Play: The Secret Weapon for iOS Devs & Designers

[@alejmc]

3:02 agreed that wouldn’t likely expect a designer to be reading SwiftUI docs… but wow, glad it’s there! As a very beginner hobbyist that dabbles in SwiftUI at times, this is a fantastic learning “cookbook” if you will.

[@ifthis_]

I'm a designer who's tinkered with some code. I've recently learned @CreatewithPlay, which was a relatively smooth transition if you know Webflow and Figma at a decent level. Learning Play was a stepping stone to learning Swift. Using Play before learning Swift was almost like a prep course for it. This video validates that so much. Great partnership Play! Hell of an ad.

[@Varitus]

Man. If only irl it was that easy to return to designer and say "Oi, friendo, you want me to make a custom ui? No no no. Go redo!" :D

[@seanallen]

Haha, fair point. Every team has a different dynamic.

[@lisbettegomez]

I'm a UX designer and currently I'm learning Swift UI and man! this is awesome, because I'm a visual l;earning! great video

[@cvought1]

Whoa! Downloaded that really fast. Like Zooomed over to Play. Thanks Sean

[@AlexandruBabel]

Awesome tool, an Interface design like the old UIKit, nice video as always! Thank for sharing!

[@seanallen]

You bet!

[@Decatilinae]

Great video. This tool can finally change my working method with the designer. I used to see the code from Figma, but this is game-changing. Can u make some other videos with this tool for making a complete app, just from a UI perspective?

[@seanallen]

Glad you liked it. Depending on how this video performs, maybe there will be another.

[@nadinnealeman8214]

As a designer starting to learn Swift UI… I request another video about this masterpiece 😅. Thanks for this lifesaver.

[@abhaydesign1396]

Seems promising, will def check it out..

[@leifashley]

So Sean, question on this video. I can see the value of a team targeting an MVP for an app with iOS first as their main iteration. This product brings powerful features for UI/UX to move the ball forward quickly. But, what if you're a small Indy team where it's just 3 people or just a single developer? I've struggled between Play, Figma, and just pencil and paper as to the best approach. What would you recommend in "most cases"? Thoughts?

[@seanallen]

My opinion... if you don't have a designer and it's just 1 developer that's in charge of design and development, then I do a quick pencil/paper sketch and hop right into SwiftUI (as the developer). I think Play is a no-brainer if you have someone full-time on design that can work through a LOT of design issues, and then the developer builds it.

[@leifashley]

@@seanallen Thanks for the input, that was my take as well. I'll let you know how it goes ;)

[@boqoll]

Is this just for designing the I.O.S app or can you build a whole app for example the functionality part as well?

[@Ayo04099]

I will give it a go. Lets see. Thanks Sean!

[@seanallen]

Let me know what ya think!

[@bobdabuilder9447]

For someone that is still learning to code is it better to still write it yourself?

[@nadinnealeman8214]

X2 😅

[@newyorkblingz1879]

Hey man, as. aiOS developer does play not essentially replace my job as a designer would not necessarily need a developer for making their app?

[@TwoLeggedTriceratops]

This is good if you are only targeting for iOS right? In most of my jobs they want to output to both Android and iOS and I would imagine the dev from Android would have to recreate a lot of the Swift interaction/animation or find an alternative way to present it?

[@pathoslp]

As a backend developer who wants to explore designing and building a fun app for myself this sounds awesome. Will give it a shot.

[@JasonMitchellAZ]

If only our designers understood mobile design even just a bit (or had any desire to understand it).

[@seanallen]

That's what this tool is for :). Teach them how to speak SwiftUI. But like you said, you need to get buy-in from the designer.

[@gabrielkime6597]

Just tried it, pretty unimpressed. It just lost 30 minutes of work because I clicked on a component i made and it reset back to its default state. Clicking undo didn't do anything. That was just one of many bugs, and I didn't find the interface at all intuitive. No thanks!

[@AndysTV]

Awesome product definitely a SUB!

[@AndysTV]

Play: The Xcode built right

[@seanallen]

Awesome, thank you!

[@MohanKumar-gj9th]

Could be a figma plugin ! Coz all apps also need to be made on android and it’s double work if iOS designed in play and android is done in figma

[@bendo7591]

This is amazing!

[@seanallen]

Glad you liked it!

[@chripolo]

Interesting! Thanks Sean for sharing 👍🏾

[@seanallen]

No problem :)

[@arjundureja]

Does Play support designing macOS apps?

[@CreatewithPlay]

Not at the moment, but we will expand to iPadOS, macOS and watchOS in the future.

[@jianyuankaka2742]

how about detailspro app?

[@EvgeniiBondarev]

Great! If only we could hire a designer who can really handle all of this himself (well, I would call this new profession a Design Prototyper)...

