PM UX: Looking at Logos Quiz and TikTok

The Smashing Cartoons by Smashing Magazine

This past week over 15 apps found their way onto my iPhone. Sadly, most of them were deleted just as fast they were downloaded with a sparse few allowed a place on my screen to crash for a couple of nights. Come Monday, though, only two of them now call my phone home for good.

The first app, Logos Quiz, did a great job keeping me entertained during a four-hour flight to Las Vegas. The other, TikTok, is a sexier alternative to the standard iOS clock app that delivers varied functionality to users.

1. Logos Quiz

Logos Quiz is a fun little game that has very simplistic UI. The game tests the user’s knowledge of brands in what is a surprisingly entertaining way given its basic presentation. The game asks the user to identify various logos, but is actually more challenging than it sounds because, with a few exceptions, users are only shown partial logos that are missing some of their identifiable elements.

I only had one small problem with Logos Quiz. Even though I enjoyed the fresh and different look of the keyboard, I found it to be very unforgiving and highly prone to fat-finger mistakes.

Right off the bat, I noticed that the keys were smaller than those of the standard iOS keyboard. However, only after comparing the keyboards side-by-side, did I realized how much smaller the keys actually were. Not to mention that the space between keys was also considerably more narrow.

If a real-estate shortage was the issue, I believe that reducing the size of the keyboard should not have even been considered as an option. Users interact with the keyboard more than any other single element in the interface. To me, that means that a good user experience here should have been top priority.

One possible alternative to a smaller keyboard could have been reducing the length of the “Check!” button. Not dramatically, but just enough to make room for the “hint” button to be placed directly to its right. That would allow for everything else to be higher up on the screen and ultimately could have increased the amount of real estate for the keyboard.

2. TikTok

TikTok is a clock app for users who are tired of the standard iOS clock app and want to shake up time telling and replace their bedside alarm clock.

It should be mentioned that it is not an app that can completely replace the IOS clock, as it lacks some features (world clock, stopwatch, timer). On the other hand, it does offer some cool features of its own and is an app that I would definitely recommend giving a try.

I really enjoyed the level of customization available to users. You can choose between digital or analog clock displays, then customize pretty much everything to your liking.

Some other cool features include: weather (displayed along with the time), sleep timer (allows users to select and play tracks from their iTunes library for a pre-determined amount of time), month and week calendars (displayed along with the time).

If you follow my blog posts, you’ll know by now just how much I apprecaite the use of gesture controls. This app was no exception. The above-mentioned features were great, but what impressed me the most about this app was its creative use of gesture controls and the iPhone’s gyroscope.

Users can swipe up or down to increase or decrease the screen’s brightness level. They can also toggle their flash on and off just by shaking the phone, which comes in handy for those 2am bathroom trips.

The only downside is that to fully benefit from all the features, users must leave the app running throughout the night and disable the screen lock. This means that they must also keep their phones plugged in so that they don’t wake up to a dead phone.

Are you playing Logos Quiz or using TikTok to find keep you on time? Tweet us with your thoughts @plasticmobile.

The mobile space has set the wheels in motion for its world domination…well, maybe not quite. But we’re getting there according to research firm Berg Insight, which reported this week that mobile is expected to grow from $3.4 billion in 2010 (at a compound annual growth rate of 37 percent) to $22.5 billion in 2016. Yikes! The report suggests that by 2016, mobile will account for 15.2 per cent of all global online advertising and marketing spending.

While mobile has been a bit of a nouveux trend until now, with some savvy and innovative agencies testing the waters, Berg Insight suggests that companies have begun changing their strategies to incorporate mobile into their annual ad plans as a key media component. Rickard Andersson, telecom analyst for Berg Insight, stated in the article from GIGAOM: “The popularity of smartphones and the increasing availability of mobile media that can include mobile advertising are the main game changers. Brands are now progressively embracing the mobile channel, including the entire range of apps from games and entertainment to utility applications.” He suspects that, while in-app ads have been the leaders in mobile marketing thus far, the advent of HTML5 brings traditional channels such as SMS as well as mobile web advertising, back on the table. He thinks that location-based advertising has the potential to unleash the full power of mobile advertising.

Location-based advertising is certainly having a hay-day in the world of mobile commerce, and should continue to be a driver of the mobile ad world. We second the emotion that it would be to a brand’s benefit to find new and innovative ways to employ mobile campaigns to enhance other advertising channels, and vice versa.