The Journey Planner series - Next Bus London
Sunday, January 22, 2012 After a couple of weeks of testing is now time to return with a post for the London Journey Planner series. If you missed the introduction and the review for Bus Checker, my goal is to complete a guide with the iPhone apps that use the live departure feed of Transport for London - basically, testing and reviewing the apps that tell you when a bus arrives to your stop.
In the second episode of this guide I'll have a look at Next Bus London [iTunes Link] by Jeevan Takhar. I've you've been searching the App Store for a bus tracker app, I'm pretty sure you've spotted this icon before. I'm not a fan of text used in icons, but in this occasion, the image of the front of a double-decker bus and the words "next bus" tell you what this is all about without strange metaphors and interpretations of TfL's official logos. This is at least is a good start.
The simplicity continues the first time you launch the app: you'll notice the very simple UI without any custom element except the subtle transparency on the bottom bar. In fact everything looks minimalist, neat and tidy. The default view is a map with your current location and a number of standard red pins to indicate the stops nearby. Once you tap on them, the actual letter that identifies the stop is displayed along with the direction of the traffic and the lines that stop there.
Up to here, this is a very conventional behaviour. Tapping on the station details gives you a list view with the departures and the schedules for every day of the week with their expected frequencies - the sort of thing you see on the posters.
