Comments on: User Experience of The Humble Converter App http://blog.taptu.com/2009/07/10/user-experience-of-the-humble-converter-app/ Taptu makes it faster to find and share mobile-friendly stuff. It's the free alternative search machine, tailor made for mobile phones. Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:03:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 hourly 1 By: Andrew Pep http://blog.taptu.com/2009/07/10/user-experience-of-the-humble-converter-app/comment-page-1/#comment-48574 Andrew Pep Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:01:57 +0000 http://blog.taptu.com/?p=1402#comment-48574 User Experience should not be solely about how good it looks - you have overlooked raw usability and productivity. The Converter app makes it much clearer and quicker for an "inexperienced with technology" user to see what they need to do to convert values. This is helped by the familiar "iPhone" blue arrow links. Once the user wants to do the conversions, there is no need to leave the screen / bring up an input keyboard. Also, it may not be immediately apparent to the inexperienced user that the Converterbot has a spinning wheel - the bottom section of the wheel stays static, and when they do see that it spins, there is no text to clarify the meaning of the mystery symbols until they are selected. From this point of view, the User Experience of the Converterbot has failed, even though it's clearly more visually interesting and "designed". Having said that, your point about making the app stand out is absolutely correct - I would pick convertbot over converter simply because it looks better. User Experience should not be solely about how good it looks – you have overlooked raw usability and productivity.

The Converter app makes it much clearer and quicker for an “inexperienced with technology” user to see what they need to do to convert values. This is helped by the familiar “iPhone” blue arrow links. Once the user wants to do the conversions, there is no need to leave the screen / bring up an input keyboard.

Also, it may not be immediately apparent to the inexperienced user that the Converterbot has a spinning wheel – the bottom section of the wheel stays static, and when they do see that it spins, there is no text to clarify the meaning of the mystery symbols until they are selected.

From this point of view, the User Experience of the Converterbot has failed, even though it’s clearly more visually interesting and “designed”.

Having said that, your point about making the app stand out is absolutely correct – I would pick convertbot over converter simply because it looks better.

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