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5 Tips to Create Awesome App Design

Posted on by Pavel Tantsiura
In this issue:

Original app design does not present developers with that many options to work with. Usually, when one is designed for shorter notice intervals and minimal screens, it is crucial for your UI design to work fast.

Preferably, you wish to design a system that is simple enough for first-time users without making the more experienced users lose interest. Here are a few tips to guide you through generating awesome app design.

1. Always apply the rules of interaction design

Having limited screen space should not be used as an excuse to do away with good interaction design rules. The first rule to interaction design is to design for the intended user, and this you can only know by conducting user research for example conducting interviews and surveys. This will allow you to generate personas for your prospective app users, as well as enable you to set distinct goals for your users and modify your app’s operations to meet their requirements.

Usability is also crucial to your app and it has to be simple enough for users’ to easily use. Also, remember to incorporate signifiers and affordance correctly. Another rule to interaction design is learnability whereby users instinctively know how to manage an interface. This is achievable through the use of patterns in your design. The final rule is response time and feedback, which notifies the users whether or not a task was accomplished. It can simply be a beep or a modal window, which is more complex.

Just ensure that your feedback is human, friendly, and is received within the set timing guidelines. Before starting any interaction design work, make sure you focus on the five rules that apply to the entire design process regardless of whether it is intended for an original app or not.

2. Recognize your users

Other than screen size, users are also considered as the main restriction in mobile design. The three primary strategies for comprehending your users include user scenarios, personas, and experience maps. Personas help you predict the behavior or your selected users in terms of what will steer their choices and so on. Scenarios on the other hand offer a depiction of how a persona will behave.

From this, you will be able to generate a UI that is best suited for them and the objectives they want to achieve. Experience maps allow you to scout all the feasible states for one interaction. Experience maps outline every step the persona is likely to make when using an app. It also helps you comprehend all the emotions and positions that surround those steps.

Undertaking this from the get-go will save you unrest down the line.

3. Plan out your content and user flow

plan

Research and design work go hand-in-hand. First, you draft your user flow. Before sticking to a certain channel, you generate a simple prototype using paper, just to understand the users will flow between actions and content.

The outlining technique will provide you with a better understanding and a clear view of your build-up of app ideas for every page of your app. Before even embarking on prototyping, first outline your idea in written form to help you investigate the most significant section of your app, which is basically the content. Establishing flow around the content offers you a much more precise evaluation of the total page number needed for your app.

The next step after this would be to create sketches for every single page, then repeating the sketches on paper and cutting them out for the generation of a paper prototype. Sketches help bring out the flow into life-like with more detail to structure and layout. A quick mobile app prototype will allow you to test all those ideas with a user.

4. Boost usability with familiar mobile patterns

Posture, orientation, and thumb positioning are some of the specified device nuances, which mobile design is centered on. Look at the renowned interfaces while paying attention to the common mobile patterns for example slide-out navigation. These patterns enable you to generate a UI that is homely and inviting. Utilize the most commonly used UI patterns as the basis of your usability and also incorporate your own creativity into it. Doing so will certainly ensure that your app design meets your user expectations without feeling monotonous.

The two groups of interaction design patterns that every designer has to master in order to design a good mobile app. They include animations and gestures. Gestures are commonly utilized on touch devices- swipe, touch, zoom, pinch, and double-tap have become a usual norm to users. As for animations, motion keeps users rooted in the UI.

When you combine both gestures and animations, you generate a whole new level of experience.

Mobile interaction patterns help decide the layout of familiar interface elements such as navigation buttons placed at the bottom of the screen, which is simpler for users to tap with their thumb, as opposed to one that is positioned at the top of the screen. When it comes to the text, ensure the copy is easy to comprehend.

5. Minimize clutter

You might want to rethink debunking the 3-click rule in mobile ux design and the reason for this is because it helped one contemplate whether they were in dire need of all the screens. Basically, users should be able to execute tasks fast in very few steps as possible. Marissa, Yahoo CEO even recommends a two-tap rule whereby it takes two taps to achieve anything you want to. If it is more than two taps then you need to rethink your design.

A good example to refer to is the Yahoo Flickr app that uses the two-tap rule; from unlocking your screen to surfing your screen, taking photos, checking out groups, navigating albums, setting alerts and so much more. Therefore, you should aim at having minimal taps in order for your app to achieve success with your users.

In conclusion

Creating an awesome app design takes a lot of dedication and expertise, as well as understanding your users. With the above guidelines, you are closer to achieving success with your app.

