My proposed project for this semester is to create an app to improve the communication between the Lincoln Students Union and the students of the University. Initial oral research suggests that students of the University feel the strength of communication from the Union leaves something to be desired, and an app seemed like the obvious answer in an attempt to rectify this.
Smartphones are now commonplace devices in the hands of most students, and the lack of an SU affiliated app is something I plan to change.
The first step involved looking at apps that have received plaudits for successful and innovative design. Below are screenshots of Yahoo Digest, winner of the Apple Design Award in 2014. The app uses a simple vertical design, with twice daily updates on the latest top news stories. Once read, a story's icon changes colour (much like links on a web browser), with a wheel on the bottom of the front page tracking all read or unread stories.
From this design, I am inspired by the stark contoured design, using strong diagonals to interlace text and images. The user interface is intuitive, with no specific buttons to link from page to page, but rather tapping anywhere on a headline takes the user to the full story. Whilst on a story, swiping left or right will take the user to the next story, akin to turning the page in a physical print book or newspaper.
Another hot style within the design world is tiles, and tiled structures for menus and front pages. Windows Phones, for example, use a very sharp and defined tiled structure for the front page of the phone operating system, which is also represented in Windows 8, the computer OS.
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