The 2020 Xojo Design Award Winners are:

Best Consumer App – HDRtist NX

Ohanaware: A detail-oriented High Dynamic Range Imaging app for MacOS X.

Best iOS App – PropertyMe Manager

PropertyMe: The PropertyMe Manager app gives property managers access to their portfolio wherever they are.

Best Lifestyle App – Crossword Wizard

Rush Software: Create and play crossword games.

Best Developer Tool – RegExRX

MacTechnologies Consulting: A cross-platform Regular Expression development tool.

Best Vertical Market App – qwireCast

qWire: Desktop app to help Hollywood casting director make cast lists.

Best Vertical Market App – bMD Medical Software*

bMD biomedical Developments SRL: Medical practice management software.

Best Plugin – MBS Plugins

MonkeyBread Software: This huge toolbox for Xojo developers includes thousands of classes, controls and examples to extend Xojo.

*Yes, there are two Best Vertical Market Apps, they were both so good we had no choice but to award them both!

The 2019 Xojo Design Award Winners are:

Best Consumer App: Goldfish

Yves Pellot, Fishbeam Software

Best iOS App: Snow Maps

Jeremie Leroy

Best Educational App: AcaStat

Phil Crewson – AcaStat Software

Best Vertical Market App: Script Studio

Dan Bronzite – Nuvotech Limited

Best Cross-Platform App: Studiometry

Tom Iwaniec – Oranged Software

Best Developer Tool: GraffitiSuite

Anthony G. Cyphers, GraffitiSuite Solutions

Honorable Mention: Mike Cotrone

For the best looking UI for a chicken and egg tracking app ever!

These developers represent the creativity, flexibility and diversity in the Xojo Community – support them and the entire Xojo community by sharing and reviewing their apps on social media and in app stores!

These apps represent the creativity, flexibility and diversity in the Xojo Community – support this year’s winners and the whole Xojo community by sharing and reviewing their apps on social media and app stores!

This year’s winners are:

Best Developer Tool: BKeeney Shorts

BKeeney Software

Best Specialty App: Curve4 

Steve Upton * Chromix

Best Consumer App: Alinof ToDo List 

Alain Clausen * Alinof Software GmbH

Best Mobile App: Packr

Jeremie Leroy

Best Utility App: Server Ranger 

Gavin Smith * LibertyApp Ltd

Best Cross-Platform App: LehrerOffice

Roth Soft AG

Congratulations to the 2018 Design Award Winners! If you are looking for more great apps made with Xojo, check out these featured apps and these growing lists – and add yours!

The first thing that went through my mind was how exactly is such an important function of a state emergency management system triggered so easily that it could be done by accident? Did a radar system show an incoming missile that was later discovered to be a mistake? No. As the Washington Post reported, the user interface for the system has a drop down menu with two items: Test Missile Alert and Missile Alert. The facts that these two options are so similarly named and that there is no confirmation dialogue for such an important command is at a minimum bad user interface design.

If I want do something as relatively innocuous as erasing all the data from my iPhone, I have to first find the feature that does this buried two levels deep in the Settings app where it’s clearly titled, “Erase All Contents and Settings.” Tapping it displays a dialog box asking me if I want to Backup Then Erase or just go ahead and Erase Now. If memory serves from the last time I did this, choosing Erase Now then reconfirms that I truly do want to erase all the contents and settings on my iPhone. That’s a lot of steps to accomplish a task that only affects one person: me. However, considering the magnitude of the result, it makes good sense that the user interface doesn’t make this very easy to do and actual makes sure you are deliberately trying to erase your phone.

Hawaii’s emergency management system does none of this. There apparently are just two menu items, one next to the other and once chosen, the computer immediately completes the task without confirmation. That’s just astonishing. What’s even worse, however, than the poor interface design on the part of whomever designed it, is that at a minimum (a) someone had to accept this poor interface design, (b) others had to use it without complaint that it could potentially cause the very situation it has caused.

