Four text add principles for touch screen interface

A picture may contain thousands of words, but a user interface needs a concise statement to tell the user exactly what to do. So decide which text should appear and which text should be a very important part of the interface design. Here are four text-adding principles that apply to the touchscreen interface, which will certainly help improve the usability of the interface.

Original: labeling touchscreen interfaces /Author: Morgan Strauss from Guifx

Principle 1

use verbs to describe what a button is for.
Users may be confused and increase the cost of learning if they are not described directly by verbs. So "OK" and "Cancel" are not the best choice, and "Yes" and "No" are worse.

Principle 2

Focus the text on the first 12 characters
(Note: 12 characters are English, may be three or four words for Chinese). People always scan text when they are reading, so you can compare these two words:

"Are you going to turn off the machine and confirm?" ”
"Shutdown?" said the fan. ”

But which sentence do you read more quickly?

Principle 3

the text of the button should be placed on the button itself, not on the side.
Research shows that most touch screen users touch the bottom half of the button, so we also suggest that the text be raised in a vertical position so that the user presses the button while the text is not easily obscured by the finger.

Principle 4

reduce duplication.
If the same text repeats in a group of buttons, put the buttons in a group and use a title to simplify the text. Or, in some cases, you can remove these duplicate text directly. This helps your users quickly locate the action that he needs to take.


In fact, we cannot apply these four points forever, but we can use them flexibly in the design of the interface.