If you’re a big corporation, what do you want to accomplish with an iPhone app? Promote your brand and product, yet also give the user a reason to keep the app.
Ford pulls off this balancing act with Flex Photo Lab. If you’re not familiar with it, Flex is Ford’s sporty crossover vehicle that’s a cross between a minivan and SUV.
When you first launch the app, you have two choices: view information about the Flex or enter the Darkroom.
Let’s review the vehicle side first, where Ford included some slick options. You can read about vehicle features, view a photo gallery, view 360-degree images and locate the nearest dealer. All of these selections are skinned with the Flex branding, and the navigation between screens is easy. Unlike other vehicle promotional apps, I felt this presentation was worthy of existing as an app, as opposed to viewing a standard printed brochure.
The graphics and photos are high quality. Viewing the photo gallery, you’re able to flick through the 22 images just as if you were using the iPhone’s photo module. The 360-degree view option was fast and responsive, although the image quality was lesser than the photo gallery images.
Finally the dealer locater worked as advertised, launching in the phone’s Map mode to show nearby dealers and their addresses.
On the Darkroom side, you can take a new photo or use an existing image from your iPhone or iPod Touch and modify it with six filters, such as brightness and saturation. Once you’re done, you can save the image to your photo library.
While this is a basic image manipulation module, it does give the user a reason to keep the app while reinforcing Ford’s brand image.
