REVIEW: USA Today Election seems insufficient for the hardcore

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly feature, Yay or Nay. Every week we’ll review a new wireless application or service from the user’s point of view, with the goal of highlighting what works and what doesn’t. If you wish to submit your application or service for review, please contact us at rcrwebhelp@crain.com.
Application: USA Today Election 2008
Running on: LG VX 8300 on Verizon Wireless’ network
Yay: A simple, easy-to-navigate user interface that delivers quick access to up-to-the-minute news and other information regarding the presidential campaign.
Nay: The lightweight app has all the graphic appeal of a first-generation game for the Commodore 64, and despite being an earnest effort in terms of content, it’s unlikely to deliver any new information to hardcore followers of politics – you know, the kind of people it seems designed for. Oh, and why do I want to pay $5 to access stuff I can easily find on the Internet free?
We say: USA Today Election 2008 is a great concept plagued by mediocre execution. And while the price tag – $5 for unlimited access throughout the campaign – might have been reasonable a few months ago when the campaign was a free-for-all, it’s far too high now.
Review: In the painful world that is the wireless Web, USA Today Election 2008 seems like a natural solution. The app serves as a kind of on-device portal for political junkies, eliminating the need to fire up a mobile browser and triple-tap search times like “Obama Clinton delegates” to retrieve relevant information.
Downloading the lightweight app from Verizon’s Get It Now deck couldn’t be easier or quicker, and users are quickly presented with a clean – if surprisingly primitive – interface. Users are presented with a menu of a half-dozen or so options including headlines, voting calendar, the candidates, a “candidate game” and polls.
And much of the content is both helpful and efficiently presented. “Headlines” presents a (more or less) chronological list of recent stories from the past few days, including several that were posted just minutes before we checked in. Clicking on a story initiates a cool, movie-like transition, where one screen slides away to reveal another, and the full, scrollable story is presented with a photo. But while users don’t have to drill down multiple layers to access full-length stories, the scrolling – which jumped almost an entire screen’s worth of text – was tough to follow, forcing us to focus on a single word, scroll down, then find that word at the top of the screen and continue reading.
The “results” category seemed dated, offering the results of state primaries and caucuses, and an informative (if not eye-catching) calendar featured events such as the upcoming Democratic and Republican national conventions. “Polls” was especially lame: It included information on only one, five-question poll, and – even worse – encouraged users to participate in a single-question poll asking which of five characteristics was the most important in a new president. Ugh.
The game wasn’t much better, allowing users to answer twelve questions to determine which candidate is more aligned with their views. Finishing the survey presented no analyses or depth, revealing only images of the two men with a check mark next to the more suitable politician.
Candidate profiles were more helpful, however. Users could access a reasonable amount of information about both Barack Obama and John McCain including their profiles, a personal/professional timeline, images and headlines (again). And examining their stands on six specific issues revealed the most enlightening information the app had to offer. Not only were the candidates’ positions outlined, the app gave historical information, putting their past quotes into context and allowing users to see how positions might have evolved. “I don’t oppose all wars,” the app quotes Obama as saying in 2002, when he was an Illinois state senator. “What I am opposed to is a dumb war.”
Even that kind of information seems insufficient, though, in a premium mobile app that seems targeted to hardcore followers of politics. Users inclined to purchase the offering probably know most of the content already, and those who don’t would be far better served by poking around the Internet to get up to speed. USA Today Election 2008 is appealing, and at a one-time price tag of $5, consumers who download the application won’t get soaked. But they may not buy another mobile download for quite a while, either.