Crit (as in Critique) is a new iPhone and iPad app by Morpholio that allows designers, architects, photographers and other creative types to upload and markup images as a form of real-time communication.
For example, a junior photographer could upload images they just shot into the app and send them to a creative director who could then mark up the images (with finger-drawn sketches) to communicate changes that should take place in the photo.
Crit was originally a smaller, internal function of parent company Morpholio’s suite of services. This new version breaks it out into its own app and also adds much of the drawing functionality and advanced commenting features that the old version lacked.
I took a quick demo with Morpholio team members last night and, as an ex-designer, I can see some of the utility here. The UI is clean and fairly intuitive and it works as advertised. The iPad version would be most useful for sustained design critiques, but the iPhone would work in a pinch or while traveling too — it’s nice to have choices.
From a sheer productivity standpoint, scheduling meetings with busy art directors or creative directors to review design concepts can be quite difficult. A tool like this—that mobilizes that interaction—could keep projects in motion instead of stuck in limbo. You might be able to get the directional answers you need for a design project in real-time from this sort of interaction.
A stylus was helpful for doing markup, but I wonder how well complex web designs or precise blueprints or wireframes would fare in this tool.
Still, even imprecise markup couldn’t be worse than a project languishing while waiting for approvals or comments, so I think this is sort of interesting from that standpoint. A legit design markup tool.