Friday view: Trending in design
Tapp Candy director Daniel Sensecall discusses the trends of app design and how high-resolution screens are the technology to watch
eGR Mobile Intelligence (eMI): What are the trends for app design at the moment?
Dan Sensecall (DS): iOS7 has led people down the path of flat design, or certainly did when it first came out. Getting rid of excessive gradients and shadows and making designs flatter. That’s propagated throughout the industry really and set a new standard. Facebook released its animation tool called Origami, and a lot of designers are now using that to assist with animation design and a lot of recent apps seem to be using more complex animations to enhance the UI now.
eMI: And what are the key issues for mobile design?
DS: Fragmentation, certainly on Android. There are hundreds of different screen resolutions on Android and we’re not just limited to mobile phones now, you’ve got tablets and phablets, and TVs that run Android as well as wearables. You have to know your audience and know when they’re using the app.
eMI: Could the use of 3D or holographic content be something to look out for in the future?
DS: My personal opinion is that 3D is dying out, and I know TV manufacturers are now eliminating it from their new ranges and focusing more on increasing their resolutions. I think that’s a trend that will carry through to mobile phones. It’s the way a lot of people are going now.
eMI: Are customers perhaps expecting too much of apps with regards to their design?
DS: Yes, particularly in consumer-facing apps. They want more for less and there’s definitely a trend in people not willing to pay for apps, and companies like Zynga have put a level of expectation there for really well developed games that are free.
eMI: Is there anything looming that could change app design standards?
DS: The interesting thing will be the proliferation of web-based apps rather than native apps and how that plays out. With the improvements in processor speeds, I think we’ll probably see more apps making use of website components. With these increases in speeds HTML5 apps don’t run quite as slowly as they used to, and it also means it’s easier to develop for multiple platforms.
eMI: So is the new tranche of mobile phones bringing about a new increase in HTML5 apps?
DS: Yes, I think they could. I know of at least one big player that’s advocating the use of HTML5 versus native purely for development speeds.