Background for different applications, pop-ups and fields
There are certain cases where faded background doesn’t work properly and you have to end up making some solid background for different applications.

Your theme will even be attracted by the user if the background is not visible for different applications. Sometimes it looks even better with the solid background than the faded ones.

Active Standby
A good idea that is used in many preinstalled Nokia themes of these devices is to use the active background also as the actual background. This, of course, limits your creativity, but is better from the usability point of view.

The current devices like Nokia Asha series posses active standby functionality where additional information is provided with the help of shortcut icons, calendar entries. Users can turn this feature off. Active Standby makes background little more challenging as more than half of background’s part is covered by calendar entries, social notifications with text and icons.

A good opinion from the experts is to use the active background as the actual background. You will also find the same strategy followed in Nokia preinstalled themes.

It does not only limit your creativity but it is also better from the usability point of view.

Scalable UI
Certain Nokia devices change screen orientation from portrait to landscape view. When the keyboard is opened, or the handset rotated, the screen orientation is changed from portrait to landscape and the aspect ratio of the display changes. This has obviously major effects on your theme, as it is being flipped along with the screen.

There are certain Nokia phones that supports both orientations (Portrait and Landscape). Usually the view changes to landscape from portrait when a device is rotated for watching photos, videos or typing texts using qwerty keyboard. This experience changes the aspect ratio of your display. So you should better be careful while designing backgrounds.

Stay with us for the upcoming posts on this series.

Mobile User Experience with Theme Design – Part 1
Mobile User Experience with Theme Design – Part 2