Once I made this remark in final week’s concern, I didn’t suppose I’d be following up on it this week:
Why do I preserve linking to David Smith’s posts on app design? Partially as a result of he’s one of many few folks running a blog on this subject…
However David additionally couldn’t consider many individuals both, and Chris Clark, who additionally runs a nice TikTok channel overlaying design and SwiftUI coding, made a superb level that the subjective nature of the work signifies that most design writing is usually thought management or case research.
My favorite articles are subjective, although, and never simply with design matters. I study essentially the most from real-world tales from folks engaged on actual tasks, irrespective of if it’s a coding or debugging concern, considering round a design downside, or a retrospective of a advertising and marketing marketing campaign. That’s why David’s publish stood out to me final week. It was a narrative about fixing an actual concern in his app, and whereas he might have solved that concern in some ways, studying how he approached the issue was fascinating.
However that additionally explains why there’s much less of the sort of content material round. Writing about options to real-world issues isn’t simple to do usually due to how a lot work should occur earlier than you place down a single phrase. It’s rather more easy to provide goal or academic articles the place you choose a topic and clarify it. There’s tons of that type of writing round coding and far much less on design, primarily as a result of there’s not often a concretely right reply with design. It’s simple to confirm whether or not Swift code that calculates the primary hundred prime numbers works and far tougher to do the identical for even a constrained design downside like “How would you design display X in Y app?”
Please word that I’m not attempting to decrease the hassle or usefulness of goal, academic writing, nevertheless it serves a unique function than I used to be simply speaking about.
I’d additionally like to spotlight a number of current real-world subjective design writing examples. I already linked to it, however Sahand Nayebaziz’s article on the keyboard-driven operation of his Particulars Professional iPad app was incredible. You also needs to learn this publish from Neale Van Fleet on designing Audio Hijack 4. I additionally actually loved this publish from Yves Jannic on not worrying too a lot about your app icon.
I’ll end this week’s remark by echoing my name to motion from final week. If of anybody writing or producing any content material on design, improvement, advertising and marketing, or something associated to app improvement, please both allow them to know so as to add themselves to the iOS Dev Listing or, even higher, add their website for them!
Dave Verwer 
