Learning to Change
It's hard to open the door for change. Whether that is meeting someone new, or moving out. We all oppose change.
Unless you work in tech.
Technology is one of the few areas that completely change within a year or two, where entire companies can fall behind if they neglect to update their site, systems, or outward branding.
And it's not just companies that see this way, it's also their consumers.
People now want to have a consistent experience that feels modern, feels updated, and current, otherwise, they feel forgotten.
This was the issue plaguing EarthCam's app.
It looked like it was initially designed back in 2013 when everyone and their mother wanted to get their app online. It was imperative to have something for your phone, with it being less essential for it to work well.
Opening the app, you are greeted with an almost instantaneously antiquated feeling. With overlayed text on images with a slightly transparent black box over top for legibility, and two words that almost mean the same thing, "Featured" and "Trending".
We are also welcome to a paid upgrade on the second option, a feature that is only present on the mobile version of the app, and absent from EarthCam's website.
For most apps in this category, (EarthCam is listed in the travel category) we see apps striving to be as user-friendly as possible, as it can make or break their travel experience.
Apps like JetBlue, Expedia, and been all aim to be simple and easy to navigate, bringing you straight to what you want most in as few clicks as possible.
These apps look clean, work well, and do exactly what the users expect them to do.
EarthCam however can fall short, with too many screens offering little to no information and even just being completely blank.
By working to improve the user experience, design, and more, this app can easily become a leader in the travel category, providing useful information to the masses in an easily digestible way, that is also portable.
There are so many great directions EarthCam can go, with such a loyal fanbase already, it has the opportunity to become bigger than the sum of its parts, and use its service to create new partnerships and provide the crucial connections some need while traveling.
There is no better time than the present to begin updating our designs, and by taking the information of what has worked over time and see the ways it can be implemented for this particular service is how designers can take a good app and make it great.
I'm excited to dive deeper into what makes EarthCam special, and help take its mobile app up to the standards its users expect today.