mobile application features

Question

Suppose one wants to port a desktop app to a smartphone (which can mean write from scratch).

How in your opinion should a mobile version relate to to the desktop one? In other words, what are the common features of mobile apps?

I can say:

• short user interface (not time consuming)
• dense content, filtered in comparison with the desktop relative
• personal: no mult-user requied (smartphone is a personal device)

What else?

Answer 1

Apple has some guidance in the Human Interface Guidelines

Some things I would think about are:

1. How do you want to present your data efficiently, yet elegantly?
2. Which controls and view types will you use? Meaning, does this part of the program do best with a UITableView or a UIScrollView or should there be a drill-down Navigation to flow better? Essentially, I'm just saying, determine the flow-down structure of your application. You need to become familiar with each and every control so you know where a typical user expects them to be.
3. Users on an iDevice (except for iPads) are used to a one-window environment. Therefore, don't try and pack every little detail into the screen. Break it up logically and intuitively.
4. Strike a balance between functionality and useability. Don't just throw an app out there that works great but looks like garbage. People like eye candy (men especially).
5. Like you said, multi-user is only realistic on the iPad and even then it's a stretch for anything other than games.
6. Think about what the user expects and is used to based on other apps and try to continue that trend. For instance, if you are showing the keyboard and there is no obvious way to dismiss the keyboard, make it so that when they tap on some area of the view outside of the keyboard, the keyboard gets dismissed. Otherwise, the user is just stuck there with this stupid keyboard on the screen and no logical way to get rid of it (sorry, I really hate when developers do this one).
7. Lastly, use the app yourself for at least a week prior to releasing it. If you aren't 100% behind it, change it. Some people are all about "failing first and fixing later" but I disagree. The most important day is the first day of launch. After that, it's either word of mouth, cross-promotion, or your advertising money. Make it a success on the first day.. and also realize that more people use the AppStore on Wednesday/Friday/Saturday/Sunday than any other days of the week.