Xing - How not to do a iPhone web application
Facebook launched their iPhone web application, Pownce does too, and LinkedIn… Xing have put their 2 cents on that table too… nobody cares, why?
Just because Xing is just other clone of a successful web site: LinkedIn, but that is part of other story. Let’s get in details with our hands on the Xing web application for the iPhone.
With many other iPhone apps around is easy fall in the same UI/UX details like LinkedIn does with theirs (is just like Facebook, but other branding, colors, etc.) but no, Xing seems, this time, not willing to do more copycats. But the attempt to make something different just fail at the design and user experience. They have a great documentation with all stuff clearly explained at apple web site, also they can look how is the user experience with the device… and… still… they are doing it wrong.
How does it fail
The first thing noticed when you head to xing.com with Safari on board of the iPhone is a logging page, right, I know what’s Xing if I get there with my iPhone, so let’s move on… logged in… go to other page in safari and you are automatically logged out… hmm… they really don’t realize how hard is to type in a mobile device.
Once in, you get to your feeds page… but you can’t see any difference in the info text and the actual links or actions, and you have to make your way in the app in a delicious trial/error/back/reload manner.
At this time when you spend some goods minutes (and expensive data bytes) you learn how to get what you want from the site… but wait… What you can do inside? Not much… only read, answer and write mails from your contacts on the site.
The AJAX animations and pretended interactivity just froze on the middle of loading and others stuff I really don’t have the time to mention. Just take a look to the screen shots.
Finally
Xing application on the iPhone sucks! I am not fan of web applications on the iPhone (just Pownce make me feel better here) but they are 100s to look at, hope next time they do better. Why? Cause I am a paid user of Xing (try to sign up a German into LinkedIn and you will know what I mean) and after all, I live in Germany.
