PM UX: Two for one! iThrowU and Chattr

The Smashing Cartoons by Smashing Magazine

This week, I want to change things up a bit. Instead of just discussing one app, I’d like to review two of them and highlight some things that caught my eye. I will be focusing less on each app as a whole and more on individual features or elements that influence the overall UX.

Let’s get started:

1. iThrowU

IThrowU is one of the more popular photo/text sharing apps available these days. It delivers an enjoyable experience packaged in a neat and simple user interface that’s also nice to look at. What I like most about this app, and the reason it caught my attention, is the use of iPhone’s gyroscope technology.

In iThrowU, users don’t just tap a button to share like they do in other similar apps. Instead, when they are ready to share, users simply hold their phones (tightly!) and make a throwing motion.

I think interactions like this are fun, engaging and make for a pleasantly different experience. I also believe that thinking outside the box in order to creatively employ available technologies, goes a long way in creating an app that stands out from the crowd.

2. Chattr

Chattr is an all-in-one messenger app that allows users to carry out coverstations on Facebook, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), Google Talk and Yahoo! Messenger, all at once.

Now, while there are many apps out there with similar levels of functionality, simply put, I like Chattr because it looks nice. What I’m getting at, is that with all else being equal, visual appeal can play a big role in the overall user experience.

Chattr’s secret is a well-designed UI coupled with beautiful themes (backgrounds).  Users can select from a list of pre-loaded background images, take a picture or import from their camera roll.

I also really liked Chattr’s use of gestures controls for navigating between chats and managing open chats. I’m definitely a fan of gesture controls and I believe them to make apps more fun and interactive. I sometimes find that apps can get boring when all you’re doing is mindlessly tapping away.

Again, we go back to the whole taking advantage of available technology thing. I am a strong believer that when you are developing an app for a device such as the iPhone, with its beautiful high-resolution screen, it would be silly not to ensure your design uses that screen to its full potential.

For example, and for the sake of argument, let’s just pretend that Chattr and Facebook Messenger did the exact same things, in the exact same ways. Let’s take it even further and say that the only difference between the two apps was the way they looked at a glance. From the screenshots below, which would you choose?

My point is that the more technologies an app takes advantage of, and the more innovatively those technologies are used, the better the experience that app will deliver.  That’s not to say that app developers should force this, but instead should consider which technologies could possible be used, and determine if they will actually enhance the end user experience.

However, it should be noted that there are multitudes of other things to consider while developing an idea for an app, or while designing and developing the app itself. Focusing too much on any one facet can possibly cause others to be overlooked. So what I am saying is, make it fun, memorable but perhaps not gimmicky – i.e. don’t force them to shake the phone each time they want to delete a letter. Find the balance and you shall succeed.

Mobile Shopping Spring Summit 2012

From our luxury press release on Tuesday in Toronto and New York City, to our presence and presentation at San Diego’s Mobile Shopping Spring Summit, this week has been a flurry of cross-continent activity for Plastic.

For the Mobile Shopping Spring Summit in San Diego this week, Plastic Mobile took our Candy Shop on the road to spread the word about retail’s new store front – mobile! For the second time since Dx3, the Candy Shop has been a success. Mobile Shopping Spring Summit attendees left the candy shop with an insightful message, and a serious sugar high. Attendee’s flew in from across the continent and a few of our fellow Canadians from Beyond the Rack, Montreal, and Central1CU, Vancouver, joined us in the not-so-sunny San Diego. Locals assured us their weather is normally more balmy, but at least bad weather is always a good ice breaker!

Also at the Summit, our president, Melody Adhami, spoke in an impact-full presentation on making mobile UX count. Read the article in Mobile Marketer.

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!

The Smashing Cartoons by Smashing Magazine

There are plenty of alternative keyboards available to Android users in the Play Store. However, only a select few of these keyboard apps offer a totally creative and different mobile typing experience.

One of these rare apps is called, “Siine Keyboard.” Siine adds several interesting twists to the conventional QWERTY keyboard, including shortcuts (siines) for times, dates and commonly used words and expressions.

