Plume 3

I wrote this review on the Android Market, but the service mangles all formatting so comments end up looking like crap.

I’m sorry to say that the interface changes implemented for 3.00 changed the app for the worse, just by removing two key pieces of functionality:

“Go to top” option.

“Pull to Tweet.”

Between those two, your actions will be that much slower. Gone is the ability to begin a tweet, pull up to review your timeline, then pull down again to finish it. Looking through old tweets and want to get back to the top? Too bad, you’ll have to flick through all those tweets in between.

Interface now has a “Home” screen, allowing access to search, favorites, trends, lists and “columns”, headers for which are always displayed. From here you may setup which columns you want to see on the interface, and in which order. Sadly, the “home” screen itself cannot be removed. In previous versions the “home” column was the timeline, but apparently users cannot figure that out. This all makes for additional wasted screen space.

This new version feels, all in all, made by developers who firmly believe their users are idiots who need to be hand-held to use the app. You are better off staying with the last version of Plume 2.x, at least until that basic functionality is re-implemented.

Emphasis mine.

It looks to me that in their rush to make the app compatible with Android 4.0, the developers threw aside some of the things that made their app unique. These things had been there since the first versions of the app, so it makes you wonder if the Google UI guidelines were written with an “all our users are idiots” mentality.

These changes to the app made a lot of the things that were understood implicitly about functionality to be displayed explicitly. Attempting a better User Interface made for a poorer User Experience.

When it comes down to it, another case of the UserFriendly Police beating down a good app.

original post