5 simple UX Tips To Improve Your App
Building a web or mobile app? The one biggest piece of advice we give our clients is to keep things simple. Simple is good, simple allows you to focus on the problem and forget the tiny little things that don’t add up to the core value of the product.
We like building user experiences, we live and breathe it. We have a set of rules and questions we like to follow in our process. Here are the top 5 tips (and questions) we’d like to share with you:
1. Unclutter
Sometimes we fall in the mistake of adding elements to the interface or functionality that does not add any value to the user, thus cluttering the interface. Ask yourself — is this element really necessary? Will it provide value to my product?
2. Content first
Colors, pictures, textures and icons will all make your app look nice and like its full of features, but where’s the content? Don’t hide it behind a fancy over designed UI. Remember: you’re building an app, your users will want to see, interact and create content. Ask yourself — How will the UI will look with content in it?
3. A holistic interface
Designing and building an app is a process. Like every process it takes time, how long it depends on the app. Avoid one pitfall though — Don’t introduce UI elements or interactions for every use case. Keep it simple, for example — if you already used a dialog as a confirm box, don’t introduce a new UI element for the same purpose, reuse that dialog. Ask yourself — Can I re use an existing element for this use case?
4. Re use, refine
There are certain types of elements and behaviors that a user will expect from your app. Let’s take a car for example, you get in it you expect to find a steering wheel in front of you. Same applies to an app, sure you can reinvent the wheel to make something different, but will your users find that useful, or will it hinder the experience? A searchbox is still a searchbox, clicking on a logo is still expected to take you back to the start page. Ask yourself — is it really necessary to re invent the wheel with this element?
5. App feedback
Your app should *always* give the user feedback. If you need the user to wait for something, if there is an error, or something was successful, your user should know! Don’t leave people off wondering what is going on, people are impatient and will quickly diss the app. Ask yourself — Do I need to give the user feedback at this point?
Well, there we go a nice list of the top questions we like to ask ourselves in our design & ux process. Hope you will find them as useful as we do!
Feel free to drop us a note if you’d like any advice regarding your app.
Originally published at ideaware.co on April 24, 2013.
