Index card and scissors as a design tool
So far, the apps that I’ve released have been designed to be paid apps and they both have paid upgrades.
As an experiment, I want to shift directions and make my next app free and ad supported. This will be a good opportunity to test out iAds once they are available and it also means that my design process changes.
To start off, I have to design the screen layout to include an ad. I have a basic idea in my head of what the app will do (give stats about the user’s iTunes library) so I have a collection of elements I’ll need (buttons, labels, etc).
What I did to help me lay everything out is I took a notecard and cut it up into pieces that I can arrange. For example, I have one piece that is roughly the size of a typical mobile ad and another that is the size of a standard button. This technique made it possible to quickly try out different layouts and screen sets. I’m going to incorporate what I learned into the UI.
