Don't make me enter my password if I don’t have to! That was one of my early design criteria that I have implemented with wonderful results, if I may say so myself.

You see, one thing I learned early on is that you may not actually have all the information stored in MEO that you though you did. So, allow me browse a bit to see if that infomation I need is in MEO ..... then just as I have zeroed in on the info you’re looking for..... and I’m just one simple touch away from what I’m looking for.... the darn MEO application makes me enter your stupid password!

PERFECT!!

You can see by the graphics design though up by the Nick team at Avicom Marketing Communications, they were going for the white text over a darker background. This is fantastic looking.





So when you select the edit mode you would expect the text to remain white, but in stead you get shade of gray. Why would I mess with such a wonderful scheme?


The reason is because of the magnifying tool.



Well, where’s the big problem here it looks just fine, right? Well, the magnifying tool is “smart” enough to respect the color of the text. Thus, the beautiful white text was invisible on the white background. Not such a good thing. I had to scramble in the last day before shipping and select fonts colors for my various fields so they would show up both in the field and in the magnifying glass. What I have is a compromise but what I have now works.

Oh, BTW, I figured that if the magnifying glass respected the font color, it probably respected the background color. Well, no.

The iPhone has a superior interface for accessing data fast, but it isn’t the best device for entering large amounts of data. A standard computer keyboard is vastly superior for entering large amounts of data. The trick to building a successful iPhone application is to get in and do your thing and get out. My Eyes Only™ is designed to do enter data fast and get the information out fast and easy. The bottom line is if you can get the data in easily, then nobody will use the application. And MEO fills the need to keep important information secret.

What I did for MEO is to design appealing visual layouts with elegant graphics as a back drops for simple edit fields. Then I used the power of the iPhone keyboard to move from field to field. In addition, if some fields had fixed lengths, as in a credit card number or social security number, it just moved to the next field automagically. I also highlighted the current edit field to help the user see what was being edited. (I credit Dan M. for the tip.)

In addition, when you are done entering the last field that is visible, when you go to the next field that is out of view, it scroll into view. Very cool! And useful I might add.

I’m a little late to the party, but in the bigger picture My Eyes Only™ is an early onto the scene. I was late because I spent the time to get my usability and visual aspects of MEO in place before I posted to the App Store for review. That added with the fact that I had to spend late nights and long weekends designing and implementing MEO, just made the timing a little late and cost me money in the short run. I’m sure when it hits the App Store will be be worth it.

In reality it will be the beginning of the beginning. Everything I’ve done so far, was just the prelude to the beginning.