[@RafaelAugustoCamposPlinio]

How would this work where you have an app that runs both on iOS and Android? Would the designer have to use a different "UI" for Android or is this only for iOS only apps?

[@seanallen]

It's really specialized for iOS apps

[@abdiadennn]

Hey Sean i'm very new to iOS and Swift and i work full time 9-5 so i want know which one of your courses should start with? 😊

[@seanallen]

I would start with iOS Dev Launchpad, then go to SwiftUI Fundamentals (they are both free), then re-assess from there.

[@abdiadennn]

@@seanallen thank you Sean, i’ve already started this one just yesterday 😅 also i want to ask the Slack link 😊

[@grafikaya]

I am following play from their launch and still don't understand why it's undervalued. I have a couple of observations about their marketing strategy. they are just posting feature videos (most of them 3-5 min) But it's a new product, I think they should post a 2-3 hours tutorial to create an entire app from scratch to cover whole software's abilities.

[@swoleavocado]

This doesn't help if you support Android and iOS. At the very least, Play needs to export a spec sheet with the name of the Material Design's components and maybe a video of the interaction.

[@NomadicDmitry]

Is it an ad?

[@seanallen]

I saw Play posting a bunch of cool stuff that I liked on twitter, so I reached out to them to see if they wanted to sponsor a video.

[@NomadicDmitry]

@@seanallen Makes sense

As a sponsored video, how much of it is biased?

[@andretirta9801]

no UIKit support?

[@createwithplay_nyc]

We're working to support UIKit export in the near future!

[@kavinda_dilshan_paramsoodi]

Damn ❤👨🏻‍💻

[@cagatay9556]

Oh man I am going to jobless...

[@seanallen]

I disagree :)

[@cagatay9556]

@@seanallen if you say so Sean :)

[@numb980]

It feels like it fixes a problem that doesn't exist. Designers don't need to think "SwiftUI", they need to think about "User experience". It's the developer's job to implement it, and it doesn't matter what tech stack they use and how they implement it

[@kironet]

doesn't really work like that. Our designer can give me anything he wants, if I got to my manager and tell him it will take me 2 days to build this fancy looking screen with custom tabbar that amazingly bends and flashers when I tap on it, he will make the designer redo it... And there will be a problem if this pattern keeps repeating.

[@seanallen]

Well said, @kironet. In a "perfect world" the designer designs whatever they want and the developer builds it. But in real life you have limited time and resources. If you're spending all the developer's time building fancy custom UI elements (reinventing the wheel), then you are spending expensive developer resources on the wrong thing. Of course, there are exceptions. If a huge part of your app's brand is to have whimsical, fancy designs, then that's a different story. But I'd argue that only applies to a very small subset of apps.

[@numb980]

​@@kironet I'm not talking about going against HIG or using some crazy custom animations. All I'm saying is a designer can use Apple's components library in Figma and make a design. And if the components are created right, you can switch them on and off with one click as well. They don't need to worry about SwiftUI

[@dD-sx3cs]

@@numb980a figma prototype gets nowhere near the fidelity that’s on show here. This opens up a whole new world for startups looking to quickly user test and gain backing from investors without coding a whole app.

[@dD-sx3cs]

A figma prototype gets nowhere near the fidelity that is on offer here. The amount of time and money this saves in creating a hyper realistic take an end state app to then user test with or even gain funding from investors is a game changer!

[@umarparacha653]

Swiftui va uikit in 2024

[@ericdraven7857]

And another subscription. We need less subscriptions in our lives, not more. Probably only worth it for teams, companies who want to pay for it.

[@AhmadRaza-f1q]

Hey I am the first viewer that's funny😅

[@chezchezchezchez]

REALLY funny

[@topscrech]

Buy a better mic please

[@chezchezchezchez]

Just call it "X Twitter" and be done with it. (Get it? "X" Twitter, or the OLD Twitter?) It's so awkward every time for so many people to say it. wow.

[@stayux]

A typical developer view. F* custom design. Just give me backed in components of Swift UI. Don't misunderstand me at all. There is a place and time to think in this way. But man designers can learn about Swift UI capabilities and create different experiences.

[@alexthurston9940]

I think the point is that Swift UI makes it really hard to design custom UI (much harder than UIKit), which makes a tool like this more useful. It would be interesting to hear how Play supports custom UI if they do.

[@createwithplay_nyc]

@@alexthurston9940 Great question! You can design anything in Play similar to how you would design in Figma. We use V,H,Z Stacks vs Figma's Auto Layout and we work to take whatever you design and generate SwiftUI code that can be used in Xcode to lay out those same views.

[@kayboy6055]

Idk how to use Play man. I was stuck on the home screen. Thank you for this tutorial because none else exist!!