9 Tips for Designing Exceptional Mobile UX

Posted on by Pavel Tantsiura
In this issue:

A good UX design can make a significant difference that brings more downloads of the app. However, with the ever-changing world of technology and the niche of Mobile User Experience respectively, making effective mobile design gets harder each year.

Surely, keeping up with developments in the field is important to create an app that stands out and wins customers. However, still there are some unchanged basic concepts that can bring you unbeaten results even on such a competitive mobile market as we are having now.

These guidelines will also be useful for those who have little or no experience in designing mobile UX or even for those whose mobile UX has gone wrong. Below there are nine tips for designing exceptional mobile UX that refers both to the apps and mobile websites.

1. Mobile UX designed from scratch

It may seem obvious, but not everybody understands that mobile UX is quite different from the web though some similarities existing between them can’t be denied. Still, the way customers see and use mobile apps is a brand new experience, and this factor should be considered when designing a mobile app.

Among a rich variety of different features, screen design is the first that must undergo changes. Aimed to create a successful mobile app, you should first design UI taking into account such elements as minimal screen space and virtual keyboard. Undoubtedly, web UX may be very helpful but you should be ready to shift from it and create a unique mobile design.

2. Design mobile UX keeping the targeted audience in mind

Who is your mobile design targeted at? If you don’t know the end-users of your product, it’s likely to fail your expectations of success. But once you learn what customers need and what they expect to get from a mobile app, lots of design decisions will come easily. Still, how to figure out your users’ needs?

That’s quite easy. Even with such diverse factors as age, gender, education level, and language all mobile users are either result-oriented and want to get a quick solution to their problem or simply enjoy the process. However, focusing on some particular users’ demands might be even more beneficial for your future app than pleasing all customer categories.

Mobile app design tips

3. Simplify functionality

Lots of functions that work great on desktops may not work on mobile devices at all. That’s why mobile functionality should be optimized and simplified. Where should you start? Redefine the menu bar first, making it more intuitive and accessible.

Then simplify the navigation process. Don’t make users go through the multi-level procedure to find a feature they need. Focus on minimalistic design and keep core messages laconic and simple.

4. Minimize content

People want small mobile screens to render the same amount and quality of content that they used to get through television and computer monitors. This where you should put your design skills into action. The main principle you should be ruled by is minimalism. However, mind that the core message of the content must be preserved.

Even if you can’t reduce the information that much makes it easier for users to navigate. For this, create additional features like arrows, a convenient scroll-bar, or whatever makes users’ experience simple and productive.

5. Avoid extra images

Undoubtedly, adding images to the text helps users grasp the main idea of the content. Not only images reinforce the productivity of your mobile app or website they also keep customers interested and make them use your app longer. However, images shouldn’t incorporate the whole space in your design.

Remember the rule of minimalism mentioned in the previous guideline, it works here as well. Don’t try to put images where they look inappropriate or replace text. If you want to achieve some special effects, you’d better choose fonts.

6. Reduce interruptions

Most of the interruptions that distract people from their activities come from mobile phones. Calls, emails, instant messages break Internet sessions, don’t let us focus on important work, or keep us awake at 2 am. If you design a simple mobile app with a minimalistic set of features, you will help your users avoid additional interruptions that can be very irritating at times.

It will also help you retain more customers since they won’t leave your app every time some interruption appears.

7. Get acquainted with users

Once your mobile app is ready with your designing skills, knowledge, and the best practices invested, think of the first encounter with a would-be user. Can you be sure that a mobile product you have designed will bring your customers an unforgettable UX? Can you guarantee that a user will easily understand how your app should be used and won’t quit it once some unknown feature appears?

If no, then you should think of a way to get acquainted with the customer and simplify their first acquaintance with your product as much as possible. This is where small tutorials or instructions that show how to navigate your app will be very useful.

Since these guidelines are also a part of mobile UX design, make them laconic and appropriate.

8. Be ready to preview your app and make changes

It seems to you that you have approached the mobile design process with utmost creativity and fresh ideas, but somehow they have failed to deliver an expected result. That’s ok. As the mobile market develops, mobile design requirements grow as well. Maybe your revolutionized ideas don’t match present demands.

Even so, don’t hurry to throw them away. You may simply adjust them to current requirements and users’ expectations, and this will help you improve both your app and UX.

