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“For the user, the interface is the product”

  …. this is the sentence explanation of how the market works today and how the common user of any object, application or product, evaluate and makes an idea about the regarding item.
In most cases is evaluated only the external interface leaving all the hidden processes since the only goal of the user is to obtain the supposed performance, without analyzing the designing process and/or programm works incorporated on the device itself .
High importance is devoted to the interface by the designer/ designers, who tend to solve the organization of information and the way these are provided to users.

Like all launches of new products or devices, including applications for the iPhone, is fundamental to have innovative ideas and concepts.
The market analysis is very important for the designer, who, in a logical and rational way, should understand how to make the idea successful, ensuring exclusivity or otherwise offering an improved and more effective offer than the one from which he has been inspired. To leave the first step there should be a clear idea of what you want to have like a final result, which aspects should be continued and which ones leaved out.
After this first design step it’s time to rearrange the ideas, the Flowchart is a perfect system.

The necessity to organize some work operations in flow is motivated by the presence of different steps before get the purpose. The steps can be sequential or not, which may be explicit to the user or hidden by programmed codes.

Useful in several areas, concept-maps are used to outline the executive process or to explane in a effective wa the content. Each step is represented by the presence of arrows which connect different “blocks” by a logical order.For GYMme application we used a flowchart made for the “8ball” application, which in a sequential way, through various steps, give to the user an answer to the question originally introduced. Small measures were made to adapt the 8ball code to our application, few parts has been deleted such as the introduction of the question at the beginning and the ability to send by e-mail the question and the related answers, in addition when the physical-exercise sheet is shown a timer will indicate the time required for the performance.
The choice to use the 8ball code is motivated by the fact that the exercises are offered in a random mode without a logical order, this is made possible by the choice of using only exercises that do not require sequencing to be performed, so any shown tab can be executed by the user.
The flowcharts in the first steps has been very helpful to understand the flow that the application should have had, both to focus on all the parts to be saved and see the ones to omit unnecessary for the intended purpose, namely to obtain the card with the exercise.

Once the flow has been completed it’s possible to switch to the next step: the graphic analysis;
thinking, planning and designing the graphical interface of the application involves a large number of areas, one of that is the copyright and “the legal protection of intangible assets” such as pictures on the web. An artist, writer, etc. that should produce a work, even non-physical, is the owner, not only of the possible copyright, but also of the “intellectual property” which protects him and its developed by lawlessness and unauthorized use by third parties.

In the case of our application, was carried out a search on the internet of illustrations explaining how the physical exercise should be performed and the result was a series of images which have been used as inspiration for designing the icons to explain to the user how to conduct the training.

Even for the main character, who appears in the initial splash and during the loading, we have referred to a classical model that leads to the fitness and the physical exercise, but we preferred to change it and make it more distinctive to avoid trouble with copyright and to make the used graphic fluid and strong so that the application can be easily recognized and detectable also only by the design side.

The use of icons, images, or works in general that already exist and are developed by others, would be regarded as copyright infringement; copying, modifying or using only, it would be  committed a plagiarism punishable by law.

Now it’s possible to think about code creation, there are different types of languages that allows it, who more or less difficult to be understudied by humans. One example is the Xcode language, which is used for programming iPhone, it’s very difficult but of high quality, which requires a great accuracy during the compilation; languages less rigid and more permissive are opposed to this such as Action Script (Flash) , which due to its flexibility it easy to write, also by those who aren’t practical with computer code; the last one limits the possibility of intervening within the files, producing so a result with a lower level than the first.
For a designer it’s important, even in a minimal way, the language code knowledge, that offers him the opportunity to communicate directly and in a fluid way with technicians related to his work such as programmers; it also allows him to know the limits that he will have designing hypothetical devices and in addition his work range can be increased with this ability.
A designer with such knowledge can prototype and demonstrate the validity of its product real time, like an application for iPhone, the study of a visual interface, or create websites.

 The design is an operation that requires certain steps to obtain a good result, not necessarily he should follow the same methodology, but each designer or planner can be more or less flexibile to create his own designing method.
When you are able to forward all the potential of your product in a direct and simple way to the user, responding to his needs, then the work of the designer can be considered successful.

Francesco Fogu