Critique: Pair
Crystal Ngai - HFS 2
Crystal Ngai - HFS 2
Pair is a mobile application geared towardscouples. It offers features that allow couples to spend time with eachother virtually. Its features include texting, sharing tasks, and interactive activities such as thumb-kissing and drawing together.
The interface for Pair. On the right is the main screen, and on the left, the menu bar.
Aesthetically, Pair is a very beautifulapp. It’s obvious that the creators puta lot of time into the design – from the coupled speech-bubble logo to the adorably fluffy default profile pictures. The dark teal interface is gender neutral and unobtrusive. The white icons are playful without appearing childish. The separation of colours (his messages are in white, mine are in blue) highlights his messages subtly, but still allows everything to remain readable.
The interface uses many standard mobile mappings, making Pair easy and intuitive to learn if the user is familiar with mobile apps. The three lines on the top left represent the menu, and the circular icon on the right indicates whether the paired partner is online. Both are placed in obvious and noticeable locations.
The less visible "plus" button on the left hand corner.
My only real gripe about Pair's interface is the small "plus" sign on the bottom left hand corner, shown above. Pressing this plus sign will give the user the option to attach a photo, video, drawing, send a thought (akin to Facebook's poke), send location, and do interactive activities. It is an important button, but my mind skimmed over it. When I couldn't figure out how to send a picture from the menu, I immediately concluded that this app didn't have that kind of functionality - an absurd conclusion if the user spent a few seconds thinking about it, but users don't usually spend more than a second or two deciding whether or not they want to use an app.
There are a few reasons for this button would tend to get glossed over. Firstly, this button isn't consistent with other mobile texting apps that I have come across. Android's native messenger has all functionality on the top bar. Whatsapp and Google Talk are laid out the same way. Pair is unlikely to be the first messaging app a user installs on his or her phone, so he or she is trained away from looking at the bottom of the screen for anything other than a "send" button. Secondly, and possibly more importantly, mobile users spend more time looking at the top of the screen than the bottom of the screen, simply because their hands are holding the bottom of the phone. It seems that the developers were unaware of this physical constraint, and therefore put one of their most important buttons in a position of poor visibility.
This issue, thankfully, is quite easy to fix. Instead of having the options appear on the bottom left, replace the online circle in the right with the options cross. The tradeoffs are minimal - since the partner's status is displayed right underneath his or her name, the circle exists mainly for superfluous aesthetic reasons - or to take up space. The side may become a little cluttered, but with clever transparency effects, it's not likely to be that obtrusive.
What the interface might look like with a more visible options button.
However much time Pair's designers spent on the app's visual appeal, it seems they didn't spend nearly as much time thinking about their users' needs. The idea of the app is great – after all, those in relationships seem like they're in their own world. You can't post overtly affectionate messages on Facebook, your mutual friends won't be pleased. Pair gives a place that’s just for the couple – their own privatecorner of the internet. For someone likeme, whose significant other lives on the other side of the continent, the ideaof an app like Pair was very attractive. It would help us keep in contact in ways beyond simply texting and talking on skype. However, we had used Pair for barely a day before we abandoned it.
I think the main reason why we stopped using Pair was because while it looked like it was a fully functioning app with many features, in reality it afforded very little. Here is what the app delivers:
The dates feature
1: Dates. This is a very small feature that allows you to input your birthday, your partner's birthday, and your anniversary. I guess not all people remember their significant other's birthday, or their anniversary, but I'm going to guess that most couples don't need reminding of these dates. Therefore, this feature becomes a bit redundant. How about giving an option for the user to have more dates? What about the other meaning of a "date", IE - some time the couple sets aside for each other. If "Dates" were changed to a calendar of some sort, it would require more code, but it would actually be a useful feature, rather than something that looks like it's here to take up space.
2: Shared tasks. I personally can't think of a time when I would want this feature, but that could be because of the nature of my relationship. I'm sure couples who spend a lot of time together may think of things they must not forget to do together. But how about giving the task list more freedom? A to-do list for couples may be fun if there's a specific context ("these are all the movies we must watch together!"), but in general, to-do lists make tasks seem like chores. If there was something like a board where the couple could trade notes, to-do lists, reminders, or non-conversational messages, would that be more readily used?
3: Moments. This is an example of a feature that has a lot of potential, but kind of fell short of expectations. Currently, Moments is simply a glorified photo gallery. It compiles all the photos and drawings that my partner and I have exchanged. There is no way to add context, and there is no way to send photos from somewhere else on the web. It would be great if moments was more like a scrapbook - that is, the users could choose which photos were important enough to add to moments. They could write something about the picture to help them remember the moment in the future. It would be even nicer if the users could add memorable snippets of conversation, and be left with a digital diary of their relationship.
4: Interactivity. Pair offers two interactive activities - thumb kiss and draw together. These activities seem attractive in that they offer a way to connect that isn't through speech, pictures and video. However, these activities, too, have a big flaw: To be able to draw together or to thumb kiss, both you and your partner have to be online at the same time. Problem is, unless it's a game, people rarely stay on a phone app for a long period of time. Pair is chiefly a messaging app, and people rarely stay on a messaging app, especially if there's only one person to send a message to. They'll send their message, leave, and check back when they get a message notification. So, unless my boyfriend and I happen to check Pair at the same time, we're never going to take advantage of these features. I understand why the developers wanted thumb-kissing to be at the same time - after all, they were trying to emulate real-life kissing. However, this is just not the way mobile messaging works.
When stripped of these features, what is Pair left with? Pair becomes merely a messaging app, one that can only reach a single person. There is no reason for users to switch from texting, WhatsApp, or whatever they've been using to use Pair for the single person. In the end, without major additions to its functionality that makes couples want to stay on the app, they will revert back to whatever technology they've been using to communicate to each other.