9. Implement the best tips and experience

  There are definitely those who have successfully designed mobile UX and now ready to share their best practices. Never stop learning. Use someone’s positive experience and your own skills and knowledge to choose the right track that will lead you to an exceptional mobile product.

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How To Manufacture Desire

Posted on by Pavel Tantsiura
In this issue:

The modern addict is a very different image than the ones of the past decades. The addicts of our time are getting their fix from a range of online distractions. There is a great deal of literature and research that has gone into the narcotic effects of these sites such as Twitter, Pinterest, and, of course, Facebook.

In The Business Of Crafting Desire

In the modern age of selling distraction, it is the companies that can quickly form strong user habits that come out on top. These companies have a clever web of internal triggers that will cause users to visit their site without an external prompt.

READ ALSO: Getting Feedback for Your App

Marketing goes out of the window with habit-forming products. These companies simply become part of the daily routines of their customers. This is called the: ‘first-to-mind’ characteristic. When the customer is bored, sad, interested in a topic or has a spare moment they immediately think of the product and company.

The Basics

While it sounds very simple to create this kind of company as there are so many of these sites already active, it isn’t as straightforward. Manufacturing desire is a skill that takes time to develop. The successful companies are the ones that can create the right hook for their customers.

Habit-forming technology has some identifying characteristics that come up in everything from video games to advertising campaigns. These are the five steps to create an effective hook. Although the process can be applied to a varied selection of companies and products this guide is focused on consumer Internet companies.

1) Trigger

The start of the process is what powers whether it is successful or not. Most of the time the triggers work in a combination of both external and internal ones. The technology will provide the customer with an external trigger to start a cycle towards an internal trigger. Some example external triggers are links on a website, an email, or an app icon. The feelings that these external triggers create will eventually become internalized, and a habit is formed.

2) Action

Once the trigger creates a desire, then the action needs to be directed. This can be based on two aspects of behavior: motivation and ability. The key to encouraging the customer to take the action is to make it as obvious and to make it require the least amount of effort possible. This is the ability aspect of the process. At the same time, the design of the product must continue the motivation aspect by being immediately attractive.

3) Reward

The reward step of the process is one of the most intricate and needs to be carefully planned. It isn’t easy enough to give a predictable reward, it must be a variable reward. If you gave a person a box, and there is a minimal reward inside that was continually the same, they would quickly take the box for granted and lose interest. If the box occasionally threw out a larger more exciting reward, then that changes everything.

Creating intrigue puts customers into an intense hunting state of mind. This makes desire become the guiding force. As a variable reward system, it can form some of the strongest habits. With the examples of Facebook or Pinterest, it is the fact that rewarding content is different with each visit. It is not predictable, and, therefore, it creates a need to visit more often to get greater rewards and the user’s next big “hit”.

4) Investment

Most habit-forming processes finish with the reward and create a short loop. The key to manufacturing desire is the investing phase. This step has two main goals. Firstly the company wants the customer to have a high chance of passing through the process again and again. Secondly is to use the dopamine reward state to push customers into parting with some cash, time, data, effort, or social capital.

The difference between most sales pitches is that with manufacturing desire the investment will improve the service. In terms of online companies, it comes in virtual assets, learning about new features, and inviting other users. The company uses each investment to make the trigger even more attractive. This will eventually result in the reward being more exciting with every pass the customer takes through the hook process.

Using The Power Wisely

Habit design is a powerful tool and should be utilized carefully. It can create a whole range of entertaining parts of a person’s lift and healthy routines. It can, however, be used to create extremely damaging and wasteful addictions.

Whether it is right or not to use is certainly an important question but one that has to be answered while also remembering that the technique is already here and is here to stay. The benefits for companies are just too great, including greater access to the collection of customer data. The combination of access, speed, and data create a whole range of types of habit-forming triggers.

With such a powerful effect, it is clear how important it is for a company to understand the hook process and how to utilize it successfully. Equally, the average customer needs to know precisely how these processes work in order to prevent excessive and unwanted manipulation.

Being able to manufacture desire is what will differentiate between companies that succeed and those that fail in the future. This is especially true for those that can build a service around especially attractive internal triggers that don’t require any need for further marketing or external triggers.

By following the four-step process can help any company to create a successful hook based product. For the customer, being aware of the processes will help to keep this powerful technique from being put into the hands of companies that are profiting off of damaging habits.

With the right companies using positive triggers that generate healthy or life-affirming rewards will mean that manufacturing desire will place many customers on a hook cycle that will benefit them and their wellbeing in general.

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