Why are the iOS apps so badly designed?

And DHG, I may add a list of things, but the Logos devs aren't morons. I'm not whining for a list of features. I'm asking they go back to the drawing board because I know they make something better.

Randy, I wouldn't consider the UI fantastic. The Logos iOS app gets trumped very easily by a more standard design. Try PocketSword by CrossWire for iPhone sometime. It's an iOS6 UI, but being more standardised, it allows me to switch from bible to commentary to dictionary and between all of my resources very quickly. It's not a perfect UI and the app could learn a thing or two from Logos in terms of features and options, but trying to pull that off in the current Logos app is maddening. Logos' current UI is fancy pants non standard when it has no reason to be, other than to look funky. It's slow to use (both technically and from a usability point of view), limited in basic functionality (like swapping between stuff quickly or bookmarking), and is missing a huge chunk of features that are meat and potato features for Logos on a PC, like being able to order your library with the same options. Features can obviously be added in (and should have been included a looooooong time ago, truth be told) but the main issue is the app needing a redesign, so it's a whole lot less restrictive in use.

BUT, this conversation is too generic. Without stating specifics, no one can address your issues. There are lots of good ideas that could be implemented, but you will need to make specific suggestions if you want them addressed.

Maybe. I'll come back and list a few more examples of how the Logos UI could be improved. But honestly, if the devs can't figure that one out for themselves, nothing I say will help them understand. I'm just here to say, "Come on guys. It's time to think 'next level' for Logos iOS, because it's far from perfect."

Is that what you are saying? Not that the app as is is necessarily broken but that it needs more fine tuning to be complete?

Yeah, pretty much. It certainly isn't broken (in some ways it's great!), but I think the app needs more than fine tuning. It has some really badly designed elements, and that means going back to the drawing board to redesign the base. Tacking on features won't help to resolve the things that I put under the category of bad design. That's why I keep harping on about how this thread isn't for feature requests. I know where to do that, and that's a place where they can be voted on and tracked easily by the devs.

Christians are really good at defending developers and what they make. But to anyone that's been paying attention to what's possible on mobile platforms, Logos apps could hold their own against their PC counterparts quite easily. It may sound harsh or sensationalist throwing around terms like, 'badly designed', but that's just what the mobile apps are in many ways.

I'm just hopeful for more. The Logos devs should move on from using feature requests as the only way to improve Logos on mobile, and instead look at taking as much as possible from the PC, and building it into a much more flexible base.

Hey Bob, I appreciate the detailed reply and the info about why you guys have taken the steps to get where you are. Your post doesn't sound defensive at all. As much as I feel parts of the app are badly designed, I am also asking the question, "Why?" So, thanks

Obviously there's a certain part of the app that I wouldn't want to throw into the 'badly designed' pot I mentioned in my initial post- I can see you guys have worked hard on the engine side of things! (although I do wonder at the speed of a few things in it, but that's a side thing). For me it's the usability of the app, from a UI perspective. I have no complaints about text formatting. I recognise PocketSword isn't a wonder in that department or has to deal with what Logos does.

So here are a few thoughts. I expect this thread will momentarily fill with comments from people about one thing or another. That's not why I've posted this. It's for you guys to consider. I've lumped in some basic things that are pretty unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but some of the points are pretty much what I think are the main issues.

- Only four methods for organising a library, and those four lack the fifth on the PC (Most Used). No collections. No series. No prioritising of resources, or cloud syncing of either. No organising by type. No organising by downloaded. No rating or tagging in the app. Searching is good, but isn't always helpful when you have a large library to look through. Most importantly, aside from searching there is no filtering of resources! So, dealing with a library with more than a few books isn't great.

- I'm not sure if there's a technical reason for this, but for resources like the ESV there are no inline (or otherwise) strongs/louw-nida, or manuscript display options.

- Searching options are pretty basic. Even PocketSword has a fuzzy search

So onto the big one. The general UI. This is all about what makes the app confusing to use, as well as restrictive in use.

- Button layouts and menu options are inconsistent between the iPhone and iPad. (this is a minor quibble)

- The three and four line icons look almost the same. Sometimes I have to do a double take to figure out whether I'm opening the side menu menu, choosing from a table of contents or something else, because the resource name is hidden. The whole top menu and the way it changes when it appears and disappears is inelegantly designed. Because it looks like the four line icon is shifting to the left when the resource names appear, it's hard to figure out at a glance. I have figured out hundred of UIs for apps and programs, and even I get caught out by it from time to time. I can see it's a similar design to iBooks, but it's nowhere near as logical to figure at a glance.

- The down swipe buttons have options duplicated from the up swipe menu. For example, the share button has sharing options, but also a random bunch of options that don't belong under it, instead duplicated from the up swipe.

- There's no way to add a folder under mobile favourites. This would be fine if the favourites were per resource, but since they aren't, this menu could get really messy when a computer isn't involved to clean things up.

- When you use the 'back' button on the top left, there's no indication as to which resource it is you've travelled back to, for the reason mentioned above (the name isn't visible). It is cool you can hold down on it to bring up the history, but I wonder how many people know you can do that (I only just found out!) . Obviously I could just go through tools -> history. But, even that looks different from the history view from the back button! It's that kind of inconsistency that can be frustrating, especially when you've been off using other apps and have forgotten Logos' little quirks.

- To expand on the above, the Logos app's UI feels like it's had lots of little features bolted on to it. Things are inconsistent right throughout the app. Things becomes frustrating over time because it's more about learning how each page works on every device, instead of being able to rely on consistency throughout the app. That's why in this thread I've mentioned a more tried and tested UI design, that allows you to expand things with consistency. Right now there are lots of little shortcuts seemingly hidden away in the app, with their own little way of working.

- No linking of resources when using a split screen.

- No preferred dictionary, or commentary.

- To go with the above, the whole multiple resources for study is really hard to use. If I have a bible open and I want to use a dictionary to look up a word in front of me, the process is frustrating. I can open a dictionary and search for a word (if I remember I need to click on the page to bring up the search box, and not click on a line icon, which is mostly useless). But if that word is right in front of me I can search the built in iPad/iPhone dictionary by holding on the word (great!), or I can do a search, which means I need to choose the resource I'm currently using (it always defaults to 'Entire Library') and look through the list of results to find a basic definition. Then I need to hit the back button to go back to where I was. If I compare this to PocketSword, I type the word into the dictionary and I'm done. Then I click back onto the bible. It's not perfect, but it's fast and not at all confusing along the way. And, I can go back to my commentary, dictionary, and look up the same word in multiple dictionaries too without much effort. There's a reason I reach for my laptop, and this is one of them. Logos' app UI is just slow to use, and makes the task of quickly jumping between multiple resources (that just aren't aware of each other) require a lot more thought than it should.

I'm not going to say too much about anything else, because that last point is probably the main one I wanted to make. The general idea is this. There are some annoying aspects of the Logos app, and there are some missing options- both listed. For me the part I consider to be bad design is how hard it is to move around the app when you're moving between resources with some speed. It's akin to drawing a masterpiece with boxing gloves. I'm sure a lot of it would possible, but it'd be a heck of a lot harder to do than it needs to be.

I have no problem if you guys have the same team. The app has come a long, long way. Props to you guys for that! But I'd really like to see a rethinking of the UI. You might have garnered lots of positive ratings for it, but whenever I get that little popup in the app (kind of annoying, but that's another thing ) that asks if I like the app, I answer no to the yes or no question, because I'm often in the middle of being frustrated at it. If there are people like me out there, then there's a better design even still, despite the improvements. I hope that makes sense.