RE: Instagram for Android. Little Photo? No. On UX.

I tend to test chinese smart phones as a hobby. Back in the days I was testing the ZTE Blade, a phone running on Android. Money well spend? Well, yes and no.

The phone did things. But he was quite frustrating as well: its inability to install those apps you truly wanted. Right, seems there’s no such thing as a default Android OS.

As there wasn’t an Instagram for Android at that time I decided to install “little photo”. I even wrote an article about it, stating that Little Photo was a valid alternative to instagram for Android-users waiting for Instagram to run on their OS.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. To start with, it was wrong to compare both “apps” as they are in fact not to be compared. But if we ignore the above, here’s why Instagram is great.

Huawei Ascend P1

In my struggle testing chinese smart phones I’m currently dealing with the Huawei Ascend P1. It’s not really a struggle this time. It’s a fast machine (it beats my friend’s iPhone5 in browser start-up etcetera), running every app I tried so far. And it also runs Instagram. So now that I’m on Instragram for Android, I realize Little Photo is -sorry- crap. What is it then that makes Instagram a “waw” and little photo a “boo”?

Instagram: it’s all about the User Experience. UX.

UX – user experience – is all about how a person feels about using a product, system or service. User experience reflects on the experiential, affective, meaningful and valuable aspects of human-computer interaction. As a result, one could state that user experience is in fact subjective in nature because it’s about an individual’s feelings and thoughts about a technology.

Next to that, UX is dynamic, in a way that it may change over time.

Finally, user experience and usability are closely linked but are not the same. In my view, usability does not define the overall user experience but it has a powerful contribution to that overall experience.

Today I have to say: it’s a pleasure to work with Instragram while it’s frustrating to handle apps like “little photo”. The experience is just great. And it’s very easy to use.

Little Photo failed on UX & Usability

And that was the entire issue with “Little Photo”. In the end, you could get nice results. But until you got there… you probably cursed numerous times at your phone. The user experience was crap. And deploying the filters onto photos wasn’t very “userfriendly”. The product failed on UX and Usability. It results in not using the product any more.

Guess it’s time to take UX seriously

User Experience, UX and Usability matter. No doubt. Or do you have a different view?