NeuBible: Design Explosions #3
Hullo! Design Explosions is a series by Jon Bell. Issue #1 compared Apple Maps and Google Maps, issue #2 went deep on the PBS Kids design, and today we’ll be discussing NeuBible. We’re not religious, but we love to learn from well-designed apps. NeuBible definitely fits the bill.
If you’re new to Design Explosions, here’s the gist: Design Explosions tries to do design critique in a polite and gracious way. Here are our guidelines while analyzing designs:
- The team that built this product is full of smart people.
- There are many things we can’t know without joining the team.
- We’re here to teach and learn, not judge.
Video!
The first two issues of Design Explosions were lengthy essays, and this one was going to be the same. But the more we explored, the more we realized text wasn’t going to do the app justice. We needed a video to show how some of the interactions and animations work, so here it is!
3 Notes
- NeuBible is gorgeous, but I skipped those details in this video. There’s not a lot I can add to the visual design discussion other than “whoa isn’t this great visual design?”
- For every 10 bold visual design directions I see, 9 (or 10) of them have untenable downsides. They load slowly, or their animations get in the way, or one of a hundred other issues appear that make them better suited as glamour screenshots in a static web portfolio than useful living, breathing, relied-on software. Yet NeuBible manages to have great visual and interaction design, all with risky but worth-it custom design patterns. NeuBible manages to pull it off, which is, as they say, about as likely as a camel walking through the eye of a needle.
- Here’s a link to NeuBible’s website . Android users, their website says “We absolutely plan to expand to Android,” so fingers crossed! You can also find them at @neubibleco .
Thanks for reading! See you next time :)