UI experiment for the iPad

Posted by Jaan on March 2nd, 2010 | Add your comment

I am trying a few different UI approaches for a clever iPad app that will hopefully see the light of day. The best thing with this project is that I can ignore a lot of rules and conventions. Left to right? Nope. Gutenberg rule? Bah. The structure principle? Nej.

All of this makes the app much easier and natural to use. And it easily meets Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines for the iPad (UX Magazine posted an overview earlier today). Especially these two bits:

The best iPad applications give people innovative ways to interact with content while they perform a clearly defined, finite task.

Whenever possible, add a realistic, physical dimension to your application. The more true to life your application looks and behaves, the easier it is for people to understand how it works and the more they enjoy using it.

At the moment the main interaction flow is top right to lower left for right-handed users (see below). The termination point varies (there are three options), making the swipe action either fairly convex, almost straight or completely straight and diagonal. This makes perfect sense in relation to the way the information elements will be displayed in the app, and the way one will want to interact with them in order to improve them (i.e. performing the “clearly defined, finite task”).

The work continues.