To be useful, usable, and desirable, mobile apps need to provide users with a sense of control. They need to help them to easily discover primary functionalities, orient themselves within the app, and find their way back from deeper sections of the app. Your choice of gestures for each action can make or break users’ perception of your app.

Discoverability & Standardization
Users mainly interact with the interface for primary and necessary actions. Ensure to follow industry standard gestures specific to a platform (i.e., iOS or Android). Secondary actions may be easily dismissed if the related gesture is hard to discover. If users can’t find it, it doesn’t exist.

Consistency
Participants expect the same gestures to produce identical or similar results. Swiping is an industry standard and well-known gesture, but it could translate to multiple outcomes within your app. For example, flip to the next page, change a section, delete content, scroll up/down, turn a function on/off, etc. With all these possible outcomes, users need a sense of predictability within an app.

Be sure to keep gesture results consistent within a single app.

Feedback & Recovery
Touch screen interfaces need to provide responsiveness by displaying immediate feedback upon user’s action. Any delay in feedback may result in abandonment on the user’s part. They need to know immediately if their action resulted in their desired outcome, and if not, find a way to fix it. The app should allow users to recover from their mistakes, especially if they are due to non-standard gestures or lack of immediate feedback. For example, if a user deleted an important piece of content by mistake, the app should to provide a confirmation question.

In conclusion, unpredictable outcomes have a direct effect on users’ confidence, level of engagement, and frequency of revisiting. Ensure your mobile app accommodates for user needs by following best practices.