Designing Apps for Phablets, i.e. ‘Stay Away from “Ow” Areas’
Steve Jobs famously said that no one would buy the larger Android phones because you “couldn’t get your hand around them”. As it turns out, screen size is one of the biggest factors currently driving the smartphone market. Apple naturally responded with larger phones with the iPhone 6 Plus almost doubling the the first iPhone’s screen size, now registering at 5.5 inches.
While the iPhone 6 Plus may be a little awkward in one hand as Steve Jobs mentioned, that hasn’t stopped consumers from purchasing the phone. So how do designers properly design their app for larger screens?
You may have heard of the “ow” factor, as shown in Thumb Zone Heat Maps above. It is an estimation for how easy or challenging it is for our thumbs to tap areas on a screen.
These heat maps need to be taken with a grain of salt, as it assumes people hold their phone in their right hand, and that everyone holds their phone in the same position. (For example, some people use a choked up grip.)
No matter how you hold your phone, the “ow” areas increase proportionally to your phone screen size
An increase in “ow” areas means that it is really important for app developers to not simply scale up their existing UIs, but to reevaluate their interface so that it makes sense at a larger screen size.
Apple touted a new reachability “feature” that allows the UI to temporarily shift down at a double tap of the home button. In practice, this gesture becomes tiresome and feels like a stopgap solution. We will probably see Apple phase out this feature in a later software update as developers learn how to develop for larger screens.
Developers may want to look at ways reducing the frequency of needing to interact with any UI elements in the top section of the screen (an “ow” area for most users), commonly used as placement for the navigation bar.
Google has already tackled this issue in some of their newly updated mobile apps by placing the primary action button in the bottom right corner, as shown in their Inbox app above.
Another trick to reduce reliance on the navigation bar is to enable a right swipe gesture from the left edge of the screen to go back to the previous screen. This allows a user to swipe from any part of the screen, as opposed to having to reach for the Back button at the top of the screen.
One of my favorite apps that implements the back gesture technique is The New York Times’ NYT Now App. I use the app daily to read the news while commuting on crowded public transit, which means I will often have my right hand occupied with holding onto a rail for balance (if only SF Muni were a smooth ride). As shown on the left, I can easily scroll articles, jump out of an article, and switch tab sections, all performed one-handed without having to stretch to any “ow” zones.
Keep me out of “ow” zones
We can all agree that “ow” zones exist on large mobile devices like the iPhone 6 Plus, and hopefully we will see developers innovate new ways to make using their apps less painful to operate with one hand.
