How can you use gestures and haptics to create more immersive mobile UI patterns?

1 What are gestures and haptics?

Gestures are the actions that users perform on the touchscreen of their mobile devices, such as tapping, swiping, pinching, or rotating. Haptics are the tactile sensations that users feel when they interact with the UI, such as vibrations, clicks, or bumps. Together, gestures and haptics can create a rich and natural way of communicating with your app, as if you were touching a physical object.

2 How to use gestures for navigation and interaction

Gestures are a popular way to enable users to navigate and interact with your app in a smooth and efficient manner. For instance, swiping can be used to travel back or forward in a screen or list, while pinching can be used to zoom in or out of an image or map. Rotating can adjust the orientation or angle of a view, and dragging and dropping can move or rearrange items. Long pressing can access additional options or menus. When using gestures, ensure to provide visual cues and hints to indicate the availability and direction of gestures, use consistent and standard gestures across your app and platform, prevent overlapping or conflicting gestures that might confuse users, and test your gestures for usability and accessibility on different devices and scenarios.

3 How to use haptics for feedback and affordance

Haptics can be used to provide feedback and affordance to users when they perform gestures or other actions on your app. For example, haptics can be used to confirm a successful or unsuccessful action, indicate a state change, emphasize a key moment, or simulate a physical sensation. When using haptics, it's important to use appropriate and subtle effects that match the context and intensity of the action. Additionally, you should offer options to adjust or disable haptic feedback according to user preferences and needs. Furthermore, it's beneficial to complement haptic feedback with visual and auditory feedback for a more holistic experience. Lastly, it's important to avoid overusing or misusing haptic feedback that might annoy or distract users.

4 How to combine gestures and haptics for immersive UI patterns

By combining gestures and haptics, you can create more immersive UI patterns that leverage the full potential of your mobile device. Examples include pull to refresh, which allows users to refresh content by pulling it down with a haptic effect that mimics the feeling of a spring or a rubber band. There is also peek and pop, which allows users to preview the content of a link or an item by pressing lightly, and then open it by pressing harder with a haptic effect that simulates the depth and pressure of the action. Additionally, swipe to delete enables users to delete an item from a list by swiping it to the left or right, accompanied by a haptic effect that conveys the finality and impact of the action. When combining gestures and haptics, make sure to design UI patterns that are intuitive, meaningful, and delightful for users; balance their use with other UI elements; experiment and iterate with different combinations; and evaluate performance and battery consumption on your device.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?