In Part I, I
reviewed the needs of a simple notes application.From the application development & design point of view, wesummarized that we want to keep in mind the overall goal of increasingproductivity with a simple tool like Notes. The other points we brokeit down to were:
- Speed of entry - Whether it's writing, typing on a full keyboard, or a keyboard on a device, we want to get the information in as quickly as possible
- Ease of information access - When you want the information, you want it immediately
- Dependable Record Keeping - Once the information is entered you don't want it to be lost
easily
- Transferable - You want to be able to use the information in other forms
BelowI review 5 notes applications for the iPhone based on availability andor popularity. I tried to stick to reviewing notes applications wherethere are many that have combined to do and notes. Here they are:
1. iPhone Notes:
The Good:
- Clean UI - It gives you a basic list of your notes, and a nice full screen when you go and edit it. Very self explanatory, functional and usable.
- Email Your Notes Out - It doesn't support two way synchronization, but at least you can email a copy of important notes from the app
The Bad:
- Back Up/Notes Entry From PC - As far as I know there isn't one unless you are a Mac user and dish out another extra $40 for a software tool called MegaPhone. But natively, iPhone Notes will not sync with your desktop, so it is not a dependable source of keeping information, unless you are constantly emailing every update you make with your notes. If your phone crashes, all your notes information is lost. Furthermore, you can't put notes on your iPhone from the desktop - Bummer!
- Quick Retrieval - The tool does not give you a way to sort, categorize, or search. As notes pile up, it'll be difficult to find the information you need quickly.
The Good:
- Integration - Google Notebook is already a powerful tool on the web, so it makes information you've entered on your desktop easy to access on the device.
The Bad:
- Editing Notes - You aren't able to edit any notes using Google Notebook Mobile. The speed of entering information is zero if the functionality doesn't exist.
- Stuck when offline - If you don't have wireless access, or if your mobile network speed is slow, it takes a long time to get to your notes. Ease of access is limited here.
The Good:
- Offline Use - This allows for faster speed of entry. Once it's loaded, notes can be added quickly
- Fast Sort - Although the buttons on the left appear small, I found it quite easy for sorting
- Color - Since colors are used as a background for text, I would suggest lighter tints so that the text is a little bit easier to read. Both of the features above are great since it allows ease of information access by organizing notes as you please.
The Bad:
- Small Text View and Entry - Default size to enter and view the note is small (above). See below for a user interface design critique for viewing and editing a note in a typical real life scenario.
- Support for Longer Lists - There were synchronization problems for longer lists, I found that from the PC I sent a note which was 344 words long. It only synchronized the first 60 words. When I sent a short document which was 488 words, it wouldn't synchronize any words. Perhaps this application isn't meant to handle more than a certain amount of words. But if thas was the case, shouldn't there be a text limit so that when people go and get my full list of notes, it's not unexpectedly cut off?
User Interface Analysis:
- By default it shows 8 lines of text. Let's think back about the grocery store shopping list. Historically we have worked with a piece of paper for something simple like a shopping list. You wouldn't click on a scroll button on a piece of paper to see items further down the list would you? No. It's all there. So if you have a device, wouldn't you want to see as many items as you can on it? A dozen items is definitely not too much to ask for. But this interface takes up precious real estate for a large "Edit Item" header, color labels, a very large "Item Done" button, and a big "Save" button. When you are at the grocery store wanting to see your entire list, which of all the above things are the most important? Seeing your items.
- Secondly, without thinking too long about it, what do the icons below the textbox look like to you? To me it looked like a stamp. I thought it was some kind of a date stamp function. The arrow is what will speak to the user, but you can barely see the shape of the arrow. The icon isn't very clear. When you click on these buttons, voila, it expands the textbox. Problem solved right? Let me explain why something like this must be designed with caution:
- Note on mental model: On paper we write in whatever space is physically available. On the web, scrollbars appear when you type beyond the space allotted. Most users come in with their previous experiences in mind, which is what we call their mental model
- Designing beyond expectations: Designing beyond what we expect is not a bad thing by any means. In fact this is where innovations lie. However, designs beyond what we expect must be incredibly obvious especially with applications that affect our productivity.
