Well now’s your chance!

The winner of this contest will have their personally designed sticker included in a future update to Sticker Quest!

And to make it even more exciting, the winner and two runners-up will each get a FREE copy of Sticker Quest to share with family and friends!

To enter, simply reply to our post on Facebook with your Sticker Quest idea:

http://www.facebook.com/stickerquest

1) Tell us the Quest for your sticker
2) Describe what your sticker looks like (or include a drawing of your sticker!)

Here’s an example to get you started:

My Quest: “Today I brushed my teeth”
My Sticker: “My sticker looks like a tooth brush with a little sun behind it”

Good luck!

Couple of small rules:
1) One entry per person
2) Winner and two runners-up are chosen by Juno Tree

Recommended for kids between the ages of 3 and 12 years old, Sticker Quest was designed by parents, for parents. Parents and kids play Sticker Quest together, making daily chores, learning activities and playtime a fun and rewarding experience.

“I’ll admit it now; the idea for Sticker Quest came from my five year old son,” said Dennis Coughlin, co-founder of Juno Tree. “One day Patrick and I went for a longer walk than usual and I was really proud of him. Patrick said he should get a sticker for walking so far. I said that was a brilliant idea and that was the birth of Sticker Quest.”

A high amount of detail has been paid to the design of in-game quests and stickers. Parents will be happy to find there are a wide variety of quests, allowing kids to complete at least one per day. Toddlers to pre-teens can enjoy the sound effects and the animation of a peeling sticker when you complete a quest.

Example Quests: 

* Today I said “Good morning” with a smile
* Today I cleaned up my toys
* Today I learned how to say “Hello” in a new language
* Today I drew a picture of a dinosaur
* Today I went for a bike ride

Features:

* 100 stickers to discover
* Over 80 daily Quests to complete
* 15 Levels to unlock
* Multiple Questers – kids can play along with their brother or sister

Device Requirements:

* iPhone 3G, 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod touch, and iPad
* Requires iOS 4.0 or later
* 17.3 MB

Pricing and Availability:

Sticker Quest 1.0 is only $0.99 USD (or equivalent amount in other currencies) and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Lifestyle category.

About Juno Tree:

Located in Edinburgh, Scotland, Juno Tree was founded in 2011 by Dennis Coughlin and Adrian Walker. Juno Tree was established by two dads from Edinburgh, Scotland and is dedicated to making fun and meaningful Apps. All Material and Software (C) 2011 Juno Tree / All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPod, the iPod logo, are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries.

View the full Press Release  

iOS Design = Web Design x 2

For those not familiar with iOS design, everything basically happens in two resolutions. One for the original iPhones and one for the newer Retina Display devices at exactly twice the size. What this means is that you have to create your designs twice. There are a few short-cuts, but when it comes down to it, you are creating two versions of everything.

This can be pretty daunting at first. Especially if your App, like ours, has a lot of images. In the end, I produced about 500 image slices for our finished App. Ours is based on Stickers so we naturally had lots of visuals to create, but no matter what type of App you’re creating, it’s always worth keeping this in mind during those early design stages. Especially if you are constrained by the amount of time it will take to create such a large number of images.

But, saying that, the upside is that it also opens up an amazing world of detail. I found myself designing everything in the Retina display resolution since I love the sheer amount of detail it offers. At 640px by 960px , most any design will look amazing. Some of that detail does get lost of course when it’s viewed on the iPhone’s small screen, but that didn’t stop me from putting in the attention to detail and I’m sure it wouldn’t stop you either. In fact, that’s the exact thing I love about iOS design. Getting in close and making sure every little bit is pixel perfect. I found the experience even more rewarding than designing a brand new website.

Your Design Across the World

So the first thing you’ll notice is how fun the iOS design process can be and then you’ll have the realisation that your design will be available in over 60 countries! Launching a website is one thing, but putting out a worldwide product is a whole new ballgame. The level of excitement is way beyond any project I’ve even been involved with before.

Add to that a sense of ownership and pride in your work and you’ll see why this is so much fun. People across the world will be buying your App and using it on their iPhone, iPod Touches and iPads. Devices that are attached to people’s daily lives in significant ways. Before we submitted our App, I said to my son Patrick, “In a couple weeks, there might be a little boy in Japan who’s playing around with our App.” No matter what your age, that’s exciting stuff!

