Week 5 Outside of Class

Outside of class I read the article http://wrenlanier.com/mobile-design-with-gestures/. These are my notes:

• Taps are great but boring - we should take advantage of gestures
• Adding in some gestures makes your app more responsive, because it simply does more stuff
• All of the critical functionality in your app should be accessible by taps - but gestures can provide shortcuts and accelerate actions for your expert users
• The biggest challenge to making gestures work for your app is creating good affordances that let users know what they can do with your interface
• The main thing is to try and avoid really heavy-handed coaching and instruction
• Instead make your interface simple and appealing in a way that invites exploration

I also read https://medium.com/design-ux/a93647e5a44b. Here are my notes:

• Using hollow/thin line icons in a user interface is, generally, not a great idea
• Icons that are hollow cause the brain to trace the shapes twice as much as solid icons

I also read Call To Action, Controls, Design Patterns, Hub & Spoke, Infinite Canvas, and Multitouch Gestures in IIDC.

• A call to action (sometimes called call to action buttons) is simply a visual prompt (call) by the designer to the user in hope of a response (action)
• Controls are common components within screen-based interface design that allows the user to change, adjust or manipulate interface content
• Can fit into different categories:
• Action based controls - take direct action (buttons and links)
• Selection-based Controls - allow the user to select one or more choices
• Input-based Controls - allow the user to enter information into a bound or unbound field of entry
• Display based Controls - help operate the displays within an interface design (scrollbars)
• Design patterns in interactive design go beyond style and are more than just visual repetition
• They are similar/reusable solutions that have a working function often seen in interface and software design
• Used in distribution, computer network systems and directional structures, hub and spoke is an analogy of a wheel where each path is connected off a central area
• To travel down a different path, they must return to the central hub first
• Scott McCloud invented Infinite Canvas to push the concept that screen content truly never ends
• This window presentation allows a variety of interaction scenarios, information organization and narrative structures 
• Multi-touch gestures are various operations and movements between a user's hand, touch pad or multi-touch device

I also did 6 refined app sketches.