Splash screen usability design guidelines
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Basically launching applications need to load resources and connect to the Internet, there often is a delay while launch application. Splash screens are typically used by applications to notify the user that the program is in the process of loading its resources or connecting to internet. Occasionally, a progress bar within the splash screen indicates the loading progress. A splash screen disappears when the application complete resource loading. The testing criteria Application startup times (UNI-01) says: If your application start-up takes a long time you can entertain the user by showing a splash screen or a progress bar to show that the application is really doing something.
Keeps these guide line in your mind during implementing splash screen to your application:
- Display the product name and version on splash screen.
- Splash screen can display the vendor's corporate image and branding
- Splash screen contains important copyright and third party components information.
- Show a a progress bar within the splash screen indicating the loading progress.
- Allow user to exit application if it takes long time to load resources.
- Make sure the splash screen supports both landscape and portrait mode view, for example, in case of N95 a user can switch between lansdcape and portrait mode.
- An audio/video clip can also be added for a better user experience.
- Splash screen should not be displayed when application has been auto-started as the intention is to give it keep it running in the background and not display to the user.
Good designed splash screen Example
It contains product name and its version, vendors corporate image, and shows progressbar of loading process.
Bad designed splash screen Example
Bad designed splash screen just show image
Example of splash screen usage
Other examples are popular games like Asphalt and Fifa from N-Games available with a demo version on the N95 phones.
28 Sep
2009
Splash screen is the screen with an image when the application is loading. This article covers a quick introduction to splash screen with image implementation. It also covers very useful guidelines for designing a splash screen. The article also provides a link to an demostrated example, which contains code snippests to create an splash screen.
This article can be useful to beginners to create a splash screen. The guidelines highlighted can be very beneficial to them.