Making adjustments

Our app is finally up and running. In case you would like to have a sneak peek, it’s available here.

The last few days were then dedicated to the daunting task of fixing the “small details”.

We have tried and enhanced the app in three directions: Performance, Design and User Experience.

Improving the performance #

When we first deployed the app, a single page weighted more than 800kb. That was a lot, given that the app is meant to be primarily accessed on mobile devices (i.e. data consumption and broadband speed can be a problem).

We took several decisions to try and reduce the load.

Improving the design #

As neither of us has any experience in graphic design, we tried to do our best to make the app as pleasant to the eye as we could — however, we know that our designer skills are limited.

The new design

We experienced several directions to make our app look better:

Improving the User Experience #

One of our first goals when designing the flow of the app was to make the user feel comfortable really quick with all the possibilities, while making errors (both geolocation and database errors) non-intrusive and friendly.

To achieve this we took a few actions:

 
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About Shawt !

Shawt ! is a social, location-aware chat application. It gives you insights about what you want to know based on where you are. The app is based on a set of three filters and a distance selector. Make your choices and see the messages... Continue →