Programming the iPhone User Experience

Chapter 2. The Mobile HIG

Most large software efforts—especially those allowing any form of extension by developers—define guidelines for user experience. These guidelines provide documentation of the design, interaction, and semantic patterns that define the interaction between humans and the software in question.

Apple is known for compelling, forward-thinking user experiences. Their tools and libraries make the creation of third-party software that fits seamlessly into the aesthetics of the Mac OS X operating system a trivial task. The Mac “look and feel” is something users recognize and expect from the applications. Apple provides developers and designers with a set of general Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) to help clarify their approach and reasoning behind interface decisions.

There has almost always been controversy around the Apple HIG, leading some independent developers to proclaim the Apple HIG a “dead” document. Most of this has been due to Apple stepping outside their own recommendations and guidelines, and has thus created three tiers of applications: those by Apple, those by developers who follow the HIG, and those by developers who ignore the HIG (think Java and Swing applications).

The benefits of designing within the boundaries of the HIG are significant for both customers and developers. Users can learn to interact with an application much faster when the design of the interface follows familiar conventions. The Mac look and feel is skewed toward ...