S03E46 – Options

Good morning 👋

Last week I touched on how work on the un-announced project has had an impact on Appy Weather’s development. Let me elaborate. A couple of weeks ago I finalised the system that allows an Appy Weather card go full screen. One card could be selected at a time. To open another involved first closing the selected card. A week later, the secret project had more requirements: 1) for the selected card to be one in a set and 2) to be able to open another card from the selected card, i.e. UI that can continue to be stacked. I then realised that Appy Weather would benefit from these changes too. For example, to be able to swipe between the hours in a day, days in a week etc. Or to open a specific hour from a day. A week later these changes have been copied across. Its extensibility is a win from a developer perspective, and it will benefit users too. The fit and finish is on point too thanks to the connected animations. So much so, I made a big call this week: cards when tapped on will automatically open in full screen.

That’s a change from the existing version whereby a tap expands the card with more details, but for it to go full screen required a long press. The previous intermediary state existed because my animation game was weak, and the unique data in the full screen designs wouldn’t justify the relative effort associated with a long press (every second counts, and a long press may not be much more than a tap in absolute terms but it does feel like it!). Neither will be the case anymore. The connected nature should make going full screen not feel any slower than a tap to moderately expand, and you’ll just want to go full screen because the data and its presentation is considered thoughtfully (for example, the Now card in fullscreen will show differently to Next Hour’s because the time should change requirements). Long presses are not necessarily expected and more likely to be missed. And so, a tap should prioritise what I think will be more useful to the user.

That’s not to say there won’t be a long press associated with cards but if there will be, it’s more likely linked to modification of state than presentation of data. Predictability is always a usability win. In the current version, some cards expand on a tap, others go full screen actually, and some don’t do anything. Although each has a visual cue (or none) to suggest behaviour, I would much prefer if there were none needed because they all behaved the same (this means every element within the existing Timeline will have a full-screen version, which has been a lot of fun to design). The only thing I haven’t nailed and may be a catch is making it feel just as quick to move on to the next point of interest. Previously (currently) you could just scroll, but at the moment you’ll need to close the full screen card first. This needs to be 👌 too. To be confirmed.

Have a great Sunday!

Best,
Bardi