Learning to write custom iPhone UI

Question

My question is more towards learning the UI skillset for iPhone dev.

I have been noticing a lot of iPhone developers who build great iPhone application, and when I say great I mean the awesome interfaces. I want to be able to create similar interfaces but I am finding it hard to learn how to do that.

I have picked up a few iPhone dev books but they all show you how to use existing UI elements provided by Apple with no customization.

Can anyone here help me find the resources and help me develop that skillset required to create those awesome UI interfaces?

Answer 1

You can use Images that are png's and made usually by photoshop. If you need to know how to do that for different UI objects then ask or search for those questions. I cannot answer this question for all the UI objects made by apple but luckily they can be broken up.
I would maybe suggest this site, but maybe you have looksed at it before due to the fact that I only google searched: "design custom ui for iphone"

Answer 2

Matt Gemmell has a very good blog post on this: http://mattgemmell.com/2008/10/29/favorites-ui-design

Answer 3

An awesome interface is one that doesn't require the user to stop and think about how to use it. Ideally, the user shouldn't even notice the interface itself but should be able to concentrate on the task the interface implements. To many people concentrate on visually interesting geewhiz interfaces that look cool in a video but which proves cumbersome and tedious to use. People soon grow to hate such interfaces.

Good interface design begins with the invisible data model. You should have a thorough understanding of what data and data operations the app will perform. Once you know that you know what data the user needs to see, when they need to see it and what operations they need to perform on that data. Only at that point should you begin to think about interface design.

You should only add unique interface elements when they will help the user view or operate on the data. In the end, useless eye candy hurts an apps success more than helps.

Answer 4

Making "awesome UI" is not just about knowing how to create custom elements, but also when not to. I highly recommend reading the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines to understand where Apple was coming from when designing the interface of the iPhone. Also, you should have access to the iPhone Tech Talk video "iPhone User Interface Design" through the iPhone Dev Center (click on the Getting Started videos), which provides some great design tips. The Mac Human Interface Guidelines are also a solid resource, because of the philosophical design tips at the beginning of that document. The "Extending the Interface" section of that document has a nice discussion of when and how to make custom UI elements.

I find there's a lot you can learn about interface design from case studies by other developers. These include

• "Pimp my App" (video) by Mike Lee
• Wil Shipley on his iPhone Delicious Library client (video)
• "IPHONE ITS NOT A FRICKEN MINATURE LAPTOP OK" (video) by Craig Hockenberry
• "Convert design evolution" by tap tap tap
• "Designing the UI of Things for iPhone" by Cultured Code

Ben even wrote a great recap of the design of Stand Alone's Crosswords application.

I also find it useful to see what other people feel about good and bad interface design decisions. Two nice articles in this regard are "30 iPhone Apps with Sexy Interfaces" by Mac.AppStorm and "iPhone Apps Design Mistakes: Over-Blown Visuals" by Smashing Magazine.

For learning how to draw custom icons, I highly recommend paying for the Icon Resource series of videos.

Answer 5

You might want to check out Apress' iPhone User Interface Projects. I've not read it so I shan't vouch for it, but it's highly rated and seems to be exactly what you're looking for.