Many Smartphone applications incorporate fixed header menu bars at the top of the screen that looks naturally sophisticated and allow viewable horizontal navigation options to users. Many designers have considered it as a design standard for Smart phones to display an interactive menu either at the top or at the footer. But at times reaching tiny navigation buttons at the top of the screen, separated by smaller white-spaces, is quite difficult and make them unreachable. Due to sluggish navigation, gestures came into action to provide ease. As gestures are more human friendly, they are more likely to be adoptable by experts as well as novice. Touch-enabled devices are now a part of everyone’s life. People on the go expect faster navigation for their multitasking and switching instead of wasting time in analyzing how to navigate smoothly in between web and applications on these physical devices. An alternative approach has been adopted by Android in recent days to resolve navigation issues on different sizes of devices.
What is “C-Swipe”
“C-Swipe” is hidden semi circular menu and an alternative for fixed menu bars that appears anywhere on the screen having distinctive selectable options. It’s more spontaneous and quicker than icons that are used as clickable buttons in conventional navigation approach. It conceals the extra buttons that hid most part of the content and caused fatigue and arm strain due to excessive scrolling up and down, giving 100% of the screen to users.
How it Works?
C-Swipe comes with two design options. Both options have different menu designs and are used according to the need of an Application.
1. Swipe and Release:
In Swipe and Release, the user gently swipes on the screen with the thumb so as to cause the menu to appear. But after swipe, the thumb must be released from the surface of the device. Otherwise the thumb will make the usage awkward by covering the majority of the menu items. In Swipe and Release, the icons appear inside the allocated menu tiles.
2. Swipe only:
In Swipe only, the thumb should not be released because it paints the menu as you move your thumb forward and causes the icons to appear outside the menu tile, helping the user to make smooth navigation.
These two swipe motions make the user interface more responsive. C-Swipe also manages overflow menu items by adding Sub-Circular Menus. C-Swipe gesture has increased the view-ability of the content and portrays a casual relaxed experience to users to “Like”, “Favorite”, “Bookmark” among many others. C-Swipe has come with many variations for sub-menus. You can add them as a set of icons or texts or maybe a Light box when a gesture is invoked.
Cons:
C-Swipe is in-discoverable as most of the applications are still using Header Menus. People would remain unaware and won’t be able t discover the swipe motion unless they are provided by some tutorial or watermarked patterns showing how to make a Semi Circular Swipe.
Final Thoughts:
C-Swipe is an incredible feature that triggers on a swipe motion and is an effortless approach to multitask things running concurrently. Variety of shapes or colorful icons could be implemented if explored and accepted by designers.
Image Source:
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