Hello,
I'm working on an app for iPhone, and the data model looks a little crazy - 16 entity types. Could you offer any advice for masking complexity like this from the user? I know all these need to be there, but I'm trying to make it look simple, cause otherwise people will not understand.
The Tricks I have figured out so far:
My app is a bit secret in nature (in development) but use for example an app that deals with nature trips, i.e. hike, mountain bike, skiing, etc. Say I would have an object for a certain journey, i.e. by bike, through the rocky mountains (Journey: Mode of transport, location). Then I would have a different object type to store a specific journey, i.e. This january, do the rockies bike trip (Trip: Date, Journey).
Trick 1: I found that the user doesn't really grasp the difference between the two objects I just mentioned (trip and journey), and generally wouldn't care if I called them both "Trips" on the UI. (Try explaining the two distinct objects to a non-programmer, 25 minutes you'll never get back).
Trick 2: certain things, like for example pieces of camping equipment, may be objects to me, (equipment name, weight) but to the user they are just words, so I treat them as such and when they type it in my app says "You've never mentioned 'tent' before, how much does it weigh?" Then they tell me, and I have created an object without telling them it exists.
These kinds of tricks are what I'm looking for, my app needs to reduce these 16ish objects into maybe 3-4 the user is aware of, the rest hide in the mists, so anything I can get would help.
Thanks.
P.s. before you say it, I know, keep it simple, shouldn't have so many object types, etc. Just looking to find a workaround for this rule (guideline) with coffee and genius.