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In October 2011 I quit my job to spend more time with my family and working on things I care about. It is the first major step in my quest to live different. Now I don’t mean to be different just to feel unique, but instead to live different in a way that makes my life better. Remember that these are the things I have chosen personally. You should create your own different life.

Be debt free.

Debt is crippling. It limits your options, forces you to keep working at a job you don’t like,  preventing travel, and adding considerable stress. It is also often a symptom of caring too much about possessions. Seriously, if you don’t have the money, don’t buy things.

Jobs are optional.

It’s time we started thinking about jobs and careers differently. At times they can be great: meet new people, work on great projects, and learn a lot. But if your job is holding you back from the life you want to live get rid of it. If your finances are in order and you have money in the bank quitting that job isn’t quite so scary. Especially if you can work on a side project that makes some recurring income on the side.

Chris Guillebeau, an author and blogger, started traveling and writing extensively a few years ago. Now he finishing up a quest to go to every country in the world (all 193). He travels almost continuously and does it on less than $60k per year. All of which he earns from writing for his blog and related guides.

If you really try you’ll find there are so many more ways to make money than going to an office every day.

Focus on family.

Over the years I always heard people say “kids grow up so fast”, but I never internalized it until recently. Watching Oliver grow and change in the last four months has shown me just how true this phrase is. No one wishes they spent less time with their kids.

Travel frequently to unique places.

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
– Henry Miller

The most remote place I’ve ever been is the mountain village of Ketane in Lesotho (inside South Africa). Someday I’ll write more about the experience, but for now I’ll just say that travel can change your outlook on life.

Spend some time seeing things close to home as well. If you live in a city anywhere near as great as Boise there are many things you have yet to discover.

Learn continuously.

If I had to choose one thing to shape my outlook on life it would be a continual desire to learn both physical and mental skills. Even though I dropped out of college, I value learning very highly. Just choose the setting that is right for you. I hope to teach Oliver to share the same desire.

Create.

Take what you have learned and used it to create great things. Whether writing, woodworking, software design, knitting, or painting; start creating.

Value experiences over possessions.

On a trip to Hawaii with my some of my family a couple years ago we spent nearly $1,000 on a helicopter tour of the island. Since it was mostly my money I thought hard before spending the money. Ultimately reminding myself that a great experience is better than whatever objects I would purchase with that money. It was an unforgettable time and I will show photos from the flight for years to come.

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That’s all I have for now. Go write your own story.

I see it all the time with designers who know how to use Photoshop and Illustrator, but fail to understand what makes a design great. Video editors who can create any complex transition you want, but don’t know how to make a video feel timeless.

If you watch the newer Star Wars movies pay attention to the transitions near the end. When they are switching between each of the battle scenes they use Powerpoint style transitions. Dissolve, blinds, swipe. It’s an amateur effect in a movie that is otherwise very technically difficult and visually impressive. The skill is there, but taste is lacking.

The contrast between local and national television commercials is a perfect example. The local commercials are loud, poorly written, and are more in-your-face. Painful at times in their lack of quality. Blaring messages about sales, quickly spoken copy, and flashing graphics are not going to make anyone look fondly on your brand.

Most of having good taste is knowing what to leave out. Slow down. Remove content. Rewrite your script. Never use phrases like “4 easy steps.”  Focus on the details. Keep it simple.

Don’t just learn the technical aspects of your craft. Focus on creating well-formed art.

Fluent is a new memory system app I recently wrote for the iPhone. It is a twist on the traditional flash cards application in that it has a system to ensure you learn every card you add. For me Fluent is significant because it is the first iOS app I have written entirely on my own. Without having to hire out any of the development. One more milestone met on my journey to become a programmer.

To learn more about Fluent you can view Fluent on the App Store.

Guidelines

I started with a few guidelines to shape the process:

• Build the app I want to use. Many people have asked for more features, Fluent to function a different way, or some other change, but if it doesn’t fit with the app I want to use then I don’t include it. Hopefully a few other people will share my vision for a memory sustem application like Fluent.
• Release as soon as possible. I focused on what I felt was the minimum necessary to launch and nothing more. I could have spent months or years tweaking the code and design before feeling like Fluent was complete, but instead I decided to release it quickly. Since it is a side project I needed it to have a feeling of completion so I could move on to something else. Many features are missing, but it is still an application that I will use every day.
• Be able to review cards immediately after launch. Launch the app, review flash cards. Once the cards are loaded that is the workflow. No need to worry about what you should be reviewing that day or navigating screens to find the right cards. I wanted to be able to stand in line at the grocery store and quickly review French vocabulary.

