Infinite Loop / The Apple Ecosystem

10 lessons of iPhone design courtesy of Sheepish

In looking at Sheepish, an App Store iPhone puzzle game, Ars suggests 10 …

Sheepish is one of those puzzle games where you create a funneled pipe system to deliver cargo to some destination. In the case of Sheepish, the cargo is sheep (baaah!) and the pipe system is exactly that: a series of tubes that your sheep move through to get to the paddock door. The digital sheep are Newtonian. A ewe in motion remains in linear motion along that path unless acted upon by an outside force.

You, as the path designer, provide those outside forces. Along the way, your sheep can bounce over trampolines, accelerants, and other special-purpose equipment to ensure the ungulates arrive at their grassy destination. This is, in a nutshell, the kind of puzzle game that I adore and have played in endless variation over the years. So why did I find Sheepish to be more work and less fun than it was worth? Here are five eight 10 lessons that the Sheepish designers really need to take to heart.

1. Skip the cute animation: Yes, your landscape sheep animation is freaking adorable but I don't want to spend 16 seconds (yes, I timed it) watching it each time I launch the application. Plus, it implies that the application will play in landscape mode. The game does not.

2. Use larger fonts or skip the serifs: Hold the phone at arm's distance and ask strangers to tell you what each menu item says. If people have to pause before reading your words, you're doing something wrong.

3. Use meaningful WORDS: Don't make your users do the extra work of trying to figure out whether to press an X-button or a check mark. Yes, I know that once you think about the options for about two seconds, it's pretty clear which item to pick, but why make your users do the work? This is a typical case where a simple "Yes/No" choice has been trumped by pretty design. Lower the cognitive threshold and just make it easier for your users. Use phrases that do all the work, like "Start a new game," "Keep playing the old game," etc. Also consider putting the safer option to the right.


4. Order your choices appropriately: When a user leaves and then returns to the game, the option they'll want to use is "Resume." Put that first in your menu. Don't make users search for the most logical option--put it right out there for them. Think about this: the new game (don't call it "Start Play," no one actually uses that terminology) makes sense for the very first time a user accesses the program, but thereafter? Not so much. Also design your screens on a phone, not a computer, and compare the menu layout to real finger sizes.


5. Use every pixel: Over 30 percent of the screen design is wasted with unnecessary menu bars. Smarter design would have given users more room to interact with on-screen elements and may have allowed the on-screen sheep to be more than 6x8 pixels in size. Remember, with the iPhone: screen small, fingers big. For direct-interaction interfaces, match your piece sizes as closely as you can to real human fingers, not to some ideal user who has microscopic finger control.


6. Design for persistence: This is the iPhone. You have to assume that users will be interrupted while using your product. A lot. So if users pop out of your program, would it kill you to let them just jump back to where they were? Sure, the cute sheep animation and the whole menu system are pretty, but that's not what the user wants. Just dump them back into their game and give them an easy and obvious way to switch modes from there. There is no reason to make a user spend 30+ seconds (yes, I timed it) to return to where they left off. Seriously.

7. Provide undo/reset right into the puzzle: The best puzzle games let you think, rethink, and re-try each puzzle until you work it out. Don't make users fail/lose between each re-attempt. Just give us a simple "restart" option so we can try out different scenarios and try again without the time and administrative overhead. Also, in a puzzle game like this, it would really help to have a "try" feature—so you can test to see if your solution works without having to move into a pass/fail scenario.

8. Be culturally smart: Sheep giving the user the finger is amusing for about, oh say, two seconds.


9. Give us a way to return from alerts: Notice the complete lack of a "Done" button? I had to quit the game and pop back in to start a new game. I mean, really, designers? Really?


10. Test on older devices and optimize your code: Sure, the newest iPod touch is a speed demon, but I used Sheepish on a standard issue first-generation (non-jailbroken) 4GB iPhone and it was slow as molasses. There were 5- to 10-second delays after tapping "resume" and Sheepish actually returning to the primary map page and similar delays for starting new puzzles. I made sure to play on a freshly rebooted system running a clean 2.2.1 install. These kinds of delays are unacceptable.

Name: Sheepish (iTunes Link)
Publisher: Pixelthis Limited
Price: $3.99
Platform: iPhone and iPod touch

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