I’ve decided to review Outlook Mobile. Outlook Mobile is part of the Office 365 suite for your phone. It is an email, calendar and contact application. With it you can check your email and schedule events on your calendar while keeping track of important email contacts.

I don’t use the calendar or contacts all that much so I’ll focus on the email portion of this application.

USABILITY:

The application does what it does well. It is a Microsoft product so it is a bit over-engineered. It’s fairly easy to use once you get it up and running but the lack of standard POP3 email setup is a drawback that I find frustrating.

 

DESIGN:

The design is a blue functional area with a white background and black text. If this is changeable, I haven’t found the method to perform this. Being a mobile app, the lack of right click menu leaves something to be desired. Most everything is available through menus in the upper left corner. A medium sized plus (+) is in the lower right corner that is used for spawning a new email.

 

 

FUNCTIONALITY:

Overall functionality is very good. It does what it is designed to do and does it well. In the multiple years that I’ve been using this application; I’ve only had it crash once or twice. In each instance, a simple restart of the application was sufficient to restore to the last state. Starting a new email is straightforward and if you save common or important email addresses in the contacts, it is even easier. The calendar and contacts part of this app function in similar ways. Reading email is as simple as clicking on the email heading and it opens it up for you to read. Security is enhanced by not automatically downloading potentially malicious content such as pictures or links.

 

Improvements for Outlook Mobile App

1.      Dark Mode – having a method to switch to a dark mode would greatly improve user experience. The bright white background can be very harsh on the eyes, especially in low light situations.

2.      Accessibility Improvements – The ability to zoom in on the main screen for all 3 parts of the app would greatly enhance the user experience for those with vision issues.

3.      Font changes – the default font in outlook is something difficult to read and the ability to change it to something that works better for you would be good.