MacDive iOS App UX thread

MacDive for iPhone. Feedback, requests, bug reports.. let us know!
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ubervizion
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MacDive iOS App UX thread

Post by ubervizion »

Hi All, I'm Jamie, the guy who's been working with Nick with the visual side of the iOS version of MacDive.
It's been an awesome experience so far, and we've had some great support from many of you.

I'm really keen to hear any feedback and thoughts on the UX and UI of the new app. Is there anything you've come across that is a bit confusing, hard to find, or generally weird and unintuitive?
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Re: MacDive iOS App UX thread

Post by weppos »

Hi Jamie, I have to say my experience so far is really good. It's a great app.

One thing I noticed, which is a little bit annoying, is that if I go to the critter/category pages and I click to add one, then I don't edit anything and I come back, the app saves an empty card. It would be nice if I press back without making any chance the app would not save anything, so that I don't have to go back to the card and delete it.

It's a very trivial feedback, but since you asked. ;)
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ubervizion
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Re: MacDive iOS App UX thread

Post by ubervizion »

Hey there, thanks for that.
Yup that's the sort of feedback I'm looking for, so thanks!

Alright, so it's the same behaviour as what happens when you add gear as well. I'm sure Nick will chime in here if i'm wrong, but my understanding of why it happens is that you need to create the entry in the database to make the fields editable, so when you exit that screen the entry still exists.

I'll have a chat with Nick about it when we next catch up and see if we can have it behave differently.
Thanks again!
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Re: MacDive iOS App UX thread

Post by Twan77 »

Hi Jamie,

first of all i would like to say that Nick and you did a great job building the Macdive app for iOS!
I like the interface and the fact that it syncs automatically with Macdive on my Mac.

I have two little things that you might consider about the UI:

1. When you enter a dive from the all dives list, and you look at the first tab (with the profile) the dive number isn't shown. Since you can swipe to the previous or next dive with 2 fingers, i would find it helpful if the dive number would be displayed in the profile screen as well.

2. It would be nice if you could swipe between the details tabs (profile tab, location tab, air/tanks tab etc). Now you have to select them at the top, but the ability to swipe to the next one would be a nice addition in my opinion.

That's all i can think of right now.

Greets Twan
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ubervizion
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Re: MacDive iOS App UX thread

Post by ubervizion »

Hey Twan,

Thanks for that! Putting the iOS app together has been a mission for so long, and it's awesome to finally have it in people's hands.
1. When you enter a dive from the all dives list, and you look at the first tab (with the profile) the dive number isn't shown. Since you can swipe to the previous or next dive with 2 fingers, i would find it helpful if the dive number would be displayed in the profile screen as well.
Yeah i think that's a valid suggestion.. Nick and I will have a chat about how to address that for sure. It's a balancing act at the moment.. the profile screen is fairly jam packed, but i think it's worth looking at.
2. It would be nice if you could swipe between the details tabs (profile tab, location tab, air/tanks tab etc). Now you have to select them at the top, but the ability to swipe to the next one would be a nice addition in my opinion.
We've talked about this one a few times about the best way to go with it.
Basically the reason we decided to not enable a horizontal swipe between the tabs is because if you swipe to the location tab, the map will catch your swipe and move around, making it a bit of a awkward move. A solution to this would be to lock the map position, but we thought people might want to scroll around the map on that screen, so we went that way.

Definitely something we were looking for feedback on though, so if we get more mentions of it we can re-look at the behavior.
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Re: MacDive iOS App UX thread

Post by Twan77 »

Hi Jamie,

thanks for explaining your considerations on that.
In the meantime i have another one.

This morning i received a notification in the iPhone's notificationscreen from the iPhone app that some of my equipment is almost due for maintenance.

I think it would be nice if this would also lead to a numbered badge on the app-symbol, so you can see it straight away when looking at the iPhone's homescreen.
And maybe inside the app, a numbered badge at the bottom on the gear-tab icon.

Greets Twan
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Re: MacDive iOS App UX thread

Post by nick »

Twan77 wrote:Hi Jamie,

thanks for explaining your considerations on that.
In the meantime i have another one.

This morning i received a notification in the iPhone's notificationscreen from the iPhone app that some of my equipment is almost due for maintenance.

I think it would be nice if this would also lead to a numbered badge on the app-symbol, so you can see it straight away when looking at the iPhone's homescreen.
And maybe inside the app, a numbered badge at the bottom on the gear-tab icon.

Greets Twan
I won't speak to changing anything, but if you tap the notification it takes you to that piece of gear, and the piece of gear also has a service icon on it (top right corner).
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ubervizion
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Re: MacDive iOS App UX thread

Post by ubervizion »

Just weighing in here too, the thinking with the notifications as they are is that they are directing you to exactly what's requiring attention, which I think does the job nicely for get maintenance alerts.

Red icon badges are great for things like mail apps where there's only really one thing that might need your attention, and personally I think they should be used pretty sparingly for things that require urgent attention.. which might be a bit much here. Trying not to nag the user too much with the mobile app :)
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Re: MacDive iOS App UX thread

Post by Twan77 »

Ok, thanks for the replies! I did see the yellow icon on the gear and now know that's the cue for getting maintenance done.
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Re: MacDive iOS App UX thread

Post by ffff »

Howdy! Thank you so much for making an iOS app. It's super helpful being able to reach into my pocket at the dive shop and quickly see how much weight I rented last time (I'm reasonably new to diving and still working that sort of thing out), or see when gear was bought/serviced, etc.

A few things I'd like to see implemented as time allows:

- Support for multiple divers on the "Dives" tab. I import data for both my wife and I. I had to create smart logs for each of us to separate us out on the Dives tab.
- To that end, I'd even go as far as saying the "Profile" tab could be eliminated by simply adding "Diver" to one of the tabs along with Tags & Smart Logs. The diver's profile information could then be moved to the "..." at the top of the screen.

- (Mostly) Read-only mode? Or lock/unlock data? The primary utility in the iOS app for me is portable reference. Considering I import all dive data from my computer, the ability to create/delete dives, gear, sites, etc can only lead to something I don't want happening. I do like that there's a confirmation for deleting something (having separate options in each area seems counter-intuitive to me, vs a simple "confirm before deletions" under the main settings). Maybe more experienced/frequent divers find more utility in being able to edit things from the phone, but since MacDive requires that I'm at my computer already- I'd expect most people to be doing all the major edits there.
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