I’m glad that more developers have started applying their UI magic to apps that aren’t just weather apps or calculator apps. Seeing more apps in categories like travel, email and news that look and feel amazing is awesome. Innovation Box make really great apps. They just launched their latest app, Flight – Live Status & Weather(henceforth Flight) for iPhone and it is absolutely gorgeous. The data for flights is from FlightStats and for weather is from World Weather Online.
Flight has fluid animations and a playful feel throughout. Flight fits in the space between a professional and detailed flight tracking solution and a minimal but really well designed app that chooses form over function. On first launch, you are greeted with a really well done quick tutorial for the app. The words “WELCOME ABOARD” greet you in all caps and you swipe up to navigate. With each swipe comes another card telling you how to do various things within the app. The tutorial ends with a “Fasten your seat belt” and when you hit the “Ready to fly” button at the bottom, the plane icon takes off leaving the clouds behind. The app comes preloaded with some flights. Swiping from left to right lets you navigate between all the flights. Each flight card view has a minimal layout with just the essential data presented to you. The background is blurred and features an animation of the weather conditions for the underlined location in the flight path. The top left has the flight number and the top right displays the terminal and gate. The bottom of each flight card has a progress bar at the bottom indicating how much of the journey is over and the status of the flight. Every gesture in the app is responsive and interface elements react to even a small swipe. I love when designers pay this much attention to interactions in apps.
A more detailed information page for flights can be viewed by swiping up. The detail page has weather conditions, flight type, estimated time of journey and airline mentioned with crisp typography. The top of each flight card also has a date and time bar that indicates when a flight will arrive or depart the underlined location. Adding a flight is as simple as swiping down a flight a card. The keyboard highlights keys you can use while entering flight number or location as opposed to using a different keyboard for numbers and letters. The search can be done by flight code or by route.
Flight is a near perfect tracking app for iPhone. I love almost everything interface wise and the animations make you want to use it more. It drops below the complete solution to flight tracking with its lack of push notifications for flight alerts. I dislike the lack of export options and seeming inability to rearrange flights in the app. Barring those cons, Flight is amazing. If you care about good design and travel, Flight – Live Status & Weather deserves to be on your homescreen. It is available on the App Store for $3.99.