ustwo™ is a digital design studio that delivers UI/UX design, app development & content creation services as preferred digital partner to the world’s leading brands

You’re right, Jon. Often applying skeuomorphs and visual tactility, just like any other decoration, results in kitsch. Kitsch in itself, however, is not a usability problem per se. It only becomes a problem for the user if it distracts visually or poor interaction design is applied. For instance if the UI replicates the physical constraints of the referenced object unnecessarily or if it hints at interactivity that the UI doesn’t deliver (like the code dial or the coffee cup in your example). It’s not impossible to use decorative elements that have no actual function though. Point and click adventure games made an art of showing intricate details to aid storytelling without offering opportunities for actual interaction. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the leather texture in Find My Friends other than that it may not exactly match the personal taste of a subset of users.

@twitter-27607791:disqus I’m guessing Metro-style solid black background will feel like glass

this website looks good

Thanks for this awesome e-book…
really apreciate

Is there a PDF version?

So.. how can I read this without an iPad?

If the file wasn’t zipped, readers could install to iBooks directly from their iPads by tapping the link. Would save a few steps and syncing.

Hey, what happens with the Kindle? I never seen this format before. If you use .epub you have ebooks fully compatible.

Fantastic doc. Thanks!

How come you set Photoshop’s working color space’s RGB profile to the particular profile of each display instead of homogenizing all computers to a base standard, say, sRGB? Wouldn’t that cause color jumps between all computers in your team? The way I understood color management, display profiles should never be used as a working color space in Photoshop, unless you know fot certain that all users will be looking at your media using that particular display (which 99,9% of the times will not be the case).

Nice work lozz

well thought and excellent production on the video. and kudos for not using QRcodes

i contend that the experience presented is very uniform and “modal”, while the current and normal usage of personal entertainment and communication devices is heavily fragmented: there are multiple applications open with the user switching to and from one and the others; push notifications, come in at all times, phone calls and instant messages/sms disrupt the task flow the user is following.

even in-flight, the availability of internet connectivity and of a personal device make for a very un-uniform experience, possibly confining the user experience of the service in very specific contexts, mostly situation driven: order a meal, prepare for landing and transfer from the airport, etc.

notably missing (IMHO) are tools and hints that drive community participation (even anonymously). closed environments are ideal places to build communities: people are in the same context, mostly with the same feelings/perception, must stay close and together for a few hourse, then disperse after landing. providing means for making people interact and play together for the time they share on the flight is intriguing.

Awesome read, thanks so much.

Any chance we can get our mitts on your export scripts?

You tried Fireworks?

- It fixes 90% of the shape layer issues you point out fixes for here.

- Page and state support in documents

- On click export of all pages to JPGs

- copy+paste from Illustrator

- Extracting logos are a 1 click operation in it

- Stackable/re-orderable glows/layer effects

No amount of glossy PR will make for a three horse race. This is like trying to promote the lib dems. Stop eating your time.

Hi Yan, thanks for your comment. No glossy PR here–just honesty and constructive criticism. I’d rather see a race with many horses, not just two or three. I think competition is healthy and helps push mobile UI design to more interesting places and ultimately offers more choice to users. I know I’m not the only one who’s getting a bit bored by the iOS UI. 

An account director talking about craftsmanship? Don’t make me laugh! You’re ‘profession’ is adept at at only trying to extort money from clients with with scant regard for the design and craft process. 

How many projects get ruined by account directors too feeble to stand up to client demands, and from agencies too afraid to let the prople who create the work speak directly to the people who commission the work.

“You’re ‘profession’ is adept” It should be written “Your”, Just saying.

Hello Guest, I’m sorry to hear you can’t look past someone’s title. ustwo™ is a place where everyone from the Studio Managers, Finance Director, Developers, and of course Account Directors, have an appreciation for good design and their passion is respected and celebrated.

If we all did only what was on our job description this place would be dull and boring, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

This is just awesome. Thank you Guys.

Great Post! the subtlety of humour in some apps is enough to keep the user on their toes and it allows an unspoken connection between the user and the people behind making the app. It’s a great way to remind people that the app was built by people for people and knowing that makes users more engaged and entertained.

Fantastic article!

What a fun concept! I have been working in healthcare UX design for a while, a very content RICH sphere. While at GE, our team was pairing up with a team from Microsoft and looking at some ways to incorporate the metro UI content-as-control concept into a data-rich display that supports interactivity and deep-diving by medical users. 

What would you say to a designer doing data-rich displays about moving in a content-as-control in their design?

Thank you very much for this simple yet extremely precise explanation. My team too is going through very similar development scenarios and it’s the first we are using git (we used svn before). Your post helped to clear up many of our questions. Lily

Well put, Anders!

Interestingly the save icon is disappearing for another reason. In many web and smartphone apps saving is automatic, and backups go to the cloud without any extra action from us. Google Docs is a prime example, I constantly find my self looking for the Save icon and rediscovering the “Every change you make is automatically saved” message.

But I think you’re right, as our interfaces become more reactive and less based around separated, segmented apps and functions, we won’t need icons to prompt us. And increasingly I think it’s hard to find icons to represent some of the more abstract functions, see the almost ubiquitous share icon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_icon#ShareThis), which has no real life equivalent, and so becomes a reduced mathematical graph.

Fantastic article, I think a few icon classics will outlive me though, the floppy disk for save for example.

“Anyone with a Dreamweaver trial from a Computer Arts CD was messing around with code” – So true!

As a developer with a love of design I see my role like that of the fairy in Pinocchio – we bring the artisan craftsman’s work to life!

