NPR News for Android 2.0

NPR announced their new NPR News application for Android 2.0 today. Normally I wouldn't cover just any new app or feature release, but there is more of a story here than just a new mobile app. I am interested in the way they went about designing it.

Last summer they submitted designs for the new Android application to the open source community to discuss how to best move forward with designing the mobile app.

They gathered feedback from users and built in what the community said was most important, such as new player, universal navigation, as well as adding programs with live streams and the ability to favorite stations.

They are working to publishing the source code back to the community repository, keeping the project open source.

Of course this is NPR, a public entity, but their approach to mobile application design using their API is a model that can be used by other API providers.