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 Smashing Cartoons by Smashing Magazine

A couple of weeks ago, we covered the success story of the Instagram app, which allows users to snap photos, add various filters and share over a plethora of social networks – including one of its own.

As Instagram gained momentum, climbing the App Store ladder all the way to the top, I started to see the magnitude of its potential. I knew it would only be a matter of time before I saw similar apps for sharing video. What I didn’t expect, however, was the incredible speed at which this new style of app-only social network would fully catch on.

Enter Viddy, a multi-celeb backed, Instagram-style app for sharing video that climbed to #1 in the App Store’s Top Free list in no time flat.

Viddy! The new Instagram for video

How it Works

The entire process, as well as the interface is very similar to that of Instagram. Users can shoot a video (or import from their camera roll), add a filter and then share the video with their friends over a number of social networks. Also like Instagram, Viddy is its own social network. Users can follow friends’ videos as well as popular and trending ones from across the entire Viddy network.

Cool Features

Unlike Instagram, Viddy gives users the ability to adjust how heavily a filter is applied to a video. Also, users are not limited to the pre-loaded filters. They can download additional filters within the app for free.

Moreover, filters come with their own corresponding soundtracks and users are given the ability to adjust the balance between those soundtracks and the audio in their recordings (so cool!).

Super Cool.

15 Seconds of Fame

One downside to Viddy is that it limits the length of videos you can record to 15 seconds. Also, any imported video has to be trimmed using the in-app trimming tool.

Having to trim imported videos in Viddy reminds me of having to crop imported photos in Instagram. I can’t help but wonder if this is mainly done to minimize file size for quicker uploading, or to keep things more uniform and consistent?

Nobody likes to wait!

Users can watch their videos instantly before applying a filter, but have to wait for the filters to be applied. As users don’t like to wait, especially on a smartphone, wait times should be minimized. Failing to do so will negatively impact user experience.

SO, to make the wait a little less noticeable and annoying to its users, Viddy encodes the video in the background and allows users to navigate elsewhere by tapping the minimize button. Users can always keep track of the encoding progress, as it will be displayed in the iPhone’s status bar.

While being able to complete other tasks helped, I never truly forgot that I was still waiting for something.

Interface

Viddy’s interface is polished and aesthetically appealing, but can sometimes feel a bit cluttered – especially when compared to Instagram’s interface. Although very similar in layout, Instagram’s interface feels less cluttered and distracting.

We all know that a simple, uncluttered and intuitive interface is extremely important to providing an overall great user-experience, particularly for new users trying to explore and learn an app.

You Heard it From Plastic:

An Israeli based company has created an app called Mobli, which allows users to share a combination of photos and videos. Mobli is gaining popularity and is building a substantial user base at a rate of 10,000 new users daily. Look for Mobli to be one of the next up-and-comers in this space.

The Smashing Cartoons by Smashing Magazine

This week we’ll be looking at Figure, a neat and super simple music-making app by Propellerhead Software. Figure allows even the most off-beat, tone-deaf, musically challenged individuals to create fairly decent sounding music.

Unlike other music apps, such as Garageband, Figure takes a much more simplistic approach that lets users pick up and play without much of a learning curve.

How it Works

Figure keeps things easy by minimizing the functionality available to users, making it more of a beat making app than a full-out music production tool.  It only gives users a variety of bass, drums and lead synths to work with.

Users also don’t have the ability to input notes as they can with other more complex music production apps. Instead – and we think for their own good – they are limited to using a pre-quantized range of notes.

Figure provides users with some pretty cool rhythm wheels, which play notes in preset patterns and rhythms. The use of these rhythm wheels makes it very easy to stay on the beat and not stray off into the weird noise area.

Touch Away

Figure is all about interacting and touching, which I believe makes the experience more engaging and enjoyable. It utilizes the iPhone’s touchscreen beautifully by using every last bit of touchable real estate.  I was impressed with how intuitive the touch controls were and how natural it felt to tap, drag, swipe and draw while making music.

Great UI

The interface in this app was simple, intuitive and looked pretty darn cool to me. Th colour coded tabs to spread out the functionality worked well as I never found myself taking time to search for anything. I could always see where everything was and didn’t need to put any thought into how to get there.

At first, I found the blue touch fields in the pattern tab to be a little too small for my liking. Then I learned that by rotating my phone into landscape view, I could have just those four touch fields take up the entire screen, making it much easier to tap out some beats.

Pattern tab in landscape view.

Save? Share?

