What’s New in Sofa 2.5
Sofa 2.5 is a BIG release.
2.5 addresses a lot of issues I’ve been hearing over of the past few months. Some of the issues I’ve been aware of for a while, and needed time to think them through.
I also did a ton of refactoring with how views present, dismiss, and the logic behind it. Remember, I’m a designer who’s only been writing Swift code for about a year. I still have a lot to learn :)
New Look & Feel
The first thing you’ll notice is the new design. As I spend more time with the Sofa brand, I’m getting a better idea of how to represent it. New icons, dark menus, and tactile buttons add a lot of fun and personality to the app.
I’ve also spent time refining the animations and taptic feedback. As you open menus and tap buttons, you’ll have a much more consistent experience.
Improvements for People with A Lot of Lists
When Sofa first launched, I wasn’t sure how many lists people would create. I now know that the number of lists can range from a few to over a hundred. Yes…over a hundred 😳. I panicked for a few seconds when I found this out. I had not designed Sofa to handle that scale.
Sofa 2.5 starts to address this in a small way. List images are now smaller which means you can see more lists on the screen at once, almost double. They are also now sorted alphabetically, instead of by creation date. This design works pretty well for a few and many lists. I’m working on ways to make the app scale even better for people with a lot of lists. More soon.
Quick List
Creating and saving things to lists is something people do with Sofa all the time. But sometimes I want to save something without having to organize it yet.
For example, let’s say you’re at breakfast with a friend and enjoying the conversation. You start talking about podcasts and they mention a new one they started listening to. It sounds interesting and you don’t want to forget it. Your job at this point is to remember the podcast as fast as possible. You also want to do this while disrupting the conversation as little as possible. This is where Quick List comes in.
Before, you would have to decide which list you want to save that new podcast to. As the number of lists grow, this can take longer than you’d like. Remember, you’re here to enjoy breakfast with your friend, not fiddle around on your phone.
Quick List is a place to put things you’re not ready to organize yet. You can go back to your Quick List at any time and move the podcast to a list of your choosing. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
Activity
Activity has been a part of Sofa since the the 2.0 release. Funny enough, few people knew that. The problem was how you navigated to it.
Before, there was an Activity icon in the top left of the navigation bar. Few tapped on it and there was general confusion around what activity was for.
Activity now has a prominent place on the home screen. It also has a stronger connection when you mark items as “complete”.
For people who like to track progress of books read or movies watched, this is a welcome improvement.
Recap
That’s it for Sofa 2.5. This was a tough update, but worth every minute spent on it. We have a new look & feel, Quick List and improved activity. If you already have Sofa, go download the update. If you don’t have Sofa, go get it in the App Store.