Ushahidi iPhone App

  • Wednesday, August 11, 2010
  • One of the first tasks as Ushahidi's Mobile Project Manager, is to deliver the much-anticipated Ushahidi iPhone app. We've had an iPhone app in the works for the past year, however a lot has changed since we first envisioned the app. For example, background processing is now available on the iPhone 4.0, and the iPad now offers a much larger screen real estate.

    So if we built the app from the ground up, what would it look like? How could we design the app to be as simple as possible, and yet still familiar to the user?

    After some discussion about the current iPhone app prototype, I've realized the desired Ushahidi app functionality mirrors that of the current Apple Mail app.

    Apple Mail Ushahidi App
    Allows you to access multiple inboxes Should allow you to access any of the Ushahidi deployments
    Selecting an inbox will display the email for that account Selecting an Ushahidi instance should display the list of reports
    Selecting an email displays the full details Selecting an incident should display the full report details
    You can forward an email to your friends You should be able to share an incident with friends via Email, Facebook or Twitter
    A new email is created via a modal dialog You should be able to create new report in the same famous

    So, taking those points into consideration, I created a new iPhone and iPad project using the Apple Mail app as a model. Below is a Prezi demonstrating the proposed application flow:



    This is the first attempt at re-thinking the Ushahidi app, so your feedback is always welcome. You can view the current Ushahidi iPhone code at: http://github.com/ushahidi/Ushahidi_iPhone

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