Designing on the iPad for the iPad

I decide to do something slightly radical last month and I haven't turned back since. I began doing all the UI design for my iPad apps on my iPad. It's been such a breath of fresh air that I'm going to recommend it to everyone. In fact I will go so far as to say, you should design everything for a touch interface within a touch interface.


Touching your designs

All of you know what I mean when I say you can 'feel' designs on a touch screen. It's that hint of something you sense when a texture or a pattern is interpreted through your eyes and on down to your fingers. It's a cognitive dissonance that makes sense of the otherwise perfectly smooth touchscreen. This, more than anything else, seems to be the most important part of designing for a tablet. So why oh why would you ruin that experience by designing your interface with a mouse and keyboard.

Realtime testing

The most important part of this process, which has dramatically sped up my prototyping and spec period, is that I can create something that works on the screen I'm working with. What I mean is, I needed to do my designs on my MacBook Pro, then dropbox them to the iPad to see if the dimensions were appropriate for fingers. When designing on the iPad, I don't need to offload for visual testing, I'm already on it.

Don't underestimate what this does for the creative process. When I'm creating UI element, I can visually test it as I'm creating it, going through hundreds of eyeballed variations in a minute or two. I would have never taken the time to tweak these elements so finely if I was constantly interrupted by uploading it to another device.

It's a sketchbook that goes with you

I can't take a 28 inch screen everywhere with me, for that matter I can't take a 15 inch one with me everywhere either. But a 10 inch screen, I can work on my deck, on the sofa, out in nature. I can even photograph textures on a hike, upload them to my iPad and play with them for a UI element right there -- or wait until I get home. It's the modern sketchbook that scales to a powerful design and drafting tool.

This is astounding new feature for creative computing work. An artist can record their observations, apply them, and test them, in minutes -- on site. No waiting to go home and losing the inspiration, just an immediate, powerful impression right then and there.

Also, it's just better

Let's face it, drawing with your fingers is far easier than drawing with a mouse. What's that you say, you need precision editing? Pinch and zoom in and you've got it. Wait, you say you need a stylus? Pick from one of the many already available for the iPad and draw right on your screen. Be careful, once you've tried it, your liable never to go back to that expensive desktop.

Apps are gradually changing everything

It wasn't until iDraw was available for the iPad that I was able to do this. Up until that point Illustrator and Photoshop were my only design options. But now that a nine dollar app is here to solve that, I no longer use those expensive other guys. I've quit them, cold turkey.
This doesn't bode well for Adobe. But it bodes very well for the rest of us, cheaper apps that let many of us do more, far more easily. It's a great time to be computing.