UI design for questions in your app

IMG_20160721_103356When asking a question in an app, it is important to make it easy for the user to find the right answer to the question. Simply because a question is phrased for a yes/no answer doesn’t mean that presenting yes or no as answers is a good idea. Instead it is a good idea to present the answers such that the right option can be selected even if the user doesn’t even bother to read the question.

The Brexit ballot from earlier this month is an example of good design. The question on the ballet asked if the UK should leave the EU, but the answers to pick from are ‘remain’ and ‘leave’ rather than ‘yes’ and ‘no’. This makes for a better user experience.

The image to the right is from the Stuff I Need app and shows the example of the same design. ‘Delete All’ and ‘Cancel’ do not explicitly answer the question, but give the user the opportunity to pick the right choice, even if they don’t read the question.

BlackBerry 10 distribution still flat

As has been the case for the past few months, the distribution of BlackBerry 10 devices has remained unchanged with the percentage of users on OS 10.3.X in the low 90’s.

One thing that was different, is that for the first time we have seen a few phones running OS 10.3.3 which is the long promised final update to BlackBerry 10, that includes zero new third party APIs.2016Jun-Pixelated-BB10OSVersions
2016Jun-StuffINeed-BB10OSVersions

This data was collected by BlackBerry World for downloads of the free strategy game Pixelated and the free checklist app Stuff I Need. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of June 2015 through the end of June 2016.

Showing the full file path in the finder

By default the finder on Mac OSX does not show the full file path of the current folder. This can make it hard to remember where a folder is, and can cause confusion when working with multiple folders with the same name.

Fortunately, there is a simple fix that will show the full file path in the finder’s title bar.

In the terminal type

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool true

And then to restart the finder

killall Finder

After that the folders full path will be displayed in the title of the finder.