We’ve had some pretty neat responses and considerations regarding Thermo - It’s great to see people invested in this and fun to share the process. Robin Raszka from Tapmates tweeted:
@robocat Hint: remove the StatusBar cause it’s useless here and it damages the look and feel. (like Camera+)
He’s referring to the Black opaque status bar i included in the screenshot here. He’s certainly got a point, and others have also chimed in to remove the StatusBar. It’s an interesting discussion as i’m sure other developers have been in this situation; Do we include the StatusBar or not?
The benefits of including the StatusBar is that you get to keep system related information that some users like to have access to, like network coverage, clock and battery time. Perhaps more important is the geo location indicator and data connection. In an app like Thermo, we’ll be using your geo location along with an internet connection to figure out where you are and download the appropriate data, so having indicators showing us the status of those could be argued as a nice thing to have.
On the other hand, including the StatusBar costs you 20px of vertical space and can hurt the design direction you’re trying to nail.
I think we can all agree that the information in the StatusBar is nice to have, but whether it’s a need to have depends very much on the usage of the app. How long is a typical user session? And how radically different from the standard UIkit elements is your interface? As Robin and others rightly pointed out Thermo might be a ‘Glance and Go’ app, tipping the scales in favor of not including the StatusBar.
What do you think? Shoot us an email or hit us up on twitter
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