iWound touts itself as ‘the world’s first arts and fashion magazine on iPhone’. The promo email I received about the app went on to state that:
We believe iWound, for the iPhone & iPod Touch audiences, provides the magazine
content specifically designed to deliver the best magazine experience ever for
the Apple screen, including video and music content as well …
I believe something slightly different – that this is probably the worst user interface I have ever seen in an iPhone app (and far, far away from being at all magazine-like), and one of the very worst iPhone apps overall that I’ve seen.
What’s so wrong about iWound?, you may be asking – or possibly also wondering why the top screencap in this review shows an advert from within the app. So let’s start there – this is a $4.99 app that is * littered * with ads. Not small, non-intrusive banner ads at the foot of the page – big full screen ads like the one shown in the top screenshot, that you cannot avoid and that you need to swipe or tap to get past, and way too often as well.
Speaking of swipes and taps and ads, let’s talk about that next. I mentioned above that I think this is the worst UI design I’ve seen in an iPhone app, and one that feels nothing at all like a magazine (or at least any magazine I’d care to pick up). To illustrate why I say this, let’s try to navigate around this ‘magazine’ a little.
When you first launch the app, you’re invited to choose a cover …
Once you make a choice from the listing above, you get a cover image to look at …
When you swipe on the cover image to try to get to the content within this section, you get a set of instructions on how to use the app – which are more than a little annoying, because there is no option to say ‘OK, got it, please do not present this every single time I choose a a main section to go to’ – so of course the app continues to show you it over and over …
When you swipe left to get rid of the instructions, you get – oh joy – a full screen advert. As a bonus in terms of interface FAIL, you cannot swipe to move forward on this ad screen (as you can elsewhere) but instead have to tap on a small ‘Continue’ button.
OK – so we must be getting to some actual content by now, right? Wrong. Instead, we get another list of sections. I could’ve sworn I already made that choice …
So I select a section again – Architecture – and I get a listing of articles …
Then I choose an article, thinking ‘here we go, something to chew on, and I get … a title image / page …
Then I swipe again, and get to the actual article …
So, let’s recap. That is SEVEN swipes / taps / touches, to get to one title image, and one screen of article text. From that one page of article text, if I double-tap (to bring up nav options) I get to – yes, you may have guessed this by now – a freakin advert, with an extra swipe needed to move on to a next story. From any content page, it is not easy to get back home to the main index – you have to step your way back through sections etc.
There are some articles that contain more than one page of written content, but all of them require the same sort of ridiculous, convoluted navigation to get to.
Another major fail I’ve noticed in various sections is that the adverts take quite a little while to load, and you can do nothing in terms of getting any closer to real content until they have finished loading.
Some of the article pages boast a small ‘Video’ icon to indicate there is video content associated with that article. That would be a nice feature, except that it is not available within the app, or even via a jump out to the iPhone’s YouTube app. It is available by visiting the iWound web site and entering a password.
As you can tell from all of the above, it took quite a while to get to browse even a small portion of iWound’s content – and the entire experience was awkward and painful. I did find some things in the Art and Architecture sections (I’m not much of a fashion fan) that were interesting and that looked like worthwhile content to discover …
The shame is, there may well be lots of good content somewhere in this app, but it is buried beneath an appallingly bad interface and a slew of intrusive ads. Others may have a greater tolerance for this, but I do not have the patience to wade through the bad design and ads to get to whatever is underneath.
iWound honestly feels to me like an advert (ha, that feels good and ironic) for how not to do an iPhone application. Clumsy and inconsistent navigation, large, bothersome adverts in a paid-for app, and no mention of when or how new content will be delivered (and whether it will be charged for).
If you like magazines – at least the ones that are not 80% adverts and 20% content – my advice is to avoid iWound. If it looks / sounds like your cup of tea despite my criticisms, you can find it in the App Store for $4.99.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I could live with all the affronts you described, I like fashion mags because of, not despite the ads and might want something like that on my phone. But, the video, as you experienced, ends my interest. Leaving the app to view is intolerable – password? fogetaboutit.
thnx
Hadn't even thought that some will enjoy the ads – I can see how that could well be the case now that you mention it. But I very much doubt that would make up for the excruciatingly bad navigation and UI throughout the app.
I agree on the ads. Sometimes the ads are better than the magazine content.
But overall, this just sounds like a not- well thought out UI. So, not going t. Win the editors award for best UI eh?
Might win the editor's award for 'UI My Dog Could Have Designed'
Am I the only one who just bought iWound and is enjoyning it?! ? I think it's a very good application, despite the ads, plus Wound is one of the best magazines at the moment..perfect match! ivy x
ivy – it may well be a good magazine (in printed form) and even the iPhone version may have some good content, but for me the appalling design makes it impossible to go through the pain of trying to discover it.
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