Have you noticed that some of the most successful apps are also the best designed? Sounds obvious, but it’s not a coincidence. Design and usability alone will not guarantee success but it certainly contributes to the success of some of the most popular apps. That’s why investing time in the visual design of your app is a smart move, and that’s why you have to trust the designer. Us designers often get a bad rep, branded as 20 year old geeks with a morbid passion for Apple products, failed artists or presumptuous young nerds who would rather be an illustrator but has not talent or time (well, sometimes he is, but that’s not the point!). The designer will help you. The designer will be your guide, your guru, your oracle, your god… OK wait, maybe I’m going too far. The point is that the designer is working for you with the aim of helping you getting the best quality product and making the best experience. We’re not here to cheat you, I swear!
If we want to make a classic comparison, let’s say that designers role is similar to that of Virgil’s in the Divine Comedy. In Dante’s famous work, this historical figure of Virgil guides Dante on his pilgrimage through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Dante uses the figure of Virgil to support his fantastical journey and to answer questions about hard themes and difficult passages. Virgil isn’t a touristic guide, he’s a mentor! So is the designer: we don’t simply use graphics programs, we’re here to guide and advise through the whole design process.

When Dante first meets Virgil, he exclaims, “You are my master and my author”. If a client said that to me it would really make my day, but in truth I would just love to know that the client trusts me and my skills. I know that the first phase of any creative collaboration can be as awful as Dante’s Hell, but there are things we can do to make this phase run smoothly and reach Heaven in the easiest way.

Please try not to dictate the design process. Can you imagine Dante saying to Virgil “Hey mate, this is the wrong way! Let’s go THAT way!”? Give a designer your requirements and preferences, but also the freedom to create something that answers them as effectively as possible. If you micromanage the design process, we won’t be motivated to do anything but get off the project.

Ask your designer about their choices. Dante asked a lot of questions of Virgil. Not because he was a dullard, but because he wanted to learn about his journey. Before steam rolling visuals ask about design direction, and you’ll probably discover that there are always sound reasons why the visuals have been completed a certain way. Thinking about mobile apps, there are hundreds of details which the designer needs to focus on. Let’s take a few examples. We need to take a device-centric approach to design, not just thnking about the size of the screen, but also where and when it will be used. We have to consider that a finger is considerably larger and less precise than a mouse, so buttons and icons on a touchscreen interface should leave ample margin for error. We’ve also got to consider what people are doing while they’re using the app, and how they’re holding the device, whilst always remembering that fingers cover a lot of the screen’s space, and are far from accurate at selecting items. These are just a few examples of what the designer has to think about before designing the app. Unfortunately is not just a matter of aesthetic.
Dante wasn’t employing Virgil, but you are employing your designer. Remember that we know what we’re doing, so trust us and enjoy your journey to Heaven!

By rossana.piazzini

From the title you might be asking yourself, am I really suggesting that Vin Diesel is a pioneering actor making quality films, or you might be wondering the opposite: that the iPad is just awful. Well, it’s neither, as this is not so much about the actor himself, but the build-up and expectation of the new iPad. Since the invitations were sent out everyone has be guessing and predicting what will be in store once the “film” was released yesterday. In the end it was predictable, and from the outside looks exactly like the last. The biggest twist was in fact that it was not named after its predecessor, therefore completing the trilogy, but instead they simply called it “iPad”. Apple had other options, there were rumours it would be called iPad HD or iPad 2S, but it was not to be.

Vin Diesel has done this before, with the release of the fourth in The Fast and The Furious series by naming it, Fast and Furious.

But let’s not discount what the new iPad has done, it’s bigger and better than the last, and Apple are calling it the “the best mobile display that has ever shipped”, with a screen almost twice as sharp as the iPad2. The camera has improved, as well as the CPU, to give an all round better performance and user experience. 4G and Voice Dictation (a sort of PG / 12A version of Siri) will be available on the device, and the biggest news with this announcement was that Voice Dictation and Siri would also be available in Japanese! But just like when Apple announced the iPhone 4S, I have been left feeling underwhelmed, and expecting more. There is nothing there that stands out and goes Wow!

