Is your app getting noticed? Presentation is everything, part I
In the first of a series of guest posts, Designer and Asilia's Creative Director Lulu Kitololo challenges app developers to ensure their apps don't get lost in the crowd by using captivating design and presentation. Hope you enjoy it and look out for more insightful posts from her in the coming months.
I judge books by their covers. It's the path I chose, as a visual communicator, and the unsettling realisation that years of experience and observation have brought me is that, presentation is often everything. I've seen mediocre ideas in shiny packaging be heralded as genius. I've seen excellent concepts not even given a second glance because, on the surface, they just weren't engaging enough.
The business of image
Often with African-made products, and services, little attention seems to be paid to presentation. It seems there is a complacency when these products and services are consumed regardless. However foreign goods are taking over our shelves, showrooms and other marketplaces, at record speed. We increasingly HAVE to pay more attention to presentation because, at the point of purchase, the consumer's decisions is greatly influenced by what looks better.
The technology industry is a very visual one. A lot of people spend most of their time looking at some sort of screen‚ be it for business or for pleasure. Computers, televisions, games, mobile phones. Whether you like it or not, the app industry is involved in the "industry of appearances." As an app developer, design HAS to be one of your priorities. That is, if you want your app to become something more than your personal pride and joy.
The business of function
I'm not advocating that substance is irrelevant. Employing that great design adage, "form follows function," fancy packaging on shoddy goods will fall apart at the seams upon closer looks and sustained use. And use is why apps exist. An often unappreciated fact is that use is encouraged by function AND desirability. To create something that not only gets something done (whether that is entertain, solve a problem, educate, inform, manage etc.), but that users also enjoy using, content and design need to work in tandem. When makers appreciate this interconnectedness from the get-go, rather than tacking design on at the end, the resulting creations are superior and their users' experience of those creations are pleasant, intuitive, beneficial and‚ lasting.
True excellence runs deep and in fact, outer beauty is merely an expression of it. So to rephrase my first sentence, I may pick up a book because of its cover but, I make my final judgement based on what's inside.
App developers, what are you doing to ensure that we notice your app for long enough to see what it's really about?
Illustration by Lulu Kitololo
