Mobile Evolution - Thoughts, insight, and experiences related to the mobile software industry

Designing an iPhone UI for a productivity app can take many directions and each time you make a choice, someone will not like it, yet others may think it's brilliant. (Of course, you hope the latter are the ones leaving reviews.) Today the landscape in the app store affects how you design your UI—you need to stand out to get noticed. However, the other edge of the sword is that if you go totally radical, people won't have that comfort feeling of familiarity of a iOS app. So the key is to get a balance of familiar, with a dose of 'zazz. Of course, it helps to have some luck of being in the right place at the right time, so someone with influence also sees your app, but this post is going to tackle areas WITHIN your control—the design of the User Interface (UI).

In marketing an app, one of the areas that needs attention is your website. The AppStore description and screenshots are sometimes not enough for every customer to make a decision. Sending them to your website gives you another chance at convincing them to purchase your product. In addition, many people do discover apps via search engines, so a website is essential for traffic that can link to your apps on the AppStore.

On your website you have more options with text formats and sizes, layout, and, of course graphics, including screenshots and device shots. Apple makes available device artwork and AppStore badges that you can use on your website, but you have to insert your own screenshots and resize the artwork to meet your needs. (The link requires a developer login). This post will cover some tips on processing your screenshots for device graphics on your website.

Our travel manager, Trip Boss, is a comprehensive travel app which posed a unique structure that required an unorthodox solution when bringing it to the iOS mobile market. In order to move Trip Boss to iOS in a way that solves both our customer's needs and makes it feasible, economically, we came up with a new method of selling—Apps-Within-an-App. The app was originally available on the PalmOS platform, which is much different than the iOS platorm. To 'port this software to the new AppStore, we had to consider many things: customers needs, data sharing, development time, and pricing. Otherwise, the app would never have come to fruition on the iOS platform. This post will take you through the history, the thought process, the choices, and the final decision and product.

Recently we released phase 1 of Trip Boss travel manager for iPhone. We've been working towards its release since the AppStore opened 2-1/2 years ago in 2008. Although we released other iOS apps prior to Trip Boss, with each app we learned something new that we could use in Trip Boss. Full time focus on Trip Boss took about 7 months and we expect another 3-4 months to release the remaining phases, or “modules”. In comparison, Trip Boss for the PalmOS, the initial release, took over a year to write. Some of the subsequent additions and enhancements (such as itinerary) took another year each to release. This post will show you some of the history behind Trip Boss' design and some of the insight behind the design decisions for the iOS release.

Trip Boss travel manager, Expense & Budget edition, will be on sale on the AppStore on November 10th, 2010. To see a preview, please visit our website.

Just a quick post to let everyone know that Trip Boss for iPhone IS in the works. We are working hard to release it this fall. We'll keep you posted as we have screenshots and other goodies available. In the meantime, please feel free to "like" us on Facebook and follow Trip Boss on Twitter (for the latest news).

Today we announced at Creative Algorithms that our Palm OS apps, Trip Boss and Date Wheel, have been "Classic Certified" for the MotionApps emulator app "Classic" for the webOS on the Palm Pre. (full press release here). What exactly does this mean?

Palm Addict, one of the oldest community blogs, focused on mobile, just handed out awards to two of our software titles, Trip Boss and Date Wheel.

One way to market your software is to sign up for one of the daily deals sites. One site we've used in the past is Bits du Jour. They promote software with deep daily discounts. The software includes Windows applications and also mobile software and web applications. We have an upcoming promotion for Trip Boss on May 12, for 50% off.