My last post about iOS application development was based on my experiments of developing FoodGarden – a shopping list and recipe application. I will release FoodGarden via d-pointer in Apple’s AppStore, hopefully quite soon. This blog post is a short introduction for the application. Let’s watch the video first.
I wanted to keep the video short and present the most of the functionality what you can do with the app. I left the boring section out i.e. adding bunch of recipes, items and sections, which you can use when creating shopping lists and recipes.
I’ve been using FoodGarden as my shopping list application lately and it seems to work pretty well. At least I haven’t found any critical bugs or annoying features.
The Feature Set for Version 1.0
Here’s the list of features what I have planned to include to the first version. Naturally, all my ideas couldn’t fit in, because I want to release the first version as soon as possible.
- Create/delete/modify
- one or more shopping lists
- shopping list items
- shopping list item categories (meat, dairy products, beverages, etc…)
- Order shopping list categories
- Show or hide shopping list categories
- Tap to select item
- Add shopping list item(s) to a shopping list
- Shake the phone to remove the selected items
- Search for shopping list items
- Create/delete/modify
- one or more recipes
- recipe ingredients
- Add ingredients of a recipe to a shopping list(s)
- Search for recipes based on name or category
- Possibility to share
- shopping lists
- recipes
I hope, I didn’t forget to mention anything, but as I mentioned, I couldn’t fit all the features in.
FoodGarden Future
I will update FoodGarden section to www.d-pointer.com at some point, which will be the official site for it. If the app sells, then I might even want to continue FoodGarden development. So far, it’s been a fun experience to develop this application. Even tough it would sell only few euros, at least I have a new entry in my CV:) But next, I will start to continue QuickFlickr development now that I have N950 waiting for hacking.
That’s all folks! Thanks for reading my blog.
Tags: d-pointer, FoodGarden, iOS, Recipe, Shopping list
Don’t know how strictly Apple’s app store is in letting through apps, but there are some pretty obvious elements that could be made a lot more “iOS” style in your app. Although I can understand that you may not be very familiar with that style.
Couple of low hanging fruits:
- “edit” buttons usually are located at the top right corner (inside title bar)
- “new” / “+” button can also be implemented as the first item in the list rather than in the toolbar, when toolbar has very few items.
- when adding a list consider using a background rather than white-field-on-white. And that view could do with a back button as well
- the behaviour in “add items” is a bit weird. It might be efficient, but I think it’s a bit confusing.
– As an animation fix, how about having a app-wide toolbar where one of the icons is a “cart” icon for “shopping lists” and then have animation where the items fly to the “cart” in the toolbar?
– How about putting search either inline (with title) or as an icon that (when tapped) expands to a search field (see search in iPhone’s browser)?
– Is the amount field really necessary, can’t the same item be just tapped a few times in a row?
There are tons of great apps for “just about everything” in the app store. You would do well to check the apps related to yours in the store and see how you could improve your design even further.
@moximillian Thanks for your comments. About the edit buttons… Yes, I know how Apple usually recommends to use them, but personally I want to use my phone with a thumb. I find it much more difficult to use with a one hand if edit/add button is on top i.e. on a navigation bar.
Actually, this is one thing that IMHO is that Apple has failed in its UI design. It’s easier to reach buttons at bottom than if they would be on top.
I also wanted to make this application a bit different. So I didn’t follow too much iOS style on purpose. For example the backgrounds changes (with couple exceptions) when you open the same view twice or more times. There are couple of views with the exception – the main startup view and recipe views that have hardcoded background.
What I didn’t mention in the post is that the startup screen is there in purpose how you see it on the video. There’s a room for ad banner now, which will be added for the free version and you can use in app purchase to buy a full version when you’ll get rid of ads and get more functionality.
But, hey thanks for you comments! They are very valid and naturally there are always room for improvement.