iPhone App Tutorial/Help Screen UI

Question

What is the best way to create tutorial or help screens that can be viewed in an iPhone App on launch?

I'm debating between using two paradigms:

1. Edit a screenshot of the app with an image editing program to add static help text. Interaction is tapping or scrolling through the tips. This involves creating a custom UIViewController to advance to the next help screen.
2. Create a custom iPhone UIControl on top of the App user interface that can be tapped to advance to the next tutorial tip. The application will transition between the modes and will be active, rather than static. It involves adding hooks into the App's custom ViewController's to handle "TutorialUIControl" objects.

Here's some screenshots of the application that I need to make help screen UI for, it's an application that creates artwork. More App Information

1. Screenshot 1: View mode that allows viewers to scroll through an image list, like the UIImagePicker, but for custom image collections.

2. Screenshot 2: Action mode - allows viewers to select images to save to the "My Saved" album from the active art generation album "My Evolution" or evolve images using sexual/asexual image reproduction.

Answer 1

The "right" answer really depends on the application you are designing. I would highly suggest getting as many apps as you can and looking at how they do help. See what works and what doesn't and think about how that is related to your own design.

In my app (a game) I chose to build a set of static images that could be scrolled through to provide detailed help (based on Apple's sample code). But, I also built an interactive tutorial that plays the first time you run the game. I also pop up a welcome overlay the first time the app is run and suggest what button to press to start a game.

It also helps if you test your tutorial with a lot of different people. After several designs with things too complex, I boiled down my instructions to something extremely simple: "Press the green buttons", and then built up from there.

You can easily store a preference to say whether the app has been launched before, and if that entry is blank you run the tutorial again.

Answer 2

You can create an HTML tutorial that you view through a UIWebView. In on of my iPad apps, I just made a large image that I presented modally with images and text explaining how to use the app.

For iPhone, the best way to include a "How-To" tutorial for your app would have to be a web document, seeing as how you can add images and formatted text.

Alternatively, You can add more views to your controllers with transparent backgrounds and animated buttons and text, for a more interactive feel.

Answer 3

To answer my own questions many months later.

1. I revamped and used WEPopover to show my help popups, as seen in the iPhone/iPad App, Wallpaper Evolution Lite. The help disappears only if tapped or the button it was attached to was pressed. Using this flow I could highlight a series of buttons to the user.
2. I added help images within the application to highlight interaction behaviors with the content. The tap, zoom, and drag images are fully interactive.
3. As @WrightsCS mentioned HTML is another avenue. I use the UIWebView to provide a more in depth help/tips screen with contact information.
4. In my upcoming app, I'm making use of a paging UIScrollView with help content highlighting app features. The help screen is loaded on the first start of the app, and is accessible through a help menu option.

Here's my fork of the WEPopover github project: https://github.com/PaulSolt/WEPopover