Smartphone and tablet statistics are showing an incredible adoption rate, putting the spotlight on the mobile web and forcing web developers and designers to adapt to the new environment. This means that there must be created a whole new way of imagining and thinking a website or app.
When doing work for a product that will work on the mobile platform you have to concentrate on things that you usually ignore on websites or apps destined for desktop monitors.
For starters, designing buttons does have its creative freedom, but there are also limitations and guidelines. You can’t put in a dashboard, for example, small buttons of the app’s features because the app will be difficult to use and the whole idea behind deigning mobile apps and websites is making things easier, not harder.
Besides buttons, the location of the User Interface is also an important aspect about designing for mobile. Its ideal placement should be in the bottom right or left corners where users can navigate with their thumb, depending if they’re left or right handed. This, though, creates quite a buzz between designers so we can reduce the placement to just bottom of the screen to avoid comments.
However, not all people navigate with their thumb, others preferring the index finger, especially those who have bigger devices, like a Galaxy Note, for example. What you have to remember is that you need to design for the majority and even if you start from this basic idea, you will see that you will make exceptions along the way.
A few of these exceptions are made in dashboard designs, where you will see that the previously mentioned navigation rules don’t necessarily apply. In a dashboard, the buttons are placed on the whole screen. Placing them all at the bottom of the screen and leaving a lot of space is pointless so you know understand the importance of making exceptions from some rules.
This article features 34 examples of dashboards from various apps, designed either for Android or for iOS. I hope these will help you with designing the app that you are working on or the ones that you will work on in the future.
Fingertip therapy
