I’ve been checking out a recent iPhone app “Color”. The new app is making waves for a few reasons;

• It’s secured $41M in investment
• The company paid $350k for the URL www.color.com
• The app is receiving some of the worst reviews and feedback we’ve ever come across in the app store – truly brutal.
• The internets are ranting about it potentially being the worst app ever released
• The internets are ranting about it potentially being the best app ever released

Not wanting to miss out on the ranting, here’s my 8 cents;

1. The app does a great job of throwing off the burden of signing in, connecting and generally faffing about with finicky app admin. I was quickly taking pics of office randomness and immediately seeing similar images with different viewpoints from others around me.
2. Seeing everyone else’s images just happens and it’s so simple that you forget how awesome it is – there was no sign in, no grouping, nothing.
3. This goodness is lost on most, once it’s there, it’s pretty much expected and everyone becomes an expert critic about the functionality of applications without realising the complexity behind them.
4. The lack of signing in to anything restricts the apps ability to drive awareness beyond email.
5. There’s an under developed web function that creates an album online with a page. You only discover this if you send someone else an email. Once on the page, your options are as limited as bodily excretion – mostly shit & pi55. Our image in this post FYI.
6. The poor reviews are a symptom of consumers maturing app tastes and navigation expectations not aligning with Color’s. We’re guessing that a very important Color team member of grounding influence was off sick, fired or didn’t have the balls to stand up to Color’s design hipsters ranting that “useable navigation is soooo 2010”. See 1990’s multi media art installations.
7. Consumers app habits and tastes have evolved. Now that the average iPhone owner has downloaded over 100 apps, there are expectations around navigation, photo ability, social tool integration and design.
8. Color takes the very risky step of re-inventing in-app navigation with buttons that evolve as you interact with them – and fails terribly. I’m a patient guy, especially when it comes to iPhone apps but this approach nearly broke me. Sharing the experience with colleagues generally leads to something like this “what a great concept! Ok, so how do I…(button press)..oh? (back button?)..hang on what the!? Well that’s pretty stupid. What if I (button press)… F#*K this shit i’ve got work to do. Fail.” This is a symptom of a development process that chose originality over usablilty.

My verdict? Until the app fixes its nav issues and adds effective social integration, this will be a wonderful novelty tool used rarely by few. It’s a great lesson for us as mobile developers on how and when to break the mould while developing mobile products aligned with users expectations.

*Further reading – Lund, 1997 Usability Maxims