For example, I just recorded myself tapping on a product in the Product list screen and the delay between the pressed state appearing and the first frame of the screen transition animation is more than half a second. The animation itself then takes 300ms which is a generally accepted timeframe for screen animations. But that half second where I'm waiting for the app to respond after I've tapped a given element is painful. UX studies indicate 0.1s as a number where an application no longer feels instantaneous. (https://www.nngroup.com/articles/response-times-3-important-...)

Contrast this against something like the Slack app where the screen is navigating even before the pressed animation has appeared. Or for an app with probably not as much engineering focus, Fastmail, which begins the screen transition within 100ms of the pressed animation state appearance.

I wrote it over the course of a week or so and I use it frequently.

It's not that it won't see the light of day for anyone else but it's a very specific niche so I doubt anyone would even find it on the app store

If anyone's curious: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.thisischris...

I use it as well for a small development blog and it's been an enjoyable experience

I don't see many mobile apps on HN but this one has a twist that I thought might be interesting to the HN community.

I recently sat down to write myself an app to record business trips in my personal vehicle and the simple use-case was an excellent opportunity to explore an old thought that a terminal interface could be a good fit for mobile.

There's a concept in the UX world loosely called "Reachability" which refers to how much of the screen the user can comfortably reach with their thumb. The idea behind it being that frequently used elements should be located within that convenience zone. A terminal-like interface, with it's keyboard-first interactive model, is very compatible with this.

Further, our fingers are also the mouse in the mobile context so mouse-centric design patterns like buttons can still be useful. One example of this in Trtl is the custom odometer entry control. It uses the keyboard for entry but you can also change the currently selected digit by tapping the UI element. The actions presented in the command lines are also tappable!

It's definitely not perfect. There are some notable UX issues to iron out, touch target sizes, discoverability, etc. Still though, I'm personally surprised and impressed by how well a terminal-like concept works in a mobile app.

Thanks for looking!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37644753

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

Windows Phone in particular was a huge breath of fresh air for me (rip) and Material Design a welcome evolution that I still feel strikes a decent balance.

It sucks for the people using it in the way it was intended but I would hope that they would agree their "fun" stops being fun when it's actively harming people.

Due process was still followed even if we don't necessarily like what it was.

I don't know what agenda you have but I will no longer be responding to you since you don't seem to be able to interact in good faith.