Where to Start

To get you started, here’s a collection of the most useful links I found:

Designing for iPhone 4 Retina Display: Techniques and Workflow : A great intro article from Smashing Magazine, this one will make it all clear from the start:

iPhone App Design Workflow for Designers : Another perspective on the ideas mentioned above:

iPhone 4 GUI PSD Retina Display and iPhone 4 GUI PSD Non-Retina : These are invaluable. All the common UI elements created in Photoshop. Brilliant.

Glypish Icons : These are the best App icons. Look no further.

Good Luck

Good luck on your App designs, it’s going to be a great journey. And don’t forget to let us know what you create.  We’d love to see it!

Sticker Quest was born in June too.  On the first day of the month, Dennis and I embarked on the process of building our first iOS app.  We had sketched and prototyped our ideas and now we were ready to turn them into something concrete.  No deadline, no budget and nobody else’s requirements to fulfil.  We were on our own.

Three months later and Sticker Quest 1.0 is built, tested, packaged and submitted to Apple.

The last time I started a project like this I was fifteen.  Like most people ‘in computers’, I became that way by teaching myself how to program whatever machine happened to have made it into the childhood home.  A ZX Spectrum perhaps, a C64 or BBC Micro…even a proper PC if you were posh.  I cut my teeth on the mighty Amstrad PCW.  Slightly left-field, admittedly, it ran at a terrifying 4MHz, could remember over 250,000 things at once and presented a world in which everything was either green or slightly darker green.  I worked late into the night, enjoying the thrill of making it seem like a tiny, spasmodic plane was being flown across the screen whilst I shot at it.  I found I worked well on my own.

Ever since, my career in technology has been punctuated by the need to do exactly the opposite; to be a team player.  ’Do you work well in a team?’ is the question we all groan at when we talk about interviews, and like everyone else I say yes when I’m asked it.  You’re just not going to get the job if you say ‘Look, I work best on my own, in the dark, late at night, listening to metal with Jaffa cakes and beer.  What’s your pension like?’

Over the years I have, of course, learned the value of the team.  But it has to be a good team.  Just being part of a group of people with a common goal is not enough.  Dennis and I finished this project because we found a good way of working together, challenging each other when things weren’t quite right, encouraging each other when we found ourselves stuck and always making sure we kept laughing when we made mistakes.  Believe me, it’s not always like that in teams.

Here are some other teams we’ve found along the way who have helped us.

• TestFlight (http://testflightapp.com): If you’re writing iOS apps without these guys then you’re stuffed.  They should be made knights.
• Google Docs (http://docs.google.com): Everyone’s heard of Google Docs, but it’s still great.  Working together on same design diagram whilst talking it through on iChat is invaluable.
• Dropbox (http://www.dropbox.com): Photoshop screen mockups at iPhone 4 retina resolution + Dropbox App = perfect prototyping!
• Propellerhead Reason (http://www.propellerheads.se/products/reason/): For sound.  Propellerheads are great and I want to be them.
• Our test team.  Getting as many people as possible to hammer away at your app will add more to the end result than you can imagine.  Thanks chaps!

Things have changed since I was fifteen, but not all that much.  Everything is faster and less green, but I’m still staring at a screen with a plastic keyboard in front of me, writing this strange code and getting excited when I make something move around the screen.

What definitely has changed is the fact that this project is finished and polished, and the reason for that is teamwork.  I still work best on my own and late at night, but to really get things done I need my team.

One day Patrick and I went for a longer walk than usual.  We had been at the park and instead of getting the bus back home, we decided to walk.  Halfway through the walk, Patrick started to get a bit tired and wanted to wait at the next bus stop.  It was a nice day so I suggested we kept going.  ”It’s not too far now,” I said.

When we finally reached our street, he forgot all about being tired and was excited to have made the long journey.

I said, “See, we made it!  Well done.”

That’s when he said, “Yeah, that was a good walk.  I should get a sticker for walking so far.”

And there you have it.  That was the birth of Sticker Quest.

As soon as we got in the house I brought out a piece of paper and quickly sketched out the initial idea.  All it needed was a very rough drawing of a sticker and a little button to click.

Patrick “clicked” the piece of paper, pretending it was a working version, and thought it was great.  3 months later we have an actual iPhone App ready for the iTunes Store and we couldn’t be more excited.

Thanks Patrick.