Let’s say you are in Reeder (an RSS reader for iOS), looking at the list of posts, and already from the title you know you don’t care, and you want to mark it as read.
You can tap to see it and then swipe back the moment it shows. This is the slow path.
There is a faster path. Reeder enables you to slide right or left on the item. You get nice haptic feedback, and many apps support this kind of an interaction.
But there is an even faster path.
You can tap to see it and immediately swipe back. Your thumb is already there on the left anyway, and the distance is a lot shorter now.
Like every advanced gesture this takes a bit of practice, but I noticed I started doing it instinctively, without even thinking.
This happening required two small design details: The original slide transition to be interruptible at any moment, and the app to support swatting/draging the incoming item away even if my finger was nowhere near it. Both are clever, and both feel very welcome, because they enabled this emerging (to me) behaviour that made going through the list snappy without me even realizing.
This might be a good modus operandi: Think of the slow interaction. Think of its fast version. Then, think some more.
Nicely done, Reeder team. (Or, if this is a default iOS behaviour, nicely done, Apple!)