Matt Gemmell suggests you think different when designing your app

The worst design mistake you can make is believing your app is software. Instead, try building a piece of virtual hardware

Thinking of apps as software is a holdover from the desktop. An iOS device is invisible to the user – your app is the entire experience

We’ve all encountered that vague, unpleasant feeling that an app isn’t quite at home on its platform. The symptoms are always the same. Terminology that doesn’t fit. Scrollbars that look non-standard. Layouts that are slightly off. The unmistakable signs of a stranger; an impostor.

On the desktop, it might be because the app has been ported from another operating system, or perhaps it’s the most theoretically promising yet bitterly disappointing of things, ‘cross platform’. On iOS, there’s another possible reason, and it’s subtle and pernicious. The problem might be that you’re thinking of your software as, well, software.

iOS devices almost aren’t devices at all: they’re just touch-screens. A window into a virtual world, where the window itself becomes invisible the moment the screen springs to life. Yet we still find apps that are designed like pieces of software running on a computer, complete with all the accoutrements of software, such as toolbars and wizards and menus. In certain cases, these widgets are justified – but often, they’re vestigial features.

Instead of thinking about apps in terms of software, shift perspective to see things from the user’s point of view. You’re designing hardware – though I’m not suggesting that we all become electronics engineers. When your app is launched, it becomes the entire device. Let that fact inform your user experience.

An iPhone or iPad isn’t a single device; it’s as many devices as it needs to be: a novel, a notepad, a sketchbook, a mixing desk, a piano or a pinball machine. All self-contained, tactile, comprehensible and dedicated pieces of hardware. Your app is another one.

Designing a piece of virtual hardware means focusing on putting what the user cares about right where they want it to be. It’s about making the content or workspace both immediately accessible and as easy to operate as a light switch. Software has arbitrary ease (or difficulty) of use; virtual hardware, however, is straightforward and prefers simple, layered, directly manipulable interfaces that prioritise what really matters.

Software is a nail gun, complete with a gas cylinder, safety instructions, builder’s gloves and an instruction manual as thick as a phonebook. Virtual hardware is just a hammer, with a handle and a head. I’ve never bought a hammer that came with a manual.

Software tends to put technical concerns (such as navigational hierarchies and options to configure how features behave) in front of the user. In the worst cases, the user hasn’t even asked for something before being confronted with the artifice behind the art.

Not every app can fully embrace a hardware design ethos, but almost any user experience can be improved by resisting what we’d conventionally call software-like design. Even if you absolutely must break the fourth wall by putting a technical concern into the user’s field of vision, it’s possible to do so with restraint. Otherwise, you’re just making software.

Virtual hardware has an implicit “No User-serviceable Parts Inside” warning label on the side, in stark yellow and black. On iOS, the best software experiences are indistinguishable from hardware.

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