Wrap Up

As we’ve just seen, mobile widgets are highly reusable items and used repeatedly, across the device’s OS. These widgets are always-on, internet-connected, auto-updated, lightweight applications and appear as miniaturized display elements within an existing or enclosing GUI. Widgets can be used to quickly access related levels of information, provide visual cues about the current state of the device, and control the amount of information and level of detail needed on a page. When incorporating these component patterns into your design, consider:

Chapter 6: Lateral Access

This chapter explained how lateral access widgets assist the user in quickly navigating to and accessing same level tier content. This is especially important on mobile devices because the potentially smaller screen sizes affect the amount and type of content presented, and the user’s ability to successfully search, select, and read this information.

Chapter 7: Drill Down

In this chapter you learned that drilldown widgets are used to support many functions that contain parent-child relationships. These widgets can be used in any context to provide access to related content, allow the user to submit information, create a change in the current state of the device, and provide related information in a glanceable manner. Drilldown widgets support the parent-child information architecture relationship.

Chapter 8: Labels & Indicators

In some situations, it may be required to use small labels, indicators and other additional pieces of information to describe content. Mobile users each have unique goals. Some require instant additional information without clicking. Others may need additional visual cues to assist them while quickly locating information. In any case, the information labels must be presented appropriately while considering valuable screen real estate, cultural norms and standards.

Chapter 9: Information Controls

This chapter explained that finding specific items within a long list or other large page or data array can be challenging which impacts the user experience. Information control widgets are used to locate specific information quickly. This chapter will discuss how the following widgets can be used to appropriately locate and reveal information: