Researchers predict that by 2025, the global revenue from mobile platforms will be $613 billion, twice as much as in 2020. With such prospects, many businesspeople are planning to launch their platforms. But with 3.5 million apps available on Google Play and 2.18 million on the Apple App Store, few businesses break through the competition. To successfully promote your product in the market, make a design that meets customers’ expectations and goes beyond them. Let’s look at best practices in mobile app design.
Four Steps to Consider When Developing a Mobile App
Mobile apps allow users to interact with business products. A developer creates a system that makes such interaction possible. A designer strives to make the communication process simple, convenient, and aesthetically pleasing. Therefore, they optimize the user interface and UX. To achieve this goal, specialists must use the best mobile app design practices. Take these five steps:
Step 1. Study the target audience and research the market
Forensic science says, “To catch a criminal, you must think like a criminal.” A similar principle works in design. You can create a helpful product only if you understand your client’s wishes, problems, and needs. This knowledge will help create a relevant design and optimize software for specific parameters. After all, business ideas about a product and the target audience’s wishes can differ. For example, a business offers a trendy solution, and the audience requires a proven, simple app.
You should also study existing and legacy products to create something new. You need to research the market and the offers of your competitors. Analyzing a product, studying its UX/UI design, and reading customer reviews are essential. User feedback is a valuable source of information that will tell you about the strengths and weaknesses of your competitor. You can create a more advanced product with a unique design, considering the advantages and disadvantages of software solutions available in the market.
As Jakob Nielsen, founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, said, “Even the best designers produce successful products only if their designs solve the right problems. A wonderful interface to the wrong features will fail.”
Step 2. Create a wireframe for your future platform
A designer thinks about using a mobile platform, considering its purpose and user actions. To accomplish this, they can sketch out a scheme of the client’s movements.
A wireframe is a draft of each screen without visual effects. It represents the arrangement of elements on a page. A wireframe shows which screen opens after clicking on a button.
In other words, a wireframe illustrates any user action so that mobile app designers can adjust it and think through the optimal user experience. They can find the best interaction option before developers write code. Thus, the team won’t have to rebuild the software product later.
A site wireframe lays the foundation for the user interface design. The next stage includes the selection of colors, fonts, logos, and visual effects.
Step 3: Design each screen
When all the wireframes are created, designers need to “breathe life into them” by adding decoration and visual effects. They have to work hard, considering the achievements of their competitors, current UX/UI design trends, and their creative ideas. Their efforts must cause a skillful combination of aesthetically pleasing and well-thought-out UX, which makes it easier to solve user problems.
Nobody limits designers in their creativity. But there are general mobile app design guidelines to consider:
— Easy navigation. Even if an app has many functions, it is necessary to minimize user efforts. The fewer swipes, taps, and transitions customers perform, the more grateful they are.
— Less mess. The content of a screen informs users what to do. If designers overload a page with many elements and text, a user feels an increased cognitive load. To keep the elements from complicating the small screen, opt for functional minimalism, use the progressive disclosure technique, or break tasks into subtasks.
— Tap targets. Since different models of smartphones have different screen sizes, a designer must consider human anatomy. For touch screen operations, customers use their thumbs to tap and swipe. If a screen is huge, someone’s fingers may not be long enough to operate the platform comfortably. A user might have difficulty performing simple movements. Therefore, designers should choose the optimal type of navigation and implement tap targets of a suitable size (usually 10 mm by 10 mm).
— Automation of operations. To make life easier for users, you need to perform the maximum number of actions instead of them. For example, save data for ordering goods, add hints to form fields, offer auto-completion of data from a scanned card, and so on.
— Inclusive interface. If the clientele of a platform includes people with disabilities or visual/hearing impairments, designers need to consider the accessibility of the app. For example, they can use specific color combinations, suggest font options, or use special sound effects.
— Good onboarding. Thoughtful onboarding helps clients learn how to work with a product and understand its value. An efficient way to implement this in a mobile app is creating an interactive tour (take Duolingo, for example).
Step 4. Test the product
With app development services, developers can build for the client a working product based on wireframes and prototypes. Before launching a mobile app, test its design and functionality for feedback. For this, you need to carry out the following testing types:
— user acceptance testing – customers, share product reviews and suggest how to improve the software;
— functional testing – testers evaluate whether functions work correctly, find navigation problems and other errors that affect the user flow;
— usability testing – to make sure that the UX/UI goals are achieved and users are comfortable working with the platform;
— performance testing – to check that the app works correctly under different loads;
— other test activities specified and agreed with the customer.
User acceptance testing is essential because it involves customers. Their opinion determines the development of a product. Changes can be small (adding hints) and large (changing the color palette). After the necessary improvements have been made, a company needs to launch the product on the market and continue to improve, focusing on incoming customer feedback.
The Latest Trends in Mobile App Design
Both ideas and the ways of their implementation can affect the uniqueness of a mobile app design. About 108,000 shopping apps on Google Play exist, but organizations still find ideas to stand out from the competition.
For example, the Bolt eCommerce platform has implemented one-click ordering and 100% refund in case of fraud. Besides a wide range, eBay has a convenient voice search for goods, a barcode scanner option, and a detailed filter (including delivery options and the end time of the promotion).
Other businesses are trying to stand out from the competition by using new technologies or trends in mobile app design. For example, the Mona AI mobile assistant caused a sensation by offering people a quick search for their favorite brands in 300+ stores at a bargain price.
Therefore, consider the latest software development trends when creating an app design. In 2022, mobile app designers are trying to adopt these:
— Augmented reality. The mobile AR market is predicted to reach $36 billion by 2026, triple compared of 2021. AR can be used for mobile games (like Pokémon Go), online stores (trying on virtual Web AR glasses), 3D product demos, advertising (Alnwick Gardens interactive booklets), and so on.
— Artificial intelligence. AI is already manifesting in mobile apps (chatbots, speech recognition technology, image reading, or personalized content recommendations). By adding a smart algorithm to a product, a mobile app design agency will attract even more customers.
— Passwordless login. Face ID and Touch ID are standard software practices. Iproov found that 38% of people are already using face authentication to log into mobile banking. 32% of people want to work with this technology. Saving users from entering passwords will make platforms more convenient.
— Animation. Visual effects are not just a decoration of a mobile app. When used properly, they can attract attention, increase the customer influx, and create an unforgettable UX. Look at the designs of Cinema, Slumber, Tasty Burger, and other vibrant platforms to see this. One of the most sensational animation novelties is liquid animation. It creates the effect of sliding a page when a new drawing emerges.
Using trending design technologies, you will make a mobile app zestful and create an unforgettable user experience.
Conclusion
Mobile app design doesn’t stand still. Every year, new trends emerge, driven by the growing needs of users. But the overall approach remains the same, and the above best practices in mobile design are still relevant. As Alan Cooper, the father of Visual Basic, said, “If we want users to like our software, we should design it to behave like a likable person.” A good software product pursues the principal goal – to make a solution to a problem simple.