PM UX: Plastic Mobile Reviews the Siine Keybord App from Plastic Mobile on Vimeo.

Check out our video (Vimeo) demonstration of the Siine Keyboard App available on Android’s Play Store. Watch as Plastic Mobile walks you through the good, the bad and the ugly of this Android app.

Practice Makes Perfect

Using the shortcuts in the Siine Keyboard allows users to type common messages like “hey, what’s up?” with only two taps and two swipes of a single finger. In theory, this should make typing messages easier and faster. However, as a first time user, I spent more time looking for the shortcuts than actually using them!

To mediate this, I found it was helpful to take time to edit and customize existing shortcuts or download new sets of shortcuts to match your texting repertoire and messaging style. Eventually, after a little time spent practicing, I became comfortable with this new way of typing and found it to be a refreshingly different experience.

Time & Date to a “T”

The time and date features in Siine are brilliant. They are highly intuitive and feel quite natural to use. Unlike the vocab shortcuts, they do not require any getting used to.

The time feature makes adding times to messages easy and fun. It is definitely one of the best features Siine has to offer, but – in my opinion – the date feature is the most innovative and useful because it allows the user to check and post dates in one easy step. No longer do we have to navigate to a calendar app to find out which day the 1^st of next month falls on.

Trash it Fast

Siine gives users three options for deleting text. Tapping the delete button will delete one character at a time. Holding the delete button will also delete one character at a time, but it’s slightly quicker and doesn’t require multiple taps.

The best option for trashing large chunks of text is the quick delete function. I like to describe it as a “delete button on steroids.” Basically, users can hold the delete button then swipe their finger back and forth across their smartphone screen to delete text. The faster they swipe, the faster the app deletes the text. It’s deleting with muscle!

I found that the quick delete function felt very natural to use and was surprisingly fun. It reminded me of using rubber erasers in art class.

Thumbs Up:

• Very innovative keyboard
• Well-designed User Interface
• Variety of FREE extra downloadable sets
• The time & date features are great
• Fun and different alternative mundane keyboards
• Also functions like standard QWERTY keyboards
• Fun quick erase function

Thumbs Down:

• Requires some practice in order to fully benefit from the functionality
• Buttons are quite small in portrait mode

• The quick word shortcuts have potential, but require some setup to be truly effective

Do you have the Siine app? tweet us @plasticmobile and give us your review!

A few weeks back, we reviewed a productivity app called Clear, which impressed us with its simplistic UI, as well as clever and creative single- and multi-touch gesture controls. I was recently excited to find a calculator app taking a similar approach to creating a great user experience.

Rechner is a calculator app with just the right amount of functionality to handle simple, everyday mathematical calculations – so don’t stroll into your final calculus exam thinking this is your ticket to an A+.

What makes Rechner Calculator stand out from the competition is that it doesn’t have some of the buttons you would expect to see on a calculator. For instance, you will not find a plus button for addition or a minus button for subtraction. Those buttons, along with a couple others, have been replaced with gesture controls, making everyday mathematics just a little more fun.

This is the first screen presented to the user after launching Rechner Calculator for the first time. Its an Instructional Overlay outlining the five gesture controls available to the user. Form here, you tap the screen and the overlay will fade out so you can get started.

Gesture Controls & Visual Feedback

Even though there are only five gestures to master, they can take a few minutes to get familiar and comfortable with. Initially, I found that even the most simple calculations (such as 1+1), were taking me way too long to execute. However, as I started to get more comfortable with the gesture controls, my speed improved considerably.

One thing I found to be quite useful when I first started using Rechner, was the visual feedback I was given after inputting a gesture command. For example, after swiping to the right, a bright yellow circle with (+) in the middle appeared in the center of the screen and gradually faded. This visual feedback was especially helpful when I first started to use the app and wasn’t totally comfortable with each gesture.

The visual feedback, appearing then gradually fading.