After creating my first masterpiece, I was pretty disappointed to discover that I couldn’t save or share my craftsmanship with the world. At the very least I think we should be able to save a few of our creative audio endeavours, but find the lack of sharing particularly perplexing as most apps have some sort of social networking element built in. I’m curious to know the reason behind this and if these options were even considered. The search for answers continues. Have any insights? Tweet us @plasticmobile and put my curiosity to rest.

The Final Beat

Figure is a fun way to pass time and be creative. It doesn’t require much to learn how to use it and, more importantly, doesn’t require any musical talent to use.

However, it is missing two pretty significant and obvious features. The option to save would give users the ability to go back and listen to their creations, and the option to share would let them brag to all their friends about their beat-making skills!

Plastic Mobile and Luxury Institute: How the Wealthy are Using Mobile to Shop Luxury Brands from Plastic Mobile on Vimeo.

Award-winning mobile marketing agency, Plastic Mobile, recently partnered with the independent, New York City based Luxury Institute in a study to learn more about how wealthy consumers are using their mobile devices and luxury brand applications.

Watch our video of the findings and learn how mobile is set to change the luxury brand retail landscape by working to enhance the in-store experience.

The Smashing Cartoons by Smashing Magazine

Instagram has been around for over a year, and in that time has built up a substantial user base (over 40 million). However, with its recent release on the Andoid platform, and the current buzz surrounding this app, that user base is sure to grow.

That’s why I chose now to hop on the Instagram band wagon and try out this super app formyself.

The Gist of It
Simply put, Instagram is a social network for photo enthusiasts. Users can take photos, add filters, include geo tag captions and then have their photos posted for other Instagram users to like or comment on. They can also share their photos on other popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, Posterous and Foursquare. What makes Instagram so special is how easy and quick it makes the process of taking and sharing great pictures. In a matter of seconds, users can take a picture, add a filter and share that picture for all the world to see.

New User Experience
I found Instagram to be relatively friendly to new users, as the interface was simpleand uncluttered. Also, I liked how the app walks you through the process of getting started in five easy steps.

I used the app on my iPhone and found that the icons and UI elements felt very iOS-centric, making it fairly easy to navigate my way around the app. However, I felt that some icons could have been designed to be more intuitive.
After doing a little research, I found that the icons and UI elements had been different in previous versions of the app and while the newer icons were moreesthetically pleasing, the previous used icons were more intuitive and user-friendly because they included titles.

Take for example the feed icons from the above screen shots. The feed icon in the screenshot to the left (older version) would be very hard to misinterpret. However, the one on the right (newest version) can fairly easily be seen as a home screen of sorts.

Filters & Photo Quality
I was impressed with the quality of photos that can be produced with Instagram. Just by adding one of the 18 available filters, one can dramatically improve the quality of an average photo. The trick is to experiment and learn when to use which filter.
I enjoyed not having to wait until after taking a picture to apply a filter. I could see what the picture would look like before actually snapping a shot. On the downside, one thing I felt was missing was the ability to apply multiple filters to a photo as you can with other photography apps.

I liked the use of a carousel style pop-up menu for the filter options. It was a great way to pack 18 items into a list while minimizing real estate usage. I also appreciated how the icons for each of the filters gave me an idea of what that filter did. I didn’t have to go through each filter individually until I found the desired effect.

Share and Share Alike
Another thing I liked about Instagram was the ability to import pictures from the camera roll. Users that already have a favourite camera/photo-editing app can use their preferred app to capture and edit a photo, then import it into Instagram to share with the Instagram community or on other social networks. However, it should be noted that photos imported from users’ camera roll need to be cropped to match thestandard square (1:1) images produced by snapping picture using the Instagram app itself.

Android Version
Since Instagram was also just released in the Google Play Store, I also took some time to check it out on the Android platform. Right away, as expected, I noticed that all the UI was now appropriately Android-centric, but I also couldn’t help but think that the app wasn’t on par with its IOScounterpart and here’s why:

• Every image must be cropped (IOS version only requires cropping of images imported from camera roll).
• Android users have to wait until they have captured and cropped their images before they can apply a filter to the image (IOS version gives users a preview).
• Not all devices are supported.

Overall, Instagram on Android offers a noticeably less streamlined experience by lengthening the process of creating and sharing images. I must also include that the short comings of the Android version of Instagram are most likely a result of technical limitations due to the many variations of Android.

Are you loving Instagram on Android or iOS? Tell us about your photo-sharing love at @plasticmobile.

The Smashing Cartoons by Smashing Magazine

Draw Something is currently one of the hottest games to play on your Android or iOS device – and we know because it has invaded our office, resulting in all kinds of hilarious images and sudden burst of “ohhhh… I see it now!”

Best described as a combination of Words with Friends and the classic game, Pictionary, the game is incredibly fun and highly addictive. In fact, after three weeks of use, I am considering checking myself into anti-gaming rehab.

