These scenarios are not uncommon, though. Even a great app like Moves, an app that is basically doing everything right, faces these hurdles. How many people would:

• notice an app was missing?
• take the time to search for it and download it again?
• continue using it if previous data, scores, achievements were missing?
• continue using it if it didn’t work initially?

If the app is considered essential (part of the mail, messages, lists, and calendar flow, tied to friends or family, an addictive game or service) we’ll jump through many hoops, but that is the exception.

I recently exper­i­mented with an alter­nate approach in design­ing the UI for Lik­ables for iPhone, with a 4-pixel rhythm. No major no minor. Just 4 pix­els as a basic inter­val unit. Firstly, both the width and height of the iPhone and even the iPad screen can be divided by 4. Using 4 as a basic unit we can con­struct hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal grids with equal parts of 4, 8, 16 and 32-pixel inter­vals. It is highly flexible.