We want to share two observations and one exciting bit of news about something we’re working on.
1. Sometimes the tactile qualities of physical interfaces and a heightened sense of physicality and (some might say superfluous visual realism) in virtual interfaces make our interactions a bit more pleasing, memorable, reassuring and more importantly, quite human!
2. Often phone-cameras suffer from a noticeable lack of stability and grip, it’s not just that we crave for that familiar feel, or the affordance and reassurance that a physical depressable button or toggle gives us, it’s also the fact that phone cameras aren’t that easy to frame shots with – essentially you’ve got one hand touching a screen and another holding the camera. Even in the case of iOS5 and iPhone 4 and 4s’ with the volume buttons taking a shot, it still feels quite fiddly. There are quite a few projects that aim to address this.
We think BeepHQ’s POPA is an attempt to address both issues head on, whether it’s with the unmistakeable big red button, the pleasing to hold leather grip, the affordance of holding a your phone in a familiar way that resonates with professional photographers and amateur snappers alike or the textures in the app itself which are also beautifully skeumorphic, POPA delivers and does so with finesse!
So when Brendan Dawes the director of Beep Industries and good friend of ours asked us to help out, we were super excited to see how we could improve the performance of the app and add a few wishlist features like ‘touch to focus’ and faster response times and stability to the experience.
With that said, no amount of software or hardware is good if people aren’t using it or don’t get it, here’s an awesome review by a street photographer with some lovely work in his portfolio. For us the proof in the pudding on how well POPA works and how people take to it, was when Brendan was demo-ing it to us in a cafe in Manchester – the guy working in the cafe came over to have a play, he intuitively got it there and then! It’s a button, I gotta press it, it has an app! I’ve also heard about kids using it with ease.
Beep Industries already had a fully fledged app, our role in working on the app was to ensure it acts in a responsive and stable fashion and work on some features! We’re pleased to say we’re looking forward to future developments which we’re also partnering with Beep Industries on!
Petite url: http://rith.co.uk/blog/totog
