Good Experience Design for Mobile Apps

A good user experience is really important. 66% will download at least one app based on a positive review or recommendation by another person. With only 57% of people having ever recommended apps based on a positive interaction, it’s important to get the app to work right first time. [1]

Take Your Most Loved Feature

Look at your features that are regularly used, will they work ok on a small screen? Consider whether doing so will be very battery and bandwidth intensive – two issues your developer will be able to advise you on at the early planning stage. If you forget the context in which your users are going to be interacting with your app (where, when, how and why) then you need to revisit it frequently until you’re answering it absolutely.

Make it Simpler

Make every interaction as easy and as obvious as possible. Make telephone numbers click to call, be consistent in design and approach, and don’t use ambiguous icons to further confuse a time pressed user, when a short word would do better. Keep your app simple, especially the navigation. Your user doesn’t need twenty-six options to choose from, they’ll use their desktop computer if they want to make use of the full array of options.

One way of keeping interactions simple, is to utilise the phone’s native tools, for example, sliders, toggles and scales. Users are already familiar with how these work from using their phone every day, and you can spend the time and money you would have wasted on making your own, to making the whole app better. Why reinvent the wheel, when its working swiftly already?

By going over the top with your visuals, you increase the amount of concentration a user has to use to engage with your app, which in turn slows the interaction down and increases frustration. Frustration will cause negative association with the app, decreasing a user’s interaction and a slippery slope of negative feedback on reviews and to other app users.

Make it Super Fast

Speed is really important for mobile apps, as well as convenience with being able to use them anywhere you can get a mobile signal. Bandwidth is often limited, and connections can be slow, especially on a limited processor. Additionally, your user’s perception of speed is changed due to the short time windows they may have to interact, and the handset’s limitations on multi-tasking, locking the user into the app to wait looking at a loading screen. Optimise your app’s start up time.

Make the Phone Work for You

Don’t forget about how people usually interact with their phone – the touch screen, multi touch gestures, sensitivity to turning, tilting and rotating the handset to change views or layouts. The user will already be used to using these gestures with other apps and the phone’s operating system, so make use of them too.

If it’s appropriate and useful to your app, consider using other phone functions such as the GPS or accelerometer to enhance your app and make it extra useful and applicable to mobile handsets.

Filed under: App Design by Kate