5 best practices for mobile app UI design
Category : Digital Commerce & Experience Blog
While designing mobile app UI, app designers are aware of the limitations of native app frameworks and they have to use the small screens effectively to make ecommerce applications efficient and performance oriented.
The other thing the app designers have to consider is the experience of end users who will operate the mobile apps – some users may not be very experienced, and may require simple navigation.
But while the mobile app UI needs to be streamlined and easy to use for novice users, it should also not be boring for experienced and educated ones.
To achieve this, app developers can follow these 5 best UI practices for engaging ecommerce mobile app development projects.
Business Strategy Focus
No business or company can prosper without understanding of their target audience and analyzing the concurrent market situation. Likewise, no mobile app will get good results unless the developers understand users’ preferences and expectations from the product. It is, therefore, necessary to do research on the market, target users and how competitors are responding to their needs. This way, developers can have better knowledge of how to proceed.
Interactive Design
Designers should consider the four fundamental rules or pillars that make an interactive design:
- Goal-driven design: The rule of thumb is to design UI for the right users. Do some user research (interviews or surveys) and create personas of the app users. This way, the app’s workflow can be tailored to users’ needs.
- Usability: If the app is not user friendly users will not opt for it. If the framework and UX is not easy to use, customer retention will become very difficult
- Ease of learning: Since every developer wants users to easily learn about the interface, it is necessary to keep the design simple yet attractive and interesting.
- Response & Feedback Option: Feedback option is very important to get user feedbacksDevelopers must provide this option to users and must respond to users feedbacks
Map Out Content And Build User-Flow
Research and design work go hand in hand. For instance, developers can easily sketch user flows according to their research and understanding. And remember, it is important to start with creating a prototype so that the user flow between content and action can be better understood.
Using Known Mobile Patterns
Mobile application development involves different device-specific patterns or features like orientation, posture, thumb placement, etc. So developers should start with learning various interfaces and list down common mobile patterns. This way, they will be able to make a user interface that is easy to use.
For good UI development, two things must be considered irrespective of the type of mobile app:
- Gesture: The fundamental thing for touch devices is gesture i.e. swipe, touch, pinch, zoom and double-tap that allow users to effortlessly go anywhere they want.
- Animation: This feature holds users on a UI and influences them to remain associated for a longer time period. Developers should cleverly combine gesture and animation in order to add more depth to the users’ experience.
Create Backward-Compatible UI(s)
Apps should work on the older version of the platforms as well. The UI components and the APIs which are used in the newer versions of the platform should be backward-compatible. To do so, you should:
- Abstract the New APIs
- Proxy to the New APIs
- Create an Implementation with Older APIs
- Use the Version-Aware Component
If you’re a novice in app development, a much detailed tutorial of this is available here.
Hope you have found these best practices in mobile app UI design useful. Do you have a great app idea in your mind? Book a free session with our mobile app development consultants to evaluate your project idea and get free guidance on project implementation.
