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. Get a free quote HERE
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