swipeconference Tag

Swipe Conference Highlights: Using gestures as shortcuts within iOS apps

Yesterday was the last day of Swipe Conference so I thought I would take this time to reiterate one of the points I took from the first presentation by Josh Clark.  Josh covered quite a few topics and if you haven't already you should check out his book Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps. In short:

• Gestures can be brilliant … if the context they are used in feels natural
• If you're using gestures make sure your users will find them
• If you don't think your users will figure out your gestures easily, don't overload your users with lots of help hints all at once; instead, let them "unlock" them over time, like a reward for using your app
• Downside though is that there is no consensus on what a 3 finger swipe gesture might do. Every iOS app that uses this gestures decides it for themselves.

It was obvious from the way Josh presents that he has so much passion for touch / gesture based devices. What I personally took away from his presentation was that gestures can be awesome shortcuts within your app. In a lot of cases gestures are a natural progression with how we interact with real world items.