Monday Play

Moves for iPhone is a simple app that tells you how many steps you take in a day.  I love this app for it’s passive activity:  it just sits in my pocket and records the number of steps I take, in the morning it tells me how many steps I took the previous day.  The design is simple and elegant and the content easy to read.  I never really kept track of my steps before but now that I have this app I find myself excited to see how many steps I took and secretly hoping I beat my record.  The only problem I have with the app is that sometimes it tells me I cycled even though I didn’t, not sure why this is.  Either way lovely and easy to use app!

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Monday Play # 2

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Everest

What’s your “Everest?” Everest is an iOS app that helps you work toward your life goals.It is described as ” a social network for people who get things done.” You can  share your goals, get tips on how to break each down into steps, and track your progress.

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Find. Eat. Drink

Unlike the majority of food/restaurant apps, Find. Eat. Drink. is  curated by chefs, bartenders, and sommeliers. With it, you can start finding all those spots that even people who are in the business love.( iOS)

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Over

Over is an app with one defined purpose: to allow users to add beautiful typography to their shots. Instead of adding boring text , Over lets you get more stylish. (iOS)

Paper by Studio 53

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Most of you all who have an iPad might already had this app installed in yours. Paper is an awesome drawing app with very intuitive interface. The app was released about a year ago by studio 53 which are consisted of mostly the team member who was behind the project Courier at Microsoft before the project was abandoned. While back then when the app was released, there were many drawing apps in the market already such as Autodesk’s sketchbook, and all other small developer’s app. However, Paper was able to get the spotlight from the whole tech scene not just because of the developers are already people in tech, but also the app itself took a very interesting design approach to how drawing app in iPad should looks like.

Paper draws the interaction design quality as if the user is using a Moleskine notebook, not a random papers like what the other apps had. The menu interface is borrowing from that older medium interactions of selecting a book, open the book, flip the pages, etc. Smooth transitions between each mode provided by genius coding (OpenGL?) also enhance this design approach dramatically. The user instantly understand what should they do within this app, as most interactions are ‘borrowed’ from what they already know.

Another point that I’m really interested in while look into this app is that the app is refined to the finest detail of interactions. Yet those finest details are possible because the app is very focused on  design for iPad. The app don’t have an iPhone variations, it is design for the device. And it also even don’t have a portrait mode interface. I like how they make a design choice of striping down unnecessary fragmentations and focused on the main value of the app.

While new recently added function like zooming or color mixing is doubtably a major improvement of the experience. I still admire the innovation the app provide. It’s kinda irony actually, to says that by bringing the old mediums interaction into the new device is an innovation. But I believe that how good innovative design should works: bring functionality that technologies provided to the hand of human in very intuitive way. And this became the inspiration of why I want to make the Giflip as my and Ceyda’s final project. It’s mashing older and newer medium together and ask the question to the user and allow them make the connection between the two. Lower the learning curve of ‘understanding the technology’ and empowering ‘playing with technology’ for the users.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/29/2909537/paper-drawing-ipad-app-fiftythree-brains-behind-courier

Monday Plays: Bang with Friends

I actually haven’t used this app, but it’s funny.

Step 1: Sign in with Facebook so you can see your friends (don’t worry – it’s discreet)!

Step 2: Pick the friends you want to Bang. We will only show your friends that you’re interested if they are too!

Step 3: Message Each Other. Once we know you’re both down, we’ll send you both an email – when and where is up to you!

Step 4: B-a-n-g. Yup, that’s right. Slow, fast, rough, or soft you decide how it goes. Stay safe!

It seems like you would just say you want to bang everyone so you can see who chose you. I wonder how they get around that. I guess that would make for an awkward situation though because then that person would actually think you want to bang them.