Are you using the Smartphone fully with your design?

For years each of us have worked on user interfaces that interact in 1 dimension and with a maximum of 4 options. Left Click, Right Click, Centre Click and Scroll. And if you were stuck designing for a Mac then you just had Click and Scroll. Things changed rapidly with the first iPhone and the others that followed. With them came the world of multi-touch. Things rapidly changed from Click to Tap. Then came a whole lot of other gestures, Swipe Left, Right, Top, Bottom, while the Scroll was still around. Add to this Pinch and Zoom complicated further by 2 finger and 3 finger swipes Left, Right… and as if this was not all, there was Shake, Tilt and Gravity. 

On todays date, most of these are not supported for HTML and JS, at least not without some serious effort. But on a Native App, you can really go crazy trying to decide which option to give. Apps like Snapseed, Magichour, have successfully managed to compress the complicated process of photo editing into a small 4″ screen (sometimes  smaller) and yes, they work. The trick is to find out what comes naturally to the user on each device. Twitter’s retweet and share options hidden behind a swipe action was one of the first to exploit these features, and today almost everyone understands the process.

Twitter App was one of the first ones to take advantage of vertical scroll and horizontal swipe in the same view, now almost every app has this!

Twitter App was one of the first ones to take advantage of vertical scroll and horizontal swipe in the same view, now almost every app has this!

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My Smoking went down after I got addicted to Instagram, it got worse when I switched from Android to iPhone

It’s simple. Spend the time doing something else!

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Usable Data / Lots of Data

Often its is said that Google creates the most usable of Apps and I constantly try to find a reason behind it. A simple display on of information on their Maps App on iPhone (or Android, since I use both) presents the user with a lot of Data. A restaurants name and address and phone number for instance. But from here on its all downhill, the Map app just allows you to see that information, but if you have to make a call to that number, you better get ready with your Notes App to write it down or memorise it and then type it back in where its needed.

The right way to do it on a Phone App is to just give a Call Button that takes the phone number and dials it. General assumption is, if there is a number displayed on my phone whether in email or any app, in all probability I would like to save it or dial it. The actual number really does not matter any more since we are not dealing with paper and pencil here.

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My Phone usage has gone more social after switching from Nexus S to iPhone 5

Although its not pure and analytical data but it’s thereabout. After switching from the Google Nexus S to iPhone 5 in November 2012, my usage of Social Apps has seen a definite increase overall. Use of Instagram has gone up by more than double and Facebook should be up by 6 times. Add to this the cross posting of images from Instagram to Facebook. Occasional use of Tumblr has seen an increase as well but not by much. Coming to actual work related stuff, reading and replying to emails now almost completely happens from the iPhone as its a lot easier and mails through Exchange reach almost instantaneously. Use of camera is a mixed bag. Although the overall usage has gone up, but using the camera on the iPhone 5 for Macro is nearly impossible. The same on the Nexus was brilliant but it definitely lacked in shooting regular non-macro pics. Browsing of information on various apps to look for restaurants, check ins on Foursquare, checking hotel and flight information has all gone up. Primarily because all these things work smoothly on iOS for some reason unknown, considering the same set of people are developing the apps for both platforms. Then comes the Find my Friends Vs Google Latitude usage, although both work in a similar fashion, Find my Friends uses a lot less of the GPS and as a result a lot less of the battery. It also feels more precise and to the point. Use of Google Maps (and all other maps including apple) has however gone down, primarily due to the initial crappy Apple Maps and then due to the use of an actual GPS in my car.

Will try and take a more detailed look at this next month.

iPhone 5 Vs Nexus S usage. Approximate.

iPhone 5 Vs Nexus S usage. Approximate.

Mavn – Social Shopping

New site mavn.me just went live with app attached for iPhone.

Mavn is a social shopping environment targeted at the urban user in motion. It allows you to smartly spot stuff that you want to buy or have and neatly organize them in bags complete with tags. Kind of like an Instagram for products. On the desktop it behaves like a curation tool where the user can keep adding items to their wishlist using convenient pinning method, much like Pinterest.

Mavn aims to connect the offline and online businesses to their prospective buyers directly, giving them a platform to interact on.

Give it a spin

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Have been spending a lot of time on Instagram lately

I have to say, the credit largely goes to Instagram’s simple user experience.

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Fake Lomography Collage

With so many smart phones around me, its inevitable that some fake lomo shots will be taken. This is a collage of some of the shots taken using Apps like Hipstamatic and Instagram on iPhone and Magic Hour Photos on Android. Enjoy!