What distinguishes a boring app from a great app?
Maybe the graphical look and feel or, more probably, the content presented?
Apps Market are full of apps, some good and some really bad but some of these latest are really bad not for the user experience, but mostly for what they are giving to the users.
There are a lot of apps related to big sites such as Wired or CNN but what some of these apps are totally missing is the app look and feel.
If I download an app related to a site I want a look and feel totally different than what I could browse with my device. If I'm looking at a news list I want something more than what I would get from the website: more features, better experience. If you cannot provide it with an app, I think will be better to create a mobile version of your site, for sure will be cheaper!
If I download an app related to a site that is not only a news site, I want deeper interaction, not only a list of news and the choice to read the entire article. If I'm looking for such simple interaction I'll grab the site RSS feed and I'll add it to my (native) 'News' app.
Apps market is still growing and there is a lot of stuff to learn, but I really hope I won't be the only one studying more!
Showing posts with label apps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apps. Show all posts
Thursday, 5 May 2011
Boring app VS great app
School is getting very old
Yesterday I was reading about a blog post talking about the complete lack of educational apps on the Android Market.
This is totally true.
Apps Market (Android and iOs) are very big, they contain a lot of apps&games but I'm almost sure they're still expanding. They haven't reach yet their maximum capacity, there's still a lot of spaces where to grow up.
As a good example, educational apps are really poor. There aren't good apps out there to help students digging deeper into historical wars and conquests, evolutionary timelines and so on.
At the end these data are totally public and it doesn't seem so hard to gather them in a simple and at the same time useful workflow.
Students, since the younger ages, collect data everyday with their brand new smartphones. If it could be possible to let them also collecting useful data (related to their school subjects) could lead to a very important step forward for the next generations.
People and technology are walking onwards, sometime school seem to walk backwards.
This is totally true.
Apps Market (Android and iOs) are very big, they contain a lot of apps&games but I'm almost sure they're still expanding. They haven't reach yet their maximum capacity, there's still a lot of spaces where to grow up.
As a good example, educational apps are really poor. There aren't good apps out there to help students digging deeper into historical wars and conquests, evolutionary timelines and so on.
At the end these data are totally public and it doesn't seem so hard to gather them in a simple and at the same time useful workflow.
Students, since the younger ages, collect data everyday with their brand new smartphones. If it could be possible to let them also collecting useful data (related to their school subjects) could lead to a very important step forward for the next generations.
People and technology are walking onwards, sometime school seem to walk backwards.
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
How could they earn money?
Some hours ago I was thinking about the hundreds of free apps that Android Market offers.
Lots of them have advertising popping out from the layout.
But there are still a lot of them that don't even have a single adv link into the app.
So, I was wondering how could they really earn money from their work. Okay, probably lots of them are not looking for money in this exact moment, but only for popularity.
It's totally right thinking that popularity will lead them to a lot of money, but in the meanwhile what is happening?
Do they probably own a websites where displaying advertising is more money-efficient than adding in-app advertising?
Yeah, probably. Probably I will use the same concept in my app for some reasons as well:
Lots of them have advertising popping out from the layout.
But there are still a lot of them that don't even have a single adv link into the app.
So, I was wondering how could they really earn money from their work. Okay, probably lots of them are not looking for money in this exact moment, but only for popularity.
It's totally right thinking that popularity will lead them to a lot of money, but in the meanwhile what is happening?
Do they probably own a websites where displaying advertising is more money-efficient than adding in-app advertising?
Yeah, probably. Probably I will use the same concept in my app for some reasons as well:
- I don't like advertising at all into mobile-app and I think they could slow down my app performance
- In-app advertising let you earn money (poor money usually) only when user click on it and I know that most of my friends and colleagues would never click on an advertising even if it could seems really interesting
- Advertising needs data connection and use it as well. This isn't so good, especially when you don't want to download more data than you need
Another important point is that advertisement needs space. When I work on a website or some web project I don't mind too much at the space. In the last years monitor are getting bigger and space is no more a problem. Right now, design principles start considering layout from a size of about 800 pixels (and sometimes even more).
But when you have to think about mobile apps, the available space starts from 200px (very small indeed).
I have to find better way (and less time-expensive) way to earn money with mobile apps.
Do you know any of them?
Hiccup data connection
Lots of mobile application and websites as well (but I'm going to talk about the first category only) don't focus on hiccup data connection.
When I talk about hiccup data connection I mean every situation where people could connect only in some spot (such as home/office/public WI-FI) and then turn off connections to save battery life and, also, phone credit as well.
When you're living in your country you don't mind at all about this situation because usually you could access the network without too much additional cost, but when you're abroad you don't want to connect to 3G or HSDPA network because it would cost you a lot of money and the amount of data available (as MB limit) is really poor.
That is the reason why I'm totally thinking on scenario where people usually haven't data connection.
I'm studying a lot of mobile apps similar to the one I'm going to develop in the near future, but all of them are based on the idea of being connected anytime and anywhere.
Managing this scenario means more data to be saved for "offline" usage, but as a user I really prefer to have my mobile loaded of data that get erased when not used anymore than spending a lot of money to retrieve the same data over and over again.
When I talk about hiccup data connection I mean every situation where people could connect only in some spot (such as home/office/public WI-FI) and then turn off connections to save battery life and, also, phone credit as well.
When you're living in your country you don't mind at all about this situation because usually you could access the network without too much additional cost, but when you're abroad you don't want to connect to 3G or HSDPA network because it would cost you a lot of money and the amount of data available (as MB limit) is really poor.
That is the reason why I'm totally thinking on scenario where people usually haven't data connection.
I'm studying a lot of mobile apps similar to the one I'm going to develop in the near future, but all of them are based on the idea of being connected anytime and anywhere.
Managing this scenario means more data to be saved for "offline" usage, but as a user I really prefer to have my mobile loaded of data that get erased when not used anymore than spending a lot of money to retrieve the same data over and over again.
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