IS IT WORTH IT? That's the calculation running in your users' heads with every tap and swipe. Just by launching your app, users have to spend scarce resources—time, attention, thought—that are in especially short supply for mobile apps. What do they get in return? You just saw how mobile users churn through apps at the speed of distraction. Unless you meet their needs and, even better, entice them to slow down and explore, they'll keep on going. Tapworthy design starts with a firm understanding of your audience and their goals.
In the big picture, an app is tapworthy if it makes your users' lives better by helping them get stuff done, make them laugh, stay connected, fill downtime, or do whatever they otherwise need to do to be awesome in that moment. Tapworthy apps might be easy on the eyes, too, but the fundamentals of great design don't hinge on making things pretty. In app design, beauty derives from function, and every interface element has to be focused on helping your users do what they're there to do.
Designing tapworthy iPhone apps means designing for an economy of time, attention, and screen space. Every tap should have a pay off: information, delight, a completed task, a sense of satisfaction. A great app rewards the user at every turn, from the first glimpse of its app icon through every tap and swipe. This takes both careful editing and definition of purpose. Clearly stating what your app does and how it's unique brings needed focus to the design process. You'll start to dig into the details of designing for the small screen in the next chapter, but before you start slinging pixels and making interface decisions, you have to start with more fundamental choices: What does your app do . . . and why?
If only fresh ideas meant automatic success. "Build a better mousetrap," the saying goes, "and the world will beat a path to your door." Lots of would-be mousetrap millionaires have taken that advice to heart: Over 4,000 patents for mousetrap designs are on file in the US, but only about 20 ever turned into successful commercial products. The dense thicket of apps in the App Store is an even more concentrated example, with the vast majority—even worthy ones—languishing in obscurity and indifference. There are lots of reasons for an app to flop, but it doesn't help if the problem was already solved by another app . . . or perhaps the problem never needed solving in the first place. Our friends in the mousetrap industry learned the hard way that it's tough to improve on the no-frills snap trap; better to invest your efforts in something altogether different, something new and needed.
Great design is a worthy pursuit in itself, and I don't mean to suggest that your goal as an app designer must be App Store success, whatever that might mean to you. Marketing and design considerations do align, however, when you meet your audience's needs in an effective and novel way. If Apple's marketing mantra is "There's an app for that," make it your goal to find a case where that's not yet true. With the number of apps in the App Store swiftly approaching the gajillion mark, it's not easy to get a new app noticed, and you won't help matters by mimicking what a few hundred other apps are already doing. If you're building yet another to-do list app, tip calculator, or flashlight, be sure it does something different from (and hopefully better than) the throngs of similar apps that have already found cozy homes in the App Store.
This is Marketing 101, sure, but it leads to a crucial question: what specific problem does your app uniquely solve for users? Too often, people start from the other end of the stick, effectively asking, "What does this app do for me, the app creator?" Maybe there's an iPhone feature you're itchin' to work with, or your company has specific content it wants to get out there, or you have astounding skills in a particular technology. It makes good sense to build on your passions and strengths, of course, and those considerations are sensible ways to choose the broad domain for your app. But that addresses only what you (or your company) will get out of the app, not users. You have to bend your content, interests, and competencies to meet bonafide user needs.
Features, content, and gee-whiz animations may be crucial building blocks for your app, but they're not the reason to use your app. At the broadest level, it's the reason—the why—that makes an app tapworthy. People will use your app if it solves a problem, gives them a superpower, or just helps them unwind, but without a clear, persuasive vision of when and why people will use your app, you're just building a technology demonstration, a curiosity.