4 of the Prettiest iOS Apps that Deserve an Award for their Design
By: Hillel Fuld
We have all heard the sayings, most of which are attributed to Steve Jobs, “Less is more”, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”, and others. When it comes to mobile apps, and the super competitive nature of the mobile space, this truth is magnified.
With hundreds of thousands of apps to choose from, developers need to know that they have ten seconds to capture the user from the time the app is initially launched. Now, think about it. You don’t capture a user in ten seconds by including 300 features in your app. You don’t capture a user in ten seconds by adding five more levels to your game. You capture a user in ten seconds when that user presses the icon of your app and the first thing out of that user’s mouth is “Wow, this is nice”.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that if your app is not designed beautifully, that it will not succeed. There are enough examples of games that are huge successes due to the addictive nature of the game and completely unrelated to the design. You know what I’m talkin about…
However, if you spend time and thought designing your mobile app, users will be more tolerant if the app has a bug or two and a well designed app with zero innovation is preferable to a completely original app with a non-intuitive interface.
The following are four iOS apps that didn’t necessarily do anything new in terms of functionality, but their superior design have made them popular and successful apps with millions of users:
1: Flipboard: I think it is safe to say that Flipboard, the social news reader for iPad, which is expected to debut on iPhone soon (based on what Mike McCue, the founder told me yesterday on Twitter) has set the standard for awesomely designed apps. Flipboard is so well designed that when I asked on Twitter for some recommendations for this post, I made it clear that I meant besides Flipboard, because that was obviously making the list.
I can go on for hours about the details of Flipboard and how it is truly a piece of art, but instead, I will direct you to read my original review of Flipboard here and my thoughts on one of the biggest updates of the app here. You can also read my interview of Mike, who is one of the more brilliant people in tech, not to mention one of the nicest. See the interview here.
The bottom line is, if you have an iPad and have not yet installed Flipboard, which is free, you have not experienced iPad the way it was meant to be experienced.
2: Tweetlogix: Listen carefully, folks. If you use Twitter and an iPhone, forget the Twitter app, forget Echofon, you can even forget Tweetbot. Tweetlogix, after years of searching, is the best Twitter app. You can read my full review here, but we are talking about design here and simply put, every single button on the Tweetlogix UI is where it should be and the colors are perfect.
As far as Twitter apps are concerned, they are a dime a dozen and I have tried them all. I even wrote an article outlining 18 features I would expect to see from the perfect Twitter app. Tweetlogix is not perfect as it does not have push notifications and one or two more of the features on that list, but it is the closest that any iOS Twitter app has come to perfection, by far.
3: Pulse: I have been a Pulse user for years. I have written about the app on so many occasions, but after I realized that I do not read much on my iPhone, I deleted Pulse. This morning, and I can’t recall why, I went to download it again. After installing it, and choosing what sites I was interested in reading, I played around with it. I was blown away.
It is no wonder one of the hottest companies in mobile, Appsfire, released an app a few weeks ago, which resembles Pulse UI-wise, only instead of news, the Appsfire app is for finding other mobile apps. Pulse did a fantastic job of making a news reader sexy. Now, that takes talent. Pulse is also free, so I would grab it if I were you. Oh, and the company is also quite awesome on Twitter.
4: Instagram: Well one cannot write a blog post about well designed mobile apps without mentioning Instagram, the king of mobile photography and photo sharing. in fact, I think my initial review of Instagram from over a year ago, is the most popular blog post on Appboy. My follow up post about the release of Instagram 2.0 also gets a serious amount of daily traffic. The reason being that Instagram is a tremendous success. I am talking 12 million users kind of success.
Not only does it have 12 million users, but those users are really using the service. Confused? What I mean is that contrary to other services that have many users signed up but see less engagement, posting a photo on Instagram often gets more likes and comments than on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ and I have a fraction of the number of followers on Instagram than on those other platforms.
There is no doubt in my head that the one and only factor that contributes to the success of Instagram is its excellent design. Other apps have filters, sharing options, and they even move faster and are more advanced than Instagram, but Instagram is more beautiful than any of its competitors.
OK, there you have my top 4 apps in terms of design, but now I am going to do something a little different. I asked on Twitter for some recommendations for this post and the feedback was overwhelming and informative. I figured I would post some of the tweets I got when asking for the most beautiful iOS apps out there, so enjoy.
