Mobile app Design Research: Principles to be followed in gesture design

Article Description: the design and research of gesture operation used in mobile terminals are discussed.

Gesture refers to a system of language that is built up by a human language center with the position and shape of the palm and finger.

Gestures in handheld devices refer to the integration of a series of multi-touch events into a single event.

The advantages of gesture manipulation

1. Intuition-good gesture design stems from life experience, easy to understand, low learning costs.

2. Fast and efficient-reduce the operation steps, accelerate the completion of the task.

The similarities and differences of gestures on the platform

Gesture status on each platform

Universal gestures can be widely used because of the matching of mental models and the acceptability of the public to preconceived notions.

Basic general or other gestures can be developed, need to follow design principles, it should be noted that gestures are not isolated, but triggered on the object.

More complex gestures are applied to large screens and special scenes (like the ipad's three-finger drag and zoom). Most remain in the conceptual and exploratory stages.

Problems caused by gesture manipulation

1. The invisible of the operation

Can you operate it? How to operate? Results?

IPhone: Slide from left to right on items such as mail, memo, etc. to delete the entry, but there is no such action on some of the other applications, and the user has no expectation.

2 lack of uniform specifications and design guidelines

Each platform has its own gesture specifications,

And there are conflicts between platforms.

3 Lack of feedback

Do not know whether the gesture, do not know whether the operation is in place, do not know whether the operation completed.

4 Lack of reliability

Error operation

Operation Accuracy

Inconsistent with expected results

The classification of Gestures

Classification by Form

Simple gestures, complex gestures, core gestures, universal gestures ...

Sort by action

1. Navigation based gestures (navigation Actions)

2. Object-based gestures (object-related Actions)

3. Drawing class Gestures (Drawing Actions)

Attention to manipulating gestures rather than gestures

Some principles to be followed in gesture design

1 offers real convenience, not one more way to operate

The purpose of the gesture:

Simplifies operations and facilitates quick processing of tasks.

Give me a chainsaw, not another knife.

2 Provide effective feedback

Some gestures operate without sufficient feedback, resulting in:

Are you making gestures? is the operation in place? Has the operation been completed?

Android Screen Slide:

There is not enough feedback, do not know whether to slide in place, often failure situation.

3 no increase in cognitive burden and selection costs

To provide users with a better solution, as far as possible to avoid the provision of a number of similar operations to allow users to choose. Because there are multiple choices, there is a cognitive burden and a judgment cost, even if the process of selection is short-lived.

Do you want to put a return key in the Palm interface?

Search for Software return button: 20%

Return gestures using hardware: 79%

4 follow habits and mental models

Donald Norman/jakob Nielsen

"When users are they did one thing but Ac-tually did else, something they the lose of sense the system controlling Se they don ' t understand the connection between actions and results.

Author Sina Weibo: Magic boat Fuzhou Network Technology Co., Ltd.