Tech Talk: A Call for Beauty in Apps

Find the Tech Talk Tuesday archive here.

Most weeks, in this space, I review apps.

But this week, I interrupt that, despite a bursting "to review" folder on my iPad, to bring this call to action to all of you who have any contact with app developers.

We need beauty in our apps.

Beauty can be defined many ways, but as an avid app user, I find myself having less and less patience for things that are not beautiful.

At the same time, I'm almost begging some of the app developers I know to use ideas I have. How do I tell them, when all I'm offering is the currency of ideas and not the currency of cash, that I don't want them to even try it if they're not going to make something beautiful?

In my attempts to better define what beauty means in the context of an app, here goes:

1. Beauty means intuitive ease of use.

AND

2. Beauty means pretty.

Yes, I said pretty.

I've had a number of apps lately--useful, easy-to-use apps--that have left me almost disgusted with their lack of pretty.

I can only compare it with my experience of walking into the Catholic Church as a non-Catholic early on an Easter morning, smelling the incense and seeing the light streaming through the stained glass windows, and feeling full.

Full of beauty. Full of pretty.

Dear app developers, you are doing a wonderful service to us. You are such an important part of the New Evangelization. Don't shortchange us--or yourself--by settling for anything less than the most beautiful.