UX review | MUST APP

Živilė Ma
Jul 23, 2017 · 6 min read
MUST APP

This is a brief user experience review of a MustApp. It’s a mobile application which helps you make a list of movies and TV shows to watch as well as fill up your watched collection. You can also invite friends so they could share their reviews and ratings with you.

All 4 parts will be rated from 1 to 10 and the final score will be the average of them.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Welcoming. We start with the onboarding. A bit boring logo intro screen. Only white with a light grey logo which made me question if that is a draft screen or will it fill in with a colour later? (1) Well it didn’t happen as later we see the onboarding steps. Appealing and simple design, feels professional…until…. bang! Pop-up shows up just after a few seconds! ‘Can we send you notifications?’. (2) Guys, do you walk to a girl in the street and start a conversation with ‘Can I get your number?’. You at least say hello. I have no idea what the app even looks like, what it does and what I want from it and you are already asking for permission to bother me. Nope. It’s not a tragedy, of course, but just wrong timing.

Then we have some nice looking onboarding screens which are informing about what the app does (3). Personally, I’m not a big fan of those as everyone is doing the same, but ok. Just little remark about the ‘next’ button — it could be transparent, replaced with an arrow or removed as you already have pagination so this double instruction is not necessary.

On the last screen we have to log in with a Facebook or phone (4). You’re either in or out. Give me a trial! Let me have a glimpse of your beautiful app and then ask me to set an account. Like ‘hey, you see we have nice stuff in here, but you have to join the club to experience that’. Not vice versa. Again, not a tragedy just a bit edgy. So I log in with my FCB account, confirmed, done. And then the loading icon on the button (5). Loading took quite some time, so in this case would be good to have a short message telling what’s happening as I’m not sure, if my internet is slow or there is a lot of content loading or what’s happening. Also, not clear why that loader icon is on the button, just have a new nice loader screen. *6

6 | 7| 8| 9

Kicking the goals. Okay, we are in. Boom! Another pop-up asking to allow to track my location (6) . I really feel like I’m being attacked. Jeeeez give me at least 10 seconds on the app and then push. Don’t allow. However maybe it’s just me being oversensitive with those pop-ups.

So we land on the first screen with an overview of movie recommendations and collections (7). Very nice, uncluttered arrangement. I see some interesting collections and open them. The view inside is very minimal just gallery of movie posters. You can click on one of them (8) to get more information like how many people have seen the movie, would like to watch it, IMDB rating, short description of the movie, possibility to add it to your watched/want lists. Clean, simple and intuitive. Big cheers for these super short descriptions of the movies (9)! That’s all you need. By the way, also nice and smooth card closing gestures.

In general, we have the top menu (7), where we find community icon, the logo of the app and search feature. And main bottom navigation with 4 options — movies page, notifications/activity, add movie and your profile.

So my goal is to find a movie or its recommendation and add to my profile. I can do it in two ways — simply search the name or wander around the recommended collections. All good, except one confusion that there is ‘Search’ and ‘Add’ icons, but they lead to the same screen, which is confusing. I would remove the top Search icon and change this Add movie icon into something which would mean search&add.

Also clicking on the bottom menu icon of the screen I currently am should bring me to the top of that screen as now I have to scroooooooll all the way up.

Then we have this notifications/activity centre. I haven’t connected any of my FCB friends yet, so guess what I see in there! Notifications from MustApp and….. me! I see my own feed which movies I liked and which movies I want to watch. I mean, I just added them, so you don’t need to show me that. Useless information I’d say. Even though the section should be very engaging once you create your friends’ circle.

10 | 11 | 12

And MyProfile section — minimalism is the God (10). Love how simple and uncluttered it looks like. Just three sections — want/watched/profile. Even though 3rd — Profile section is a bit cluttered. What we have in here: my statistics on how many movies, TV shows, I’ve watched or want to watch, then a list of actors and directors and some rating statistics (11). My suggested logic would be to put statistics in one chunk and list of actors and directors after that. Yes, the rankings table do not look super sexy and the whole view would probably be even worse, but then it’s a pure visual design problem.

And lastly, about the community section on the top left corner with the saddest icon, there can be (7). Hey, but the community is fun, why this sad face? In here all good, super simple, easy to follow people according to the movies they’ve watched (12). Just one comment about the private users. This user is not inactive or dead so doesn’t have to be marked with that dismal grey avatar. Also, would be smart to mention in the list view that this user is private so I wouldn’t have to wonder why it looks different. *7

Bonding (feedback). I believe that design and development are still in progress so that’s why we don’t see much of micro-interactions, visual feedback from the app. Especially I was missing this feature after I marked a movie as want/watched. Only the colour of the button has changed, which is significant and this is great, but a small interaction would be pleasing. It doesn’t have to be something flashy. Marking a movie is a very often used feature, so any fancy interaction will be annoying, but a little response would be nice because now it leaves with the feeling like ‘Yeah, OK you added something, move on’. *6

Visuals,the tone of voice. Visuals, in general, are just great, very clean and simple. My heart melts when I see those examples how the simplicity of design compliments the content and makes it work. Even though I didn’t get the inconsistency of the logo itself — blue app icon, very light grey logo on the loading screen and bold black logo in the app…

The tone of voice is quite neutral. Simple statements with some emojis leave a friendly impression. Maybe, in general, the app is lacking a bit of a brand charisma, but as simplicity is the key it can be excused. *9

Overall - positive experience! I was always disappointed with those over cluttered movie apps when all I need is a simple list of recommendations and a feature to add them to my collections. And here with a beautiful and simple design it works just great! Tried MustApp for a few days, but definitely keeping it on my phone.

Aaaaand the score in total it is *7.

Thank you for reading. Comments very welcome!

Živilė Ma

Written by

UI/UX designer living in Berlin www.junikorn.rocks

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