It is no secret - I am on my phone a lot throughout the day. Talking to friend & family, testing prototypes, check on the score of the Cardinals game, etc.
One of the UIs that I am constantly interacting with is the keyboard. Text, searching, emails.... the works.
There is a small but effective tactic that you can implement on your keyboard that users will interact with immediately if it is present
but...
if it isn't there it will add more time consuming effort and tapping to accomplish the same task.
Take a gander at these 2 screens:
What do you notice that is different from the standard keyboard to the twitter keyboard?
Can't see it. Well lets back up a little further.
Focusing on the twitter image - What are critical symbols that are necessary to use almost in every tweet?
"@" and "#"
Twitter saw a relatively easy action (click the symbols button, select @ and then back to the keyboard) to an ultra intuitive action. Not to mention the delight that your list of users pops up immediately after.
When you are creating your app and user flow answer the following questions:
- what could make this action even easier (UI, text, combine a step, remove a step)
- what unconventional but easy to do gesture, action, button, etc could make this action as easy as possible (think outside the box here - well played snapchat)
- Forecast your user's next action and prompt them with it before they even ask for it (it is like you are reading their minds)
That's it - a few small edits to text (in this case) can make even a keyboard way better.