Issues with Mobile Native controls

[Sannyasin Brahmanathaswami]

Some thoughts on icons. I have a focus group of about 10 people, mostly in London, one older woman in France.

The "old" FontAwesome as used by Livecode out of the box (I have yet to explore Brian option for bringing in your own or use the "new" FontAwesome....

While the icon are a bit bold (="Clunky) there are advantages for a UI point of view.

1) they are recognizable, well known. We had a discussion in the my focus group about making the icons of the home screen of SivaSiva (will be out in the stores in a few day)  more elegant, one advocate said "rather those use those cartoon icons can't we find something elegant, e.g. for Listen instead of Headphone, find something else? " 

I wanted to encourage everyone and said "Sure, send me some examples." (SKYPE meeting with 10 people)

Others were quiet. 

2) after the meeting, on Whatapp, I get several private messages "Oh, why change the icons? When I go the home screen I want to know exactly what I have navigating to. Why make it obscure?"

3) the Fellow who wanted "elegant" sent the five icons from Ayurveda represent 5 element (earth, air, fire, water, space) that had nothing to do /no relationship to that navigation. 

I know Apple and Google have designs that are looking for the "Wow, new look!" ...  but frankly e.g. their flat new button style (we used in the web for a recent UI) ... people did realize it was a button! To make such a subtle distinction (graphically) between a "touch link" and  "label" gets you nothing but N number of people not clinking!

So, you can crazy doing "native UI-platform specific" OR you design stuff that "works" (for users)  and use it on both Apple and Android, you can focus on content instead of hours making the UI match something that Apple or Google is happy with. They are not the authorities. Your users are. 

Disclaimers: I'm not saying that UI pattern of the Native interface of Human Interface Guideline (Apple, and is constantly change) of Material Design (Google) are not good, they are. But those who have lean budgets, you can just ask you clients and associates. "Does this work for you?" If that answer is "yes"  Your design is just as good...

My two mangos from Hawaii

BR






On 4/20/20, 4:11 AM, "use-livecode on behalf of Graham Samuel via use-livecode" <use-livecode-bounces at lists.runrev.com on behalf of use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:

    Just a quick addition - it’s a whole world out there, isn’t it? I am so behind the curve… anyway very useful. I am not sure why so many icon designers go for chunky designs - it’s as if they preferred bold type over regular. The little icons at the top and bottom of the screen in your own tool are more my style! But I suppose that’s just a personal preference.
    
    Thanks again for all this.
    
    Graham