Well we've completed our review of Virgins new Project.app e-zine reader for the iPad. Overall not a bad app but lacking in some design considerations that would make it stand out in the crowd. As magazine and newspaper publishers deepen their investments in the digital medium (ahem it's about time) app design appears to have it's priorities a bit askew. Yes, beautiful text and animated page turns are important, so is the overall UI. Elegance is important, however along with that so is simplicity. What the Project.app and it's somewhat competitors have overlooked is this need to hide from the consumer the technical working of what's going on behind the scenes. Sure some of us old-timers love to see download status bars and bytes per second in transfer rates but the market as a whole has little interest in this as a design feature.
As a design component this is akin to adding an abrasive seam where your consumer will use the product the most (and reminding them your making them wait)? Not smart in our opinion and something that should be considered in the app design process. Project.app isn't the only app of it's kind to do this so it's hard to call it out just on that component. The industry as a whole will have to grapple with the concept if mass consumer adoption rate is important to them.
That's it for now, we'll be back with more in the coming months in the reader app space. We have high hopes for the reported "The Daily" app that sounds like the next big reader to be coming to the market
- ZuCom
