WordPop! for iPad – Flattening the Design

When reading the advice from Apple in the iPad Human Interface Guidelines it is clear the language and tone assumes the developer is coming from the iPhone and is in the process of converting their iPhone app to an iPad app. Thus someone came up with the idea of describing the iPad UI as flattening the iPhone version. This is really just a very odd way of saying, “You have more real estate to use, put everything on the screen that you can that is important, and no need to hide it on other screens like you did for the iPhone version.”

When Jim, Wyatt and I were redesigning WordPop! for the iPad we asked ourselves what additional elements would engage and entertain our players in addition to the game itself. One answer was game statistics. The Best Words and High Score Global List stats are very popular among WordPop! players. They compare the player’s current game and words to other players, which then acts as an incentive to do even better as you want to beat the current high score or best word on the global list. However, the stats were hidden in the menu (two taps away). By moving the stats out of the menu system and onto the game board would result in “Flattening the Design“.

However, we all felt it was not enough to just move the existing stats. Thus we decided to add more fun stats, many of which were recommended to us by players of WordPop! for the iPhone. When the iPad version of WordPop! is released, players will be able to compare their game to several new, important, and exciting stats that will act as another incentive per round and word to do better.

Look for more peeks into our development of WordPop! for iPad in coming blogs. Please share this blog and follow Smart Box Design on Twitter.