How it works

1. You start a game with friends by connecting the app to Facebook or by using their email address or Draw Something username. You can play multiple games with different friends simultaneously. You can also play with random Draw Something users if you find you don’t have enough friends to sufficiently support your habit to the addictive game.

2. Once you have selected a friend to play with, you choose one of three words that vary in difficulty from easy, medium or hard. You then draw a picture of your chosen word and send it to your friend. They then have to try to figure out what you’ve drawn using a subset of the letters shown on the screen. Based on the fact that few of us are anything remotely close to artists, this is the fun part.

3. If your friend guesses the correct word, you are both awarded coins that you can use to purchase more colours or bombs. The number of coins you receive depends on the difficulty of the word your drew. You get one coin for easy, two for medium and three for the hardest word.

4. It’s then your friend turn to draw and your turn to guess. This cycle continues indefinitely, even if either person fails to guess correctly.

Plastic Mobile User Experience Draw Something App Review from Plastic Mobile on Vimeo.

Despite the addictive nature of the game, and how much the Plastic Mobile team seems to love it, we decided to take an objective look at its overall usability.

Usability Issues

I encountered one minor usability issue while using this app. I found that while trying to guess words, the bottom portions of some drawings were obstructed by the semi-transparent overlay showing the number of letters in the word.

Only after repeatedly becoming frustrated with this, I realized that I could pull up the image and uncover the bottom portion.

A possible solution for this issue could be a “hide” button that would toggle the visibility of the overlay, or a more evident and intuitive scrolling option.

Pros

• Play with friends or random players
• Seeing replays of your friends guessing and drawing (so hilarious at times!)
• Easy to pick up and play
• Simple interface
• Highly entertaining and interactive

Cons

• Limited dictionary (words are repeated among different players)
• You can write instead of drawing (takes the fun out of playing)
• Obstructed view of some drawings

Suggestions for Improvement

• Give users the ability to pause and navigate away from a game that is in progress. Right now, in order to leave a game with one friend and move to the next, users must finish guessing and drawing. The only other option available to users is shutting down and re-launching the app.

• Provide users with an option that would allow them to undo their last action while drawing. This would save users from having to erase parts or all of their drawings in order to correct any mistakes.

Side Note: Back to the Stylus…

Here at Plastic Mobile, we are in the midst of an ongoing debate regarding the use of the stylus. We generally believe that the introduction of the touch screen should have been the ultimate demise of the stylus. We agree with Steve Jobs’ belief that we are born with 10 of the best pointing devices in the world.

However, after playing Draw Something, I could see why sometimes a stylus could be useful.

Are you as addicted to Draw Something as the Plastic Mobile team? Tweet us @plasticmobile.

Amazing Acrobats Playing PLastic Mobile's Twist 'em!

Yesterday at the Spring IAB Mixx conference, our Plastic Mobile take on an old board game favourite was revealed at IAB’s MIXX conference and turned out to be a huge success among attendees.

“Twist ’em” allowed two players to compete to knock down the opposition’s bendy acrobat – yes, there were real acrobats on the unique Twist ‘em board. The two players combat using an iPad application to light up the positions and colours on the Twist ‘em board, causing the contortionists to try to twist away without falling over.

The iPad apps allowed the users to choose one of four colours and one of the left or right hand or a left or right foot (very similar, if not exactly the same, to Hasbro’s Twister). The mobile twist came of course from the mobile app controller on the iPads, as well as from the Twist’em board, which was 16 iPads that would light up to identify which square the acrobats should use. The person with the bendy acrobat left standing, won, and it was very challenging because those contortionists were REALLY flexible!

Needless to say, the Twist ’em game was a huge success for event attendees so we can’t wait to play it again!

One of our favourite tweets of the days was: “Wow, flavored oxygen at @TCTranscontinen and acrobats at@plasticmobile, bringing out the big guns! #MIXXCanada@iabcanada“

Stay tuned for our video of “Twist ’em: The making of…,” a documentary of sorts (not really) about what happens when a creative agency decides to take their event booth to a whole new level…

In my weekly blog post, I normally prefer to comment on some of the large scale challenges or successes affecting the mobile industry, but this was too special to pass up.

Our team  made some time earlier this week to mobilize our Ping Pong matches. It all began with one of our Android developers creating a tablet app that could actually keep a proper game score (there seemed to be a recurring discrepancy in the scoring of our afternoon table tennis matches). The idea was that an Android tablet would sit atop the Ping Pong table and the app would keep an accurate, un-biased score of the Ping Pong games while in action.

