Photo by Masaya

These themes aren’t lies. They’re not designed to help users understand how these apps work. They’re just decoration. They’re per-app branding. Apple no longer endorses system-wide visual uniformity. Special apps are supposed to look special. Why is Find My Friends wrapped in rich Corinthian leather? Because someone at Apple likes (and, sadly, if my guess is right, better said liked, past tense) how it looks.

It is well known that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. If you are starting a new project soon, try to go from point A to point B in a straight line, being ‘A’ the day you start designing the product and ‘B’ the day you finish working on the project.

In order to archive this, it is necessary that us, designers, do our homework, and have our clients do theirs, before getting our hands dirty. I’ve found myself walking in circles every time I don’t do it, and sooner or later I have to go back a couple of steps. Doing our homework means preparation; here are some items to have in mind: doing research about our client’s work, its competitors, other related products and services, communicating with the client about their needs and expectations, asking them for any images, logos, and documents you might need, updating yourself learning new technologies now available, brainstorming, and getting all the team on the same page. These few things can help you go from point A to point B without distractions.

You may be asking yourself, all this to just get started? Well, remember all these are billable hours. Point A is not the day you start working, it is when you start designing. There is plenty of work before you open Photoshop.

A happy client is a happy designer.

Here is a picture of Aiguille du Dru, a Mountain in the Alps, it is beautiful as you can see. The blue sky and the snowed mountain is in perfect harmony with its surroundings. However, as magnificent as the photograph might look, it is not enough for building your house at the foot of Les Drus, right?

Now imagine that you send a Photoshop comp to a client and explain to him/her how easy it will be to navigate and interact, how fast it will load, and how it will respond to different devices, screen sizes, and inputs. It surely is a nice picture, but it is very difficult to have the complete experience without being on the mountain.

Photoshop files are great for your own visual reference, but let the client be able to fall in love with the experience. If this means to delay your first deliverables 1-2 days for HTML-CSS mockups, it well might be worth it. Anyway, at the end of the day the font-end development will be completed 1-2 days earlier.

It is always saddening to know that someone is gone, but when you see that this world wouldn’t be insanely great as it is today, it hurts deep.

Since then, I have been trying to learn more about Steve’s life and experiences from other people who met him. Every time I find a great story I read it to my wife and we both share this special moment remembering someone who changed our lives, someone who made our lives much better. The last story I read her was John Gruber’s Universe Dented, Grass Underfoot, I couldn’t finish reading the last 6 words, we were both in tears.  We were, however, happy because he had a second chance back in 2004 and since then he launched a great set of products that changed millions of lives, specially the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010.

That day, October 5th 2011, I was working on my iMac designing my first iPad app user interface for a client when I got the heartbreaking news on my iPhone. Who the heck knows what would I be doing without his legacy.

Thank you Steve.