Rolls-Royce’s Drone Shipbots Will Rule Tomorrow’s Oceans, Shipping Containers
I suppose this also means that, in the future, we’ll have drone pirates as well.
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Food for thought: The Battery is my friend
As designers and developers there is no greater sin than building an app that is a battery hog.
I recently read an article by David Smith that speaks to this idea. As David Smith puts it:
“We are building applications that run on handheld, battery powered computers that connect to the internet over wireless networks. Every watt that we can save will improve our customers’ experience.”
From a UX design perspective we have to be aware that our apps live as part of a larger ecosystem of apps, all of which share the same battery on the device. And nothing ruins the user’s experience more than being left with a lifeless iPhone with 0% remaining in battery life.
All the design, features, and functionality will be pointless if you don’t consider the first commandment of mobile design: “Thou shalt not screw with my battery life”
Dear Car Makers: Please Hire People Like This
I’m not sold on this specific concept, but he’s definitely on the right track. Interior UIs in cars have always been terrible and barely evolved over the past 40 years.
You’re gonna need a bigger data plan
According to this chart by statista, mobile data consumption is going ‘ludicrous’
You will find more statistics at Statista
How To Manufacture Desire
Great article on UX Design and how to create desire.
Mobile Design Patterns (via ReadLists)
One of my friends recently posted a picture of her daughters in a library researching material that…wait for it…wasn’t available online. Wha?! To this end, I am reminded of how grateful I should be that no matter what I’m working on, inspiration is but a mouse click finger tap away.
Here’s a collection of links (in-progress) that I’m putting together on mobile patterns and designs. Enjoy and Happy Coding!
JBChartView: A nice charting lib for iOS
I recently came across this cocoapod from the developers at Jawbone (yes that Jawbone). It’s highly customizable and pretty easy to use, but more importantly it looks great and fits in well with a FlatUI app design.
You can download JBChartView on Github.
Happy Coding!
Shopkick’s shopBeacon (iBeacon/BLE) trial live at Macy’s in SF
It’s like living in the future 🙂
App Launch: Yank
My latest project, Yank hit the iOS app store today.
Yank provides users the ability to send an emergency alert to friends and family simply by ‘Yank’-ing the headphones out of your iPhone’s audio jack.
Design by @ericajaclyn
iOS7: Just go all-in
Whether you’re upgrading an existing app or building a new app, my advice is to go all-in with iOS7. Like most things in life, it’s easier said than done, but the numbers support me on this point.
If you haven’t already heard, the iOS7 adoption rates have been astronomical. According to stats from mixpanel, in just over one week, almost two-thirds of iOS users have already upgraded to iOS7. SEVEN DAYS, and we’re already over 60%. So the $64k question is: Is it really worth my time, money, and effort to support iOS6? Probably not.
For the devs out there here are a couple of code snippets to get you moving.
That Pesky Status Bar
iOS7 brings with it, full layout (i.e. edge to edge) view controllers and translucent bars (nav bars, status bars, etc.). And because a view controller’s view now extends beneath the status bar, you’ll inevitably run into situations where the status bar blends into its background – making it appear invisible (don’t worry it’s still there).
Prior to iOS7 you could set the tint/style of the status bar with the following code:
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarStyle:UIStatusBarStyle animated:BOOL]
In iOS7 the statusBarStyle (among other things) is more or less handled at the view controller level. Thus depending on your view controller’s content/color you can dynamically set the status bar’s style so that there’s contrast. Here’s how you do it:
1. Implement the following method in your view controller
- (UIStatusBarStyle)preferredStatusBarStyle
2. And any time the method (above) returns a different value, make sure you call:
- (void)setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate
NOTE: If your view controller is part of a navigation controller’s stack, then you can change the tint of the nav bar and status bar simply by changing the UINavigationBar ‘barStyle’ and/or ‘barTintColor’ properties.
Hope that helps. Happy iOS7 Coding!
Double Burrito Day 