One Hand is Better than Two

The only problem I had with Rechner, was that the gesture for the clear function was a two finger swipe in any direction. Because this gesture requires two fingers, it also requires two hands (one to hold the phone and one to input the gesture command). I think I would have enjoyed the app even more if I could have done everything using just one hand.

200% More Efficient?

In the app store, the creators of Rechner Calculator boldly claim that it is “200% more efficient,” though they don’t specify what exactly this app is two times faster than – a regular iOS calculator app? I assumed as much, so I decided to put the two apps to the test.

I handed my iPhone to a friend and asked her to take five minutes to get familiar with both apps. I then gave her three basic math problems with their answers and asked her to execute all three problems, one after another, while I kept time on a stopwatch. We did one time for the three equations on the iOS calculator app first, and then one time for the three equations on the Rechner Calculator, second.

Here are our very scientific findings:

The Verdict

Overall, Rechner is a fun and interactive twist to the conventional calculator app. The simple and uncluttered interface is very easy on the eyes and its use of gesture controls is pleasantly different.

As for the claim that Rechner is “200% more efficient,” if they mean compared to a regular iOS app, our experiment shows they need to re-think their slogan. In fact, we found that it’s around 16% less efficient. However, it is important to note that our test was light years away from even coming close to being considered “scientific,” so perhaps they do have a leg to stand on. It is also important to consider that most of us have been using standard calculators since elementary school and only five minutes with the Rechner Calculator can’t match that.

Even though our speed test didn’t pan out so well, I nonetheless consider Rechner Calculator a great app. I know that with more use, any users’ speed will increase substantially. As far as I’m concerned, Rechner did the job I expected it to do, but in a fun and different way, and all without any unnecessary bells and whistles to clutter the interface and distract me.

Doe you have the Rechner app? What do you think? Tweet us @plasticmobile.

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.

1. Don’t build an app just for the sake of building an app- Businesses are starting to recognize the enormous potential to interact with customers through the mobile platform. As this area expands everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon, especially if their competitors are already embracing the mobile space. The automatic reaction that I often witness is a panic stricken one attached to the words “I need an app… Can you make me an app?”. This reaction is also paired with the misconception that a ‘mobile strategy’ is essentially having an app. Examining the business model to determine the most relevant path into the mobile space, be it a mobile website, an application, or a mobile campaign of sorts might encourage businesses to be more objective with their approach.
2. An app will not solve all your mobile needs- Although an app can serve as a tool to utilize the mobile channel, businesses need a strategy that could come in the form of a combination of SMS campaigns (if need be), mobile websites, mobile commerce, mobile social programs and/or perhaps a tablet strategy.  Exploring mobile commerce capabilities, customer engagement practices, along with possible loyalty programs that are built into a mobile campaign would be a more comprehensive way to tackle mobile.
3. One size does not fit all: As a marketer you don’t need to reach far beyond your personal experience to figure out that mobile is different than the website/online experience. Apps or mobile websites are not just mini websites, and “porting” your site into an app/mobile websites is not a mobile strategy. Mobile devices are used differently, so you don’t just take all of your content and move it onto 320×240 pixel screen. Ask yourself: ‘how much time will my user spend navigating a website on their mobile device?’.  Be selective about what you put out in the mobile space and remember that generally less is more.  Also, take into consideration that mobile usage happens at different times of day, and in different settings for the user, so what you serve should be relevant to time and location.
4. If you build it they wont come: An app or a mobile website is like any other product which requires a promotion and distribution strategy. Identify your target audience, assess your distribution channels, and give your audience an incentive to use/download your product. It may seem elementary to point out that existing and potential customers aren’t psychic, and they’re certainly not browsing the various app stores to see if your brand has decided to offer mobile services.
5. Although this would suggest that you will need to build apps across the various platforms, its important to focus on the old principle of “quality over quantity”.  So if you are at a cross road and deciding between doing an HTML5 app that will work on all platforms, I would recommend that you go for quality (in native form), rather than quantity (in HTML5 form). Disclaimer: HTML5 can be very useful, even in-app, but must be handled with expert care and used for certain design patterns.