by AJ Picard — Self taught designer & founder of Chad

Photo by Dose Media on Unsplash

Like I said in my previous articles I plan on uploading more postings focused on UI & UX design.

I study apps every single day, I’m not saying that I am the best designer in the world, but I do have my beliefs/views. In this article, I want to talk about one of the most important elements in your app, the “taskbar”.

The taskbar has been around since the beginning of time, it’s what your users use to toggle between pages inside of your app. Nowadays the organization of your taskbar, color scheme and now animation can play a huge part in your app's success.

Everything is advancing except the taskbar.

It’s outdated.

We have the biggest apps in the world still offering a static taskbar to navigate between each page.

Instagram

Twitter

Even Apple’s App Store follows the same format…

App Store

We’re starting to realize how important an app's design plays into its success.

UX designers are becoming more popular in the mobile app industry for a reason, you need to be able to communicate with your users through your designs.

I’m always looking for ways to innovate when it comes to my designs and that’s why my mission is to help reinvent the taskbar and how we use it.

People are getting more comfortable with mobile app interfaces which is changing the way designers, design.

It used to be mandatory to have an icon and a label for each page in your app.

Remember these days?

Now that we’re all frequent mobile app users we have more knowledge on what each icon does, this has led to users needing less guidance.

We have taskbars that communicate strictly through icons only.

I saw Instagram do this first.

Next Step

I’ve been seeing mostly the same taskbars throughout all different kinds of apps.

I’m starting to use a different type of taskbar throughout my designs and I believe it offers the following benefits:

Additional screen space

Sudle animation — Can enhance the user experience

Separate you from the rest of the apps out there.

Floating Taskbar 😍

I believe “floating taskbars” are the future of how we design, with screens getting bigger users will want to access more of their screen.

I’ve seen floating taskbars in the middle of the screen as well, but I think having it in the bottom right corner 25–30 px’s from the right border and 45–50 px’s from the bottom of the screen is the best placement.

With the majority of the population being right handed it allows users to easily toggle between screens using their thumb.

I think this helps organize your app as well, you can implement “search” and “direct messages” if needed on other pages (I’d suggest the home page) instead of having it located in your floating taskbar.

The floating taskbar only allows you to have three to four screens depending on where you place it. I’ve seen taskbars that offer options to five different pages when they’re placed in the middle. If it’s in the bottom right corner I suggest sticking with a total of four pages, three that pop out.