App Navigation

  • Better Navigation Through Complex Mobile Apps

    As we all get more comfortable using mobile apps in our everyday personal and working lives, we are demanding more functionality from them. But the very simplicity of using mobile apps has been one of their greatest strengths that attracts us to keep using them.

    So how do we increase the complexity and functionality of the apps we design, while retaining the ease-of-use vital to an engaging user experience for their on-going use? This article will show you how ViziApps new Sliding Panel feature provides complex app navigation that is very easy for the user to access and use.

    Sliding Panel App Navigation

    Slide Panel

    You have no doubt used a slide panel in the mobile apps that you interact with every day – it can be seen in mobile apps for Facebook, Google Drive, LinkedIn, Box, and many others. Look in the top-left corner of the app, and you’ll see a slide panel icon. Sometimes it’s a company logo, sometimes it’s the ubiquitous stacked-menu icon, and sometimes a combination of these.

    Sliding Panel App navigation

    Tap on the menu icon, and the Slide Menu appears from the left of the screen. The menu shows a list of app pages that the user can navigate to. Since the menu icon takes very little of the screen’s real estate, it’s very unobtrusive, yet it’s in a familiar position so users can find it easily.

    Sliding Panel App Navigation 2

    The list of menu items can be arbitrarily long, which the user can scan through quickly by scrolling, so this is how the set of app features can expand without burdening the user with the feeling of complexity.

    Sliding Panel App Navigation

    To build a Slide Panel into your ViziApps app, click on the Slide Panel field button in the ViziApps Studio. You can enter a list of menu selections, and then for each selection, specify the page that the app will turn to when the user taps on that selection. Finally, create a menu button using your own image or one of our many stock images, and for the user action select “Show slide panel”.

  • Part 1 in a Series – Mobilizing Your Business, From Hardship to Rapid Impact

    During April, we will have a series of blog posts focusing the increasing importance of Mobile apps in Rapid Application Development - what does it mean to have mobile apps power the way your organization works. This will include Showcasing different companies leveraging Mobile Rapid App Development, aka MRAD, to improve their business results.

    What we have seen are some incredible productivity enhancing stories that provide competitive differentiation. In some cases, companies have prioritized their operations focus on the back of mobile app platform. We are in very interesting times where mobile is changing the way we do business.

    But you might be wondering, why are employees still tethered to their desk and not out in the field selling or servicing customers, at the customer’s office or at a Starbucks.

    The reasons are many fold.

    • First, it is important to understand what are the deficiencies of SaaS applications being provided in the marketplace. There is no doubt that you as a customer leveraging a RAD platform has seen the increase in number of productivity apps. DIY users are quickly able to make some pretty nifty apps. But the SaaS providers have not optimized their RAD platform for creating mobile apps. Yes, you can get a mobile app but it lacks the functionality that is required in a mobile oriented workplace. A report or task workflow on a mobile device needs to be different than a report in a desktop browser. RAD platforms are still playing catch up to the mobile space and will probably never catch up as mobile devices keep rapidly evolving.
    • Second, creating a mobile app is not the same as creating a browser app. You might want to take advantage of some native capability of a mobile device in your app and you want that information stored on desktop app. Two sets of requirements which further leads to – can your org have the capacity to take on two unique approaches to solve the problem.
    • Third, mobile apps need to have simple task navigation, as the screen real estate on the device is limited. Trying to jam too much information only leaves a bad taste in the app’s user experience, resulting in low-adoption.

    Companies need to be innovative in their thinking to adopt mobile apps as they choose a RAD platform. Companies that have embarked on DIY mobile apps with the right MRAD platform are seeing the business results impact in a just a matter of days, As they mobilize workflow by bringing mobile business processes to the palm of their mobile workers hands, wherever they are, and whenever needed.

    Next, we’ll some unique use cases where different companies have solved key business needs with rapidly developed mobile apps.