So our goal for version 6 was to launch a good core foundation that can be improved upon over time. Launching a subscription version of the app was the only way for the two of us to sustain continuous development over the long term. With Tweetbot 6, we plan to introduce a lot more optional icons which will let me get more creative and push boundaries. We are currently calling it “Early Access” because we still have a lot of nice improvements to make all around. Since we’ve been refining the experience for many years, our focus for the version 6 launch was to tighten up some of the loose ends and make use of Twitter’s V2 API as much as we can. What did you want to achieve from a design standpoint, and how did you improve on what was already an excellent iOS Twitter app? This is one aspect that has always differentiated our apps from the rest. Once I feel like I have something that sounds great on paper, I’ll open up Sketch and start mocking up rough concepts and iterating over and over until I’m ready to pass assets over to the development side. What are the fundamental problems I want to solve? What kind of core features would make this app better than the competition and solve problems that others don’t? Then I’ll brainstorm at a high level any interesting UX and UI ideas that would make this type of app an enjoyable experience. Whenever we start a completely new product, I start off brainstorming and writing down all of my thoughts. When you start designing (or redesigning) a product, what are your main goals, and what’s your approach? I pretty much switched over to Sketch for every new project we started until I didn’t have to deal with Photoshop anymore. I remember it being a little buggy back then, but the workflow was just so much better than Photoshop. My first Sketch document seems to be from 2012 - around when we started working on Tweetbot for Mac. Everything was done in Photoshop, and honestly layer management and dealing with raster-based workflows was a chore. The workflow was just so much better than Photoshop. Being able to design my first app was a dream come true. And then Paul Haddad and I made Weightbot together. The first one was through Oakley, the company I worked for at the time. When the iPhone App Store was first introduced, I had my first opportunity to design apps. I dreamed of being able to design software someday, but never really had a clear path to pursue it. I worked primarily as a web designer, but I would dabble in icon design and theming for fun. There was also the fantastic theming community like Macthemes and guys like Max Rudberg making inspirational replacement UI themes for OS X. Companies like Panic, Delicious Monster, Mac Rabbit, and Icon Factory became a huge inspiration for me. Truth be told, I never felt value in paying for software until I bought my first Mac. Not only were they well-designed, they had delightful experiences and were very intuitive. With the money I earned from my new job, I bought my first Mac - an MDD PPC G4 - and I was blown away by the beauty of Aqua. It was a tough choice, but I’ve always followed my passion and it felt like the right choice for me. After a few years, I ended up getting a job as an entry level web designer and dropped out of school. I went through the motions in school and learned things here and there, but I was mostly excited about building websites outside of class. There was no remotely inspiring design app on Windows (at least at the time), but the web was full of inspirational UI design. Macs were commonplace, but I was a poor student using a PC my parents bought me as a gift when I went off to university. ![]() I really wanted to pursue the first, but in the end decided that going into design was far more financially practical.ĭesign school was focused heavily on identity and print and packaging design. That led me to two potential professions - 3D animation/modeling, and graphic design. I also started to get really into computers so I was interested in a field that blended art with computers. ![]() After a few illustration/art classes in college, I felt that my skills weren’t up to par. I loved to draw and my dream was to become a character designer or illustrator. Up until my first few years of college, I was clueless about design. Let me start a little bit earlier in the timeline. Mark is the designer behind Tweetbot, Calcbot and Pastebot (amongst other things), and we sat down with him recently to talk about his experiences in the design space, his thoughts on recent trends, and why Sketch is his go-to tool.Ĭan you tell us a little about how you started designing apps, and when you started using Sketch? What makes a truly great app experience? For Mark Jardine, UI Designer at Tapbots, it’s as much about user interactions as it is about the design itself.
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