Follow Rabbit Trails No More: 5 Ways to Outstanding Mobile App User Interface

Follow Rabbit Trails No More: 5 Ways to Outstanding Mobile App User Interface

While ideating your app’s design, ideas keep ricocheting around your head. Some ideas keep bouncing off the walls while some are put into their right place. Now, these ideas contain a concoction of attributes like the visual appeal of the app, the unique features it would boast, or for that matter, how layered it would be. But one area that many app developers and designers happen to skimp on is how amicable the user-interface of the app is.

You might have features that are breakthroughs in their own right, but if your users have a hard time working on your app, you are hardly pushing the pencil here. In order to truly make a mark, your app should revolve around what your target audience wants and how good it is at technology. Crafting beautiful interfaces and aesthetics can only be good enough if they are of any use to the user. If your users are scrambling to navigate through the app and squinting hard to understand even the most basic features, you surely have hit the nail awfully far from the head.
The approach to good user-interface comprises of a suite of deliverables.

Design Great Mobile App User Interface

Make the Cursor Appear Automatically in the Text Field

Smartphones are unarguably not so ideal for surgical inputs since they require fingers as pointed as toothpicks to seamlessly type or click accurately inside the text boxes. Thus, when you have a website that needs your users to type in something in a text box, it is recommended that instead of making them first click in the box to make the cursor appear and then type, you keep the interface designed in a way that the cursor is already there and the users can start writing right away. See how Google does it, you simply have to open Google.com and start typing immediately:

Google

While keeping the same practice on desktops is also much advised, on mobile phones there is a greater urgency for this sort of interface, simply for the much smaller screens and the absence of any physical keyboard. Now, this is the part where you need to seek your developer’s help as he/she would implement a JavaScript to integrate this functionality.

Be Creative (But Hold Your Horses)

Users always like to come across something fresh, exclusive and new-fangled. And that’s where your innovation comes into play. That said, too much of it is a spoiler. When we talk of user-interface, we talk of user-friendliness. There are some standard buttons that certain apps and game users are accustomed to. The most common example can be given of a typical music player which uses the traditional icons for different features. You have a triangle for “Play”, a circle or square for “Stop”, two parallel lines for “Pause” and so on.

Be Creative

Now, if in your creative pursuit, you start tinkering around with it and start using some beautifully designed but nevertheless unrecognizable icons with the hope that users will get used to them, you are only going as far as making things more complicated for them.

Creative
Wrong inspiration for a mobile device music player

The whole drumhead underlining is that you must keep pursuing innovation as it is always great to set new benchmarks, but you also have to know where to draw the line.

Keep the Motion Tendencies in Account

This one has more to do with user behavior. Typically, there are certain motions that are natural for us. A right handed person, for example, would be more comfortable with sliding from left to right than vice versa. And that’s probably why phones like those of Samsung trigger the “Call” function when a user slides his thumb from the left direction to the right.

Motion

Same would go for games. If you are creating a game wherein there is a slide that needs to be made more than any other motion, make sure that the movement is kept natural for your gamers.

Size of the Buttons and the Typesetting

It is common knowledge that button sizes can make or break a mobile interface design. When your users have to zoom into the buttons to be able to touch them comfortably, you are already off the mark with your design. Too small buttons are a pain and it is easier for your users to get muddled up and click on the adjacent button that is not on their agenda.

Buttons

In addition to keeping a minimum size for the buttons, it would serve you well to not keep a uniformity in their sizes. There are certain buttons that are more important than others in the context of the action they trigger.

The size of the buttons and other elements also has to do with the fact that you also have an audience among senior citizens with relatively weaker vision. However, instead of increasing the button size, it is recommended that the overall layout is more adaptive and responsive.

Responsiveness and Compatibility Count the Most At the End of the Day

Not every phone is made equal, at least not its OS. There have been numerous instances when an app created for iOS has given a hard time to the users of Windows phone and vice versa. And the same goes for the disparity between Android and other OS platforms. Now, it will be asking for too much from you to create an app that is compatible across all, but compatibility with more than one platform would surely help your cause in terms of the sales figures you can achieve.

Multi-platform compatibility may not be a critically important requisite, but responsiveness is. If the app created by you is filled with heavy-handed features and designs that run fine on larger screens of tablets but not so on the smaller-sized devices, you’re already are on a wrong footing.

Tablet

When you are creating a feature-rich application that is not meant to run on cheaper devices, at least go the distance to ensure that they run responsively enough on the devices they are meant for.

Conclusion

So, stop following the rabbit trails and start adopting the right approach to a great user-interface. Have you developed and/or designed an app? What was your experience, do you agree with the points made in this article? Share your opinions and links with us in the comments section below.

Deals

Iconfinder Coupon Code and Review

Iconfinder offers over 1.5 million beautiful icons for creative professionals to use in websites, apps, and printed publications. Whatever your project, you’re sure to find an icon or icon…

WP Engine Coupon

Considered by many to be the best managed hosting for WordPress out there, WP Engine offers superior technology and customer support in order to keep your WordPress sites secure…

InMotion Hosting Coupon Code

InMotion Hosting has been a top rated CNET hosting company for over 14 years so you know you’ll be getting good service and won’t be risking your hosting company…

SiteGround Coupon: 60% OFF

SiteGround offers a number of hosting solutions and services for including shared hosting, cloud hosting, dedicated servers, reseller hosting, enterprise hosting, and WordPress and Joomla specific hosting.