In this article we will look at some iphone apps and provide comments about these. These comments will be in the light of the book "Design of Everyday Things" which I happened to read recently. Also did watch the related course on Udacity.
Plan to keep on adding to the list of apps reviewed. Note that these comments are my personal opinion only. And these comments will take a systems view of the phone apps where we consider not only the apps but also the experience associated with them.
- Highlight is an app to targeted to help you learn about the people around you. So you see all information that is publicly shared of a person close to you who is sharing highlight. The app is running in the background. I downloaded this app only on my Android phone.
- Comments:
- The app is not very clear for a person who downloads it. You see a bunch of photos of people
- On selecting a photo, I see the same photo again, a map probably with the location where the person was a while ago and a bunch more information. What do I do with this information?
- There is a button that takes me to my profile but then how do I edit my information. Probably I cannot but I do not know the model in the mind of the creator of the app.
- There is also a camera (signifier in the language of "design of everyday things") on the main screen. I clicked on that, it took pictures and then I have no idea what happened to the photographs. Talk about "gulf of evaluation".
- And of course "running in the background" all the time probably thereby sucking the battery of my phone.
- Not to speak of notifications about strangers I do not care about on my home screen popping up.
- Well I "deleted" the app. No sense wasting space on my cell phone, battery life as well as "wasted cycles" deleting notifications about strangers I don't care about.
