Inc reports that people spend over 4 hours a day on their mobile devices.
How does your app capitalize on all of this potential screen time?
A great app idea will only get you so far. You must not only successfully define a desirable product or service—but how you deliver that experience to your users in an engaging and valuable way. This is where User Experience Design (UX) makes its impact.
User Experience covers every aspect of a person’s interaction with a product or service. From marketing funnels, to application onboarding, to the user interface—everything must be designed to deliver value to your users. Whether that value is educational, entertaining, or productive—here’s five methods for making better product decisions with thoughtful user experience and user interface design.
Design for Clarity
Be clear. Be concise. On first launch, quickly communicate what your app does, who it does it for, and how a user gets started. If you get this right—users will be interested, engaged and continue forward. This can also manifest in marketing, sales collateral, app store images, or as introductory slides inside served upon startup.
Clarity is especially crucial when the success of an application onboarding requires the setup of hardware. Roket’s work on the Tabs IoT device setup and the 360fly camera setup UI flows are great examples how important clear and concise user directions are to a potentially confusing process.
Design for Engagement
How do you get the information you need from the user as quickly as possible? This is one of a product designer’s biggest challenges. If an app needs to be fed information to output value for the user and the user wants to do as little work as possible—how do we resolve this conflict?
Make this process easier with smart auto-fill fields, by eliminating fields, or by breaking it up into smaller steps to give users a sense of accomplishment. For example, upon launching Google Maps, it only requires access to your location information to immediately demonstrate its core value: interactive location mapping.
Anticipate user needs and solve any point of potential friction in the process before it occurs. Validate inputted data as the form is being filled out. When users need to enter a value, display the numeric keyboard. Present input fields with placeholder text showing the expected formatting. Get inspired by some of the best app designs according to DesignRush.
Design for Awareness
When users interact with your app, nothing should be a surprise. Every element, format and form should have a visual consistency so that users will feel comfortable.
In the same way, there should also be functional consistency. Buttons and any other in-app functions should all work similarly so that navigation is intuitive and predictable for users.
If something doesn’t work, users need to know why. Error messages should let them know what something went wrong within the app or if the mistake was on their end.
Users will be able to tell not only what parts of your app are interactive, but also have a good idea of where they will end up once they interact.
Design for Optimization
With the increasing number of both users and the time that people spend on their phones, your content needs to be adjusted and designed specifically for mobile consumption on a wide variety of device screen sizes.
Consider the responsiveness of the screen content, how visual details change at various screen resolutions, and how your navigation must adapt to remain intuitive across devices. Fuss over load times, image optimization, and other details that will improve content digestibility and ease of engagement. These considerations will give you a better shot at keeping users engaged and free from frustration.
Design for Value
The quality of user experience of your web and mobile apps is directly linked to your ability to keep users satisfied and engaged. This engagement helps ensure your ability to deliver value.
By focusing on providing a great user experience, your company and its products will stand out. But UX is only one component of creating an effective and beautiful experience for your users. Brand, user interface design, messaging, marketing, support, and a stable codebase are also critical for the success of user’s experience.
If you are interested in seeing how one of Pittsburgh’s best mobile app development, web development, web design, and branding agency can help your business, check out Roket’s portfolio items or contact us today.