I’ve been working to deal with the ever growing information that Transport for London (Tfl) like to provide the daily commuter with. Part of this is changing how the information is downloaded from the server and part of this is small and subtle UI changes.
The first of these is to ensure that all colour information is downloaded from the server instead of making use of hard coded colours in the application itself. This seems obvious, but time constraints the first time around forbid this happening.
So now, the version I am testing has the colours coming directly from the server. It’s working very well and doesn’t slow the application down at all.
It also means that I can now truly update the information given to the application without having to update the application itself – this is a massive bonus!
Soon after the next version of the application is approved, the DLR status information will be added. All done without having to resubmit any new version of the application to the AppStore. This provides the user with up to the date information without the two week wait.
I felt this was a worthwhile design choice, and something that a number of iPhone applications don’t do. I don’t like the idea of buying an application that has to be updated just because the style of something in the data it relies upon changes. This just causes frustration.
The other change I have done is to reduce the font size. Silly? Maybe. The issue at the moment is that the amount of engineering works leading up the 2012 olympics means that Tfl are having to put a lot more information on their posts over the weekend around things like Bus services. This is useful to the user, so I wanted to make sure I included as much as possible. Initially, only the first paragraph was shown.
Now, the server side gets as much as it can onto the small display the iPhone provides. That’s great, but the font size on the original version was massive. In fact, it was 17pt! I’ve now reduced it to 12pt, which is still readable, as you can see from the screenshot on the right.
The other thing I have done is to make the UITextView that is used to display the data scrollable. So shortly after release on the AppStore, I intend to change the server side to really pump out all the information (carriage returns and all) to the user so they get the best experience and can quickly get at the information.
I’m still really glad of the feedback I have been getting thanks to the freebie version I pumped out for 48 hours. The latest download statistic I have from Apple puts it at over 300 copies were grabbed for free over the weekend. That’s fantastic! If only Push Notifications could be free – I’d offer it for free, forever.
