How to Create a Mobile App Design That Gets Best Results

The mobile app market is a huge industry with more people than ever using smartphones for everything they do. The app market is expected to generate $77 billion by year 2017.

That is a huge number. If you are into designing mobile apps, then you would definitely want a piece of that number.

However, mobile apps needs to be interactive. It needs to have a great design in order to be used by masses. A great functionality if not properly integrated with design will be a disaster.

The design that goes into the app itself will help to make it attractive to people when they are deciding whether to download it or not. It also makes it possible that the people who have downloaded it will continue to use it and give it good reviews online.

In order to familiarize yourself with the ins and outs of app design, and you will have to learn to make the kind of app everyone will want on their smartphones.

In this article, I’ll provide you detailed information on how to master mobile app design and some of the best practices for mobile app design.

Best practices for mobile app design

Make sure to apply the rule of interaction design

Whenever you want people to use your app, you want them to interact with it. In order to make them interact with the app, you need to apply the rule of interaction design. Rule of interaction design has five main points which needs to be considered will designing anything.

If you’re looking to master mobile app design, I recommend you to follow the below points and implement in your design.

Usability

Make your product one people will desire to download by first making sure it has a use. Assuring the product is filling a need, or a desire, people have assures that it will at least interest people in downloading it.

Learnability

Acclimating your app to the expectations people have with apps is a big part of what will help to get good ratings and will assure the people who download the app actually use it. Utilize things like common app features to make it more familiar at first glance.

Design with a Goal

While you want the design to be familiar to people, you also want it to be specialized for how your users will use the app. You may need to invest in some research groups to see who will use the app and how they will use it. This will help you to design the app in a way that your end user will be most comfortable with.

Feedback and Response Time

When users are performing tasks on your app, you want to assure them they are actually doing something. Whether you provide an auditory response or a visual one, you need to give an indication that something happened.

Also, you should make sure that your response is within the timing guidelines set forth by the Nielson Norman Group.

Affordance and Signifiers

Whenever you have a function in the app, you need to use a signifier to indicate what the text will do, or what other factors of your app will complete. By using familiar signifiers, users will not have to put too much thought into the affordance of the function.

As you can see, a lot goes into the design elements of the app when mastering mobile app design is your most important focus.

Well, these were the basics of mobile app design. If you want to excel in the field, you need to focus on what users want. What are they looking for in an app. Following a few points which will help you to design an app that users will like immediately.

What users want in mobile app design

The only way you can assure mastering mobile app design is at the forefront, you need to pay attention to who will be using the app and how they will be using it. To do this, you should pay attention to:

Persona

The first thing to do is to use your research about the people who will use the app to determine how they will use it. This way, you can guess at what their behaviors will be when interacting with the app.

Scenarios for users

While looking at the UI of the app, you need to create scenarios in which your personas will use the app. Think about the goals they will want to accomplish as well as how they will go about accomplishing those goals and you will be ready to design the app to make it possible.

Maps for experiences

The emotions of the users as well as the circumstances surrounding how people will use the app should be in mind when deciding how it will be designed. As you chart the usage of your personas you can see how everything will be used and how it should be organized for best results.

As you go through the design process, you should put your app in front of a test audience to see how your changes are being received. This will give you further insight into additional changes that may be necessary.

Design the content along with the user flow

Another element of mastering mobile app design is to map out all of your screens as well as how one will flow into another. This will help you to see how one screen will affect the next as well as what functions will need to be accomplished in order to meet an end goal. To assure that you have good flow and that your users will not be frustrated by the steps, you should:

Minimize clutter

Make sure that your steps to the end goal are clearly defined and easy to determine. If you’re utilizing subcategories, assure the users will be able to understand which categories they should choose to find the subcategories that will lead to their end goal.

Minimize flow

Multiple steps to get to the end goal are frustrating. The more steps you build into a single function the less likely it is that people will go through the steps to get to the end goal. Map out exactly what the user will have to go through in order to reach the goal and see where you can minimize the steps.

Build the pages

Sketching out the pages and the functions of the different on screen elements will help you to see and react to the ways in which your users will use the app. It also gives you a chance to test out the app with users to see how they like the flow, before having to code it.

These three elements are important steps to assuring the app will be ready for coding and that it will be well received. Expect, regardless, that you will have to go through redesigns after the app has been created as people actually use it.

Conclusion

These are just a few of the ideas that will help you on the road to mastering mobile app design. Remember at every turn that the app design should incorporate not just what you want the app to accomplish, but how your users will interact with the app to get to their goals.

The more you can bring these two elements together, the easier it will be to create the kind of app people will be excited to use.