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Designing and Specifying iPhone Apps

September 4, 2009 · 1 Comment

Designing and Specifying iPhone Apps

I asked the twitterverse for a list of tools to help to specify requirements for an iPhone App.

I got some great responses so thought I’d better write them down and share with the class.

Wireframes / Mock Ups

I had been using http://lovelycharts.com/ to create mock ups in the past. This is great but struggled to find any iPhone specific image assets to use to help me.

Someone mentioned a tool called balsamiq http://www.balsamiq.com/and it seems to be perfect for the job. I will give away a free copy worth $79 at the next openMIC event ( http://openmicamp.ning.com/ )

If you already use OmniGraffle then aparently these stencils are good http://theresaneil.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/wire-frames-for-iphone-web-application-design/or here http://graffletopia.com/stencils/437

If you are using Photoshop then there are some PSD files here http://www.teehanlax.com/blog/?p=447

If you just want to use powerpoint as your tool of choice then there is a powerpoint available for download here. http://www.slideshare.net/graiz/wireframe-parts-iphone-interface-design-presentation?src=embed

If you are using Visio then there are some templates here http://www.bretteddy.com/iphone/

Somebody also said that the best way of creating the wireframes was to use pencil and paper, if you prefer that you can download an image to print as a guideline for your drawing. http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=770666

Developer Tools

I founs some of the resources listed above from tools listed for developers, you know the teach yourself iPhone development type resources. The best list I have foind for that type of thing is here http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/iphone-application-and-website-development-all-tools-and-tutorials-you-need/

Hope this is useful, feel free to copy and paste it into your blogs etc if you think other people you know would be interested and dont forget to join the mobile app development community at http://openmicamp.ning.com/

Cheers Chris

September 4th 2009

http://twitter.com/bookmeister

Categories: Mobile · Uncategorized
Tagged: iPhone wireframe spec mobile

MMS is Dead

April 4, 2008 · 1 Comment

MMS MMS is DEAD Its been 7 years since we started work on MMS and will be 6 years in August since the much hyped launches of the service by all of the mobile operators in the UK. So where are we with this service, the supposed launch pad to 3G? Most people I speak to in the mobile industry wrote it off 2 or more years back. Usage is climbing as the usability and penetration of good devices increases. But it hasn’t gone through the rapid increase of usage we witnessed with SMS in the early naughties or the increase in WAP requests in recent years. I am sure there haven’t been too many MMSC capacity upgrades required yet. Only in America Its widely reported in the US that MMS volumes are sky rocketing though, maybe because of the relative newness of mobile messaging (no major sms legacy) or the fact that most contracts come with high numbers of MMS bundles built in. Maybe there is just more to photo and video in America. MMS Re-suss? Is it possible for this service to be brought back from the dead? I believe so, but I am the minority. Its my baby and in the immortal words of Radiohead – I want to pull it out of the air-crash.Lots of good has been done by the operators, equipment vendors and device manufacturers (apart from my friends at apple).