20 min
Design is Hard Murphy Can App
-
- Technology
# What to expect from this podcast:
- Short episodes released often.
- No editing at all.
- No cursing.
- My thoughts and experiences while I’m developing this app on the side.
# About the app:
- A simple app to help people be more aware of gratitude.
- Written in ReasonML.
- Written using React Native.
- Developed on top of Expo.
# Talking points in this episode:
- UX design is hard.
- I started with a UI library, but it didn’t solve my design problems. I didn’t know where to put things on the screen.
- Kind of like handing someone a pencil and expecting them to be good at drawing, or a coloring book and expecting them to be able to paint a lovely picture on top of it.
- I purchased the book [Refactoring UI: The Book](https://refactoringui.com/book/) and read it. Mind blown.
- The last three or four days I’ve spent experimenting and refining the look of the screen that shows recorded thanks. Here was the progression:
- Started with a linear list of cards, each one showing the text from the “thanks”.
- Then grouped the cards by day, with a friendly “X days ago” text header for each day, and cards beneath.
- I added buttons for deleting, marking as “thanked” and sending thanks to each card.
- I got advice from my boss at work to reduce the button count.
- Last night I added a tab bar at the bottom of the window that blurs the background behind it, and I removed all buttons from the card, featuring the content text, showing the exact date at time at the bottom in dimmed text, and offering a “more” button, to be able to perform some actions.
# What to expect from this podcast:
- Short episodes released often.
- No editing at all.
- No cursing.
- My thoughts and experiences while I’m developing this app on the side.
# About the app:
- A simple app to help people be more aware of gratitude.
- Written in ReasonML.
- Written using React Native.
- Developed on top of Expo.
# Talking points in this episode:
- UX design is hard.
- I started with a UI library, but it didn’t solve my design problems. I didn’t know where to put things on the screen.
- Kind of like handing someone a pencil and expecting them to be good at drawing, or a coloring book and expecting them to be able to paint a lovely picture on top of it.
- I purchased the book [Refactoring UI: The Book](https://refactoringui.com/book/) and read it. Mind blown.
- The last three or four days I’ve spent experimenting and refining the look of the screen that shows recorded thanks. Here was the progression:
- Started with a linear list of cards, each one showing the text from the “thanks”.
- Then grouped the cards by day, with a friendly “X days ago” text header for each day, and cards beneath.
- I added buttons for deleting, marking as “thanked” and sending thanks to each card.
- I got advice from my boss at work to reduce the button count.
- Last night I added a tab bar at the bottom of the window that blurs the background behind it, and I removed all buttons from the card, featuring the content text, showing the exact date at time at the bottom in dimmed text, and offering a “more” button, to be able to perform some actions.
20 min