The Ushahidi iPhone Application - Please Critique

Erik Hersman
Sep 16, 2008

The volunteer developers behind Ushahidi are at work on a number of concurrent efforts, one of those is the team working on the iPhone application: Joe Jones, Chris Blow and Wilfred Mworia. They have reached the stage where getting feedback from a larger audience would be extremely helpful. Click on the image above to see a full resolution version of the screen mockups. What we're hoping you will do is take a few minutes to study what we're doing, and then provide a critique on what you think we can do better. Though the mockups look "done", they are not. We're still at an early stage in trying to figure out what features should be included, as well as what the user interface should really look and act like. We have a lot of iterating to do on the design process, so please don't hesitate to jump in with any ideas or changes. Feel free to leave you comments below, or you can reach us through the contact form.

Some Background Information

Our goal is to drop people into the actionable items as quickly as possible. We think that most people will want to see the events happening near them (or their default location) first, but there is also the option to jump right into reporting an incident on the same start screen. Viewing Incidents Incidents can be seen in two ways, on a map and as a list sorted by proximity. The default filter is by category. You can drill down into any specific incident to get to the full report, where we're trying to bring out the important parts of any given incident. Reporting an Incident We've tried to streamline as much of the reporting into a one-page view as possible. You go immediately to the editor to start creating it. If you have already taken a picture, you can still add it to the report at this stage, or you can take an image right at that moment to add to the report. The location is defaulted to where you are currently when you create the report, however, you can change that by selecting the "edit location" option underneath the text box. That will take you to a screen that lets you drop a pin on the location where the incident happened. Other Stuff You can set a default location within "settings" so that you always start on a specific location to view new incidents, and you can set your favorite map view. That is the only information that is stored, upon closing the application, we would like to wipe all data from memory.