The first steps in designing an application
Designing an application takes careful planning from the start. The rule of thumb when designing an application is to keep it simple. Design your application with a few core functions in mind. After figuring out what your core functions will be, guide the user through each of the core functions of the application. Don't make the user go through too many steps to get to the function or it will frustrate the user.
With function in mind, we need to create a guide to get the user there. Many first time app developers make the mistake of creating screens or even worse, starting to write lines of code before creating a map. We can use simple flow charts to create a map to the functions in our applications. Creating a roadmap to our functions before creating screenshots or writing a single line of code will save countless hours of development time.
The first thing in creating a road map is to come up with a convention, in this article, we will use the same conventions as a flow chart. We can designate rectangles for the screens and diamonds for the choices and arrows to designate which direction to go. Creating a simple mock up of the flow of the program can help the designer visualize the complexity of the application. It will also allow the designer to change the flow as needed without having spend hours and days redrawing or reprogramming the screens.
When designing the roadmap, if we see that it is too confusing to follow all the arrows and choices, it probably means that the user will also be confused. Clean up the roadmap before creating a single screen or writing a single line of code. It is much easier to erase arrows, squares and diamonds rather than photoshopping a whole new screen or re-writing countless lines of code.
Once the roadmap is designed, it will help us to create the wireframes, which will be discussed in a future article. As stated earlier, the rectangles becomes the screen and the choices become some sort of control which leads to another screen. This will help us not only determine the controls to use but also help keep the layout of the screen simple.