Twitter.com and Twitter for iOS are fabulously designed: beautiful, well-conceived, and efficient. Most importantly, both have matured well over the years, improving both visual aesthetic and user experience with each subsequent update. As with all designs, however, there remain opportunities for further improvement.

In this article, we’ll explore Twitter for iPhone (and iPod Touch) and evaluate specifically its layout and workflow. Some areas are perfect... others are completely wrong. I’m sure many people (Twitter engineers included) may disagree with me, but this is just my opinion.

#letusbegin

Writing text is still the backbone of any new tweet, but the app gives you a quick “toolbar” of additional items that you can add to your tweet to make it richer and more interesting.

#flexibility
#adaptability

When attaching a picture or your location to a new tweet, you no longer need your keyboard. Twitter automatically replaces it with a more useful photo (or location... etc.) panel to conserve space, which is so valuable on a smartphone screen.

#multipleinputtypes

If you add multiple items (a location, a photo, a hashtag), the app notes those additions on the toolbar by highlighting the corresponding icon in blue. Not only does this quickly remind you what you’ve added, but it encourages you to add those extra details, too.

#visualfeedback

COMPOSING TWEETS

Writing new tweets is awesome: easy, and more importantly, easily learnable for first-time users. The latter point is especially crucial given deep Twitter integration in Apple’s iOS 5 and the resulting surge in new user sign-ups.

One area of opportunity, however, is the New Tweet panel. The “sliding panels” interface that Twitter for iPad (and Tweetie’s original maker, Loren Brichter) made extremely popular is especially useful. Mac OS X Lion and Safari 5 use a similar implementation:

ABOVE

The “sliding panels” concept that Twitter made popular with Twitter for iPad would be very iPhone-friendly. We navigate our smartphones mostly with our thumbs, and the top-left “Cancel” button can be difficult to get to.

Replying to tweets is easy to do with sliding panels if a user can quickly glance at the original post. Furthermore, the quick swipe to the right (which in Twitter for iPad closes a panel) would be handy on an iPhone where quick thumb gestures are easier than hitting small “Cancel” buttons in the top-left corner.

Regarding the above screenshots, I have a few additional comments. The “Turn On Location” button should be renamed “Add Your Location.” Its current phrasing implies turning on Location Services, which users actually do in Settings.app. Furthermore, the panels are very washed out; a little more contrast would help users who turn their brightness down to save battery.

THE QUICK PANEL

Next, consider the “power-user”-friendly “quick panel” that appears when you swipe over an individual tweet. PRO: the panel allows those with a lot of tweets to triage them efficiently. CON: a new Twitter user has no way of knowing what each one does.

ABOVE/BELOW

What each icon in the quick panel actually does VERSUS what each icon in the quick panel looks like it does to a “newb.”

These icons, like many of Twitter’s character-based functions (“#” for hashtagged topics, “@” for Twitter names) are intended for those familiar with the app. Unlike Facebook (check out “Why Facebook Works for All, Twitter for Some” by Nick Bilton, NYT for more on the Facebook/Twitter user divide), Twitter does not shape its web and mobile applications to cater toward audiences some may call “older,” “tech-illiterate,” or “noobs.”

As a test, I handed Twitter.app to some people my age (who are admittedly Apple-foreign and smartphone-phobic). None of them found the swipe-gesture, and most of them commented that they would never have figured it out had I not subsequently showed it to them. From there I asked them to pick a message and reply to it. About half of my “subjects” figured out which button it was on the first try; the other half hit every single button to see what it did before picking one.

SUGGESTION

Easy-squeezy. To reveal the shortcut buttons, you can still swipe (left-to-right, or right-to-left), or you can double-tap the individual tweet. Multiple gestures means multiple ways for someone to figure out how it works. For the buttons themselves, holding one down should bring up a “context menu.”

Above

Holding down a link/button/icon and getting a context menu is not new to iOS; it’s already implemented in system apps such as Safari and Mail. In Twitter.app, holding a “quick panel” icon would bring up the context menu so that novice users know what each one does.

BOTTOM NAVIGATION (a.k.a. more nitpicking)

The app is well-organized and seemingly effortless most of the time, which is impressive given how many functions Twitter crams into it. Lists, favorite, direct messaging, trending topics, multiple accounts, and numerous account settings each have their own place, even within the limitations of the mobile medium.

Top and bottom navigation bars are especially useful here. They allow mobile users to navigate multi-function applications easily even though smartphones have very limited screen real estate.

Above

For me personally, half of these functions along the bottom navigation are irrelevant (DM and search). I should be allowed to replace them with useful ones.

BUT

Twitter.app’s bottom navigation is not customizable, and it really should be. At the moment, it features new tweets, replies to your @-name, direct messaging, and search. Personally, however, I don’t use direct messaging or search; instead, I frequently use favorites and look at trending topics (which needs its own screen, in my opinion). Users should be able to choose which functions they want easy access to, and which belong on the “...” page. It works well on the native iPod/Music application; it would work well here.

CONCLUSION

Overall, I love to write new tweets... read tweets... and reply to tweets... on Twitter’s own application. I find it to be vastly superior to any third-party options that are available. That said, there are some small corrections that would take the app beyond mere perfection. And as I’m sure my fellow Twitter-users will agree, none of these corrections should involve the #dickbar.