A year since its release, the iPad platform continues to gain broad appeal in the design and building product community. That big, bright, highly portable screen is replacing both the clipboard and the laptop in many meetings and site visits. Businesses in all corners of industry and commerce have found it advantageous to create apps for the iPhone.

As an electronic catalogue, or purchasing device, its big screen can display architectural materials at a pleasant scale, and explain design problems and concepts with readily accessible illustrations. The iPad-based catalog not only weighs nothing, so it can be carried anywhere, but it can go conceptually where a hardcopy catalog cannot: interactivity, video displays, and far more.

A thoughtfully designed app can be an effective means of interacting with your customers. We believe that developing such apps, is a great opportunity for building products marketers, and we are working with our clients to take advantage of it.