For designers, as well as developers, probably one of the most exciting phases of the application life cycle is the design phase. In this phase, there are multiple factors that need to be carefully considered, avoiding any rash decisions. An application's design, in simple terms, should satisfy the following:
- The consumers' expectations
- The platform imperatives
- Development costs
The feature-set of an application should really correlate with customers' expectations. Layout options and navigation hierarchy should serve the purpose of the application. According to the requirements, an application can be designed as a single-page application or with a complex hierarchy of navigation pages; the content can be text-only or rich media elements can be used; and context actions can provide access to user actions or the interaction can be laid over multiple application pages.
On the view level, in general terms, an application view contains three different types...