How to do iOS tooltips
Mobile devices exploded onto the scene in 2011 and are only going to get bigger in 2012 and with them came a whole new learning curve for designers.
The smaller screen space has meant that not every feature can be placed on the screen at the same time. This has led to a lot of features ring hidden only to be displayed after an arbitrary gesture. To get this hidden information across tooltips have become common place within many apps.
To use tooltips effectively thy should only display in the context where they are necessary and they should be easy to dismiss, otherwise they can get in the way of the experience just like this example from Path.
After registering, Path suggests that you connect with friends, however, I wasn't ready to yet and looked for a way to dismiss the tooltip and actually explore the app. Sadly, I discovered their gentle nudge to connect with friends was actually a demand because I couldn't dismiss the tooltip.
If you're going to use a suggestive tooltip you should make sure it is easy to get rid of. Path could have easily just added another step into their registration process that asked me to connect with friends of skip. However, they disguised this extra step as a tooltip, which I had to annoyingly accept and then instantly take a step back to the home screen I wanted to use.
This didn't give me the best first impression of them.