The Chairman of the FCC wants an an expensive investigation. Let’s please not spend $1 million or more of the taxpayer’s hard-earned money on a $100 fix. First, these two menu items should be reduced to a single menu item entitled, “Missile Alert…” The ellipsis tells the user that before this item performs its function, a dialog will be displayed to confirm it. The dialog that appears should be on that requires deliberate actions by the user to initiate a true warning to the population of Hawaii:

In the above example dialog box notice that in order to initiate a real warning, the user will not only have to uncheck the “Internal Test Only” checkbox but also have to deliberately click the Proceed button as the Cancel button is the default.

After taking those two deliberate actions, the user is then presented with a second dialog box to confirm that requires again clicking the Proceed button, another deliberate action.

With this simple, 5 minute fix, it would be nearly impossible for someone to accidentally send out a warning when they meant to only perform an internal test.

Not all user interfaces have functions with such wide-reaching results. However, user interface guidelines for many years now have said that an action that cannot be undone should be confirmed. That’s a simple rule that all of us that design user interfaces would do well to remember.

Here are 8 proven tips to help ensure you create a user interface that your users will love.

1. Limit choices.
Don’t provide an overwhelming number of options or preferences for your users. Too many choices can be intimidating and confusing and can make people not enjoy using your app. Your job is to design the software, which means choosing what it should do. Don’t take the easy way out and provide loads of options for your users all at one time.

2. Be familiar.
Sometimes you may need to implement an entirely new user interface metaphor in order to design your app. But typically this is unnecessary. Though it can be fun creating new and snazzy UI layouts, your users will likely not appreciate them much. Why? Because they won’t understand them or won’t know how to use them. A unique UI design isn’t always practical – stick to what people are familiar with.

3. Be consistent.
Your app should be consistent within itself. Don’t use UI controls in different ways on different screens because that is just confusing. For example, don’t use buttons on one screen to indicate actions, but then use link text on another screen to indicate the same action.

4. Put the user in charge.
Let the user feel like they are controlling the software. This means don’t force them down a single path to solve something. Let them try things and make mistakes. Have an undo feature so that they can easily fix their mistakes.

5. People can’t.
Don’t spend time writing long text for the user as they likely won’t read it. Keep the language short and simple. Make it easy for people to enter text because they are not good at it. If the user has to enter lots of text, give them lots of room, enable a spell checker and use a larger font to make it easier for them to read the text.

Make your UI targets easy to find and use because people can’t control the mouse, trackpad or even their finger for touch devices. And lastly, users likely won’t remember how they did something the last time, so make it easy to figure out.

6. Design first.
Have a design process – it doesn’t need to be anything complex. Sketching designs on paper or a whiteboard is a great way to get a feel for things. Software to mockup UI designs (such as Balsamiq) can also be quite useful. You can also use development tools like Xojo to mockup UI designs, but be careful not to make your mockup too functional or the users might think it is nearly complete!

7. Time is relative.
Users perceive time differently than you might expect. For example, they typically hate waiting for tasks to complete. But if you make it seem like they are not waiting, they often don’t notice how long a task takes. For example, if your main window takes 5 seconds to appear, that will irritate your users. If you instead display the window immediately with a loading indicator, users are far less likely to notice the delay. In general, users more easily notice delays when the UI becomes unresponsive so try to minimize that.

Also keep in mind that features you have spent a large amount of time creating may only be used for a very short period of time. Don’t let yourself become comfortable with a difficult design because you use it frequently.

8. Help out.
Your app should provide assistance to your users. Tips and guides are a great way to gently remind users how to use your software. It’s also a great idea to provide default data for the first launch of your app so that users can see how it is actually used in the real world. Another strategy is to prevent the user from making a mistake in the first place. Disable things when they cannot be used and enable them when they can be used.

For more tips like these, I recommend User Interface Design for Programmers by Joel Spolsky.

If you want to try your next app in Xojo, download it free anytime.