What is the best design for an app icon?

If you picked your icon color right, what your app icon design should be?

Remember that your icon must tell something about your app main features. It must be in line with your target audience. That's the easy part.

Your app icon must give the user an idea of what's in there

Now designing an icon means drawing something. If you are good with Photoshop, google up some tutorial, otherwise get ready to spend around $40 to purchase an icon design software from the following list.
You can also buy directly ready to use icons or customize them through dedicated websites such as webiconset , seanau , symbolicons or the very cheap iconshelf (how can they be so cheap?)

Whether you are designing the icon yourself or you bought it out (believe me, there's no shame in that), there are 4 principles you should respect:

- The simpler the better: don't put too many things in your icon, it will ultimately be confusing: 3 objects is a maximum
- Use universal imagery that people will understand wherever they come from
- Avoid putting text in your icon: it's a waste of space and it's hard to read anyway
- Avoid gloss, when you load your icon, Apple automatically adds gloss

Keep it simple and universal

Also bear in mind general design principles also apply to the app world because the eye moves throughout a design from one element to the other just like the ear with music:

- The eye associates line positions and directions with concepts: horizontal lines are calm and quiet, vertical ones suggest potential for movement and diagonal lines suggest movement and vitality.

- Straight lines are associated with human creation and work, curbs with nature and emotions

- Use familiar schemes: the eye is naturally attracted by something that is both complex and familiar, in the App Store chaos, it's a good way to make a difference. Check out this excellent article on visual hierarchy from Joshua Johnson on the subject, a real eye opener

- A good design must always be "balanced": to avoid mistakes, I found useful to use the "rule of the thirds" to build good proportions in an icon

Thou shall not ignore design principles even on the App Store

There so much to say about design that we could discuss it forever. But our app check list is far from over, we now need to focus on keywords and marketing pitch.

What's the best color for an app icon?

An icon represents your app on the App Store. Just like walking in the street, some people will notice your store and stop by, some won't.
What does it take to catch the attention? Color? Suggestive draw? Link with the name? Preview of the graphical interface? All of that?

How to attract attention in the App Store?

Being an amateur, I don't have a definitive answer BUT I do have a few clues. Let's start with colors.

Studies have shown that people tend to associate colors with emotions: white is pure, cold or high tech since Steve Jobs decided so but it is a mourning color in Asia; red is associated with heat, passion and is the color the eye recognizes most quickly; black is associated with sophistication, power or underground (Anonymous for example); green is nature, environment, more generally associated with wisdom; yellow is the most attractive color for the eye, the most tiresome also, supposed to go with fun and used with black it's a strong teaser; purple is power but difficult to use; brown is both nature and strength; blue which is the most popular color especially for men often associated with trust. No wonder  why most brands use blue. And finally pink which is associated with romance and the favorite color for women (which I challenge since I won't bet on any guy dressed up in pink for a date).

Colors help you get noticed from the App crowd

Now what's the best color for an app icon on the App Store? Remember that the App Store is a grey world, so avoid grey of course but also black, at least for the background. 

Depending on the target you have, I suggest you choose the following:

For business, productivity or any category which is serious, I would pick blue, brown or white as favorites and handle with care the others. 

For health I would pick white and blue.

For everything around games, I'd go for more vivid colors like red, yellow, everything which catches the eye of young folks. 

If you've been clever, your graphical interface was already in line with your target and all you need is to duplicate.

You are still not sure? Well, make a test. Like for name get random people in line with you target audience and make them choose between several png colors for the same name and see how it goes. 

Make sure your color attracts the right target audience

To tell the truth, we didn't act this way since we were more or less in a rush. Our app icon has been designed after our graphical interface which was brown so we didn't get it completely wrong. But not having it right the first time is not that critical, you can change your icon with a new version, so there is always time to do things right.

If you want to explore some more about colors: 

Generic about colors:

- Kissmetrics blog

- Marketo Blog 

More specific about icons

- Mobile testing blog which has some very useful information

- Adrien Friggeri experience on the iphone

And if you need inspiration, check out AppStorm review of most gorgeous icons. They didn't pick iTakeNotes but we are forgiving.

