Zhephree

It’s coming along. Did a lot of behind-the-scenes work (battling foursquare’s ups and downs due to SXSW and St. Patrick’s Day) and did some UI work.

As I’ve said before, the overall goal with this redesign is threefold:

• Make the app resemble the other foursquare apps better
• Make the app have a more webOS feel and take advantage of features unique to webOS
• Make the app easier to use and more intuitive

Big changes! Obviously, it looks different. Aside from being cleaner, you get more information, such as number of users currently checked-in at the venue, and venue names have more room for more text, and we’ve added category icons. We also went back to the default webOS CommandMenu widget for main navigation because, as I stated, we want the app to look like a webOS app. And, actually, even though my zBar had more features, this simpler bar is cleaner and makes the whole app seem cleaner.

You’re probably wondering where some features are. Don’t fret! We are not removing functionality! For one, we added a dedicated refresh button (upper right) and there’s a shake-to-refresh feature. There’s a dedicated Map view button (upper left) and it’ll toggle between a Map and List view.

Now for the stuff you don’t see.

• Search - there’s no button for search! Like in nearly every other webOS app, to search, just start typing! As soon as you start typing, a search box appears at the top and pressing enter will perform a venue search.
• Add Venue - Well, there actually is a button for that:
  Again, making the app more webOS native, we used the built-in add button for lists in webOS. Tapping it brings you to the normal Add Venue dialog.
• Shout - Ahh! Where’s the shout button?! Logically, Shout doesn’t make sense as an item in the main navigation. It’s a function that is seldom used by most users. So, it’ll have a dedicated button on the Friends view, since you’re sending a shout to your friends, it makes more sense there. Plus, 6 buttons in the main nav cluttered the screen too much, so we dropped it down to 5. (It was at 4 for a while, but I tossed the Leaderboard back in last minute.)

So, there you have it! A better sneak peek at 1.0. I’m doing all I can to try and get this out this week, but please don’t kill me if I don’t make it out by the end of the weekend. This is a secondary free time project for me, so sometimes life gets in the way.

Also, if you really like the app and feel like you wanna contribute something, please send a donation to St. Baldrick’s on my behalf. I’ll be shaving my head on Saturday in solidarity with kids with cancer and the money I raise goes towards cancer research.