“Which color do you recommend for an app icon? Ours should stand out from the rest of the icons.”
“Don’t you have a brand color?”
“No. We are a start-up company and we are going to launch a mobile app soon.”
A couple of young guys asked me this and so I embarked on a ‘highly unscientific study’ on 90 app icons that happen to come my way.
Continue reading Designing a Unique App Icon: An ‘Unscientific’ Study
“I will email you the links of some mobile apps we love. Study them and all the very best!”
This is my standard closing line to a majority of job seekers who end up before me to be interviewed for a post of mobile UX designers in my organization. Good talent is very rare. But I sincerely hope that more and more people will sensitize themselves about the amazing and complex arena of user experience design.
Here are the 10 mobile apps we love for the user experience and ‘Wow!’ factors, in no particular order.
Hey, what happened to all those text in the background? Why are they mirrored?
Who doesn’t want to take a selfie and broadcast it to the world? We all love to capture the moment, the place and the fact that we are present in the scene of action. we use the mobile front camera for taking selfies and video calls.
Depending on the social media app that you use to take a selfie, the transmitted image can be a ‘lateral inverted’ version as shown above.
You are not considered as a ‘complete’ UX designer till you publish your views on the “≡” alias “hamburger menu,” alias Side Drawer Menu!
The recent update of the YouTube Android app by Google prompted me to jump on the bandwagon and express my thoughts on this interesting UI pattern.
“≡” is called a “hamburger menu” for its resemblance to a hamburger, the top and bottom lines representing the bun and its middle line representing the hamburger filling.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail!
–Law of the instrument
(Narrated by Sahil Kini of Aspada at MobileSparks 2015)
MobileSparks is YourStory’s conference on mobile. The 2015 edition happened in Bengaluru on August 7th and 8th. Yours truly attended this conference.
I would like to share some quips I picked up during the event. I have created the following from my notes. The words may not be the exact ones uttered by the attributed persons. But I think I have succeeded in retaining the spirit.
Continue reading “If all you have is a hammer…” From MobileSparks 2015
“The UI should be intuitive” is the topmost item in the requirement brief from clients for a mobile app design.
Intuitive [in-too-i-tiv, -tyoo-] (adjective):
Easy to understand or operate without explicit instruction.
So, ‘Intuitive’ means ‘no surprises,’ right?
It is difficult to bring novel interactive elements or ‘pleasant surprises’ or ‘Wow! factors’ in a completely intuitive UI.
What can we do to have the best of both worlds?
As a UX designer, I have been told umpteen times by clients or stakeholders to add some ‘Wow! factors’ in the design. There is nothing wrong in this request. But if you ask them to define this ‘Wow! factors,’ probably you will get some fumbling or vague answers. Or, they will mention the name of a recent eye candy app followed by the question, “Why don’t you design our app like that?”
If you identify with my situation, let us try to decode the ‘Wow! Factors’ and publish the results for the greater good of all app designers!
Wow [wou] (noun):
Excitement, interest, great pleasure, or the like
Continue reading Decoding the Elusive ‘Wow! Factor’ in Mobile Apps
Yahoo! News Digest mobile app is a gem. The experience is awesome. The news digest gets published twice a day at 08:00 AM and 06:00 PM. Simply consume the news as a healthy nine/ten/eleven nibbles. “Did you know?” at the end of each digest is always a good read. The subtle dots animations and parallax transitions are awesome.
But today, probably around 06:30 PM IST, with a heavy heart, I uninstalled this wonderful app.
Why, you ask?
Continue reading Why I’m Uninstalling a Great Mobile App from Yahoo!
LightTails group announced a contest based on the theme Reflection for the last of week of November. I wanted to create an image that was more than my reflection on a mirror.
My neighbor was celebrating again and it was giving me ideas!
Continue reading Jumbo Reflection – How I Made That Shot
The above photo was posted by Sudhir Shivaram in his Facebook page. (imgae link) My interest was immediately piqued. I understand the pain of looking through the eyepiece at such low angle (think macro photos). So I wanted to know what wildlife pro photogs thought about an articulating screen.
The following conversation took place based on my question.
Continue reading Articulating Screen – Is it useful in a DSLR?