Archive for the ‘ux’ tag
Maximizing Responsiveness
During the beta testing of Gratuitous, nearly all of the testers reported problems with the responsiveness of the app. This included anything from difficulty registering a touch to sluggish UI elements. How many apps have you seen that use the stock info (i) button where, try as you might, it takes a miracle just to register a touch on that button? Or, apps that use the default slider control and its difficult to control blue dot?
If a user feels your app isn’t responsive, they’re not going to use it. Here are a few lessons we learned during the development of Gratuitous that maximized the responsiveness of the app.
Don’t rely on the iPhone Simulator for usability testing
Within the first minute of testing Gratuitous on an actual iPhone, we quickly realized fields or buttons that we had no problem accessing in the Simulator, were now difficult using our fingers. The mouse is a far more precise input trigger than your finger and can hide difficult to register hit areas. This led us to the next lesson…
Don’t make touchable UI elements too small
The smaller the UI element, the smaller the hit area needed to touch the element. Sorry guys, in this case bigger is definitely better.
Don’t make touchable UI elements too close together
Bunching up touchable UI elements just increases the risk that the user will accidentally touch a different element than they were intending. When at all possible, give touchable elements their distance.
Provide a visual indication that the touch was registered
When the user touches an object, let them know their action was received via some sort of visual indication. Take a look at Apple’s Calculator app, the behavior of the keyboard, or when you launch an app from your device. By following Apple’s lead and providing a visual indication, your app will feel more tactile and responsive.
Beta test your app using someone who has never used a touch screen input device
We had a few people who had never used a touch device take the app for a spin. Their input was great as it provided us a way to see our user interface through the eyes of someone who didn’t know what they could or couldn’t do (“I can touch that?”).
UX on a touch interface mobile device is different than traditional computer software. Developers, we’d love to hear what you’ve learned in the course of developing your apps.
