2013 mobile App design 13 items of attention Detail summary _android

Guide : In the past year, mobile into the mainstream also let a lot of mobile applications springing up, in many developers profit from the competition also intensified, how can we ensure that they remain invincible? The user is God and everything has to be said from the application.
What do you want to say about the past 2012? Mobile development in the 2012 is enough to use the "surging, fast-changing" to describe, mobile application market booming also let a lot of mobile application developers profit bandits, but also the emergence of many excellent application design, with the user's rising demand for quality, App interface design has also been upgraded to a new level. Mobile applications to achieve a successful transformation from the Internet to mobile devices, from the user point of view, the vision, style, operation, architecture, content and other aspects of the design of mining, so as to create the most exquisite application. To this end, the famous foreign application designer Gannon Burgett combined with his actual combat experience summed up the 2013 years of app design development 13 trends.

1. Flat Design
Flat design is essentially just one of the design aesthetics, with the same visual effects as antique, high light and metal texture. In the past 2012, both in terms of interface design and the overall app design, flat design is becoming popular, which seems to be the most significant trend in 2013.

Figure: A typical skeumorphism style

In today's app design world, it's natural to say that flat design is one of the typical Apple style--skeumorphism. What is skeumorphism? According to Wikipedia, skeumorphism refers to the design elements of a product that mimic the design elements of an original product, except that the design element has a function in the original product, but only a decoration in the copycat. Even though Steve Jobs was very keen on skeumorphism design style, the visual rendering of physical objects was nothing more than a painted visual masturbation. In the user experience of the supremacy of the app design field, misuse of forms of mimicry is bound to cause confusion to users, which is why the flagship minimalist flat design style will be popular one of the reasons.

Flat design has a long history, the use of flat design developers are not a few, but for most developers, flat will not be the preferred design, in 2012, Microsoft Windows 8, the promotion of flat design into a new realm.

Figure: Windows 8

Windows 8 is a brand new system that Microsoft has built around the flattened UI, most of it revolves around the Windows UI (that is, the previous Metro UI) and real-time tiles (live Tiles). Booting through the Xbox Control Panel and then loading the system around its flattened design, although Windows 8 cannot be said to be perfect, it is undeniable that the Windows UI, which is the main flattened design interface, has conquered the world completely.

Figure: Rise

This is the use of flat design in the interface design, that in the application? The most sufficient application of flat design is an alarm clock application called rise. Rise's entire UI design does not use any form of three-dimensional elements, the interface is very refreshing from beginning to the beginning. When you use the gradient set in your application to set the alarm, you will get a perfect alarm clock. Of course, a practical alarm clock is not too esoteric, and rise's navigation and UX strongly demonstrate the benefits of flat design, making one app simpler and visually appealing.

Flat design is not applicable to all applications, regardless of style, the interface form depends on its actual function, but undeniably, if you want to make the application of the UI breakthrough, for designers and developers, flat design is the best way.

2. Fewer buttons, more gestures

For application design, if you want the overall interface beautiful and generous, flat design is certainly a good way, but in addition, one of the indispensable is to do subtraction for the button, both to reduce the necessary number of traditional navigation elements, but also to help avoid interface disorder.

Figure: Fewer buttons

This is a good example of Google Maps, whether it is flat design or for the button to do subtraction, are impeccable. Of course, not everyone thinks that gestures are the best choice in application design, and with the popularity of flat design, what can be more suitable for your application than gestures?
Figure: More gestures

3. Understandable auxiliary animation

When you don't have a button or an icon that you can choose from, you may be overwhelmed by how you can guarantee an effect, and understandable auxiliary animation is definitely a strategic move. While it's not uncommon to use it in today's applications, it's undeniable that a little animation is definitely the best way to help a user perform a task.

The best example I've found so far is the camera icon on the iOS lock screen. Many users who are unfamiliar with iOS may rely more on screen scrolling. There's nothing else to do, just a little bounce-and-go action, and it's a good way for people who don't know how to use it properly to give visual reminders and hints that users can quickly become familiar with.

By providing some small animations as an aid, you can guide people around the UI without disrupting it because of the buttons, which is one of the smallest and most prominent visual cues to weigh.

In addition to assistance, there is another very effective way to animate and transition effects, namely, micro-flow. The user experience of the application many times the animation also animation, if the user for the application design layout and so feel natural comfort, even if there are small flaws will make the user experience better and more valuable.

4. Left navigation menu

Looking back over 2012 years of app design, most apps will choose to use the left-hand navigation menu when it comes to menu design, but I think it's going to be more common in 2013 years. Admittedly, the left-hand navigation menu is really a very simple and surprisingly effective way to display the list of options actions.

Map: The left navigation menu of MySpace

A good example of this is Marco Arment's Magazine app, and if you hold down the menu button for 3 seconds, the menu will appear, which is one of the best ways to display it in commercialization. So as a visual expression, the left navigation menu will certainly be more prevalent in the future.

