Sage Advice About iOS UI From my 5 years of Experience

This is not a tutorial blog. It's about what's the best way to design a UI, Tips on all the ways, My experience in using all and the steps to become a pro in Designing UI in iOS. Add your questions on UI and I can resolve your queries.

Let's see what are the various way to achieve a design in iOS using Xcode.

Storyboard
UICoding
SwiftUI

The Hardest part for a developer is choosing which among these works. So let’s discuss those in this blog.

Coming from my Favourite Storyboard.

Storyboards allow you to prototype and design multiple view controller views within one file and also let you create transitions between view controllers.

Yes, I have been in startups and these are the areas where small Indian startups made their territory in global sourcing of projects and timely delivery. We used to work on 2 projects same day Design an app and integrate features for another app. Why I said those is because there would be my colleague who would be doing the integration same time as me for the app I designed. It helped us in faster delivery and can show massive progress to clients every single day.

Storyboards can be used in static designs or for smaller projects where you wanted to go with a design-first approach. I prefer it when I build a product alone and wanted a working prototype in days. You can use it for your POC Purpose.

UI Coding :

Designing a UI programmatically kind of sucks in the beginning, for a person like me who started with NIBs and then to storyboard it took me quite some time in onboarding to UICoding. You won't have a picture of what exactly are you trying to do until you run the app. But after a few having some hands-on you may love it as clearly I loved doing it when I had the core understanding behind the content.

If a project you are building has a wider team, you're worried about the app size, wanted code reviews for UI’s too, need more customisation and also wanted those as components I would suggest UICoding and onboard your developers based on it. I would provide a simple code for the UI I made with Storyboard and UI Coding.

Swift UI :

SwiftUI helps you build great-looking apps across all Apple platforms with the power of Swift — and surprisingly little code. You can bring even better experiences to everyone, on any Apple device, using just one set of tools and APIs.

If you're starting a new App and want a killing UI that also with a minimum target version is 13.0 you can use swiftUI. But have this in mind it's still not a stable one and support for it is pretty less compared to others. If you're a person like me who uses view hierarchy for debugging in the first place have a second thought cuz you can't do that here but you get a preview scene so your not coding blindly like in UI Coding.

Personally, I love swiftUI and was so eager to work on it, My first thought was it could be like UI coding and complicated but when I saw the resources it was too easy than I imagined. there are too many pros than cons to using SwiftUI. I recommend developers use it and familiarise themselves with it because it can make the storyboard disappear sooner than you think.

How I onboarded myself into UI :

I used to take an App concept and start finding my favourite design from Dribbble and start designing an End-to-End UI.
Once done hands-on, I chose to make it as components and tried recreating advanced apps with components.
Then I follow UI Designs on Pinterest and do mock apps like meta, Netflix and Instagram.
Applied my skills in multiple places like a storyboard and UI Coding at the same time so I can do them simultaneously. I suggest freshers or anyone reading this blog to try swiftUI too.
Learn about keeping constraints properly from Professionals, Understand the core behind the auto layout.
I’m fascinated by the difference people make in UI, after 5 years even now, when I see an app with cool UI and UX I still do a replica app and I love this part of my life.

Most asked Questions :

Can we use SwiftUI and UIKit same time?

Yes, It can be mixed with UIKit using UIHostingController.

2. Is SwiftUI fast?

yes, SwiftUI is screamingly fast and all without us having to do any extra work.

3. Can I upgrade my existing app to swiftUI and what are all things I have to keep in mind?

Yes, You can move the existing app. But separate the view and logic of the code, and make sure you have customers using os below 13. Do one view at a time. Start from a smaller one and do one at a time. Try to make more components for re-usability.

Ask more questions in the comments will interact and learn more.