GORDON  MCDOWELL

App Store Link – Baby UI is an extremely simple iPhone / iPod / iPad app designed for Test Subject #0001, also known as, “son.”

Baby UI is a result of my son not intuitively understanding what constituted a simple “tap” on my iPhone. We don’t think much of tapping, but it involves pressing your finger down, not moving it for a moment, and lifting it back up. During this process, you can’t be holding the iPhone with your other hand so that you’re touching the screen.

Baby UI responds to just such “incorrect” interactions that a baby would try, and offers the chance for discovery as your infant rotates & shakes the device, and explores different particle systems. Some particle systems are simple (colors appear at point of contact), others are complex (colors swarm around baby’s touch). They all teach your infant “this device responds to me”.

You can purchase Baby UI (for 99 cents) at Apple’s App Store.

Customer Feedback

I solicited feedback on Reddit by running a paid promotion, and also giving away free activation codes in /r/parenting/. Most of the Reddit responses were about the video ad itself and not the app, app feedback appeared in iTunes…

• My son loves this BTW. :-) Good job Gordon!
• Good app very entertaining. (iTunes review of v1.2.2)
• Baby loves it. Interesting and colorful visuals. (iTunes review of v1.2.2)
• Simply beautiful, baby loves it and so do I! (iTunes review of v1.2.2)
• I’ve been waiting for an app like this! Finally! (iTunes review of v1.0.0)

…I can’t link to individual reviews, but you can see these by looking at Baby UI in iTunes (or App Store on your iPhone / iPad), and looking at Ratings.

If you would like to comment on this app, feel free to do so here, or to use your iPhone / iPad to do so in the App Store, comment on the YouTube video, or email me directly at gordonmcdowell@gmail.com.

I’m constantly looking to expand Baby UI’s funcationality whenever I have time not… taking care of Test Subject #0001.

v1.2.3 of Baby UI

Addresses finicky multi-touch support. I wasn’t noticing my infant son having any trouble with it, as his multi-touch behavior was specifically having one hand resting on the device while trying to interact with his other hand. So it did support 1 inactive + 1 active touch. But adults trying it would of course experiment with multi-touch in a more dynamic way (and older babies probably would have too). So v1.2.3 now has full multi-touch support.

I recently picked up an iPad2 and verified Baby UI still works (it does). The only problem I’m currently concerned with is the iPad HDMI adapter is outputting Baby UI in vertical orientation. I don’t think too many parents are concerned about that, but I certainly need horizontal orientation HDMI output for demoing Baby UI, so this is a to-do item.

And as far as iPad2 performance… well the only particle system which pushed the limits of hardware was “Galaxy Color”. On an iPad2 it looks amazing! And iPad2 supports 10 points of contact with multi-touch… just wow.