This post is a study into the design of an already existing app, WeMo. WeMo allows users to turn on a light from another room, or turn it off from across town. You can put your home on a schedule—living room lights go on in the evening, kids’ TV goes off at bedtime. You can check to make sure you turned the iron off, after you’ve already left. This is a similar outcome to that we are hoping to produce, so it is important for us to study the existing apps to make sure ours can improve on their design.
My first criticism is the visual confusion created by the decision to use skeumorphic design aesthetics. It makes the home page seem dark and cluttered, not something that makes the user want to explore the possibilities of remote control energy monitoring.
The grey and white colour scheme does allow the odd splash of green to pop form out of the screen, green is an important colour choice based on the environmental nature of the app ( it is also the colour of money in the US of course) However I feel that the choice of grey with this skeumorphic approach only darkens the navigation bar and the interface feels quite claustrophobic.
I appreciate the icon design within WeMo. The icons for the clock are very easily recognisable and suitably minimalist in approach. The email or SMS icon is also very similar to that of the iOS mail app and therefore fits in well to the operating system's motifs. As i previously mentioned, the green is a good and important touch, there is also an added visual gratification in the applied gradient to the green, giving the colour shape and form. However, the skeumorphic design has also encroached upon this area as the icons have been embellished with drop shadows. I understand the principal of making the icons look more like real buttons by adding depth to the design but I feel it is an unnecessary cluttering of the interface. But perhaps thats just my Bauhaus-ian palette kicking in.
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