At the end of the day though, Apple will ship an increasing amount of iPads and iPad 2s, with the latter now starting at $399, which will be around the £250-£300 mark in the UK. With Apple currently occupying around 70% of the tablet market, with this announcement that is only going to increase. Their next major competitors, Samsung and Amazon, each own 5% of the market share, and it is hard to see a product on the horizon that will even compete with Apple’s dominant product. Even the PC is losing out. In the last quarter 15.4 million iPads were sold, which was more than any PC manufacturer sold worldwide, with the largest, HP, only selling 15.1 million! Until a game changer, another Apple enters the market, the future is, and will be, the iPad.

As for the future of Apple, just like any Vin Diesel movie, I cannot wait to see the next one, even if I have come away disappointed. We are expecting the iPhone 5 later this year, which I hope means we do not see Apple type-casting itself again, and just releasing an upgrade to last year’s massive blockbuster, the iPhone 4S, and as I part with iPad (iPad 3) already, maybe I can suggest to Apple that they call the next one “2 iPad 2 HD” in true Vin Diesel style!

By Alistair Barfoot

I remember handing over £60 for a Voodoo 2 graphics card like it was yesterday. A 90hz chip, optimised Glide Drivers, 12 meg of RAM, and more integrated circuits than you could shake a stick at. It truly was a thing of beauty. I’d done my research, could recite the endless list of specs from memory and knew as I walked home I was moments away from 30fps Half Life bliss.

Back then the specification mattered. You poured over PC Format reviews of the latest hardware, always hunting for the highest spec’d upgrade to give you that extra nugget of gaming and software performance. Now the PS3 and Xbox 360 churn out polygons at an insane rate. Buyers don’t need to check the recommend specs on the back of the box. They know their consoles will handle it. The same is true of PC’s. When my dad called me last year wanting advice on buying a laptop I told him to simply get the cheapest one with the biggest screen. He’ll be using it for sorting photos, shopping online and editing the odd word document. 2gb of Ram or 3? 350gb hard disk or 500gb?

It simply doesn’t matter.

Advertising has gradually been leaving specification as a selling tool behind, and in both the computing and Smart Phone world Apple have led the way in abolishing pointless specifications, using language like “3x Faster” rather than quote actual clock speeds. This trend is mirrored with Smart Phones: I know the iPhone 4 is quicker than the 3GS, but no idea how much.

When choosing smart phones there are stats that matter. Battery life, camera mega pixel and hard drive space are all important, though one by one the stats which affect buying decisions for smart phones are gradually disappearing, being replaced instead by OS choice and manufacturer specific features, such as Siri or the niftily titled “Samsung Voice Solution”. Over time cloud based services such as Dropbox and Spotify will make the need for large hard disks redundant, battery life will improve and with apps like Instagram, Hipstamatic and Be Funky able to make your blurry Saturday night photos look like Salgado masterpieces the need for ever higher megapixels is starting to look irrelevant.

So you can imagine my surprise when Nokia announced a 41 mega pixel camera yesterday. Yup, as you can imagine a bit of digging around on Tech Crunch shows that the sensor isn’t actually 41MP, but rather a clever mash up of 8MP images. Even so the spec generated much surprises, and as many column inches, though I can’t help feel this is a parting shot of the “high-spec sells” world of thinking. The phone the camera is attached to runs Symbian, and is doomed to fail.

Gaming wise things have changed too. Whilst blasting zombies in Rage HD yesterday it occurred to me I couldn’t find a minimum spec for this game even if I tried. It just worked. Back in the Voodoo 2 days you had to work for your hobby. Now the hobby works for you.

We’re seeing a monumental shift in the way buyers and users select products, opting not for the technically superior or the highest spec, but rather the feature rich and the easiest to use. As application creators we should ride this wave, pre-empting what the user wants rather than being guided by the hardware that carries our products. Seamless services, bullet proof UX and low barrier to entry are the watchwords for successful applications. Let’s make sure the old days of specification driven products stay behind us.

By Sam Clark

The meteoric rise of the smartphone and tablet PC is changing the way the young communicate, educate and entertain themselves. A new generation are using thumbs, not forefingers, to interact with the world around them, and as mobile apps herald a new dawn for software creators the opportunities for engaging with children are seemingly endless.

In late 2007 a revolution began. Apple launched the iPhone and the apps market we know today was born. Whenever a new technology gate-crashes the media mix old rules have to be discarded and new challenges overcome in order to create successful and unique products, and when designing for Children real care and attention must be taken as they are a demanding and hard to please audience.

