I have been using iPhone since the first one came out. I have been following cricket since I can remember. Naturally when I got my iPhone I was excited to follow my cricket from anywhere, anytime. Cricinfo has been the leader (and the only website) when it comes to cricket coverage. They simply have the best coverage, not necessarily the best UI though.

I have written before about their website redesign. So I won’t talk about that today. Although, there is so much that they can be doing with their website to make it more user friendly.

Today, I am going to be talking about their iPhone application. It is so disappointing that it made me browse to their actual website more frequently via my iPhone than to use their mobile application.

So those of you who haven’t used their iPhone application, I highly recommend you to give it a try before further reading this review.

Initial thoughts:

The application is very rough. It is not completely a native application. The only native component is the tabbar at the bottom and the actual content is rendered inside a UIWebView. My guess is that this application is built using PhoneGap or some similar technology. Nothing wrong with using such technologies but when the UI doesn’t follow the convention it creates all sort of issues.

The Main Screen:

The main screen contains three different sections: Summary, Current & Recent Matches and Upcoming Games. The idea is well thought out at least in a sense that it gives me a snapshot view of what’s going on. When you tap on a game it has two reactions: 1) dispatch a request and 2) flip the current view. This flip is not so user friendly. The reason being that it is not a “native” animation, it is a webkit enabled animation which isn’t that smooth.

Also the tap has no response, the usual tableview on iPhone has a “blue” or some sort of background feedback that a touch has been detected, which doesn’t happen here.

The tabs at the bottom react very differently as well. When you tap on a tab it first shows a loading image and then shows the actual view. This should be the other way around. First show the view and then load the data.

Match Details Screen:

Once you tap on a certain game you are then presented with a mini-match detail screen. This screen has a sort of tabular layout where information such as score, last 12 balls, run-rate and a small quick highlight from the game is present. There are also two large buttons for “Scorecard” and “Ball-By-Ball” view of the game. This is perhaps the only sane UI in the whole application. One thing that bothered me a lot was the “back” and “refresh” buttons at the top. Those were trying to simulate “UINavigationBar” but really when you scroll down you loose them from the screen and every time you have to refresh you have to scroll up. Again this is a restriction due to the “design” of the application.

Scorecard:

A very ordinary looking scorecard. One of the key vital information missing from this screen is the “balls faced” by the batsman. Seriously, that is so needed here. But I guess Cricinfo doesn’ t think that’s important information. Also, the tabs don’t really look like tabs at the top.

The refresh and back buttons are still having the same issue.

Ball-by-Ball:

This view really lacks the visuals that would make it much more exciting and pleasure to use. It is very plain and simple and missing a lot of key elements. While reading the ball-by-ball commentary, if you want to check on current batsman’s score, you have to actually go back one screen and then come back. Why can’t the “Match detail” view and this view be merged somehow?

There is a lot of room for improvement here.

While Cricinfo does a decent job of covering cricket on their site, their mobile application can certainly use a complete redesign. There have been some major bug fixes in recent updates. Most notable bug was the inability to view more than two innings of scorecard. So during the test match the scorecard view was only showing the first inning scores for both teams.

Another short coming is the inability to distinguish the follow-on of a team and no push notifications (not that big of a deal).

So what is good or bad about the new design?

The Good:

1. Improved navigation bar. The top navigation bar is a bit of a relief to find your way around cricinfo. Previously, these options were buried under a pile of other useless stuff, making it hard to use the website to the fullest.

2. News and video highlights. The core of the site is the instant news about the cricketing world, and they have done an excellent job in highlighting that part of the website. Making it easy to gaze over the latest news and consume it.

3. Scores. A bit mroe detailed score right on the right-hand panel. Makes my life much much easier.

4. Scorecard. Beter colors and layout. The ugly toolbar on the left is gone (woho!) and it gives the actual scorecard a bit more breathing room.

The Bad:

1. Hard to focus on certain portions of the website. I think the background gradient distracts the reader.  A boxed container to overlay the gradient would have helped a lot.

2. Scorecard. The tabbed navigation is just over used. Everything is crammed on a single page and tabs are used to organize them. Tabs within a tab ain’t good for usability. Another nifty idea, gone wrong is the commentary along with the batsmen dismissal. I think this is a neat feature but gone wrong. So far, for me, in a live game this info is always wrong.

Overall:

I think this is a positive step towards a nice redesign. I am sure they will work on some of the quirks in coming weeks and fix it up.