Designing an iOS app prototype? Get inspired with these top recommendations and excellent iOS app design examples!
Designing an app for the iOS platform? Need a little inspiration? Don’t be concerned; you’ve come to the correct location. Creating apps for iOS is similar to creating apps for other operating systems. However, Apple is slightly less flexible than other platforms like Android and there are a few strict standards set out in their Human Interaction Guidelines (HIG) . Looking for Hire iOS Developers for your business needs.
In this post, we’ve pulled up the most crucial ideas for designing iOS apps in your prototype tool to make things a little more straightforward. We’ve also tossed in 20 of the best iOS app design examples to get your creative juices flowing.
Great recommendations for iOS app design
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Choose your color scheme carefully
Be careful in your attitude to color. Your color scheme and how you deploy it will effect the user experience and usability of your iOS app design.
HIG recommends restricting your color palette to those that are in your brand emblem throughout your design. Moreover, you’ll want to make sure that the colors in your palette work harmoniously towards a more intuitive UI. Use the colors in your palette to consistently demonstrate distinct UI elements in a way that helps the user understand the different parts of the interface.
Furthermore, with respect to warning messages, make sure to utilize a color like red in tandem with an icon like a triangle to make it evident when a mistake happens.
Learn more about how to utilize color and alternatives to color to make UIs more workable for persons with impaired eyesight in our guide to accessibility testing. Looking for hire iPhone app developer in London for your business needs.
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Use color to express interaction
The HIG recommend using tint colors for items with interactivity. Tint colors are ones that are more saturated with white and have a lighter appearance. If you do this, the user will have a much easier time identifying static items from interactive elements. You may even consider utilizing altogether distinct colors for interactive versus non-interactive UI elements.
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Make your colour scheme work for both light and dark looks.
Lastly, make sure your color scheme is flexible to both light and dark appearances. The iOS system colors are all automatically adapted for both appearances, according to their semantic color scheme. Using the system colors for key icons and features in your iOS app design can save you time.
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Use iOS custom typography if possible
There are no hard and fast standards when it comes to typography, although the HIG do advocate utilizing the two iOS custom typefaces: San Francisco (sans serif) and New York (serif) (serif). Apple designed these typefaces with both scalability and versatility in mind.
Is this to say that you can’t employ typefaces that aren’t specified by the HIG? Of course not. In fact, it can help your brand stand out and make text more lively. However, we at Justinmind encourage you take care that your typography is constantly legible throughout your iOS app, as readability comes first in the user experience.
Not sure about the ideal typeface for your users and your brand style? Check out our post on the best fonts for mobile app design to help you select!
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When should San Francisco and New York be used?
For paragraph text and functional text (such as for navigation or instructions), we recommend utilizing the San Francisco or New York typefaces as the majority of iOS app users will be accustomed to reading this font.
Furthermore, the San Francisco typeface comes in up to six different fonts, so you won’t have to worry about distinguishing text hierarchies for your user. Meanwhile, Apple’s New York serif functions as a complementing typeface for San Francisco, and is fantastic for titles.
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Don’t waste up space with a logo
Apple’s HIG advocates reinforcing your brand, but you’ll need to make sure that your logo doesn’t take up too much screen real estate. This can get in the way of both content and navigation, to the detriment of the user experience.
Nonetheless, there are other means of reinforcing your brand. The easiest and most suggested option is just adopting the same color scheme of your brand colors and using them for various UI elements throughout your iOS app design. You can use your brand palette for iconography like as glyphs, to highlight text and even for backgrounds or splash screens.
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Don’t build your own light and dark appearance settings
When it comes to the light and dark appearance of your iOS app design, always avoid making your own appearance settings. You don’t want to create separate settings that compete with the systemwide settings on the user’s device.
By doing this, you could wind up creating confusion and unnecessary work for the user. This is because they’d have to flip two sets of switches on and off to manage light and dark appearance.
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Ensure appropriate contrast in dark look
Next, for accessibility reasons, you’ll want to verify the text in your iOS app design is still accessible when in dark look. For example, if the user increases the contrast whilst in dark appearance, is there less visual contrast between the dark text and the dark background?
You may paste your color codes into this free Contrast Checker to ensure you’re supplying the optimal contrast levels to put your design in compliance with international accessibility guidelines.
As long as your iOS app is in dark appearance, you’ll also want to make sure there is appropriate contrast between the backdrop and the foreground. An example of when this is necessary could be when modal sheets show in the UI. You can do this by conforming to Apple’s HIG dynamic standard color rules.
Lastly, consider developing symbols for both light and dark appearance. To do this, simply design hollow glyphs with outlines for iOS light look and filled glyphs for iOS dark appearance.
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Respect iOS gesture norms
Unless crucially necessary, attempt to avoid interfering with the systemwide gestures for the edge of the iOS device. This is because those motions normally allow the user to access the Home screen, the Notification Center, the app switcher and the Control Center.
Always use normal iOS gestures to do standard activities. Users are accustomed to these common gestures across a wide range of iOS devices and don’t generally appreciate having to learn additional gestures for completing the same operation. An example would be the left-to-right swipe to go back to a previous screen.
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Choose items that leverage iOS haptics
You may also make your iOS users feel at home by employing typical UI elements that are compatible with iOS haptics such as sliders, date pickers and switches. Did you know that you could have complete access to all of these common elements with Justinmind’s iOS element UI kit?
For an elaborate guide on app interactions for all platforms, why not review our guide on app interactions and gestures?
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Create in-app navigation
As you surely know, iOS apps, unlike android apps and those of other OS, don’t have access native navbar. Instead, the apps themselves have to ensure they account for the user’s fundamental in-app navigation. The HIG recommend that you should always position this navbar at the top of your iOS app design and include a back button (← or <) accompanied by the title of the previous screen.
For example, if your user is viewing a message from a particular contact, then your navbar would show the back button, followed by “Messages”. The user would then understand that if they push the back button, they would then go back to all messages. On the right, you should include items like edit, done and other elements that are important in that display, or else further navigation alternatives.
Final thoughts – iOS app design
Designing for Apple’s iOS platform might not be as easy as other OS. However, the perks of designing a successful app for one of the most popular, if not tightest, OS on the planet pays dividends.