The interface

Wireframes

I start every project with sketches. As you can see above they aren’t very detailed or even very good. But the important thing is that they convey the ideas of the application. Each thumbnail is accompanied by notes about features and design elements I want to include. I even sketch out icon ideas and try names. Whatever comes to mind I put it on paper.

Version 1

The first design direction helped get the screens figured out and a better feel for the application. But ultimately I didn’t like where the design was headed so I scrapped it and went in a different direction.

Version 2

The next version started around a blue color and a dark fabric texture. They looked really good together and I designed the rest of the style around those two elements. The application was better organized by using a tab bar to move between sections.

When I first start designing a simple application like Fluent I always underestimate how many screens are required to fulfill the features, especially on devices with small screens. That was very true with Fluent. What I originally thought would have 3-4 views ended up with 12.

Everything in this version is more precise and focus is drawn to the most important elements.

The Icon

App icons should meet a few basic requirements: communicate application purpose, stand out in a crowded store, match the style of app, and look excellent. I tried a lot of different concepts (a few sketches shown with the wireframes), before I decided to go with a basic shape. I’d like to give credit to whatever inspired the shape, but I can’t find the source (maybe it was original). Though the color wheel idea comes from Kaleidoscope by Sofa.

This icon meets all the requirements except for conveying the application’s purpose. Oh well, I guess I can’t insist on having everything. To me it represents fluid, continuous, and dynamic.

The Name

I hate naming products. Though I am really happy with the names of my products (OneMotion, OneVoice, and now Fluent), I didn’t come up with them. David Wheeler named OneMotion, and I named OneVoice to match that style he had already setup. At first this project was just called “Flash Cards App.” Then in keeping with the previous style I started calling it OneMemory. Not great, but I thought it was good enough to launch.

OneMemory stuck until my mom came over for dinner one evening (the memory system is based on something she created years ago). Though she was thrilled to see that her ideas were going to be available for so many more people to use, she hated the name. Dinner conversation moved on to other topics as she was quiet for a few minutes.

“Why don’t you call it Fluent?” she said. “It’s short, simple, and it implies mastery of the topic.”

Wow, great name, but I never thought it would be available. Amazingly enough the name was available on the App Store. 500,000 applications and no one had taken the name Fluent. Cool.

That’s it. If you are interested Fluent is now available on the App Store for $1.99.

“I don’t know the secret to success, but the secret to failure is trying to please everyone”

- Bill Cosby

First know that your customers won’t understand your vision, and just because they purchased your product, doesn’t mean you need to accommodate their requests (in almost all cases). If a feature idea doesn’t match with your vision for the product, feel free to say “No.” Be patient, listen, truly consider it, but don’t feel obligated to build it.

If you aren’t interested, just say so. You should never string a customer along by saying “Great idea! We’ll build that in a few months.” If you don’t have a solid timeline for the feature being built, don’t tell the customer you are going to deliver it.

With OneVoice my vision was for usable software that did less than the competition. So I have to be extra careful since it is very likely a new feature will go against my narrow vision. Though since I am not an expert in the niche my software serves, I must listen carefully to know if an idea is useful. Otherwise I risk not serving my customers needs.

Find the balance for your software and don’t try to be all things to all people.

If you’re interested in iPhone & iPad design checkout my iOS Design Mailing List for more tips, inspiration, and tutorials.

iOS Design Weekly was inspired by Dave Verwer’s iOS Dev Weekly. After receiving his first issue I thought that the design side of iOS needed something more. So much of the iOS community is focused on development, that design doesn’t get talked about as much. Everyone knows the importance of great design in iOS applications, but not as many people are explaining how to achieve it. Especially when you compare it to how many developers are sharing their code examples and knowledge through blog posts, tutorials and Stack Overflow answers.

