Initial research

by Ivan Katsarov

The world is filled up with apps. There are apps for virtually everything: apps that deal with everyday information, apps that deal with traffic, apps that deal with professional needs, apps that deal with boredom and many more. There are also apps that deal with finding particular apps and there are apps that provide alternative apps for apps. And there are well designed apps that are first of all a pleasure to use like the famous Instagram. There are apps that are poorly designed and do not get too far. I will be ignoring them in my research for the obvious reasons.

But what is the difference between an app and a website? The convenience, speed and notificaitons that really improve usability.

Technology is in the base of of the applications we use. It is the advancement of technology that determines the limitations of application design. Although not completely perfected, an interesting development is using augmented reality. To summerise what augmented reality means I can say that the idea is for a device to be able to scan and ‘understand’ a certain environment and be able to interact with it virtaully buy extracting information from a particular object or the whole environment, or adding content to the environment. Google use augmented reality in their recently released product Google Glass.

Concepts for application design grow more popular. One of the reasons for that is their creative presentation. The presentation of Google Glass for example is executed in the form of a first person demonstration of the product that features beautiful visuals and humorous elements. It makes using Google Glass seem like endless fun, yet convenient and reliable. The frames are selected so they flatter the interface and bring the experience out of technology and into real life.

Creative presentation of an app can be achieved and improved through a wide range of methods and tools. Appropriate music and a dynamic atmosphere might hide a mistake or two. A nice flow that matches the concept might improve initial trust towards the presentation and therefore the product.

This connection between technology and real life is something I am quite interested in pursuing in this project.