Years ago, when Apple launched its first iPhone, people went crazy
for touchscreen mobile phones. There was not only tapping on interface anymore
but nibbling, escalating and swiping. It was a huge hit. Touch gestures in mobile app development have become
extensive.
In the starting, there were only a few elementary movements. But,
with adding combinations like double touching, long pressing, long press
dragging etc., the era of gestures started mushrooming. New features are
continually coming but, the cynosure remained on natural behavior and
congenital workflows.
Today, in-app gestures in mobile application development are so
natural to us that we don’t even consider it unique. Most of the mobile phone
users may not know a single gesture by name, but they spend most of the time in
figuring out and learning them.
What Kind of Touch Gestures Are There?
There are various gestures in all shapes and sizes are listed in
the graphic below. All these gestures are already very common because all
mobile phone users are used to them. All these touch gestures are used across
all the mobile application platforms, so the user becomes habitual with this
experience and can control gestural.
Designing touch gestures for applications is not an easy task, it
requires strong planning, excellent ecosystem, appealing designs, and
conceptual foundation. Lacking any of these elements may risk the value and ROI
of the finished product.
It is very important for mobile app developers to keep all
these gestures within the reach of user’s thumb as most of the mobile phone
users use the thumb for navigation. So, all the app functionalities need to be
concentrated.
Importance of Touch Gestures over the Buttons
Save Time
It saves user’s time by reducing the number of steps required to
perform a particular action. Now, in mobile phones, everything is one-touch
away. Because of smart gestures, actions including search, surf, and click, are
become easier.
Save Space
Gestures are the logical way to make your app aesthetically
pleasing and clear. Navigation through touch gestures removes unnecessary icons
and numerical buttons on the screen that provides breathing space to an app
without creating a mess. Touch gestures also provide more space for valuable
content and let the user do a valuable task without any distractions.
Engaging
Gesture increase engagement and provide tactile experience, which
is really enjoyable. It also makes interaction with content more natural and
spontaneous and also makes us believe that we are interacting with something
tangible. Engaging interaction can give users a sense of accomplishment that
the reason we become more immersed in this experience.
Give Your Users Clues
While designing a mobile application always keep in mind the needs
of your target audience. During mobile application development, give your users
clues about the availability of gesture and guide them about the gestures step
by step. Start by showing only the most relevant options for interactions.
There are various visual interaction design techniques are available to
increase user experience.
Role of animation in gesture-based mobile app development
Gestures are closely linked to animations in mobile application development as it
plays an important role in nurturing an illusion of interactivity for app
users. When animation paired with Gestures, it makes the brain believe that it’s interacting with
touchable objects and also provides visual feedback to the user. Without
animations, users wouldn’t get the idea of successfully completed a gestural
action.
Now in every innovative gestural interaction, animation has become
standard. It feels so smooth and spontaneous that countless list-based
applications adopted this gesture simply by convention.
Things you should take into consideration before designing
a gesture-based interface
Increased User Effort
Most of the gestures are difficult to learn or remember. Let’s
take an example, in most mobile apps a single finger gesture means one thing,
the same gesture with two fingers means another, and yet another with three or
four.
Lack of Feedback
Most of the gestures do not leave any record behind their path,
which means if one makes a gesture and gets a wrong response, there is no
information available to help understand why this happened.
Lack of flexibility
Most of the gestures are not consistent across mobile apps yet and
are not always flexible for users. Even a simple gesture of swiping over an
email item work differently in various mail apps.
For example, in Apple Mail, for deleting an unread item user
should swipe left and in Gmail, swiping to the left marks an email as unread.
Conclusion
The gesture-based user interface has solid possibilities to
enhance the user experience, they are also a powerful mode of interaction.
Today designing a mobile app without gestures may cause a downfall for you. So
for the app success, design a meaningful gesture and tie it to an action and
allow the gesture to linked with the particular action.
Before integrating mobile app gestures, mobile app developers need to make
sure about the proper visual analysis tools, like touch heat maps, tracking,
optimization, and troubleshoot these user actions. Never forget “Seeing is
believing” so make your mobile app appealing as well as seamless to use.
Consagous specialize in business-centric mobile app development
solutions. Please contact us at +1 (512) 333-1321 Or email us at projects@consagous.com or
get a free quote HERE
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