Our favourite app this week is only really going to appeal to quite a niche market – people in London, who get the bus. Despite this, the design and functionality of the app are so clever it definitely deserves a mention as the top app this week. Called Jump, it’s for people who need to get up to date bus times, locations and destinations within the M25.
The free to download app requires access to your location settings, you don’t need to sign up for an account though, which is nice. Once you’ve walked through the quick tutorial you get straight to the map which will centre on your current location (or if you’re not in London, an area immediately outside King’s College).
Surrounding your current location is a ring with a set of pins, each one marking a bus station. Tap on the pin and you will get a pop up window detailing the name of the stop, the bus lines that run there, the time of all of the busses running there in the next 30 minutes on your currently selected line and the option to add that station to your favourites. Watch in real time as the busses approach the stop, giving you time to plan when you need to leave wherever you are to jump on that bus. A quick tap on the name of the line will pull down a screen to show you all of the stops the bus has been to and all of the stops coming up.
If you’re looking for a station that’s not immediately around you, you can select search from the tabbed navigation bar at the bottom. You can also select your favourite stations from this navigation bar, with the free app you’re only allowed two favourite stations, but you can pay an extra £1.49 to upgrade this to unlimited. With the paid for account you can also set reminders and change the colour of the navigation bar, if that’s your sort of thing.
Overall it’s a great app, both the design and functionality are great making it an invaluable tool for anyone who will be visiting or living in London. It would be good to see similar apps release for other major UK cities, although the success of Jump in London would determine this.
Tradebox Media are an award-winning software development agency based in Cardiff, UK.