So I’ve calmed down a bit now. I sat down to write up some application reviews on All About Symbian this morning, but in the end I had to delete the applications and go outside for an aggressive game of Swingball to work out the frustration of a number of applications just completely and utterly failing to understand even the basics of working in a software market (let alone the specialised nature of Symbian OS).
Now don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of great applications out there, although with the amount of apps bundled in firmware these days, perhaps the obvious holes for extended functions are harder to find. With devices that come with 60 'apps' out the box, developers should be fighting faster, harder and stronger than the rest of the competition. And not making some stupid and obvious mistakes. So as the weekend approaches, here’s some things to do to improve your audience’s appreciation.
Spell Check Your Text!
Yes, coming from me, I can hear Rafe and Steve chuckling at this(!), but there’s absolutely no reason why you should have any bloopers in your application. Dialogs, boxes and the captions should not draw attention to themselves for the wrong reasons. One application I recently tested managed to have the name of their program displayed incorrectly in the caption on the system screen! They must have seen that every day, but yet it slipped past them. Stood out like a sore thumb to me.
Don’t Lift Obvious Graphics
This is an interesting one, because you really do want an interface to be self explanatory, so you’re going to want to use elements that feel familiar (one reason your applications should look and feel like the built in applications is to leverage this familiarity). What is a big no-no is to wholesale 'lift' elements from other applications – so you’ve made a word processor, it's right to use icons that look a bit like the standard toolbar icons in Microsoft Office (for example), but it’s not on to use exactly the same icons. It might help the end user, but could land you in a heap of legal trouble. And there’s every chance some users are going to spot the lift.
Use Appropriate Examples
Oh, I loved this one. An RSS Aggregator program that came with a number of example feeds. Perfect. Except that for an English application, with an English language flag in the SIS installation file, all the sample feeds, titles and content were in the Cyrillic script, and complete gobbledegook for my first experience of the program. One simple dialog box asking in which language I wanted some sample feeds (if I wanted them at all) would have made this much more painless.
Make a Good Impression
It’s all about the first thirty seconds. Someone installs your application, they’ll run it straight away, and if in that small window they can’t work out what it’s for, how to do things and how it will help them, they’re going to delete the app. While getting people to download your application will be hard, the last thing you want is to waste that effort by not focussing on those first moments and impressions they will have of your code. Give them a demo, or a tutorial, if you have to direct them to a menu then make sure that things like Stats, Settings and Exit are all there, and easy to get to. You get one shot at this, make it worthwhile.
Make It Look Like A Built In Application
This goes back to the first impressions, but if everyone with a UIQ phone has been using the built-in applications already, it stands to reason that they understand where everything is in the built in menu structures and dialogs. So why try to re-educate them with a shiny, whizzy, scroll out tabbed interface? Unless you have a very (very) good reason for breaking the style of a user interface… don’t! It might seem strange, but applications that act like the built in apps do a lot better than those where the developer has done something that he or she thinks is better.
So that’ s my advice. Not quite set in stone, but they suited me well when I wrote for PDA’s and smartphones. What would you add to the mix? And, developers, before sending in your application to AAS (via Handango), please, please take note and don't commit any of the cardinal sins. Otherwise you'll get short shrift from me.
Ewan Spence, 13 July 2007