Fluid Gestures

Video: https://youtu.be/gYbJS1ZpDWQ
Slides with Animations: http://ericleong.me/talks/fluid-gestures
Backboard: https://github.com/tumblr/Backboard

Material design on Android has ushered an age of delightful animations and meaningful transitions, leading to more engaging and sophisticated apps. But gestures, which tie touch mechanics to hidden actions, have been left behind, relegated to specific tasks, such as reordering or dismissing items in a list.

The first half of the talk covers the design of gestures, as well as the benefits of gestures over the usual tap-based interface. The traits of a good gesture are examined, as well as various methods for hinting hidden gestures to users and ideas for adding gestures to existing interfaces.

The second half of the talk dives into implementing gestures using Backboard and Rebound, libraries that help tie user interaction to on-screen motion. Code examples from Tumblr gestures are used to demonstrate the ease of developing a gesture-based interface, even in a production application.

Transcript