There is a very basic law of application development, when you are developing an application for a very specific organization, religious entity, or community, you need to adhere the complete standard of that target entity. For instance, in Islam there are five pillars: 1) Shahada 2) Salat 3)Sawm (Fasting, Rooza) 4) Zakāt 5) Hajj, now when you are developing an application on Mobile or Desktop to facilitate the strict-code of ritual your MUST include all the detail, either it is used by some some user or not. From User Experience point of view is utmost necessary to adhere exactly what the specific culture, religion or community is expecting, we call this process a “holistic approach thinking”.

Now lets explore the iPray App on iOS devices. It facilitate the notification of the “Prayer” timings on your phone, very neat application, and very easy to adjust the timing according to the School of Thoughts followed among Muslims. It pops-up the notification PLUS it will play Prayer Call for 30 seconds or less (iOS limitation, you cannot play audio more than 30 seconds during alert/notification). However, if you keep this app open, and then there is a Prayer Time, it will play full Prayer Call. You may ask where is the issue?

Well, as I said earlier when developing the religious, community-specific, culture specific application the approach should be holistic, and should not leave the “important” part out of the application, as user can see it as a whole-package, instead of misleading, incomplete or deceptive presentation of their specific need (in our case religious need). So the issue is simple, let me explain the issue first.

When you are in the app, and leave it open and let your iOS Device goes to sleep and then the prayer time arrives, this iPray app will play the full prayer call. However what I noticed that the “Fajar” prayer call played, but it is not the actual “Fajar” Prayer Call. Here is the Regular Prayer Call all Muslim around the world can recognize it, and this is the Fajar Prayer Call. Hear the difference. Let me put it for you in words here, in Fajar Prayer Call there is a very specific sentence “Salat is better than the sleep”. Pretty obvious as you can say? Right? NO the iPray Developers never consider this thing in this app. My friends tweeted to them, I wrote a review to them, no action taken from them.

Solution? Very simple, add the Fajar Prayer Audio file in to the app, and just like user can select different Regular Prayer Call for other Prayer Timings, they can pick Fajar Prayer Call for Fajar Notification, and they can make the Fajar Prayer Audio file as a default selection or ONLY selection in their app. This is how you have to develop the “trust-worthy” app.

Now lets see if it is implemented anywhere else? Well these days I am using Windows Phone 7 (HTC HD7 to be specific). Yes, there is an app, name ” Muslim Prayer Times“. This app DOES have the Fajar Prayer Call, see it is not that difficult to implement. I am getting the notification in same manner as I can get it in iPhone, if it is not open, then only notification appears on my Windows Phone 7 screen, however if I keep my App open and phone goes in to the sleep mode, it does play the Fajar Prayer Call or Regular Prayer Call depends what time is it.

And a last note, do not come to me by saying “Oh well, it is just a small thing they missed”, my answer will be same as above when implementing some feature that facilitate the strict code of implementation of the required action then it should be complete, and it won’t consider as a “pure” implementation. Excuse me, but here is what my analogy is: IF you put a very tiny bit of piss in the “pure organic 1 gallon of milk” it won’t be considered as “pure”.

If you find this article helpful, please spread around and let your friend know about the iPray, so they can either take off there app down OR rectify the issue.