Why optimizing for your mobile platform is crucial: a mini-case study in iOS design
How a “Brand Refresh” of Mindbody made me re-think the value of native UX patterns on mobile.
Problem:
The mobile consumer app for Mindbody is visually out of date with the brand. We need a refresh of the product without a ton of overhead and rework. Optimize certain parts of the mobile app without reducing speed to market.
User Research
Looked at user satisfaction surveys and VoC support tickets to determine key problem areas
Ran a series of user interviews with 20 users to understand key problem areas.
Narrowed in on three primary opportunities
- User registration
- Search & Filtering
- Checkout
Idea, Challenge, Solution, Insight
iOS, Android, or …something else
Idea
When establishing our mobile design system we wanted to unify around Material React, the framework we were using for our desktop interface.
Challenge(s)
- Material is an android oriented design system
- React is a desktop oriented development system
- The iOS app store favors apps that have iOS oriented design systems
- Our primary users are iOS users
Solution
- We create iOS and Android mobile themes in Figma
- Easily swap between the two using Figma tooling (increase designer speed)
- Greatly speeds up our iOS engineers
Insight
- Brand consistency isn’t just about atomic components
- It is about optimizing your brand per platform
Outcome & Impact
Favorable metric progress in all key areas
- Increased registration success and reduced error rates well beyond margin of error
- Dramatically increased checkout success & unified all checkout experiences
- Search and filtering support ticket reduction
Design system creation
- Established our mobile design system on Figma
- Mobile themes are now readily available for consumer and business application
- Reduced designer overhead and increased mobile first strategy
Conclusion
Fear not the threat of customizing your experience per platform! Doing so will increase adoption of your product, improve your engineer’s daily work, and reduce confusion for your users.