Designing the Sudokumaster layout

Based on the Sudokumaster UI mock-up (see the following figure), the simplest UI view in Sudokumaster is composed of the game title, game board, game information, and softkeys. Since the game board is the main focus of the UI, it takes up the largest amount of space on the screen. Although the game board does not leave much space on the screen, to improve usability, the interactive elements have to be separated by small gaps. If the largest finger, a thumb, can interact with a UI element, then an index finger or a stylus can do the same. For more information about the UI elements, see section Designing the Sudokumaster UI elements.

Figure: Sudokumaster UI mock-up

Since Sudokumaster is optimized for both key and touch input, the touch keypad is not used with the application on S60 5th Edition touch devices. Disabling the touch keypad leaves much more room for the UI. In addition, the user experience is far better with dedicated touch interaction as opposed to a virtual keypad that relies on key-like interaction.

Designing the Sudokumaster layout comprises the following steps:

1. Categorizing the layouts

2. Selecting the default layout

3. Defining the layout logic

4. Designing UI element scaling

5. Designing the final layouts

For general information about designing dynamic layouts, see section Designing the layout.