Swim Lane App

This is my first attempt at creating an iPhone app. Of course my partner sets up the initial things I need and shows me where to find the AI agent to help me. We collaborate on this one to start with, me being incredibly unsure about the whole thing and him understanding much more about what makes a good app, before I go away and do some things on my own.

I try to be too complicated at first, sketching out loads of pages and adding in all sorts of information and extra steps. Then he points out that this isn't very user-friendly. He sketches some more simple ideas and tells me to research other apps to see what they do.

I want to add swim lanes and also gym classes into the app, but it seems like it'll be too hard to get the gym information, so we stick to the pool. I learn about tabs and lists and buttons. I think through each step and make sure it's paired back, but that everything that needs to be there is.

I get stuck for a long time on the day picker - the scrolling dates that will update each week and be clickable. It doesn't play well with the navigation bar and the other elements above and below it. It needs to scroll upwards over the nav bar when the list below it is long, but it needs to remain legible and not look like it's in its own little rectangle of content. Turns out, this is a thing to do with Xcode, and I've still not solved the problem.

It's a work in progress, like many of these projects. I haven't got it looking quite right yet. But it's simpler than it was, and I like the colour blue more than the purple I had originally. The buttons and tabs do what they should do, there is a set-up phase for when the user first opens the app, and the settings are coming together. I guess I'd like it to look a bit more professional, and we still need to fix those little bugs, but it's a good first go at app design. I'll keep you posted with its progress…