The original design for the Welcome screen
Today I opened my Guardian iPad edition and I saw a message telling me that my free period is ending soon. That’s fine, in fact that’s good – I love the Guardian and want it to continue producing quality journalism in all formats… But that’s not what I’ve come to write about. Every single little thing you see in an app (or in print for that matter) had to be designed, and in the case of the notice saying “you have 4 days left of our free period” it was me who decided what colour the pixels should be and what should happen when you tap or swipe them.
I love a good form – one which makes the process of buying, joining or filling in a profile effortless, even enjoyable and when it comes to designing one it is surprising how much goes into one – there are quite a few pitfalls, and many stakeholders, most of whom you never meet face-to-face.
The main decisions here (for me) were: is this a custom view, or do we make this as vanilla as possible (I go with vanilla, and add some detail which give each screen some character of the app and brand. This way it’s easier to build, and we can focus on getting the process right).
The initial concept for this involved orange type writ large in Guardian Egyptian to give it a touch of personality, and help invite the reader to complete the form. Simple grey buttons were used with colour added where there is a more urgent call to action. Much of the flow was worked out pretty quickly – but then the long slog started – trying to get someone to provide information on what the business was going to charge, which periods of time they were going to offer subscriptions for, or nail down the exact wording – these are always very difficult to finalise… Thankfully I once again had a great product lead in Ben Stewart, who specialises in calm, clarity and finding the precise information required in as timely a fashion as possible.
Then there is the problem of finding developer time to do it in what had become a very busy project. One can be sure it will get done, but like so much in a big app project, the main problem is getting the finer detail attended to. Not all of the design was completed as spec’d, for example When the user taps the text link for more information I intended for the form to flip over – revealing helpful information on the back. The additional complexity this would have involved meant this was dropped in favour of a swipe transition.
The images for the help pages were a pleasure- there is always something tremendously satisfying in conceiving of image ideas then watching them come to fruition. As as always, Mark McCormick, a guardian graphic magician did the work on these simple but expressive drawings.
Please make sure to explore all parts of the subscription process, read how they works even of you already know and explore the costs, fans etc. I hope we have done our job well, and you find the process better than painless – a pleasure… And that at the end you press the button that says subscribe and continue with the guardian on this journey into the digital present and future.