5. More native

The application categories have been fairly consistent over the past few years, but as the native application platform shrinks, it seems to prove that native-based applications often seem to be the most appropriate choice compared to web apps.
Especially in this year HTML5 voice in the industry is very loud, a lot of media began to hype this thing. There is a lot of misrepresentation and distortion in the reports. Advantages and disadvantages of HTML5 and native I'm not doing too much analysis here. You know, at the time of last summer, there were only about three people inside Facebook who were doing Android. Facebook's client development team is growing as good software engineers continue to join. Now it has enough manpower to use native to implement the functionality of the previous HTML. At the same time, native also has more room for optimization in terms of performance. It is not surprising that Facebook has launched a purely native version of client applications for the user experience.

6. Responsive Web Design

Some might say that since more native is a trend, why do we have a "responsive web Design"? In 2013 years, there are two obvious ways for designers, one is native and the other is web. As an application developer, sometimes a proprietary platform is not the best way to get a wider audience. Figure: Quartz

In this respect, quartz is enough to explain everything. Quartz is not native, and far from native, but its design feels quite responsive, which makes it almost effortless to work on every device. I can open it in the same way on my iphone, imac, and Surface tablet computer, and I'm sure I can render the same information in a very beautiful way.

In the past year, response design is being used by more and more developers to render web-based content. In this world, it is not possible to design specifically for each device, so responsive web design has proven to be the best choice for allowing content to be cross-platform but consistent.

7. Larger page width

This trend is actually the opposite of what I've seen recently, at present, many sites take a narrower width, of course, we can not completely negate this, but imagine, when you design a width of 700px response page, if you use the "Retina" screen or 27-inch imac view, That site page is bound to leave too much space.

Especially for visual media, the text display can be more prominent by providing a larger page width. So why not use a larger page width? Not only does it ensure that web space resources are not wasted, but it also provides a better user experience.

8. Larger fonts

At present, the common text standard font of the network is 12-14px, but now more and more websites tend to use the larger font of 16-18px in the text font.

Image: Larger font

At present, the response web design is an unusual feature of the layout of the page content in the readability of a very important role. When viewed on mobile devices such as the iphone, 18px fonts are much easier to read than 12px text. Of course, this isn't all of the text, and if a long article uses such a large font, it's counterproductive, especially if you're using a bigger but less pixel screen view.

9. Large search box

Search is playing a more and more important role in both social networks and applications. In this respect, designer Scott's Noun project and the brand new MySpace (Click to view video demo) make full use of the advantages of the big search box, and in the past year, Google search for the first time to achieve stability, I believe this is because there are more proprietary forms of search, rather than a method that has been overly popularized.
Diagram: The Noun Project

Although this does not refer to large field searches, the famous social application path makes a great effort to make the unique search function tailored to their services, and it also expects the larger search box to be used more and more, thus becoming an application trend.

Figure: Path

10. Use of more moving graphics material

GIF files now seem to be widely used on the web, and the next step is how to apply them to the application design. The current standard is a PNG file, and GIF allows you to add or move specific elements in a less-than-code way.
Image: GIF Not the same feeling (click on the picture to see the effect)

Of course, not all designers would agree, because many times GIF files can be a bit weird on mobile devices, but there is no doubt that the use of GIF files will become more common in application design, and there will be more attempts in 2013.

11. humanized Design

It is more of a design concept than a trend. We often get caught up in looking at every detail of the dead end, will regret doing wrong, but we can not go back, the only thing to do is to think about why we are wrong? So before and after the design, we must understand a problem, that is why this design?

For good design, people flock to, will feel that this design is very good value, but in the application design how to maintain the application of extraordinary value, but also have a very humane experience, will design and application itself into a higher level? Figure: The main humanity of the Magazine

humanized design is bound to have a wider development this year, as we have come to understand the authenticity of the devices and use them every day. Therefore, the humanization should be the designer design webpage and the application goal, we need not only is the extremely good user experience, but also has the whole creation idea and how through creation realizes it.

As a very important technical detail, its design experience will have a very important impact on human society. After all, we're not producing products, we're just designing, and we've been able to design for the betterment of the world. No matter how people use their daily equipment, you can change in a very important way, and you will have an impact on their overall productivity and mood. If good design does not need to simplify or improve life, it is fundamentally meaningless.

12. Less Corny colors

One thing that has been stagnant in the design world is the innovation of color. My desktop app 60% uses one color-blue, and I understand why I use blue as the primary hue, but on the other hand, in the past decade we have many icons in the App Store to show apps, but only a blue color dominates the half.

Figure: Applied color ratios on iOS

This is not just an icon problem. Many applications and Web sites are so heavily used in blue. Color learning is very interesting, so we need to get out of the narrow blue space and change it. Of course, not every color can be used, but try to always be true, maybe you will find your own application of style.

13. Vector Adaptive

With good tools in hand, designer's work becomes more convenient. Perhaps for many designers, sketch is the best tool. For different screen design to develop different application interface is not simple and impossible, if you want to achieve "one design, anywhere", you must carry out a more streamlined workflow, of course, vector adaptive is essential.

Figure: Sketch Design

Conclusion

For all the designers and developers, 2013 can be called a very good year, as the mobile gradually become mainstream, developers and designers have more opportunities to show themselves, but also through the application of profit, of course, no one can pat chest guarantee win, because whenever the fate of the total, But as long as the people of the trend of the app design trends to understand and make use of, I believe in the future of the outstanding application of love will be endless.