Mobile App Design Best Practices for Better User Experience

Mobile user experience refers to a user’s perception and feelings before, during and after using your mobile app. For any developer, user experience (UX) should be the top priority as it can make or break your app.

Some of the mobile app design best practices to improve user experience are as follows:

Identify the users
As a mobile app design best practice, you should start with identifying the kind of users you want to target. Generally, there are two kinds of users: 

1. Hunters – looking for specific information or wanting to do a specific task quickly
2. Gatherers – wanting to browse around or fill in time, not so concerned with a specific outcome.

The design should be decided according to your target audience, in order to enhance mobile user experience.

Result oriented design
Mobile app design should adopt the bottom-up approach, after deciding what action you want your user to perform. You then move upwards, deciding and enhancing your app with the required elements that can provide the right feel to your users. For users, mobile applications are a tool for completing tasks efficiently and in less time. Hence, your app should be such that it enables the user to do just that. You should try to sense their intent and design it in a way that they are swiftly able to complete their task, resulting in a great user experience.

If you are designing a mobile app which already has a web presence, you should keep in mind that 80% of the users will be using just 20% of its functionality. In order to keep the UX consistent, identify how consumers interact with your website and what functionality is used most. Then, for better mobile UX, you can offer these features and make sure that those vital 20% are easy and intuitive to use.

Clutter-free clean UI
To design a rich app, you should avoid crowding your controls and give breathing room to your control buttons. This helps in reducing the ‘tap error rate’ and inconveniences that the user might face. A clean and simple UI will enable the user to interact better with the app. In this day and age of cut-throat competition, it is important to create a good first impression by delivering a great user experience. Customer reviews, word of mouth marketing and social media are great sources to market your apps. 

Factor in interruptions
With mobile devices, interruptions are unavoidable, be it external or internal, which may affect the user experience. Hence it is important that you factor in such interruptions while designing. The design should be simple with a clean interface, which helps reduce the cognitive load on your user, making it less likely for them to disengage from your app.

    These are some of the basic mobile app design best practices to consider while developing a successful mobile app.