Using your experience

We have talked about the bigger principles in the earlier sections of this chapter. From this point on, I will give you some pointers that will help you do the design work even if you are not a designer. Keep in mind that all this has to fit the big ideas outlined earlier.

I assume that you are an experienced developer. I guess you have written software before you picked up this book. Even if you have not done so, I think it would be fair to assume that you have used software before. Think about the apps you use on your smartphone. Which ones do you like to use? Which ones do you not like? Which apps do you use because you have to but do not enjoy doing so? Why is that?

It can be tremendously helpful to look at the software you use every day and make a list of things you like and dislike about them. This list will be highly personal--the things you like might be the things I dislike and vice versa, but this can still be a very educational task to do.

Learn from other people's mistakes instead of committing the same ones yourself; this is something that can be very helpful in designing apps as well.