Scrabble schmabble: Just bad app design!

I love scrabble. I hate Scrabble. I started playing Scrabulous on Facebook, what?, three years ago? Then Hasbro/Mattel stepped in and objected to Scrabulous because it was too close to their board game, Scrabble, to which they owned (jointly, through different licensing arrangements) indisputable rights to market and distribute (between them worldwide). Scrabulous was changed to be Lexulous and the board was changed to different colors, different size and different letter distribution and points. But I kept playing it with my friends and still do.

Isn't this an engaging screen?

One of those friends, however, decided to move on to the licensed and approved Scrabble app on the iPad. I followed her about a month ago. That’s what leads to me hate Scrabble.

The Scrabble app annoys the heck out of me. It logs me out when I haven’t been playing for X minutes. No other app I know that uses FB to log in ever logs me out and forces me to re-login. The only other apps that force a log-out are my banking apps in my Web browser and they still let me decide how long before they log me out! But I’m talking Scrabble, not my money.

Scrabble constantly puts up inane dialog boxes, like “Click Next to take your turn”, “Your session has expired. Please login again in order to play online”, “Joining SCRABBLE game XYZ”, “Retrieving Facebook Information” “Retrieving Facebook My Games list.”. This is why you have a computer — it’s smart enough to know that you are you and not force you to click dialog boxes to confirm what it already knows! For instance, having just logged me in, it knows that I am the next user should logically just let me play without clicking a dialog box.

This app is an icon of bad app design. That’s just the iPad app. When I tried to use Scrabble on my iPhone, it didn’t recognize that I already have the iPad version. Instead, I had to buy the Scrabble app as a different product. After I paid an additional $1.99, the iPhone Scrabble does NOT use FB to log in. Instead, it required me to create a new account with a user name and password. But with a different account I can’t play in the same games as on the iPad, which used Facebook to log in. WTF?! Same game, same name, different UX, more money. My analysis? This game is produced by an outsourced developer for Hasbro. Between the developer and Hasbro, is there anyone that actually knows and understands that an IOS app is different than a Web app, has a different user experience and needs to be designed differently? Or this is just testament to how big, old media companies make their users lives more painful by being clueless.

Excuse me, I see that it’s my move in Lexulous. Too bad the iPad doesn’t support Flash, because then I wouldn’t have to use a stupid and badly designed but legal app on my iPad to get my addiction to Scrabble fed.