mobile

/ Don

Diss ‘n’ Gauges

Diss 'n' Gauges: Menu

I’m pleased to announce my first application is ready for sale on Google Play and Apple App Store. You can also see the information about Diss ‘n’ Gauges in my company’s portfolio.

Diss ‘n’ Gauges: Sometimes the best response is an app!

Diss ‘n’ Gauges: Multi-Pack combines all our individual meters into one great application. Are you looking for best and funniest way to start or end (disengage from) a conversation?

The Multi-Pack includes:

  1. BS Detector: Is your friend talking out of their butt? Inform them (and the rest of your party) that you’re not buying it.
  2. Dial Down the B!tch: Is your friend acting nasty or spiteful and it’s exceeding your tolerance level? Inform them (and the rest of your party) that they need to dial it down a bit.
  3. Give-a-Crap Meter: Is your friend droning on and on about something that you couldn’t care less about (say, Crossfit, for instance)? Inform them (and the rest of your party) of your disinterest in a fun way.
  4. Hottie Finder: Looking for a great way to strike up a conversation with that beautiful girl or guy across the bar? Let our Hottie Finder act as a divining rod to direct you to them!
  5. Gaydar: Often find yourself in a dance club, at a karaoke hall, or on a cruise ship with no way to hone-in on the guys around you?
  6. Fuel Gauge: Need some help deciding if you need one more or had one too many? Here’s a quick, clever way to reply to friends when they ask if you’re ready for another round.

All meters react to tapping on the screen. Tap once to trigger, tap a second time to reset. Diss ‘n’ Gauges is now available for iOS (iPhone, iPad) and Android phones and tablets.

/ Don

Note to Self

Android’s “Note to Self” feature has become a life saver for me. I remember things when I’m walking to and from meetings, sitting on the train, or generally away from my desk. And rather than keep a notepad or moleskine and pen with me at all times, I’d begun to use the message voice action that’s packaged with Android.

The only cumbersome aspect of this feature is that it doesn’t let you specify the recipient of the note to self. After all, in Google’s world, your Google Account’s main email/gmail address is (and should be) your “self.”

“Maybe I can recreate the main email address tied to my HTC Evo,” I thought, “so that it’s a more specific ‘self'”. I tried to change it from don.citarella to don.citarella+mobile, but had no luck. Apparently, once you’ve associated a main address with an Android phone, the only way to remove/change it is to perform a factory reset.

So, while it’s not the cleanest/best solution, Gmail Filters do the trick.

Read more

/ Don

Seven Questions to Ask When Designing the Feel of Your Mobile App

Feel Can Make or Break a Product
Imagine you are shopping for a new car. You found a model that looks great and has all the features you want. It’s even in your price range. So you go to the dealer and take a test drive. After about five minutes of driving, you find you are mildly dissatisfied with the car. Perhaps it’s the way it takes the bumps. Perhaps it’s difficult to check your blind spot. Perhaps the pedals and buttons are not responsive. Do you buy the car anyway? After all, you like the look, it’s a good buy and it’s got the features you want. Odds are though you are not going to buy it. Why? Because you don’t like the feel of it, and the majority of your experience with a car is tied to the feel.

Feel Plays a Key role in Mobile App Satisfaction
Since mobile devices are held in our hands and operated with touch, the feel of the experience becomes a key determinant of user satisfaction. Also, since the screens are small, more interaction is generally required than on desktop devices. So we experience the nuances of the feel again and again as we use an app. Mild annoyances can add up, let alone major ones. Conversely, a good feel will create an ongoing sense of ease and comfort. This makes it more likely the app will be used repeatedly, bubble up on users’ favorites list, be talked about and recommended to others.

Seven Questions to Ask When Designing the Feel of Your App
So are you ready to optimize the feel of your mobile app? To help, here is a list of questions worth asking when designing a mobile app to make sure you have addressed the feel:

  1.  Have you anticipated how the user will hold the device?
  2. Have you designed for operation using fingers, thumbs or a combination of the two?
  3. Have you eliminated undesirable “eclipsing” effects, that is, uncomfortable blind spots where the finger obscures what is being touched in such a way that the interaction is awkward
  4. On screens with a dense amount of content, have you kept the structure of the layout and interactions simple?
  5. Have you used an intuitive sequence of gestures to perform core tasks?
  6. Have you minimized user effort to see, locate and interact with elements on the screen?
  7. Have you asked someone (or several people) to try a prototype of your app on an actual device?

Check your design against the above items, and you will find the improvements you make to the feel of your app to be well worth the effort.

Original post: Bob Moll, Pathfinder Software

/ Don

Apple gives up…sorta

Over a year ago, I posted about ZDNet’s 10 Most Annoying Programs on the Internet, where Apple was ranked #2, forcing users to install Quicktime with each upgrade of iTunes and also pre-selecting that the user wanted to install Safari and Mobile.me onto their computers as well. I’m a strategic marketer, so I understand the logic behind it. More than half of the users probably just click “Continue” without reading what they’re installing. It’s the same guiding principle behind bundling installers with Yahoo! and Google browser toolbars. Read more