Lab 6

Among a few examples, there were three design principles that I found were useful to keep in mind when designing navigation features, form entry features, and usability features.

Allow one-step backtracking

When a user is stepping through a progressive-disclosure-style feature, the back button should allow the user to step back one page instead of exiting the entire process. This would allow for users to edit previous pages without the possible loss of data or possibly irreversible choices.

An example of an app that once failed to use this design concept correctly is Jour, a journaling app with a progressive-disclosure-style process. For example, when the option for the user's current emotion was selected in one page, the user had to commit to that emotion because there was no back button to navigate back to the emotion selection page. Instead, the back button exited out of the journal entry and took the user back to the home page. When the user reentered the journal entry, they were forced to continue with the page that they left off on and were given no option to edit previous pages.

Back button points down and takes user back to the home page

Since the app's latest update, the developers have fixed this issue and have added a backtracking functionality to allow the user to navigate to and edit previous pages and an "X" button to return to the home page.

Back button to previous page

Match the keyboard to the input type

For inputs that require words or sentences, the standard keyboard should appear. For inputs requiring dates, a calendar or date picker should appear. For numerical inputs such as credit cards, a numeric keypad with numbers 0 to 9 should appear.

The app myHomework implements this design principle well on the form inputs for several different kinds of information for an assignment, including a description (text input), class (picker), due date (calendar), and due time (time picker). This allows for the user to quickly input the necessary information and not get confused about the format of the information to be entered.

Standard keyboard for text input

Calendar for due date select

Ask for permissions in the context that they will be used

Permission to use the user's current location should be prompted during the appropriate time, such as when the user is viewing a map, so that the user understands the context of their current location being used and the reason for it.

The Kung Fu Tea app somewhat fails to implement this design principle well. It has an alert that pops up right as the app opens that immediately requests that the user shares their current location. While the alert includes a description of how the app will use the user's location, it would have been more appropriate and less detracting from the user's experience to ask for this permission when the user entered the "Locations" widget.