OUGD503 - Work For Creative Advertising Student - App Functionality Research

I looked at some of the information-based apps on my phone to look for design features and problems in multi-page apps that I can take inspiration from or need to avoid or get around.

The home screen of the British Gas app is one big menu, but after clicking on some of the options you realise that the way they open is inconsistent, something which could potentially be confusing to the user. The pop-out effect is detrimental to the consistency of the colour scheme due to having a shadow. Having a mechanism that allows you to return to the home screen easily like the sliding "Home" tab at the bottom of the other pages gives the user an easy way to navigate around the app, and it's important that this is placed consistently for ease of use.

The Sky Sports Score Centre app has it's homepage set to display the most important information at any given time, which increases the functionality of the app. This is contradicted however by how unclear it is as to how to access any other information. When you do open the menu it takes up the vast majority of the screen in a way which makes it look awkward and unconsidered because of the numerous visually unappealing shadow effects. There is also an inconsistency in the size of the text that titles the page, as can be seen in the "Pub Finder" text compared to the "Fixtures & Results" and "Home" text, this is a basic error that should be avoided for consistency.

Overall the British Rail resolves the menu problem by having a fairly elegant menu at the bottom of the page that doesn't draw much attention to itself. This only becomes a problem when you choose to see more options, as it then covers a large amount of the screen, but this would only cause problems to more niche users of the app because the main functions of the app because the vast majority of the functions of the app are fulfilled within the 3 options on the regular menu. For the most part the grid and styling of the app is extremely consistent, making the app easily to use and navigable because the user already has an idea of where certain things will be found. The only inconsistency comes when adverts are involved, but this isn't going to be something I need to consider.