It would be a nice to have jolla provide an official guideline on the user interface design (user experience mainly) that it would be good for the devs to follow for their apps.
The reason i am writing this is that i’ve been stumbling on apps (in the store) that the user interface is all over the place and feel alien to SFOS.
While i get that there is no reason to strictly enforce a policy a guideline for those who are not designers and might not pay attention to stuff like that might come handy.
Thats all good but i had some more specific stuff in mind. More precisely withing the apps.
Ie that the user interface should move from Left to Right. Tapping on something moves you a screen to the right and if you want to move back you swipe LtoR.
And other similar stuff that will bring more consistency to the apps.
My observations are: there seem to be two interaction paradigms in SailfishOS — what I’d call the older concept, which makes use of pull-up/pull-down menus (so-called “Flickables”?), and the left–right page-design. I think both have their use cases and certainly depend on the context.
Some apps combine these two input methods, for example the native Telegram client called Fernschreiber.
SailfishOS-Apps should avoid adopting concepts from other platforms that don’t fit swipe input — for example, hamburger menus.
Some time ago I suggested releasing a kind of UI editor so you could build or click together a QML scaffold for your SailfishOS app, and there is a kind of style guide.
I am missing a good practices guide that will somehow make all apps feel more consistent (ot a degree at least) and better looking.
A prime example of inconsistent behavior is the email app which to get to your folders (which ie are a superset of your inbox mails) you swipe RtoL when most of the os moves the opposite way. Same behavior on quickditt and seen it other apps.
Many apps seem to more text size options than nessesary and this makes the app look bad (at least to my eyes)
And there are probably many other bits like the above that i cant think from the top of my head as i am typing this.
BTW even jolla developed apps seem to suffer from issues like the above. Not only community dev apps.
“Many apps seem to more text size options than nessesary and this makes the app look bad (at least to my eyes)”
If you mean with “text size options” the number of menu entries I’m with you. And of course there is a rule herefor in the guidelines above. Possible solution is e.g. to create a option page (settings, tools, ..). But I’m not sure I have understand “text size options” correct.
“email app which to get to your folders (which ie are a superset of your inbox mails) you swipe RtoL when most of the os moves the opposite way.”
That’s not clear for me. I go to an inbox folder, then swipt to right and see a page listing all folders. This pages supports only 1 swipe: back to last back = left. What is wrong here?
“And there are probably many other bits like the above that i cant think from the top of my head as i am typing this.”
We all can learn from bad examples. Go on, please. Maybe some screenshots can help.
“BTW even jolla developed apps seem to suffer from issues like the above. Not only community dev apps.”
I’m on the side of making a final summary only at end. The process of designing and programming the gui of an app is a hard job. It is like having 3 whinnig little childs called “guidelines restrictions”, “software restrictions” and “hardware restrictions” and you have to finish your app development. Only in simple cases you can satisfy all for 100%. What is your way to deal with this?
SFOS (in general) moves from left to right. Tap something you move a page on the right and if you want to go back you swipe LtoR. This way you move from sets to subsets (ie network settings are a subset of the settings etc).
Some apps move the opposite way and make things inconsistent.
Ok. Many apps are trees of pages. There is one entry point, the root of the tree. From here you are going further, on a branch. And so on until you reached the end, a leave. Apps structured in this way works like you discribed above. The Setting app is an example here.
If the Email app structured as a tree the start point of this app is the list of your email addresses for choosing the post box. This page is ommited if there is only one email address. The next page in the tree approach is the page listing the folders in this post box. Here we can choose “inbox” and go to the left to the list of mails. And so on.
But lazy people like me want to see the mails in the inbox first. And the usually lazy app programmer created only one page for listing mails inside a folder. With a filter for “inbox” folder or “sent” folder and so on. Now we have the first page listing the email addresses. When clicking on one email address we go to left to the list of mails filtered for “inbox”. Going from this list page left for more details (sub page) you see the list of available filters (the list of folders). Thats the leave. It is like a context menu for changing the color.
Maybe some technical background can help here. Imagine all pages of an app are presented on a table like cards. Opening a page from the menu of the start page is like putting this new card above on the start card. You build a stack of cards or pages. Then you put the next card on the top of the stack. Going to left shows you: you put a page on top of the stack. Going to right: remove the card on top of the stack.
This is one of the SFOS guidelines. And as gimmick there is an animation showing the moving left or right.
I feel we’re moving firmly into Clockwise territory here. So now only confusion is left, right?
So, the start view in my case is the list of email accounts
From the accounts I most definitely swipe left to go into the messages view (which is located to the right of the accounts page)
A further left swipe takes me to the folder selector view (which in turn is located to the right of the messages page)
Tapping a folder in the folder selector immediately takes me to the messages of that folder. No swipe involved
All views, except the start view, have indicator dots in the top left/top right corners as appropriate to hint at the pages located to the left and right respectively. Tapping these works the same as swiping
I think this is what the OP finds running contrary to the standard flow in SailfishOS. (I don’t quite get why yet, and I even find this flow reasonably intuitive.)
I can’t say for sure how this works with a single email address, but with more than one address the messages view definitely comes before (to the left of) the folders picker. Like you say here…
…except we disagree about the direction: I go right (by swiping left).
Heading back to the original issue of UX guidelines. What about RTL languages:
Should the flow be reversed? (I think that might make sense, but I lack experience of RTL languages and culture.)