October 24, 2009

iPhone Settings: Square War

After I wrote about iPhone settings, iPhone developer Mariano Abdala from Zerously contacted me with a really neat solution he used in one of his games. His free application Square War (iTunes Link) allows users to access settings by pinching the screen. This zooms out and turns the playing field into a preview for the changed settings:

Square War

This obviously only works for a very specific set of applications, and it requires users to read and understand the small text at the bottom, but I think for this specific application, it’s a very clever and clean solution for exposing settings to the user.

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If you liked this, you'll love my book. It's called Designed for Use: Create Usable Interfaces for Applications and the Web. In it, I cover the whole design process, from user research and sketching to usability tests and A/B testing. But I don't just explain techniques, I also talk about concepts like discoverability, when and how to use animations, what we can learn from video games, and much more.

You can find out more about it (and order it directly, printed or as a DRM-free ebook) on the Pragmatic Programmers website.