Today there are all manner of apps for children, spanning a range of categories from games, to reading, to education. Apps are always at users fingertips and can be downloaded at a moments notice. They also represent excellent value when compared to traditional children’s media including console games and printed publications.

As well as benefits to consumers, the low cost barriers to publishing applications have also sparked big opportunities for small and independent authors and developers who have been quick to market.

Whilst nobody can deny the success of apps on the smartphone, it is arguably the introduction of tablet computers and in particular the iPad that has been the most disruptive technology in the children’s app space.

When it launched over a year ago, many questioned the need for such device. After all it was more expensive than a netbook, lacked useful features such as a keyboard, and was heavier to carry around than a smartphone.

The skeptics that predicated failure were soon to be proved wrong, with over 25million iPads sold and predications that by the end of the year 50 million will be in circulation.

So why has the iPad been such a game changer for apps for children?

Firstly, people use tablets in a different context to smartphones. The device is seen as being less personal, with people more willing to share the device around, making it more family-orientated. Parents are far happier to allow their children to play with their device for longer periods of time. For those children lucky enough to have their own device this may be their first, and only computer.

Secondly the screen is considerably larger than its smartphone cousins, providing a more immersive experience for the younger users. Furthermore the display ratio is that of a typical book page making it a natural form factor for reading, spurring the publication of 100’s of interactive book apps. Interactive books differ from e-books in that they feature a richer multimedia experience, often with sound, hidden features and games. Frequently they’ll fall into the “edutainment” category having a learning aspect or theme running throughout the application. It is this immersive experience that is enabling books to take back some of the time children are spending in front of the TV as they find them equally entertaining.

Whilst the opportunities applications present are many, there are also a number of challenges facing both would be app publishers and the consumers downloading them.

The low barriers to app production and deployment have created a wide diversity in quality in the various market places. Parents need to screen the applications they download for their child thoroughly to ensure suitability, including use of proper language and age appropriateness.

Interactive book producers have similar problems. Unlike traditional book publishers there are no clearinghouse’s, catalogues and ISBN numbers don’t exist, and consumers have no librarians or sales staff to consult before purchase. With ways to find quality apps still narrow and in flux, bloggers and review sites are filling the gap and need to be courted by publishers in order to ensure downloads.

Competition for user downloads is fierce. Customers expect great applications and games at the lowest prices, and with over 500,000 apps in the Apple store, there are plenty of great quality apps across every category. Pricing apps correctly is also a challenge. Consumer perception of application value is skewed down due to the volume of free apps available and as a result publishers are struggling to sell new children’s book in the app store for the same price as they’re printed counterparts. On top of this expectations for interactive books continue to climb exponentially higher as consumers demand more animations and interactivity. Some predict this will create a long term problem for both traditional and digital publishers alike, as the more children play and become familiar with applications, the more they expect from new ones. This can mean a far shorter shelf life for applications as fast moving competition can make any offering rapidly old and obsolete. In comparison some printed books such as Spot the Dog have remained unchanged since the 1980’s and are still selling strong.

Combine all this together and it’s hard to imagine how a return on investment can be made.

Where does the future lie?

Huge competition in the marketplace has meant that those finding success today are doing so through a business model that focuses on quick hits and large volume sales. Releasing smaller apps early and at a low price offers quick insight into download numbers and user reaction, acting as a platform for further updates and revenue experimentation.

This type of business model tends to suit large corporations who own established brands, have multiple channels for marketing and the capital to invest in the development of advanced titles. Entertainment brands such as Disney and Nickelodeon have teamed up with smaller development partners in order to begin building a presence on the mobile screen, and publishers such as Penguin are building internal teams to bring apps to the children’s space.

Over the coming years it’s likely increased competition will put pressure on smaller developers and further convergence will occur as bigger players buy out smaller ones. This will limit the diversity of apps available but is likely to lead to higher standards of application quality.

As tablet and smartphone penetration continues to rise more and more parents will download applications and share the experience with their children. Games, stories and edutainment apps will become increasingly popular, and designers, developers and publishers will have to continue to experiment with content and business models to ensure that they see a return on investment while consistently raising the bar in face of increasing competition.

By Sam Clark

The Conjure website has just had a bit of a facelift! We’re also launching our blog: Grimoire very soon where we’ll be covering topics across social and mobile.

By Conjure