18 Great Mobile Experiences That Will Restore Your Faith In Technology

Creating a quality mobile experience goes far beyond a pretty screen and a nice interface. A lot of people confuse user experience with the user interface, but a great mobile experience is much more than just the app itself. The best experiences allow people a simple way to do something complicated.

1. The Perfect Lager Project

Australia’s first crowd-brewed beer. Take a picture of the beer you’re drinking, then rate it. The numbers were then crunched and used to brew the perfect Australian beer. (Or at least an average of everybody’s perfect beer.)

2. Uber

You know if the taxi operators are pissed, Uber must be on to something hot. Redefining transportation.

3. Hotel Tonight

A very cool app that lets you book an inexpensive hotel at the last minute. Tonight, in fact.

4. Amazon Flow

A new part of the Amazon app – point your phone’s camera at an object and Amazon will find it for you, with no need to scan a barcode.

5. Ring

A wearable ring to write text in the air, control appliances, even pay bills, all with a flick of a mobile-enabled finger.

6. Bus O’Clock

A live bus departures app for Londoners with iPhones. A cool way of presenting useful, up-to-the-minute data.

7. Lightt

Capture, personalize, and share your video on the fly. Not limited to six seconds, and all your videos automatically come together in a seamless stream. You can even combine your friends' videos to create a unified stream.

8. Waze

Bringing real-time, crowd-sourced traffic alerts to the masses. Makes navigation a snap and can help you avoid traffic jams.

9. Songza

Working? Relaxing? At the gym? Songza plays you the right music at the right time.

10. Best Parking

BestParking is a parking search engine that steers you to the cheapest and closest parking garages and lots in North America. Save hundreds of dollars, if you're the sort that parks in garages.

11. Epicurious

Search recipes in the palm of your hand, and get shopping lists at the market. The iPad version offers a full-screen cookbook layout.

12. The Over 40 App

Makes it easier to read menus and on other things in dark restaurants using the phone's built-in flash to light up the text and the camera to magnify it. Don't laugh -- your time will come.

13. Kayak

The whole world probably knows about this app already, but greatness still deserves to be recognized. Find the right flight, the perfect hotel, and even manage your itinerary or track your flight status.

14. MLB.com AtBat

The official app of Major League Baseball offers live baseball — every pitch from every at bat. It integrates video, audio, and data feeds in a way that enhances the experience of baseball, at the ballpark, at home, or on the go.

15. Dark Sky

It predicts when it will rain or snow — down to the minute — at your exact location, and presents it to you alongside the most beautiful weather visualizations you’ve ever seen.

16. Make.TV

MAKE TV was an integrated branded entertainment content for Sony’s “make.believe” campaign. The audience could use the smartphone app to push buttons on the machines on set during the broadcast and participate in creating a music video on live TV.

17. Hipmunk

Hipmunk shows travel search results in a unique visual format that makes it easy to see what flight or hotel is the most convenient, has the right amenities, or is the right price. The Hipmunk cross-platform search allows visitors to start a search on one platform and refer to it on another, a handy feature for a travel app.

18. Fiat Social Drive

A hands-free service that allows drivers to connect safely to social networks while driving in safe way.

For more about creating great mobile experiences, check out this video

CA Technologies / Via youtube.com

A great user experience encompasses performance, availability, up-time and, of course, compliance and security. And since the consumer is in the driver’s seat, you’ll need to find new ways to measure and continually improve their experience.