- The placement of these expand/shrink buttons are close to the screen so it is easy to tap the textbox instead of the buttons
- The icons did not communicate well. In usability we say that if it happens to one user, it often happens to many. Usually problems like this recurs from one usability study to another
- In the case of notes, a better design is if by default, the textbox is much larger in the first place. Is it really necessary to see such a large "Edit Item" header? If we tap on an item and we see the blinking cursor, it'll be obvious that we are in edit mode. Do color labels have to take up so much space? Can it automatically save instead of having a big save button that takes up space? All these questions make an impact on the user experience.
The Good:
- Speed of Entry - Although this application uses the internet for connectivity and it does not have offline usage capabilities, clicking on a line item expands a note without going through a reload. (Read additional user interface notes below.)
- Fun and Attractive Experience - I found myself enjoying the use of this application over the other alternatives because of its attractiveness and interactions with expand, collapse and the various colors associated with each category you can assign to a note.
The Bad:
For Pogo Notes, I would say these are areas they can improve on rather than bad points about their application:
- Lack of further integration - Since this app has done well with interaction design on the iPhone, it would be great to see more integration. See what Remember the Milk has done in terms of integration, which is truly impressive. Each major technology integration perks the millions of users that are already everyday users of that technology!
- Room to optimize for more speed - See below on "Adding a Note". Ways where it can save a few seconds here or there can continually improve the user experience.
User Interface Analysis
- Expand/Collapse Without Reload - I thought the expand and collapse was brilliant in saving time to view your notes and how it expands to amount of your content (in the second image where it shows the expanded grocery list "cheese" is indeed the very last item on the note, very intuitive!)
- Adding a note - It would be great if a "New Note" interface can be displayed without having to reload as well. As I have mentioned for the Noter, by default the input box could be much bigger - there is space for it as you can see above.
- Editing a note expands textbox automatically - Although during the add process the textbox is smaller, when you edit, the textbox will adjust in size and give you additional room to add more to the note. This addition is very much appreciated and the design demonstrates the understanding of the "edit" scenario well, such as adding more items to a grocery list.
- Color - I have written about some key points from Dr. Don Norman's article on Why Attractive Things Work Better. And Pogo Notes nailed this with their color usage. With Noter, the colors made the notes you are looking for easier to find but at least in my view, more difficult to read. The color selection for Pogo Notes brings the fun of having a bunch of post it notes, and I couldn't help myself to try all the different categories and see what category uses what color. It would be great if these categories could be customized to your liking.
The Good:
- Integrates with email - This application is about as simple as it gets, it is a one page notes application which automatically saves every minute, and it allows you to email the note when you are done with the note.
The Bad:
- Does not beat the status quo - This application is worse than the notes app that comes with the iPhone. There you can email notes as well as see a list view of your notes, making it easier to find notes than this app. Web Notes does save every minute to your cookies, but is that really all that valuable? The native iPhone notes app is definitely more aesthetically pleasing as well.
User Interface Analysis
- Essential Functions - Remember, user interface design is about simplicity and efficiency in terms of accomplishing user goals. There is a button for "Save", "Revert" and "Email". After you've emailed your note and assured that it's safe in your email, what if you want to start a brand new note? How do you clear the note? Since it saves every minute, the "revert" button reloads back to what was saved a minute ago. The only other alternative is to clear your cookies by going to the iPhone settings, or holding the backspace button on the iPhone until it deletes everything you have. At least this is my understanding after using it for several minutes.
What's Next?
I hope the above review helps designers and developerssee applications from a user perspective and give ideas to think about during the development process from Part I. InPart III of iPhone Notes review, I will briefly present which of these productsI actually ended up with.