Mobile App Design: Do’s and Don’t

Mobile App Design Do’s and Don’ts 

Bad users experience usually stem from faulty app design, which is an acute expression of the app’s structural flaws. One of the common starting points for all app design failures is an attempt to give user everything at once, resulting in a cluttered, complicated interface. If you want to storm those critical initial launches which make or break your success – avoid these deadly sins of mobile app design.

1. Making Users Work Hard

Nobody wants to open an app and then solve math equations to get what they need. But this happens way too often because app designers forget the primary purpose of the app and quickly fall into the trap of information and option overload.

The app that is selling clothes may try to include pictures, prices and shipment info all on one page. After scrolling through 10 of those attempts, it is likely that user will feel like there is too much choice and take their shopping spree urge elsewhere, where decision process seems simpler.

How to avoid it?

Never forget what the app is for, and by that, we mean what it is really and essentially its purpose. If the purpose of the app is to get a taxi, cut to the core by turning the content into an interface – start by recognizing the user’s location and showing the closest ride. If the user is hell-bent on searching for extra options, that can be accommodated – but treat this as an additional option that is subjugated to the primary task – and the visual solution should reflect that.

Using cards is another way to keep the interface tidy and provide users with all the relevant information – by tapping on the area of interest, you can display additional content without losing the simplicity.

Sometimes you cannot escape it – no matter how simple the design is, the task at hand is not. Choosing a product, going through its specifics, size charts, ordering it, entering shipment and billing info, going through checkout – seems like a whole lot of job. This is when you split the task into smaller pieces.

Make an app work harder than its user – if it is possible, replace text with pictures or commands with icons, and memorize entered data to cut down on requesting users to type the same thing over and over again.

2. Turning Navigation into Labyrinth

Your app should be an easy walk in the park – not a spiral of dead ends. Navigation should be simple and available at every step of the way – there is nothing more frustrating than digging into app options and then not knowing where you are and how to come back to home screen. Toggle menus, which can save you a lot of beauty and simplicity on bigger screens, are usually a fickle friend nowhere to be found when invited by a tap on the smartphone screen.

How to avoid it?

Icons are probably the holy grail of navigation, and the chances are that most of your users’ potential actions have a well known corresponding icon that is intuitively recognizable even after design tweaks (for example, shopping cart or download icon). They don’t take up a lot of space, yet they are readily available.

Replace toggle menus with tab and navigation bars for apps that don’t require a long walk among the options.

If this is not a possibility, you can avoid plenty of a headache by simply turning full-screen navigation menu into the home page – if your app offers several different services, this may be an excellent way to direct a straightforward user who wants a specific task accomplished.

Know what belongs where – the most frequent actions should be easily accessible. With customer support app, the phone icon should be the first thing the user sees – in a diet tracking app, contact info can be dug in somewhere in the depths of the user interface.

3. Making Fingers Stretch and Eyes Squint

While it may sound excessive, some apps offend users’ retina – and this flaw often comes hand in hand with the user having to employ surgical precision to tap on the right menu option or detail. Similarly, when the interface is cluttered or not organized intuitively, users often end up having to uncomfortably stretch fingers whose length still did not catch up with cyber (r)evolution.

How to avoid it?

Treat your screen like a war zone – everything that is easily reached by thumb is a navigation friendly area. Everything that doesn’t fall into an often-used category can go elsewhere – for example; the dangerous delete buttons can be put away to the outskirts of the red zone.

Try to take into consideration users with bigger screens – keep essential options in the green zone.

Don’t think that giving your interface some empty space is a waste of your most valuable resource – it visually boosts an element and also makes it easier for users to tap on.  

4. Turning App into a Circus Performance

Naturally, you want your app to look fresh, sleek and engaging – but that doesn’t mean that animations should pop around every corner. Sometimes, these distractions serve as a way to camouflage an even worse flaw – the dreaded waiting time.

How to avoid it?

Functionality and responsiveness is a priority. If the app is a bit bulkier, users are going to have to wait – in that case, there are two choices. The first one an animation, which may start annoying your user as bad as the famous “loading circle,” or you can trick them into thinking that things are going faster by using “skeleton screen,” a gradually loaded blank version of the page.

5. Annoying Users

Blasting subscription offers before the users have any time to warm up to the product, begging for rating, or notifications chirping 24/7 are not an effective selling strategy. In reality, it is good only as a method of crowd dispersion. Many app developers are so obsessed with making the users stay, that they forget to give them a reason to stay.

Take a news aggregator app for example, and think – do the users have time and interest to engage with the app that rings 30 times a day and informs them of 94 unread stories? Do they really want to be the first to read the news about Gloria the Hippo giving birth this morning in a local zoo?

How to avoid this?

Before you think that some notification or chunk of news is *really, really* important, keep in mind that annoying users with these things is number one reason people uninstall mobile apps. So make sure you reach out to your users only when you have something to say – be it an emergency or a genuinely useful, personally tailored information.

Don’t send anything at inappropriate hours – according to comScore, between 6 pm and 10 pm in users’ time zone is the best option.

Use a venue that corresponds to the type of content. Invite for a quick look, reminder or update works well with a short push notification. Aggregated, personally tailored content with multiple links, however, works much better as a newsletter, than five chirps in a row.

Conclusion

Another common denominator of the greatest app design sins is that they are intertwined with structural and functional flaws of an application. This makes things more complicated because achieving good design means there is not a lot of space for mistakes – from the get-go, you have to know what you want and how to get it. Following this advice, however, may help you to avoid cardinal sins that will drive away your users for good. By delivering a product that follows basic design guidelines, the chances are you will gain a loyal following of users who will be ready to give you feedback and an opportunity to upgrade and evolve.

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