In our last article, we wrote about 5 web design trends in 2011 that might be of a great help to web designers when developing their web app. In today’s article we will talk about 5 trends relevant to mobile app designers. Let’s take a look at them.
1. Hands – free apps:Speech tech will be mobile tech: with driving laws regarding mobile phones becoming stricter every year, you might want to think about the way your mobile app could follow this trend. Voice recognition is the next hit among mobile app developers. “Pretty soon voice activated apps will dominate the app market, and people can place calls, shuffle through their play list and surf hands-free”, writes My Tech Team, a leading online tech support company based in the USA. Nuance’s Dragon Go App, Vlingo, or Siri – the Nuance powered app bought by Apple are some apps that are pursuing the concept of smart voice recognition. “Speech is transforming from an alternative to text input into a much more powerful tool that can understand user intent and connect them more quickly to information, using natural language processing, semantic analysis and cloud computing. In essence, speech is becoming the smart short cut for mobile”,says Vlad Sejnoha, Nuance Chief Technology Officer, for GigaOM. Moreover, earlier this month, there was a post on GigaOM, “Text – to – speech could be Apple’s next mobile trump card”, reporting “Apple released iOS 5 Beta 5 to developers, and some intrepid digging by 9to5Mac revealed that it contains a text-to-speech system powered by Nuance, the makers of Dragonsoft Naturally Speaking. The system apparently works by allowing users to switch from keyboard to speech input at any text field, and it looks likely to be a system-wide feature, if it makes it to public release”.
2. Bold, primary colors, and gradients with minimal gloss: Mashableadvises mobile app developers to pay attention on colors since this is becoming a popular way “to make their apps stand out from the competition”. If the first generation of apps specifically developed for touchscreen devices often looked alike Apple’s native iOS apps, now the new apps “move away from the iPhone blue and gradient stripe background and a shift to bolder primary colors and gradients. The glossy button look popularized by the Web 2.0 era has been eclipsed by more matte finishes”, reports Mashable. Strong colors are recommended since they can create emotive reponses from users. Thus, there are greater chances that the user will memorize this app and pick it up again.
3. Gestures, not buttons: Lextech, a mobile application development company, in its blog post “Top Mobile UI/UX Design Trends for 2011”, strongly recommends to mobile app designers to make their app more intuitive with less buttons. “As users grow comfortable with touchscreen interaction, new multi-finger gestures are being implemented to augment standard tapping behavior. For instance, Apple’s newest iOS introduces the concept of “squishing” a screen with five fingers to close an app. It’ll be crucial for us designers to use gestures to make apps even more intuitive—while also avoiding gestures that are so complex that they become unusable”, writes Lextech.
4. Layered Interface: Smashing Magazine advises developers, especially the ones creating apps for iOS, to focus on layered interface when developing their mobile app. It recommends layered interface with making “some elements stationary and others vertically or horizontally scrollable”. Why? Because of 3 reasons: 1) this approach reduces the number of unnecessary traditional navigation elements (saves energy), 2) it enables users to get the information they want fast and easy (saves time), and 3) there is more screen space for information.
5. Texture, texture, texture: Mashable reports the “texture” trend as becoming increasingly popular among app developers. The idea behind is that “texture can add a tremendous amount of personality to an application, but developers should be mindful of how text and button elements look on top of the background. The wrong color choice can make content unreadable or buttons hard to find”, writes Mashable. One of the most popular combinations is wood panels and semi – transparent menu items. “Texture-driven applications are expected to rise in the near future and a large part of that can be linked to the subtle effect textures can have on the overall appearance of a mobile application”, reportsV-Soft Inc, a leading software and mobile application development company.
There are many other trends and tips that could help you as mobile app developer to create an app that will stand out of the crowd. These were 5 trends that we believe are the most popular this year. Nevertheless we are interested in your thoughts on this too. Do you have any other mobile app related trend, tip, or opinion to share with us?
