Big screen mobile app experience
Mobile phone size is bouncing back to days where you need big pockets to keep your mobile phones. Where in my teenage smaller sized phones were considered a pride, with my age, size of the screen is also making its mark on the scale. From my college days till now it has increased from 4in to 6in but the user experience WRT button placements has not changed much. Either it is forgotten or it's being ignored. I think our user experience experts should consider it once more.
I imagine to operate my phone with my thumb, but as they increase the size of the screen, I can't really reach all corners on it. So I usually miss the dirt in the corners. wouldn't that be great if one can operate the screens which they can hold in one hand just with their thumb? This is why I use to love my iPhone5, cozy and powerful enough to meet my needs. However, with even with big screens, these control buttons need not be placed at an unreachable place.
If there is one thing that will stand the test of time, it’s thumb placement on mobile devices. This makes consideration of the “thumb zone”, a term coined in Steven Hoober’s research, an important factor in the design and development of mobile interfaces.
Have you ever interacted with a mobile website or app that simply didn’t play nice with your thumbs? Perhaps you’ve had to stretch to get to an important menu, or swiping turned into a battle with multiple swiping elements. Mishaps such as these reveal poor consideration of the thumb zone.
The “thumb zone” is an essential element in the UX/UI design and for the development of user interfaces. The developer creates all the navigation and important clicks in this zone so as to allow the user to navigate the design.
Believe it or not, your UI can define how your user is supposed to hold their device. If you develop Games for a casual play, you might want your user to hold the phone just in working hand But if you are making games for hardcore gamers, like ones played in portrait you might want users to hold the phone with both hands or if you are making apps that need the phone to point to something with back camera, you might want two hands but a selfie app we want user to use single hand.
So lets cut the legacy of the top navigation bar, it suits bottom as well. I don't want to use my second hand to tab on the back button or any navigation for that matter. Why is menu so far, bring it to me. Just putting 3 dots can give access to tools to capture the world. Making them inaccessible shall just keep the crow thirsty.
The three dots in list items, even when they scroll should be easy to access. you can choose to put a nest of a bird on top of the list so the top element can also be pulled in thumb zone if the user needs it.