Finding the right App name

Finding the right App name is everyone's obsession. There are plenty of theories around setting up brand names : it has to be positive, make reference to something people aspire to etc etc
Well would that be true then someone may explain to me why a pathetic name such as Google has been such a global success? Or Microsoft? Or Volskwagen? Or Lady Gaga?

Let's be serious: of course having a cool name is important, but if the product behind is crappy, it will be shortlived anyway. Like for people, a name, in the end, is just a name. Customers will ultimately decide if the product is worth it or not. And with virus marketing, you can bet they will make your promotion.

 That thing is cool with or without a name

OK but we still need a name, don't we? So how do we choose it? So here's my advice:

Remember the umbrella principle. The name must answer for your app main feature. Don't go look for exotic names, remember that the App Store is a very crowded place and for one category you pick there may be thousands of Apps, so don't go confusing too much the customer.

I also suggest you look for several names and not just one. In my case I came up with iTakeNotes, Minutes and a few others. Then make a quick check that they don't exist on the App Store. Once that's done, pick up a few people from various backgrounds who have no idea what you are working on and who could be interested in your App. That would rule out wife, husband, significant other, mom and dad and whoever would be too nice with you. 5 to 10 people is a good number for a "focus group" because that's what this is.

Then ask them what kind of app they would suppose each name is about. Once they are done, tell them about the concept and see how they react. Listen to what they say (even if it's sometime painful) and which one they would pick. If the whole process ends up without a name, try again.  

Reactions to name proposals can be disappointing

When you have finally picked up your name, I suggest you make a quick reservation of the web domain and why not for a change picking up yourname.app .

Now here are a few spoilers on the App Store:

-You can add a keyword to your app name in each language: say you have a name for a cooking app, you can add "Cool Recipes" in English and to whichever language you publish your app.
- Don't try cheating with the alphabet, so far it seems that only release dates or ranking have an importance on the positioning of your App.
- Apple prohibits the use iPad and iPhone names, so it seems.

If you want to check for more spoilers, I suggest you check out the following blogs:
- Noel Chenier's blog who has a great article on this subject
- Bogdan's thoughts on app name rejections
- Happi Papi on name changes

Apple Submission Check List

Now that you believe you're done with testing and your App is ready, you will proceed to the developer's holy temple, iTunes Connect. It is designed to give you access to all resources you need to manage your App.

Back when I thought iTakeNotes would be ready in no time, I registered on iTunes Connect right from the start and paid for my developer's license too early. I suggest you do that when your App is maturing, no need to rush.

Apple is very tight on registration so make sure all necessary company numbers are ready and that your company exists. In case you're an individual entrepreneur, I believe the process is a little easier.

Anyway don't even think about talking to anyone at Apple at this stage, the whole process is highly industrialized. You do as they say or you just won't access the millions of iPad users waiting for you.

Just do as Apple says

Once registration is done, you can proceed with your app. BUT... there are important things you need to have when you arrive at this stage:

- An App name
- An App icon appealing enough for the App Store in color and in design
- A list of keywords
- A 10 lines marketing pitch describing your app making good use of reading patterns
- 4 Screenshots of your app
- A fancy website with in depth explanations
- A demo video if you are good at it
- Email adresses for inquiries and customer support
- A price
- A banking account in case you end up doing revenues

Did we have all that when we came up on iTunes Connect? Well, partially. So we had to fill up the gaps ourselves. And since we believe in our guiding principle, "Do It Yourself" , we did everything ourselves.

Our upcoming posts will describe each of these items in details, one by one, yes we can!

Happy New Year Bonne Année 2013

Happy new year 2013! Best wishes to you all !

Bonne année 2013! Meilleurs voeux!

Finally 2013 shows up! Let's hug!

Next post in 2013!