Great post, thanks for sharing.

test

Interesting thoughts, Tony. I could never have imagined how much of my mobile games art-work would be resizing and re-formatting for various screens and resolutions. 

I now try to do as much work as possible with Photoshop’s vector tools to allow for easy-resizing. Smart Objects have proved invaluable in this regard, also.

Lewis Boadle
Art Director 
Fallen Tree Games

@fallentreegames:disqus  - yes, we love Photoshop’s vector tools here as well, especially since we can design at Retina resolution and then easily scale down by 50% to get non-Retina size (just have to remember to make everything an even measurement so it scales down to whole pixels).

@facebook-717106340:disqus - all the designers here work on both icons and UI, so they love having their time freed up from production to work on the fun stuff!

Thank you this is really great to share with design teams

You are so creative, this is very impressive. I would easily use the play-doh version. It is like tailored for me =) (AKA 19 year old female – target group?)

Confusing

@ravicious:disqus 
For me, more serious photographers on Instagram are people who use the network to showcase photos freshly taken with their phone that and go beyond snaps of drinks with friends or food. These users might use the filters, but put effort in taking an interesting snap. Some people do this and have talent. Serious photographers on Instagram are not people uploading their edited SLR photos days or months after they were taken like this is Flickr.

Yes, the process of uploading photos process should be easier, and more integrated. But then again, I want people to feel like the photos should come from the phone camera. So, camera gets a higher priority. What do you think?

Hey Nuno, fantastic article and work. I really like the hidden options when sliding left, or right, on the image itself. I love the feel of sliding a photo around to see more info on it. It feels more like a natural movement, and less like an enabler for more options. I try and do this on all my photo-based apps now, even though they don’t have the functionality – that’s a very good thing. Have been showing this off left and right. I would have loved to see the camera button reflecting light based on accelerometer movements.  

Congrats to both you and ustwo for producing this type of blog post. I love the open nature of sharing knowledge. It was truly a brilliant read and insight into how you work. Do more please. 

@twitter-1151731142:disqus I would not say so, I quite like the play-doh one. It feels fun and fresh every time I see it. It’s particularly beautiful on the bright display, and more in tune with Instagram than the dark theme.

Thank you for the material. The world and Brazil thanks

Yes, it makes sense. I’m not a Mac user but I will try to install iOS SDK and Xcode on Windows 7. It’s possible with virtual machine. I found alternatives so I will also test them (intelliJ IDEA, MobiOne Studio, etc.). Now I know what to look for.

Thank you very much! As you can see I am total newbie in this area and you helped me a LOT. i really appreciate it.

All the best!

BTW: I checked your portfolio and your works are clean and fresh. In your designs (brand ID and apps UI) you use some grid and layout templates or placing all the elements is based only on your artistic intuition?

Theoretically vine does everything I want in a video tool as it would allow me to capture a wider share (for example showing off the studio vibe etc) but something just holds me back and I default to instagram. Maybe there is something too real in vine. I seem to like the fact the viewer has to make their own motion up in the stills… 

I wish there was a simple way of letting me know if the forecast has changed significantly… a simple button on the forecast would be really useful so I don’t have to recheck

love the idea but please fix the many connection problems, or at least give users the chance to resend (a nice retry button would be great) unsent randos. i’ve already lost so many potentially beautiful randos!

I’m actually loving this app! The “peephole” view is a fantastic aesthetic. Unfortunately, about 25% of the photos I receive do not respond to a double tap so I never get to know where they came from. Other than that, I think this is a great start!

Love it, Love it, Love it !!! Five suggestions:

1. What about swipe from the right to delete? Swipe from the left mostly brings up the help screen which then you have to dismiss to get the delete button. Ugh!!!

2. I think geo-location should be mandatory. I want to know what part of the world the image came from. Not the specific city, just the general area. Or those that block their location should only get Randos from others that have also blocked their location.

3. People that send black images should get those images sent right back to them, instead of polluting the Randoshere. They take without giving.

4. Wish there was a way to save my sent images

5. Wish there was an easy way to delete multiple photos.

Serendipity rules. An app that values social sharing rather than spamming it. Love it. Awesome stuff guys!

Love the new update, thanks!!! Double-tapping to delete is perfect.
Instead of grey dots on the side that change to red dots in the middle, what
about grey dots in the middle that turn red when you’ve got a new Rando?

would love to have a queue to send a rando – sometimes you are in a spot where it’s costly to send over cell network – a queue would send as soon as wifi is available. Or to be able to select from camera roll?

Also a map of locations sent to, or received from would be awesome. Also support the idea posted about chat via reply with pic

how do i save the images i receive without having to screen cap (iphone)?

Help! Why can I only take two Randos and then no more till the next day?

do something about preventing people from sending blank images. they should immediately be banned/blocked.

I really want this to work, but it crashes whenever I try to upload a picture. Such a shame.

I have not been able to connect with the Honk app on iOS for about a week now. Please fix Honk! It is my favorite messaging platform right now!

Hi, I’m looking forward to the update. I really liked the old one and find it very useful. Thank you for that

But none of the download links sem to work. They all give a 504 error.

Check out http://www.weathertone.net

Great work. I especially liked the typography section as that is the part that I have trouble getting right, I never can get my web typography right from the start.
thanks

This is a fantastically simple way to instill good practice in new starters. But furthermore it’s a beautifully designed piece that gives just enough detail to allow creativity to flourish still. In my opinion this is exactly how ‘guidelines’ should be! Have shared this with my team!