Intro to iOS Design

Figma File

https://www.figma.com/community/file/1220022786856032423

Midjourney

What's amazing about AI is that we can take inspiration from Midjourney and transform the generated image into a beautiful UI design. I will teach you how to use Midjourney, an AI-based platform that assists artists and designers in creating high-quality digital content quickly and easily, to generate images.

What are we designing?

We will be designing a music maker app. As we progress through the design process, we will explore deeper levels of design to create an immersive and visually stunning 3D keyboard piano, layouts, and buttons in a neumorphism style. By incorporating elements such as soft shadows and gradients, we can create a sense of depth and realism that will elevate the user experience to new heights.

Primary Goal

The primary goal of app UI design is to provide users with a seamless and enjoyable experience. This is achieved through a deep understanding of user behavior, preferences, and the app's purpose, features, and functionalities. On the other hand, a poorly designed UI can cause frustration and dissatisfaction among users. Therefore, it is crucial for designers to understand UI design principles and best practices.

UI/UX Design

Designing an application involves more than just creating a visually appealing interface. It also requires crafting a seamless user experience that encompasses both UI and UX design. UI design focuses on the visual elements that users interact with, while UX design is concerned with the overall experience of the user. By combining these two elements, app designers can create application that not only looks great but also provides an intuitive and satisfying user journey.

UI Design Tools

UI design tools are software applications used to create digital designs, prototypes, and design systems for websites, mobile apps, and other digital products. Popular UI design tools include Figma, Sketch, and Adobe XD. These tools offer a range of features for creating vector graphics, wireframes, interactive prototypes, and design systems. Today, we will use Figma to design the UI of our app.

iOS/Android Guidelines

When designing mobile apps, it's important to consider the platform. Both iOS and Android have their own guidelines for building app UI design, so following them is essential for creating an app that looks great and provides an intuitive user experience. Today, we'll focus on designing for iOS. If you're interested in designing for Android, we encourage you to read the Android design guidelines to better understand the platform and its design principles.

iOS 16 UI Kit

The iOS 16 UI kit for Figma by Joey Banks offers pre-made design elements like icons, buttons, and UI components for creating iOS app designs. This kit speeds up design, ensures consistency across designs, and meets iOS requirements. We'll use it for the status bar, home indicator, and tab bar.

Figma Community

The Figma Community is a great resource for design inspiration and materials. It's a platform where designers can discover and share design resources such as templates, UI kits, and icons. Additionally, it offers design systems, wireframes, and illustrations. Users can collaborate on projects and receive feedback from others.

Icons

Icons provide visual clarity and convey messages or ideas quickly without requiring written text. They occupy less space than text, making them ideal for compact interfaces like mobile devices. Icons can make interfaces more user-friendly by reducing the need for written instructions and adding visual interest to designs.

Typography

Good typography is essential for clear and visually appealing language. It determines how viewers interpret visual content and plays a significant role in engagement. Typography selection goes beyond just fonts to include size, style, spacing, and alignment. The right choices clarify the information hierarchy, highlight essential content, and convey brand identity.

Colors

Color plays a critical role in app design, as it can impact everything from the user's mood and emotions to the accessibility of the app. Choosing the right colors is key. We will also cover color styles.

Components

Components allow you to create and reuse design elements, speeding up the design process and maintaining consistency. When building interfaces, we frequently use instances of components for objects such as icons, buttons, and cards. The Instance menu enables you to quickly search, preview, and replace one component with another.

Figma File

To follow this course, you must begin with my Figma file. Create a new page from the left menu and design it on this page. All color styles, gradients, text styles, icons, wireframes, and components have already been created, making them useful for the rest of the course.