Did you knowTNW Conferencehas a track fully dedicated to exploring new design trends this year?
Check out the full Sprint programhere.
Last week everyone was talking about Iowa.
I usually wouldnt bother covering the controversy here if not for two things.
A nerdy web-designer/developer, out in Iowa, trying to fit in, and mostly failing.
So I do feel connected to Iowa as its a part of who I am.
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
While the UX crowd wasnt too pleased by my approach before, I still stand by it.
There are edge cases in which a professional team of developers built a sophisticated app for pros.
It can be poorly done on the front-end side and still do its job well.
I know the political divide is quite big nowadays.
It was created for a reason (and is quite good, actually).
What happened to judge a book by its cover?
Dont they see the difference?
Some of the younger employees maybe even worked on some digital products (or around them) before.
So why was a product that looks like a functional demo even chosen?
Well probably never know (or dont want to know).
Ill have a go at go over what little screenshots of the app appeared and briefly annotate them.
Lots of those problems are universal and are an easy way to judge a product.
Sure you might be wrong but you likely wont be.
Lets check it out, shall we?
The image above is a good example.
This is the login screen.
Notice the click here phrasing that can be confusing on mobile devices (its an app after all).
There are at least 3 problems with this very simple screen alone.
We can, of course, talk about the alignment of the entire screen, or logo-to-form relation.
But thats not the point.
Even with low quality, in-perspective screenshots you could still see a lot of problems here.
Nearly everything here is messy at first glance.
Spacing can be too large and then suddenly too small in places.
It seems like it has been put together randomly.
I dont know the whole story here obviously.
And Im not trying to bash an easy target for the sake of it.
And if not, its still a good example.
Sure, the problem with the app wasnt with its interface.
Judging a book by its cover may be hurtful but with digital products, its 9/10 times right.
The goal of building apps of any kind is to make them the best possible quality.
But its also the stuff you DO see.
CEO of the HYPE4 agency and author of the Designing Interfaces book.
