Design Mistakes We Made in Our iPhone App
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Design Mistakes We Made in Our iPhone App
1–10 of 15 posts
Re: Design Mistakes We Made in Our iPhone App
#2Great article, thanks for posting. I find the 'Mistakes we made with X' posts to be the most useful thing I read on HN.
Re: Design Mistakes We Made in Our iPhone App
#3Very insightful. Each point seems obvious after the fact, but it's good to get some validation on this 'obviousness'.
How do you handle the reports after login? Is it just a webview presenting the same content as the web app? I assume it's not too js heavy, so you don't run into performance issues?
Re: Design Mistakes We Made in Our iPhone App
#4Nice writeup, I'm a fan of FreshBooks on the web. You guys should add better keywords for your app so your customers can find you:
vat,gst,bill,receipt,budget,report,finance,income,customer,profit,business,money,crm,ocr,pdf,bookkeeping,estimate
I'd generated these keyword suggestions with a tool we'd built for my startup at https://appstorerankings.net
Re: Design Mistakes We Made in Our iPhone App
#5I particularly liked the approach they took with the "first run" experience, or rather the second approach after they learnt their mistakes.
I can't count the number of times I've downloaded an app and have been smacked in the face with the exact same screen of two text boxes (username, password) and two buttons (log in, sign up).
Re: Design Mistakes We Made in Our iPhone App
#6I instantly forwarded this link to our lead designer for the insights like "Recognizing that no design is sacred". Really reinforces the idea that reiteration based on actual user feedback is important. We're about to launch an app so this was helpful! Thanks
Re: Design Mistakes We Made in Our iPhone App
#7Nice writeup, I'm a fan of FreshBooks on the web. You guys should add better keywords for your app so your customers can find you: vat,gst,bill,receipt,budget,report,finance,income,customer,profit,business,money,crm,ocr,pdf,bookkeeping,estimate I'd generated these keyword suggestions with a tool we'd built for my startup at https://appstorerankings.net
As good as your tool may be, HN generally frowns on linkspam and SEO "hacking", and you happen to have placed yourself in the worst possible intersection of both.
Re: Design Mistakes We Made in Our iPhone App
#8Very insightful. Each point seems obvious after the fact, but it's good to get some validation on this 'obviousness'. How do you handle the reports after login? Is it just a webview presenting the same content as the web app? I assume it's not too js heavy, so you don't run into performance issues?
Avrum from FreshBooks here (one of the authors of the post).
After login, the 'Create Account' and 'Login' buttons are replaced with two links: 'Email me a link to Reports' and 'View Reports in Safari'.
The primary call-to-action is the email because we recognize that the viewing experience for a traditional accounting report is still best on a computer (we actually say that in the copy). That said, if you need access immediately we provide it in a webview that shows the same content as the webapp (as you guessed).
Performance is fine on these pages but ultimately not as good native.
Re: Design Mistakes We Made in Our iPhone App
#9Nice writeup, I'm a fan of FreshBooks on the web. You guys should add better keywords for your app so your customers can find you: vat,gst,bill,receipt,budget,report,finance,income,customer,profit,business,money,crm,ocr,pdf,bookkeeping,estimate I'd generated these keyword suggestions with a tool we'd built for my startup at https://appstorerankings.net
As good as your tool may be, HN generally frowns on linkspam and SEO "hacking", and you happen to have placed yourself in the worst possible intersection of both.
I think you have misunderstood, as the post is specifically app store oriented. Still, I'm sure the app's authors would be delighted to see this post in an email form in their inbox.
Re: Design Mistakes We Made in Our iPhone App
#10> We neglected to consider the importance of other categories of tasks, such as [viewing, updating]
These kinds of tasks were actually more common than creation — especially on mobile...
Sounds like a business analysis problem, then. Don't build for what you think your users will do or what they tell you they'll do, build for what they actually do.
I'm not sure this was a "design" problem per se.