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列举手机应用UI设计应注意的5个问题

发布时间:2013-04-10 15:12:23 Tags:,,,

作者:Parham Aarabi

当概念化手机应用的UI时,牢记以下几点:界面的清晰度、屏幕与屏幕之间的一致性以及按钮或其他UI元素的反馈直观性。绝大多数应用设计师都会考虑到这些。

然而,有些事情如果忽略了也同样会影响用户体验。以下是一些经常被忽略的UI设计问题:

1、老手vs新手

通常,我们会把我们的用户当作一类目的和经验都差不多的普遍人群。然而,目的和经验不同的人也是存在的。

例如,在使用应用时,新手的反应往往更慢,而且容易出错。与之相反的是,老手因为已经记住应用上有什么元素,所以目的明确、行动迅速。

当制作应用的UI时,你应该同时考虑这两方面:让老手觉得足够高效,而新手能从中获得足够的信息并且觉得简单。

2、理想的按钮尺寸

这是一个显而易见的问题。

按钮的大小通常取决于我们的手指头,所以如果太小,用户就不能准确地触击。通常我们会很难(和更慢)触击到宽度小于1厘米的按钮。除了最小尺寸,不统一的按钮大小也有一些优点(游戏邦注:暗示新手哪些是重要的按钮)。

Gestures(from theindustry.cc)

Gestures(from theindustry.cc)

另一条经验法则是:按钮尺寸应该与老手会使用到它的概率的次方根成正比(“尺寸与概率的次方根成正比”法则是有科学根据的,但不在本文的讨论范围内)。

3、按钮的位置

通常来说,UI的按钮要么在应用底部(最常见的),要么在应用的顶部。

然而,大多数用户习惯用拇指触击按钮。如果用户是右手持机,那么拇指就可以更容易地触击屏幕右下方(游戏邦注:如果是左手持机,那就是左下方)。拇指更难触击到屏幕上方的角落,并且干扰更大,因为手掌会挡住屏幕。

所以最好能把主要的应用按钮放在屏幕底部;最理想的是把重要的和常用的按钮放在屏幕的右下方。

UI design(from venturebeat)

UI design(from venturebeat)

4、移动方向

与手持设备的方式有关的不只是按钮位置。

我们还应该记住,拇指通常有特定的移动方向。例如,对于右手持机的人,围绕屏幕右下方的轴点作循环滑动会更容易,而线性滑动则更困难。

所以如果你的UI控制有移动元素(如滑块、选项列表等),那么你应该记住:什么样的持机方式容易实现什么样的移动方式。

5、每屏UI应该放多少按钮

有些应用往往会把好几个按钮放在同一屏UI中。

应用设计师应该考虑到,当多个按钮出现在同一屏UI中,即使按钮尺寸是合适的,还是会产生问题。用户一眼看到的按钮越多,就越难触击到其中某一个(特别是新手)。触屏设备也是一种沟通渠道,其目的是最小化界面的信息量(也就是用户在每一次触击时需要考虑的信息应该尽可能少)。

大多数用户友好型应用的界面信息熵值会低于3.5比特(根据手指头的平均大小和屏幕尺寸,iPhone 5界面的最大熵值大约是5.5比特)。这意味着,你应该将玩家每一眼见到的可触击UI元素的总数目控制在10个以下。

一个优秀的手机应用UI涉及的考虑当然不止这些。但愿本文提出的建议能够让你受益。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

5 tips for creating great mobile app user interfaces

by Parham Aarabi

When conceptualizing your mobile app’s user interface, there are a few things that you should keep in mind. Some of the basic things such as clarity of interface, consistency from one view to the next, and making sure that tapping on any button or UI element provides feedback to the user are fairly straightforward and are generally, though not universally, followed by most app designers.

There are a few things, however, that are often ignored which can equally impact the user experience.  Below are some of these often-ignored UI design elements:

1 – Expert vs. novice users – the tale of two audiences

Often, we think of our app users as a ubiquitous set of users with similar intentions and expertise.  However, there are often several distinct user groups with different intentions and levels of expertise.

Novice users, for example, tend to move slower throughout the application, are prone to making more touch errors, and are more uncertain about the functionality of each button. Expert users, on the other hand, tend to have the app elements memorized and move quickly and with intent throughout the app.

When creating your app’s user interface, you want to make it efficient enough for your expert users while being informative and simple enough for novice users.

2 – Ideal button size

This is a fairly obvious issue.

Button sizes are generally limited by the size of our fingers, and so if they are too small, users will be unable to touch them accurately.  Button widths below 1cm are harder (and slower) to touch.  Aside from the minimum size, there are some benefits to non-uniform button sizes (they give an indication to novice users as to which button is more important).

As a general rule of thumb, the size of a button should be proportional to the square root of the likelihood that an expert user would need to select it (there are more scientific reasons behind the size-proportional-to-root-probability rule, but that is a discussion for a different day).

3 – UI location

Usually, application UI elements are either placed at the bottom of the app (most common) or at the top.

However, the way most users hold their phone is by using their thumb as the primary finger for touching buttons. If the user is right-handed, the thumb will more easily reach the region at the bottom right of the screen (or, for left-handed users, the bottom left).  Reaching the top screen corner that is opposite to the thumb is much more difficult, and more intrusive with the application flow since the user has to reach over the screen.

Generally, it is best to keep the primary application buttons at the bottom of the screen, and ideally, to place the more important and often used buttons at the bottom-right corner of the screen.

4 – Accounting for motion

The location of buttons is not the only consideration related to how we hold our mobile devices.

We also need to keep in mind that the thumb generally has a specific flow direction.  For example, for a right-handed person, circular flows with a pivot point at the bottom right of the screen are much easier than linear flows (flowing out radially).

So if you have a user interface control that requires motion (i.e. a slider, a selection list, etc.), keep in mind how a user is holding the phone and that certain motions are generally more natural for the user.

5 – How much is too much

Some applications tend to pack quite a few buttons into each of the application views.

Now, even if the buttons are of a decent size so that a user can click on them, there is another issue that app designers should be aware of.  The more buttons presented to the user at one time, the more difficult it is for the user to choose one of them (this is especially true for novice users).  It is interesting to note that as an analogy, a touch screen device can be thought of as a communication channel where the goal is to minimize the entropy of the interface (i.e. require the least information from the users for each touch selection).

Generally, most user-friendly apps tend to have an interface entropy under 3.5 bits (the maximum entropy for an interface is approximately 5.5 bits on an iPhone 5, accounting for average finger size and screen size).  What this essentially means is that you should keep the total number of touchable UI elements to less than 10 per view.

There is a lot more involved in creating great mobile user interfaces.  But hopefully you will find some of the above suggestions of benefit.(source:venturebeat)


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