[Apps Appreciation Project] MIT OCW

No need to introduce, MIT OCW is one of the biggest open course community/organization for people to learn for free. I’d really appreciate MIT OCW for giving people like me a chance to take classes if they want to learn.

I downloaded MIT OCW app on my iPhone about 4 months ago and I’ve been using it to take Intro to Computer Science and Programming taught by John Guttag and some other classes.

[Markups]

See the markups here (a link to my Flickr photo set)

[Download Class]
If the user wants to download class materials (e.g. a video) she has to tap “Download Class” first, then select a lecture. This is contradictory to the normal user behavior.

Suggestions:
Put the “Download Class” button in the lecture detail view. Also, allow the user to download the complete materials for a class (which might include 10 lectures, for example) at the same time.

[Add to My Classes]
Currently the user can only add one lecture at a time to My Classes

Suggestions:
Allow user to add a class (which might include 10 lectures, for example) to My Classes

[Sorting and Grouping]
In My Classes tab, the lectures are organized by the time they are added. Traditionally, students see lectures as components of a class and usually do not treat them as single sessions.

Suggestions:
Group lectures by classes to make it easier for the user to find the desired item.

[Misc]

The current design uses orange to inform the user that the class materials had been downloaded and white for not downloaded.

Suggestions:
An easier way would be showing Play when already downloaded and Download for not downloaded.

Catalog and MyClasses are the 3^rd and 4^th tabs in the TabBar respectively.

Suggestions:
Those two are the ones that are used most frequently in this app. Move them to the front. 

[Apps Appreciation Project] Thank you, good apps.

I myself as a phone app builder (interaction designer), I understand how hard it is to devote time, knowledge and efforts to design phone apps using the off-work time; even it’s a professional job I still appreciate some good apps out there in the market. Most of the phone apps I have are freebies or no more than $1.99. In order to show my appreciation to all those incredibly awesome apps I’ll criticize some applications from the interface design standpoint and inform the redesign in the next few weeks. Critiques and suggestions might be biased :p

Creating more Space on Mobile Device

Mobile devices are convenient, popular and essential because of the mobility. Space is the tradeoff, obviously. Earning more real estate has always been an issue and there are some really successful examples.

Think about those examples with limited real estate:

• Spaces on Mac
• Tabs grouping on Firefox 4
• Folders on iPhone
• One-click-for-all-apps on Android
• ...

Those features are all trying to create more space, but in different ways.

1. Increase the usable canvas

If the screen is not big enough, enlarge it by extending the edges. iOS used to be really good at this. For instance, it introduced the concepts of pages to accommodate apps that won't fit into one single screen. Spaces on Macs, that benefit multi-taskers, is another good example. 

I however think Google and Android truly get the essence of this principle. On Android, instead of extending edges outward, it grows layers inward :)  E.g. scrolling down the status bar, scrolling up too see all apps, squeeze the page to the right to see search options on Google search app, etc.

2. Decrease the size of shown items

Folders and grouping are two common ways to grow space-- miniature makes things spacious :). 

3.  Create Z axis  

http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/05/app-review-spb-shell-3d-for-android/

Most people were talking about the 3D effect here, but to me more importantly is the space it got in this app. Did you see how much you can view on the screen with a single flip? I would say it's not just a cool app with fascinating 3D effect, it got lots potential to be the future of mobile devices.