App user testing : Getting ready for the big move

After 2 months of hard rework and extensive design and recoding, the app reaches the stage where we can test it.
2 months may sound long to some but remember we are family men and we work at night. I've read recently that start ups behave like rock bands and I find it very true, we just don't have the road shows in far away places on week ends.

If you come from the IT world, you know about user testing. Back in the "old ways", user testing would happen at the very end of the project and would be very structured with long user scenarios and so on. The software world has gone very far in industrializing the process and when a product reaches user testing, if the work has been done properly, they are not that many critical bugs i.e crashes that prevent you from doing what you are supposed to do.

IPad app user testing is different. It is closer to web like applications development and what people in IT call Rapid Application Development meaning coding and testing go in parallel. However there are 2 things that you need to know about iPad apps user testing:

- iPads may sound homogeneous but there are multiple configurations out there: iPad 1, iPad 2 and so on, various ios versions and it seems that some apps will generate memory issues. So sometimes the App will crash on one configuration and not on another and finding the bug can be very time consuming.

Let's admit it: bugs are a hassle

- It happens all along the project with 2 stages:
Stage #1: you test it home, some features work fine, some not at all, multiple crashes, several days to fix them. Fine.
Stage #2: you make the tests in real life situation.
Why? Because the Apple development environment happens on Mac and even if the simulator is good, it feels very different on your tablet where you happen to use your fingers and not the mouse pointer.
And also because if you have followed us so far, you know that the umbrella principle applies. If you want to test the umbrella, get out when it's raining and see how it goes.

No test is worth a real life testing 

So we took our iPads in multiple meetings. And we tested and we crashed and we fixed. It was very painful when it crashed during meetings so we really made sure it will NOT happen again. The very good point is that it gave us new ideas on features we could propose to the user.
More importantly we were able to "impress our colleagues" with a report right at the end of a meeting and saved us a LOT of time. Audio records were also a must, you can really write down minutes without any mistake.

When you're done testing your app, you feel indestructible

Lesson#7: Good real life testing should make you feel comfortable for submission

Time now to get prepared for the big show, the Apple submission.

The umbrella principle and why Office like suites are in trouble

With a mobile device app, what is important is the context where the user is and the added value you bring to him. I call it the umbrella principle. Let me explain.

Umbrellas and apps have much in common

If you go to a museum nowadays, you'll see people walking around with iPads, looking at a painting or a sculpture, googling it out on their iPad to get details or explanations. Some do that their with smartphones as well. And museums out there are designing apps to help people walk around and promote museum stuff such as in NYC Natural History Museum.

As it may have occurred to you, none of this ever happened with laptops because they aren't designed for this kind of mobility. And the same thing applies to applications and office type suites. It means that, as Google has understood it, office type suites are to become a commodity and Microsoft Office is in trouble.
I am not saying that Office like suites will disappear on tablets but what I believe is that their usage will decrease and so will the prices the users are likely to spend on them. Why? Because these applications were designed for computers (desktops and laptops), they give the user an incredible freedom but they are not "situational".

Mobile apps are giving Office like suites a hard time

Business apps designed for tablets or smartphones are "situational", they are designed to answer one situation and add value to it. Just like an umbrella which is useful when it rains. That's the umbrella principle.

iTakeNotes have been designed with this principle in mind.

Situation: you go to a meeting and you have to do a meeting report.
Added value: You can prepare it beforehand or jumpstart and set the elements afterwards. You can record what is said and take pics or draw and use them to finalize your reports. You can generate a structured report right after the meeting with all elements set up. And finally you can generate an email and send the pdf or txt to the participants. The added value is 30-50% time saving.

It's a push button process and word processors don't do that. And I know what I am talking about. I've been writing tons of meeting and interview reports, forgetting things, rewriting and I hated it.

And now gentlemen, who will write the meeting report?

Other features will be of course be available to accommodate upcoming needs. But for a first dry version it has to concentrate on key added value.

Lesson learned: Concentrate your app on its key features and make sure the added value is there in the situation it is designed for. Forget the rest.