Designing for Mobile: Best Practices and Challenges
Have you noticed how much time you spend on your phone? You shouldn’t be ashamed if the answer is “A lot!”. These days a mobile device provides the power of a personal computer wherever you go. No wonder that in the last decades we`ve all started using our mobile phones more often than before.
As a result, content consumption through desktops is rapidly decreasing while mobile internet usage is gaining popularity. On average, American adults spend more than five hours a day scrolling down a small screen.
If you want to thrive as a designer in this increasingly mobile world, you need to deliver a great mobile experience.Designing mobile and desktop applications is an absolutely different playground. With smaller screens, you will need to adapt your UX and UI accordingly.
In this article, we will explore the unique challenges of designing for mobile devices, and provide the best practices for creating successful mobile user experiences.
Let us start with the basics.
What is mobile UX design?
Let’s clear things out by uncovering the main difference between web applications and mobile applications. The first ones are typically browsed on large workstations, desktops, and laptops, whereas mobile applications are optimized to deliver the content on a smaller screen.
So what does the term Mobile UX design stand for.Mobile UX design is a design that aims to create the most positive experience for a user of a service or application running on mobile devices.
Why is UX for mobile so important?
It’s no mystery that mobile apps are running on user engagement. Users highly focused on the product are more likely to spend more time using it, return to it and even share it with their close ones.
The time spent with the app is one of the main factors in any mobile app’s profitability. That’s why ensuring a valuable and pleasant experience for a user is a primary goal for every design team.
Mobile UX design: best practices
Let’s say you have just started working on a new solution for mobile devices. The best thing that you can do for your product is to avoid the most common mistakes and learn from the best mobile UX design examples.
Here are a few tips to consider while designing for mobile:
1. Conduct end-to-end research
Guess-work is the biggest mistake that costs dearly. Remember that we are not our users and cannot predict their desires. Only through extensive user research is it possible to create an attractive, and functional design.
User research enables you base your design decisions on real data:
- Learn your product market niche
- Find out your target audience’s needs and pain points
- Note competitors` strengths and weaknesses
Research is the only proven way to lower risks while designing a new product. It may seem like an excessive step, but even the smallest investment in research can save a significant amount of time and money in the long run.
2. Design awesome splash-screen
A splash screen is the first screen the user sees when opening your application. Give your customers something beautiful to look at while the software is loading the relevant content.
Use it as a chance to enhance your brand visibility. But remember not to go overboard with your creativity while designing a splash screen. Even though it should be stunning, you do not want to distract users with unnecessary animations or too many colors and logos.
The main function of the splash screen is to make a great first impression and keep users engaged.
3. Set up smooth navigation
Make sure to put effort into setting up good navigation. Well-designed navigation allows users to move within the app without distraction and confusion. The easier your product is for the client, the more likely they will use it.
Combined with an attractive UI, a good navigation design will help you to make the best use of a smaller screen.
Simple navigation is a main factor in minimizing bounce rates. Bounce rates indicate clients that abandon a mobile application without interacting with the content. If the navigation system in the app is not optimized or misleading, users might quit the app without taking the desired action.
Simple and familiar to most users, icons make navigating the Apple Music app easy and intuitive for a wide audience.
4. Choose a legible text
When choosing a font size and layout, make sure it’s easy to read on small screens. Choose a typeface that will perform great on different sorts of mobile devices.
For example, such typefaces as San Francisco Google’s Roboto and Noto are neat and easy to read. To reduce eye pressure, consider font sizes of at least 11 points.
There is no straightforward way to choose a font size, but Apple and Google’s recommendations are a good starting point.
5. Increase the touch area
If you don’t want to frustrate your customers, make the touch area large enough to activate it effortlessly. Nothing is more annoying for a user than pressing a button with no visible response from the app.
A best practice is to create controls, buttons, and links with an average fingertip width in mind, at least 7–10 mm. Also, consider leaving enough spacing between these UI elements. For comfortable and accurate pressing consider making touch targets at least 48 x 48 dp.
This is Huckleberry the app for new parents to track their babies activities. Large colorful blocks are touchable making it easy for a parent holding a newborn to easily touch the screen and choose activity or activate the timer.
6. Think of a thumb position
Sometimes people can’t be bothered to engage both hands when using the phone. That’s why some prefer to use only one hand and thumb.
To satisfy this need, think of a thumb position. Making targets easily hit with only one thumb will keep your user from the necessity of using two hands.
7. Get rid of the clutter
Striving for minimalism is a way to approach the design of a mobile application. All the unnecessary images, buttons, and pieces of content are very destructive and irritating for a user.
On a small screen, every UI element needs to be optimized and thought through. Refining the most used features and making them intuitive is a good way to use your creativity in contrast to creating more elements.
Prioritizing one main action per screen is a good idea to keep your users focused and calm.
Keep it simple and minimalistic, like in this Strava example below.
8. Take care of UI feedback
UI feedback is a great way to keep your customers informed and engaged. Without any feedback from the app, users can get lost and confused. A lack of feedback will make them wonder if their interaction with the UI element has been successful.
For example, when the user clicks the Submit button, your job as a designer is to provide a screen or a pop up that will let the person know whether their action succeeded or failed.
9. Responsive design
Follow the responsive design approach to guarantee users a consistent experience across devices. Make sure that the design of your project automatically adjusts to the browser space on every device, from a watch, phone, or tablet to a laptop or desktop computer.
Use specific technical features such as responsive layouts, flexible visuals, and media queries to design more flexible and user-friendly applications.
Watch how Spotify has approached delivering the same user experience no matter what you’re using desktop or mobile device.
In both versions, the content is displayed in a way that can be easily scaled across devices and adjusted to the user’s behavior.
10. Design with respect
Now that we are using our phones more than ever, mobile applications impact our day-to-day life significantly. Recognizing this impact is essential for a modern designer. Designing a product with an ethical perspective is vital nowadays.
Design decisions, such as endless notifications, unclear consent requests, and misleading or manipulative texts and buttons can harm the user. Those dark patterns are destructive and abusive for a user.
Respect your users boundaries and empower them with a customizable design and notification system.
Design your product to be enjoyed by a wide range of users and create human-oriented solutions.
Conclusion
The growing use of mobile applications opens up great opportunities for designers to create new interesting products that will make people’s lives better. Inevitably new challenges arise along the new horizons.
Drawing the line between desktop and mobile applications is one of these challenges. Understanding that mobile apps are not just scaled-down versions of desktop apps is key to creating a successful mobile experience.
Designing for mobile devices involves numerous nuances that you need to consider. We hope that the tips outlined in this article will help you improve your mobile UX.Good luck on your journey creating amazing user-friendly mobile apps!