Planning & Design

I started thinking about all of this Sunday afternoon and decided to move forward with it later that evening. First I needed a domain name. Quite a few domains were available including iosdesignweekly.com, iosdesign.org, and others. Plenty of decent options to choose from. I ultimately went with iOSDesign.co (I’m curious what other people think of .co domain names). The reason I didn’t go with iOSDesignWeekly.com is I may want to expand it into a full blog or other site in the future and didn’t want a domain name that would limit my options.

With the domain name taken care of I moved on to design. I spent about an hour with different design concepts before finally coming up with the one you see here. On the right you can see an earlier concept that I didn’t go with. After completing the design in Photoshop I took a break and spent time with my wife (always recommended!).

Markup & MailChimp

Monday morning I got up early and started to implement the design. I had already decided on MailChimp for my email provider for a couple reasons: a great free plan and their interface for designing emails is very easy-to-use. The free plan goes up to 2,000 subscribers. When I reach that number I can start paying.

Coding the form was fairly easy (I used the provided code, then heavily customized it). The only real issues were around getting the form validation to look right. Also there were a lot of inline styles to strip out.

Then it was time to go into work.

Permission & Launch

With the site up and running I was ready to launch. But then I thought: “What if Dave Verwer didn’t like what I was doing?” Not that he had exclusive rights to iOS newsletters, but I really like his project and never plan to upset someone if it can be avoided. So I asked. Sent a quick email, which he responded to in minutes saying he thought it was great and would link to it in the next issue of iOS Dev Weekly.

Now time to launch: I posted to Hacker News, Dribbble, Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. Hacker News produced the most traffic by far, with Dribbble next, but not anywhere close. Surprisingly it didn’t go anywhere on Reddit where I have previously picked up quite a bit of exposure. I’m not sure what I did wrong there.

Below is unique visitors and subscribers for the week. August 8th was the launch day, and almost all of that traffic is from Hacker News. At the peak the story made it to the middle of the second page (which only required 7 up-votes) and received over 400 clicks.

The second spike is from the link in iOS Dev Weekly (thanks Dave!). Overall the conversion rate is very high (very targeted traffic!), but look how much higher the conversion rate is from iOS Dev Weekly.

Here are some stats:

• 279 Subscribers in the first week.
• 732 Unique visitors in the first week.
• 18 hours from idea to launch (3 hours of time actually working on it).
• 7 Up-votes on Hacker News.
• 7 Likes on Dribbble.

What’s Next?

Now I have to actually create the newsletter. Each issue will go out on Wednesdays, starting tomorrow. From there we’ll see where the site goes.

If you are interested, signup here: iosdesign.co. Also please send me any article ideas you may have.

Liam McKay

Liam is a designer from the UK working on WPBundle and IconJar. He was even kind enough to give me an invite to Dribbble.

• Website: WeFunction.com
• Dribbble: function
• Twitter: @LiamMcKay

Josh Hemsley

Josh is a designer previously from Oregon, now living in California. He does an excellent design for each one of his posts on TheHemsley.com.

• Website: JoshHemsley.com
• Dribbble: joshhemsley
• Twitter: @joshhemsley

Wendell Fernandes

Wendell creates clean interfaces and impressive icons. Even his icon sketches look really good.

• Website: wendellfernandes.com
• Dribbble: wendellverli
• Twitter: @wendellverli

Tobias van Schneider

Tobias’ iOS designs stand out the most to me. Especially the record player (below). It is just stunning!

• Website: vanschneider.com
• Dribbble: tobiasvanschneider
• Twitter: @schneidertobias

Liam, Josh, Wendell, and Tobias: thanks for inspiring me to become a better designer.

To everyone else, you can follow me on Dribbble to see more design work.

Who inspires you?

Getting my Feet Wet

In February 2010 my boss at Unity put me on the team to build a new iPad app to be available in the app store in two months; the day the iPad was to be released. Since no one in our company had Objective-C or iOS experience (though we have plenty of talented programmers), we hired Small Society, a portland based iOS dev shop, to guide us through the process and help along the way. With a few minor hic-ups we released Medical Video jLogs right alongside the iPad. I did the design (with help from Andy Martin), and it got me interested in doing more.

Since Boise didn’t have an Apple store at the time I flew out early Saturday morning to Portland, with a small team from Unity, to get in line at one of their stores. Once we purchased the iPads (10+), we went back to Small Society’s Portland office to load our app on the iPad for the first time and to start testing. Overall the day and app launch was a huge success. We flew back to Boise that evening.

