Article
The blog that I went to was beautifulpixels.com and read the article about an app called "Over".
 |
| Picture of the app on tablet |
Over is an app that allows the user to addd typography to any picture that they have taken.
 |
| Example of result |
The app comes with 28 different fonts that have been able to change a regular picture into something inspirational, funny, or solem.
I enjoyed reading the article, not only because of the content, but also because of the presentation of the article was great.
The page color and font colors gave a calm atmosphere to the article since also allowed the pictures of the app (as shown above) to pop and grab the attention of the reader.
The article was written well, but the paragraphs seemed kind of long for a blog. If the paragraphs were broken down more, the article would not seemed so dense that the reader doesn't feel overwhelmed with the length.
Peer Evaluation
Evaluation of Jade Storm's Balsamiq
There were a lot of pages and preferences to go through before actually getting to a list of restaurants.
Rating: 4
* Made some suggestions to help fix that in video
No back button that you could change your preference input
Rating: 2
Having a back button for the preferences is so that if the user put in the wrong preference they wanted, they could go back to that page without having to restart the search over.
There is no map.
Rating: 5
* Made some suggestions to help fix that in video
Not showing the opening and closing times of shops.
Rating: 1
This just a minor thing and I mentioned this in the video, so that the user know their options at the current time.
Here is the video of Jade's review on my Balsamiq: Evaluation of Martin's Balsamiq
App evaluation
Awesome Joke - This app is very similar to what I want my joke app to do. The app allows for everyone to view different types of jokes, submit your own, and save ones that the user finds funny.
The problem I had with the app was that the visuals seemed to come out of a pre made template. There is not as much visual appeal to it.
Pros:
Pros:
- Similar set-up as my app
- Easy to navigate
Cons:
- Visually, feels like a generic pre-made templates
- Not that colorful
The other app had all the buttons for the app on the screen where this one just have a big list of jokes with filters and categories in the installed menu button.
Pros:
- Visually, more appealing and colorful
Cons:
- Non-intuitive navigation bar
- Do not feel comfortable when trying to navigate
Navigation bar
The 3 navigation bars:
1. List menu
2. Tab menu
3. Metaphor menu
1. The list menu is usually very simple and straight forward for the user, so as not to throw the user in the heart of the app and be confused on how they got there.
2. The tab menu allows for the user to have all the different locations on the same display as the content so that, the user does not have to jump from page to page to get to their desired location in the app
3. The metaphor menu is visual exciting, by uses an object that is related to the app and make it into a menu. The problem though is finding the right object to use as the menu.
Great work throughout here Martin. However I had really been hoping for four individual blog posts, so that I could comment on each of them separately. So sorry we didn't manage to connect over the weekend - various technical challenges I'll try to explain in a video, anyway, taking each in turn.
ReplyDelete1) Lovely choice of article from Beautiful Pixels. The paragraph length doesn't seem so long to me, but perhaps that's the screen I'm reading on and font size, although I have to admit that scanning it I didn't read them in their entirety :-) Also if it was me I would have made the first hyperlink to the permalink of the blog, and the second "over" be a direct link to the app, since I initially assumed it was and thought you hadn't included a permalink to the actual blog post; but that's a relatively minor gripe. Great app!
2) Well done with hooking up with Jade for the Balsamiq evaluation, however I had specified that you should try and hook up with a programmer if you were a designer and vice versa. We'll try again this coming week. Also, I note that again you rated the issues purely in terms of severity and didn't classify them in terms of the type of heuristic violation. I guess I need to wait for Jade to post the video to look more closely at your evaluation?
3) Great to see you find two apps similar to your own. Hopefully they give you some ideas. Any particular reason for selecting these two? I had also been hoping for a heuristic evaluation with issue severity and category, with perhaps screen shots of the apps. http://www.howtogeek.com/121133/how-to-take-screenshots-on-android-devices-since-4.0/, but well done for including links to the apps and their logos. In Best Jokes ever it took me a while to find the category function, but I like having jokes on the first page. Would be great if there was one uber-database these were all plugged into ...
4) Great to see you selecting options from the mobile design pattern gallery, but I had been hoping that you would drill down to choose individual examples of things you would like within the list menu, and perhaps include a screen shot of a design you liked: individual example of list menu
Lots of great work here - hope I don't come across as too negative - mostly it's these communication issues we are working on - many thanks for all your efforts.
here's a video overview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S0045Md0mQ
ReplyDelete