Windows 8’s touch screen interface and hidden navigational structure allow for some interesting paradigm shifts in User Experience practice. I have recently been working on re-purposing an enterprise level medical software for Windows 8.1. It’s been a jump in the deep end, but I’ve walked away with some pretty interesting insights. This post will broadly look at search, navigation and layout patterns common to native Windows 8 apps. I will select some of my favorite aspects of each, some innovations made and my approach. There’ll also be some takeaways for your own projects, applicable to any User Interface. Search Prior to Windows 8.1, apps used the Search charm to provide in-app search—the charm bar is accessed by swiping your screen on the left (inwards)–it is now recommended that the search charm is used for global searches. In app search being on the page, as seen below: User interface with on page search My Approach A good rule of thumb, from a UX point of view, is to think about the importance of the feature. We did some user sessions after some initial prototypes and found that clinicians relied heavily on doing searches. Innovations Made In the example, the drop down icon is used to distinguish the label from a button
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