Do you do... mobile apps? close

Quite often we are asked if we “do” mobile apps. The answer is of course ‘yes’. Or rather, we create elegant and functional apps and the way we deliver them will depend on your business objectives.

I’ve never quite understood the notion that an agency might ‘specialise’ in iPhone apps. It’s like saying we only do Flash work or PHP. It might be that you have a bias towards Flash or PHP, but it’s hardly a selling point. The key question is “is it useable by the people who you want to connect with?”.

To us, it makes sense to consider the use-case for everything and then determine how the content will be delivered. So this could mean an app that supports an existing website, such as the Pownum iPhone app, that just allows people to do something on the move that they could otherwise do online. It could be a stand alone application, such as The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill app that acts as a revenue-generation tool for the client, or it could be the Inside Ferrari iPad app that makes the most of the platform to show off beautiful photography. We’ve gone into a bit more detail below.

Pownum iPhone App
For someone like Pownum, they have a site that allows people to find and rate companies. It’s not a hugely complicated concept for the end-user, but the website has a lot of content on it which doesn’t look as good on a mobile screen. We also made the assumption that the use-case would be slightly different when on the move. It would be most likely that someone would want to instantly find out the Pownum rating of a client, or quickly rate a company. So we paired it right down to these key elements and made the interface easy to read without needing to zoom in or horizontally scroll.
Pownum app iTunes preview

The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill iPhone App
This is a stand-alone application (supported by a website page that further sells the app). Users have to pay to download the app, which provides a searchable database of quotes, speeches and ‘Red Herrings” (quotes mistakenly ascribed to Churchill).
Churchill iPhone app iTunes preview

Inside Ferrari iPad App (launching late November) 
In this instance, we are using the iPad’s innate strength of being a portable tool that shows off rich media to its absolute best. Jon Nicholson is a renowned photographer who his work has been the subject of a number of articles and books. Like us, he felt that the iPad, could be the digital equivalent of the coffee table book if presented in the right way. This app is due in the iTunes store in late November.