I really thought a long time about the question whether I should review Typeli by Lukasz Dmowski or not. When I looked at the app website for the first time, I was quite impressed by its design and feature set, but after trying it out for some time, most of the magic the website conveys is gone. What remains is just another note taking app with innovative, but very uncomfortable and unfinished styling and organizing features. Read more

During the last years, dictation software has become more and more popular with the development of touchscreen devices. Many writers prefer to use mechanical keyboards for typing, because touchscreen keyboards are not suited for longer texts: they can get very uncomfortable for someone who is not used to them. So especially when you’re outside, dictating text or data can be a very comfortable and healthy alternative to touchscreen keyboards. Even Apple has shown a reaction to that development by introducing Siri, the mobile all-in-one voice assistant on the iPhone 4S. Although it works fine and has lots of features, there are still many independent competitors in this area of app development.. Assistant, developed by Appmosphere and designed by talented designer Michael Flarup, is one of the newer, yet slightly more interesting, efforts.

Assistant serves just one feature: setting calendar events and timers via voice recognition. I know, Siri does that as well, plus much more (and might be funnier too). So why mention a more or less obviously inferior competitor, for which you even have to invest extra money when you get Siri for free with your iPhone 4S? Well, first of all, because not everyone owns an iPhone 4S and Assistant works on 3G(s) and 4 models. And to a certain extent, because of Flarup and his UI work.
After firing up the app you’re greeted with that immensely huge and gloomy stainless steel recording button and some examples on how to use the features of Assistant. Tap it and the voice recording via the integrated or attached microphone starts; tap it again to stop it. The app processes your vocal input (using the well-founded technology of Nuance Communications) and shows up a date dialogue afterwards, titled with the dictated appointment content and enhanced by eventually mentioned reminders. That’s it: all these main windows are clean, simple and immediately understandable, and the voice processing is pretty accurate and efficient.

Besides its well-done demo video on the app’s website, Assistant also has many setting possibilities which make the app very flexible and useful. You can select the default calendar in which Assistant will deposit your appointments, and default alter time and event duration. The app currently supports only English language input: you can choose from Britain, American, and Australian English. In addition to that, the settings include examples as to which kind of formulations the voice recognition is able to process. It’s quite variable: for example to set an appointment to a special time you can use direct time spelling (12.00 AM) or prevalent paraphrases like noon.

So now let’s get into the UI. Although I like Michael Flarup’s style of digital design very much and, as I already pointed out, the main window and the dialogue panel look nice and polished, there are two things that made me feel a bit uncomfortable with the overall design of Assistant: the buttons and the (also stainless-steel-like) titlebar used within the settings. The latter might fit pretty well to the main window and the “What can I say?”-example list, since the recording button, the monospace screen at the bottom, and the gloomy red list elements correspond to it. But if you move into the settings and the standard iPhone listing UI used for selecting several options, it becomes a disturbing visual overkill. Secondly the buttons set on it do not have anything in common with the plastic and rather machinery look of the titlebar: in my opinion, they are too smooth and colored too dark to fit to the bright but still cold and “hard” atmosphere the title bar creates.

So, I have to say that giving an exact final statement or even a recommendation for buying Assistant is rather difficult. It definitely has some advantages and provides iPhone 3G(S) and 4 users the possibility of stripped-down voice dictation to quickly create calendar appointments. But its look is a bit uneven and therefore I think not good enough to be considered as a must-have — there are some hot spots in it, but to me it is not completely coherent and attractive to reasonably use because of the design. Still if you’re searching for a stable and quite enjoyable app to solve the problem of not having a Siri-like working robot on your phone, get Assistant for $1.99 to dictate calendar events on your older devices.

 

Great content deserves great design. In my opinion, this is one of the main principles UI designers have to sought after. If your product features great content, it needs to be highlighted with great design and usability elements around it, or it loses a lot of its advantages and flair. The second principle I truly admire when executed well is the attitude that content always comes first. If the standard tools (in the case of UI design, the standard interface elements) do not fit your app’s purpose, create new ones instead of reducing your feature set.

You do not often stumble upon apps with such interface features (one of the more prominent examples could be the current Twitter app with its “pull to refresh” feature) but if you do, most of the time your jaw just automatically drops. This is also the case with the new National Geographic National Parks app.

The app lets you discover American national parks in a way you’ve never seen before. You can rush through images, park information, secret tips and much more in a trip of pure joy and wonder. Before I focus completely on its tremendous UI, allow me to list the main park guide features the app has to offer as they are summarized in its App Store description:

• Global and interactive map views with filtering by activity and seasonality
• Personalized user space to track your favorite parks, activities, itineraries, photos, and more
• Thousands of points of interest, all tagged with GPS coordinates for easy planning and locating
• The top must-sees and must-dos for each park, curated by National Geographic editors [includes downloadable park guides]
• Stunning photo galleries for each park, plus rare vintage images from the National Geographic Archive Photo tips from National Geographic photographers
• Sharing through Facebook, email, and Twitter
• Collectible park stamps.

Just to get the idea. But mentioning all these features explicitly would have distracted me from writing about what I’m really into: the app’s design and the way this content and feature possibilities are presented. So let’s get into that now.

When I fired up the National Parks app I immediately recognized that it’s something very special. The main window contains a beautifully styled photo wall of all parks to choose from or alternatively a map (with fluent Google Maps integration) featuring their hot spots and attractions. This window already shows the designer’s approach with taking common iOS buttons and selectors and re-editing them in order to give them a personal touch. This is most of the time achieved by changing their structure to something that looks wilder, grungy and very often like tanned leather. The app’s look makes you almost feel the park guide in your hands: everything is rounded up with well placed shadows, visual borders and, more importantly, realistic consistency.

After selecting a park and browsing through its given information, you’ll also recognize a (at least to me) completely new interface effect: if you take a look at its visitor stats or current weather situation, the main window gently slides in the background and up comes a halved screen presenting the selected information.

But National Parks is not just an excellent example for UI innovation: it also makes great use of visual guiding. The app features an immense and advantageous use of well-placed pictograms and especially photography — even on the rather small screen of an iPhone. Professional and beautiful images are flawlessly integrated while discovering the parks, and they give every single park presentation an individual and inspiring touch.

All in all I just can say that this is one of the most inspiring, useful and consistent iPhone apps I’d seen in a while now. There’s a lot more to it than I just highlighted. Although it crashed two times while using it and the enhanced park guides are only available for extra money (the first one is free, the rest is $1.99 each, which is a very fair price) I definitely recommend you downloading it for free. Whether you’re an enthusiastic lover of American National parks and a frequent visitor, hobbyist, professional photographer or just a interested design lover — it’s going to be worth it!