This week we were able to get formative feedback for our apps from Kyle and our peers in the class critique. For the critique I displayed my app in a number of mock-ups as well as in a prototype to show how I would want my app to function.
I got the following constructive criticism which I has happy with as I knew it would help me improve my project:
Kyle said the overall take away from this class critique was that everyone needed to work more on spacing, padding and the consistent look of their app. All these little things are quick fixes which can really help to improve my app.
To improve the shadowing, I removed the shadowing from all my text apart from the text in the header. I felt the text in the headers needed to keep the shadowing so it could stand out from the photography which I used as the background. For all the photography images I used for album covers and headers, I changed the shadowing opacity to 10% from 25%. This allows the images to still stand out from the white background and keeps a small amount of depth to my app so it doesn’t look so flat.
To help with the consistency of my icons, I changed my library icon from a music note to one that looks more like books and reflects a library better. I also decided to change this so it matches the rounded look of the search and home icons better as well as all the other little icons such as the heart, play, forward and backwards. I think implementing this has really helped to make the ap look more consistent.
I also looked at elements such as the sizing and spacing of the icons, headers and navigation bar to make sure they were positioned the same on each page. Not only does this help make my app look more consistent but it stops the elements jumping about when you move page to page.
I then looked at the spacing of my icons such as the account and sleep icon and the forward and back buttons with the heart. One of the flaws that was pointed out to me was the spacing of the heart not being centred between the two arrows. When I went back to look at this it was only on 1 of the 4 play screens so it was a really quick fix. I could also fix the spacing and consistent look of the account and sleep icons by scaling the sleep icon down a little bit and creating more space between the two.
