Dear Dave Pell, I really enjoy the NextDraft iOS App, but…
Let me start off by saying that I am an enthusiastic reader of NextDraft. I appreciate the time you take each day to curate and filter content, and deliver it in a whimsical, sarcastic, or otherwise entertaining way. It makes my commute infinitely less boring.
I am, in fact, so pleased with your content, that I’d like nothing more than to share it with my friends, but… I can’t.
Not easily, anyway.
1. Sharing Your Original Content
When clicking on the share button on the page on the left, the contents of my tweet, don’t look particularly appealing. This doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it’s a little annoying.
Your app is, at times, either grabbing the NSStrings incorrectly, or not grabbing them at all. The fix should be fairly simple, even for a beginner iOS developer. I just wasn’t sure if anyone’s ever brought it to your attention.
2. Sharing Others’ Content
When an article you mention really grabs my attention, I want to read the whole thing. Since not only are you linking to the article, but you’re also making sure they know you were the one who referred the reader, the link gets extraordinarily long. As you know very well, Twitter only allows 140 characters/tweet. In most cases, the tweets your app generates are too long to post, so the reader either doesn’t post the tweet, or has to go through a painful process to do so (from within the mobile app, of course).
Here, I actually have a solution for the problem I’m complaining about — bit.ly. I’ve used their URL-shortening service before in creating a news reader mobile app for my college. It’s pretty nifty.
Here’s the code snippet you’ll need to “bitlify” your links, and make sure that your tweets are never too long.
(code looked terrible in Georgia font. Feel free to email me for the snippet)
That’s it.
Well, actually, there’s one more optional comment that I had, in case you’ll actually read this.
*. Bringing Your App To the iOS7 Era
While I’ve enjoyed the color and font choices of your app since I started using it, the design is getting a little stale. Here’s my proposal, with a few minor fixes in order to give it a more iOS7-esque feel.
I left the first screen as is, because the only things I’d change would be the navigation bar, status bar & the more icon.
Because the fixes are so minor, you might not notice what’s going on exactly, so I’ll list things here, if you do proceed in fixing them:
- Skeuromorphism is dead, so I made the top bar a solid color
- The status bar should naturally flow into the top bar , so I made its background the same colors as the top bar
- There’s no need to preset your cell size, to accommodate longer titles — your cells can resize!
- Thick icons are out — I made the side-bar icon thinner, and sharper
- The sharing icon lost it’s box a long time ago — I put the “new” sharing icon in its place
- The “home” button style you’ve got going on died with iOS6 — say hello to the back arrow
- With respect to iOS7s love for translucency, and continuity, I made the bottom bar the same color as you had it, but at 90% opacity
Okay. That’s all I’ve got to say. Hopefully you find my advice valuable, because I think it would definitely improve the user experience of your app.
One more thing. If your developer’s too expensive, feel free to hit me up. I’d enjoy fixing the app, if only for my own personal satisfaction.
Cheers,
Lea