Learning More

Next we worked on building a iPhone client for one of our existing web apps. I did all the design, flow, and user experience for this app. For this new app I decided to get into xCode and start making design changes myself rather than make a request and wait for the developers to do it. Though I did a lot in interface builder, I also started getting familiar with Objective-C. Unfortunately this application is still unreleased, so I can’t provide any details.

In August I went to iOS Dev Camp in San Jose and spent the weekend “hackathon” building what would eventually become OneVoice. Robert Carrico, a coworker at Unity, helped and we had a working prototype finished before the event was over. It was a great weekend at the PayPal offices spent coding and learning as fast as possible.

Later in September I went to iOS DevCon in San Diego. It was a three day conference where I learned a lot. Including enough to get OneVoice storing phrases and categories using Core Data. Easy for some, but it was a huge step for me. I couldn’t have done it without Chris Brandsma’s incredible help and never ending sarcasm.

Getting Serious

Towards the end of the year I was serious about releasing OneVoice as a product and had hired Chris to do the more difficult parts of the development while I spent my time designing 100+ high quality icons. I learned a ton and actually had a product to sell.

OneVoice released on January 8th, 2011 and sold 4 copies the first day. Though sales continued, after that I never sold more than 2 copies in a single day, and most days didn’t sell any. It turns out being on the new list in the App Store can be worth quite a bit.

Since the initial release I have put out two more versions of OneVoice and learned a ton more.

In trade for the immense amount of help Chris had been providing, I started design on an idea of his called Agile Cards. A poker planning app for teams using Agile development processes. The app turned out really well and is now available in the App Store.

So for my first year of part time development I had a hand in four apps, all of which turned out quite well. Of those four OneVoice is by far the most successful. Someday soon it may produce enough money that I can focus on it full time.

I can’t wait to see what the next year brings.

While standing in the checkout line I watched the Japanese lady in front of me sign her credit card receipt with small, perfectly formed strokes. Her precision was followed by my childlike scribbles on the next receipt. I felt foolish in comparison.

As designers we work on logos and other branded material quite regularly, so why note focus on your signature?

I’ve always had an ugly signature. First when I was a kid it was just my name written in rather blocky letters. It wasn’t fluid or quick, it was just my name. I always hated cursive so when forced to learn it my signature improved, but only a little. My pen moved between letters fluidly, but the final result was still ugly and crude. An awkward combination of block and cursive letters.

Over time my signature became more random until a friend commented that it was just scribbles. From then on I took it as a challenge to see how crazy I could make it and still get it accepted. This turned out to be incredibly boring when after two or three purchases I discovered that no one cares if your signature even resembles letters. They’ll accept anything.

With my fun ruined I decided to try the exact opposite; to make a signature I was actually proud to show off. I started by looking up cursive and calligraphy samples, found some I liked, and then came hours of practice. First I focused on the first letters of each name N and B. My theory being that if those letters looked good it didn’t matter as much what followed.

After filling a few pages with practice letters and signatures I found a style I liked. But as hard as I tried I couldn’t get the “th” in “Nathan” to look how I wanted. Signatures are supposed to be quick and effortless, and my new style was too difficult and slow even after quite a bit of practice.

Both problems were solved by signing only “N. Barry”. After all the domain name for this blog used to be nbarry.com.

“Perfection is achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Now my signature was short and looked fine, but it still wasn’t distinct. With the Antoine de Saint-Exupery quote in mind I decided to shorten it even further to just N.

Quick, distinctive, and simple. It works. I practiced it a few hundred more times before being satisfied and moving on.

It turns out the more difficult part is to actually use the signature on a daily basis. When presented with receipts and documents I always sign my old signature out of habit. It has taken a conscious effort to remember my new signature. Sometimes on financial documents, even when I remember, I still sign my old signature, because I am worried the new one won’t be accepted. Though so far it has always been accepted.

That’s my story. Hopefully you will start to apply design to some of the smaller areas of your life as well.

Update: I gave the same talk in February 2011 at Boise Code Camp. Thanks to everyone who attended the session!

Here are some resources for further learning about HTML5:

• Dive Into HTML5
• HTML5 for Web Designers