How it works is pretty awesome. The “Plastic Paddle,” as it has now been dubbed, is good for a single’s or double’s match, and scores in terms of three sets per match and follows the proper rules of Ping Pong prior to 2000, meaning every 5th point the server changes. You can pre-set the serve, or use the server randomizer by clicking in the middle. A voice not entirely unlike Siri (but, better) will tell you who’s serve it is based on the scoring system. She will also tell you who’s advantage it is or if it is a deuce. To compensate for the inevitability of human error (if you click a point on your side when you did not actually receive a point) you can minus out the score. Last, when you win, the voice will tell you that you are the winner, and then a prompt will appear to allow you to post your results to the server.

It proved such a huge success around the office that it’s currently being developed for web to include such things as player stats with loss and win ratios and real-time tracking so matches can be carried over and rivalries can be tracked.

While this is an amazing first step, I’m looking forward to an even more advanced Ping Pong tracking system – Got that, team?

A big congrats to our developers for their ingenuity and drive to maintain a civilized game playing environment, and stay tuned for the coming improvements!

Great job team!

Plastic Mobile and the Luxury Institute banded together to conduct a study of affluent Americans and their smartphone use. The study covers everything from how many wealthy folks are using mobile, to what they are using it for.

Yesterday, the luxury institute announced the study in an initial press release, to be followed by a more comprehensive report on the findings. The study produced some information that even shocked our team here at Plastic Mobile – who just assume that everyone is on mobile ALL the time because, well, we are!

Check out the initial press release below and stay tuned for the complete findings to come out in the next month:

Wealthy U.S. Smartphone Users Reveal Details on Shopping, Spending and Use of Mobile Apps; Facebook, Angry Birds and Words With Friends Top List of Favorite Apps

The Smashing Cartoons by Smashing Magazine

Last Thursday, Apple released iPhoto – the final piece of its iLife suite for iOS. A few days later, a friend asked me to recommend an app that she could use to touch up photos taken on her iPhone. I told her to give iPhoto a try. The next time we spoke, I asked her what she thought about iPhoto. Her response was: “It was ok, but it wasn’t worth the $4.99. It doesn’t do much.”

Apple #Fail? Is that even possible?

I decided to check it out for myself. Maybe the reason her experience with iPhoto was so mediocre was because she’s a fairly new to iPhone and lacks the experience to get the most out of the app.

So I installed iPhoto on my iPhone and was greeted with a pretty straight forward, simple and intuitive home screen. I could see what was clearly my Camera Roll (as an album) sitting on a glass shelf.

The Home Screen

When I selected my Cameral Roll, my individual photos were presented in a cool scrollable thumbnail view along the bottom. So far, so good.

Camera Roll

The trouble starts when you realize that auto-enhance is the only real photo editing tool in the main view. It works really well for an automatic editing tool and is simple and easy to use, but I then had to go into the toolbox icon on the bottom left to slide out a tab with additional editing tools. Since there were so many options, it was difficult to figure out what each tool did and how to use them.

Tool Kit

The problems continue when I clicked on the cropping tool and could pinch to zoom and move the grid to crop my picture as desired. As an experienced iPhone user, pinching to zoom while moving an image was intuitive. However, iPhoto also throws image rotation into the mix, and there seemed a bit too much going on. I also noticed that, after I had zoomed into my desired amount and started to rotate my image, my zoom level would unwontedly change. This was really annoying.

Only after further exploring the copping tool did I realize there was an alternate option. After pinching to my desired zoom level, I could tap on the rotate dial at the bottom of the screen to rotate my photo by actually physically rotating my iPhone. This was not only a cool feature, but I found it made for easier image manipulation that was much more user-friendly.

Rotate

Overall, iPhoto delivers a lot of functionality with many ways to edit, tweak, optimize and share your photos. But when the high amount of functionality equates to increased complication for the end user, tooltips for each tool or on-demand tutorials might be a good idea. That way, users who don’t want or need help won’t be bothered. But users, like my new-to-iPhone friend, can get the help they need.

That being said, after going through all the editing tools and options in iPhoto, I couldn’t believe that my friend said that iPhoto doesn’t do much. What I can believe, is that she might have never gotten to the cool effects because she wasn’t prepared to put the effort into learning about all the tools. So she gave up before she had a chance to really bask in the glory of all that iPhoto has to offer.

It just goes to show how important a user’s first impression of an app is, and that the fine balance between having too much and too little is a delicate relationship. Even if it does everything the user wants, there’s a chance that if they can’t do it easily, they won’t do it at all.

The good news is, I hear the iPad version of the app does offer tooltips to users, so hopefully the iPhone version of the app will incorporate some much needed tooltips soon.