Best Practices for Good User Experience in Mobile Apps — Part 1
Mobile is a very handy device so users can consume anything on the go on mobile devices rather than desktop. As mobile app consumers are increasing drastically hence, mobile apps in play store and apps store are also increasing. Ultimately in this competitive era of mobile app industry your app needs to be unique in terms of features as well as user experience to get noticed. So now let’s talk about user experience.
User Experience is all about how user interacts with the App. It is not only about making good looking user interface. It includes user’s perception of utility, ease of use. Good user experience always keep user engaged.
Following are some of the best practices for good user experience.
1. Frequently used features should be easily accessible:-
Place vital elements near the top of the screen, also consider how far users can comfortably reach. We can consider our Primary Action buttons as vital element.
Let’s take quick example. If our app is shopping app than on purchase screen BUY NOW button will be our Primary button. It should be prominent, larger in size compare to other buttons and most important thing is, it must be easy to accessible. If we talk about different section on single screen than, arrange all sections in the descending order of importance.
If we talk about another example, we can use tab bar also, so user can access and navigate easily most important screens of the App. We can provide drawer menu too.
2. Keep Required fields minimum: -
Simplify the users’ journey with your mobile app by minimizing the number of steps they need to take to reach their goal. Suppose user is going through sign up process than there should be very smaller number of required fields to complete the sign-up process. We can provide option to skip the optional steps.
We can also include auto fill, dropdowns, alternative input such as voice-controlled input. Let’s take one example, many ecommerce apps and sites now offer a camera option for inputting credit card information. Rather than typing in a card number, user can open their camera and scan their credit card. The app will automatically read the number. So, user journey became effortless.
3. Room for Personalization: -
What a user likes and what a user doesn’t like is different from one user to another user, because every individual is unique. Personalization helps to provide a more unique and relevant experience to the user.
Personalization could be anything like different themes, wallpapers, different effects in camera app. We can provide user’s favourite features on top of the screen as shown in above image. Displaying user specific content will make user feel that, this app is specially made for me, thus user will explore more content in the app. For example, provide the users with specific retailer deals based on their location, past searches or previous purchases.
4. Consider one hand use: -
Accessibility is the practice of making your products usable by as many people as possible. With “design for everyone” in mind, it’s important to consider the different ways people hold their mobile devices.
Most of the time user hold and operate their mobile with one hand. For better experience to use with one hand, we can consider below hand reach comfort zone for phone and design accordingly.
we can make interface in which most of the important actions can be accessible within natural reach of the hand. Could be especially the thumb as shown in above zones. We can consider as an example of iOS control centre which can be open with natural reach zone.
5. Guide user for how to use app via onboarding: -
Purpose of onboarding is to make aware user about main features of our app by demonstrating how they can use our app to achieve their goal in efficient manner. If the user is having trouble within the first few screens, they’ll likely drop off without hesitation. Delivering an excellent onboarding experience is the foundation for attracting and retaining users.
We can offer onboarding tour while user open the app first time. In on boarding tour we can show all essential button actions and most important gestures used in the app. Gestures allow users to achieve goals quickly and in an engaging way. Unfortunately, they are hidden controls, so users won’t usually try them out automatically. To make the user experience with gestures more natural and accessible, aid users with visual clues and animations demonstrating how to interact with your app content.For example sliding from left side of the screen to open side menu as shown on above image.Also provide FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) somewhere in help sections.
6. Hold user Distraction: -
If your app needs time to complete an action, entertain your users. Turn their attention to an interactive animation such as animated progress bar.
To create an illusion of speed, use temporary containers (skeletons) as placeholders until your content loads. By immediately showing the screen and gradually loading the content underneath, you will make your app seem more stable and faster and keep impatient users engaged. We can add shimmer effect as shown below.
Entertain users as they’re waiting for files to be deleted, images to be loaded, or any other action which is time taking in your app.
Make sure that after showing animation, user should reach to their original state where they have started, without loss of any information.
7.Provide Feedback to Users: -
Giving users feedback as they perform actions on a mobile app is an important aspect of a positive user experience.Use different forms of feedback (sound, hepatics, visualizations), based on the UI element or the current state of the app.
Lack of good feedback can confuse users and cause them to question whether something has happened, is happening, or why it did/didn’t happen. Providing touch feedback when certain actions are performed is particularly popular with mobile games, and also with error messages.We have often noticed that in popular games, when we touch any action button, we feel that button is been touched via hepatic feedback. Action button will be different for different types of games. If we talk about racing games, action button would be acceleration or brake button and the same time if talk about shooting games, then action button would be fire button. Another feedback type, audio feedback is popular with functions on all kinds of apps.
Conclusion
Following these established practices, we can ensure overall best user experience for end user. We have only a few seconds to catch people’s attention before they abandon an app in favour of one that is more user- friendly, intuitive, or streamlined.
Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to clap and share if you find these methods useful. If you have more suggestions to make app more user-friendly don’t hesitate to comment.
