Month: May 2015

I talked about this iPhone/iPad app before in class which is called ∞ Infinite Loop by Jonas Lekevicius. It’s a surprised encounter as an Ad popped up when I played another game, but I like it very much because it’s the simplest UX & UI design I’ve ever seen in a game app.

 

Infinite Loop is a very simple, relaxing and never ending game for iPhone, iPad and Android inspired by Flash game “Loops of Zen” by Dr. Arend Hintze. The goal is to turn all forms on the grid so that there would be no open connections. Most levels are algorithmically generated and randomly colored, and after successfully completing each level you will be rewarded with a beautiful design of your own making.

 

The UI looks very extremely simple and there is no bottom at all. As a user, the only action you have to do is tapping, and the elements you tap will turn clockwise by the times you tap. When there is no open connections, The UI color changes immediately.

I like the simplicity very much, but as a UX designer, I feel abnormal using a app with no button at all and sort of lost when playing. Finally, the recent update added some UX elements:

1. It tells the players which level they are currently at

2. It has navigation dots to control the sound and go back to previous level.

3. It has sharing function when the level is complete,but the camera icon looks more like do a screen shot for me.

 

It’s on awesome game with a simple beautiful design, and after adding some UX elements, it makes more sense for the players.

 

Orgami is an unconventional note taking app. It’s UI and UX design is so creative that you actually will be surprised by how different it is. 

First you will be surprised by its layout design. There is only one corner of the notebook one the home screen. You can categorize your notebooks by color. Slide on the top to easily change the category and double tap to enter the notebook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is a little bit confusing when it comes to diary panel. There is no working area or things we find normally on a note taking app. Instead of a paper, Orgami uses post-it size rectangulars to carry the content.

 

 

 

To be honest, it is indeed not that easy to use as a Memo app. You only can take notes by tapping on individual rectangular. Also if you tap on the wrong place, all the content of the note will be gone instantly.  Therefore Orgami is a very innovative app in terms of the UX. However, it is not an app for everyone!

 

 

  

 

High Dive was developed by The Frosty Pop Corps, they published few apps before but none of them received these much attention as High Dive.

User needs to control of an athlete to jump into the water smoothly. In the game, the spray of the water is not the priority. It seems very easy at the beginning. But when the height starts to be raised, it becomes more difficult since the user needs to avoid to bump into birds or barriers before the athlete gets into the water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also during the fall the user can collect diamonds to get more points.

 

 

Rhythm Necklace is a sequencer for composing rhythmic loops. It was created by Meara O’Reilly and Sam Tarakajian. The interesting thing is this app make uses can see the music they made.

The latest instalment in a long tradition of compact and innovative iOS musical tools is Rhythm Necklace, a new app for generating and modulating melodies. Capitalizing on super legible circular step sequencing and a restrained interface, the app offers a tangible method for composing, iterating, and exporting audio.

Rhythm necklaces are circular representations of repeating patterns. They’ve found application in fields as varied as crystallography, radio astronomy, nuclear physics, and ethnomusicology. When applied to musical rhythms, circular representations show the underlying geometric properties that make them enjoyable, such as the degrees of evenness and symmetry. Computer scientist Godfried Toussaint has found that analyzing rhythms geometrically reveals surprising relationships between rhythms the world over. The Rhythm Necklace iOS app is a musical sequencer for exploring the geometry of rhythm necklaces, and for experimenting with generating rhythms algorithmically.

Blue Cheese is a menu translator and dictionary. This app could complete menu translation immediately via simple scanning of single or multiple lines. With using this app, people could easily obtain detailed ingredient and flavor descriptions with food images, food and view historical information, and food comments.

Since a lot fancy restaurants usually have a dim space, this app also have the light function. It help people to light the menu.

For now it support translation between Chinese and English.

There is a love story behind of this app. Ray, the founder of Blue Cheese, was an international student studying in a university in the United States and was pursuing a Taiwanese girl in his freshman year. When Ray took the girl to an Italian restaurant for their first date, they were both confused by unfamiliar food names on the menu and had no clue what to order. The girl asked Ray for suggestions, so Ray ordered a Grilled Romaine Salad with Blue Cheese dressing for her. He had no idea what blue cheese was and just wanted to order for her to show his cultural savvy. Ray thought foods with beautiful names such as blue cheese must taste good. But after seeing the unpleasant look that appeared on his date’s face while she was chewing, he realized he must have made a huge mistake. After searching online, he was shocked that the blue dots are actually mold. He felt horrible and promised her that she will never have to order blindly again. Although the girl has gone back to Taiwan, Ray never forgot his promise, and built this app for her with the hope that she and others will be able to order with confidence wherever they travel. The “Blue Cheese” story made the app featured as the “Best New App” in the iTunes AppStore in China. Ray hopes she will see Blue Cheese and that this time she will like blue cheese.

https://www.flinto.com/p/09e66f85

Wireframe

Prototype

What do we learn from paper prototype:

• Remove the location restriction
• Remove the menu which is confusing for users

 

Please find our first digital prototype here.

Possible names: Porder / Pooli (Pool in Finnish). Vote!

What we learnt from paper prototyping

• Cart view is redundant for our app. So our tab bar iterated from [Feeds, Cart, Profile, History] to [Buy, Cart, Profile, Orders] to [Buy, Orders, Profile].
• We reduced the complexity of settings by merging personal info/notification/security settings to a single page.
• We simplified the process of placing an order by reducing the quantity of confirmations.
• We found that it is more convenient for users to allow them to scan their cards instead of entering card information. Reference: Uber.