Designing – Coruscate Solutions

Top UI Design Tips for Mobile App Designers

Vishal Virani — Tue, 29 May 2018 15:50:21 +0000

A good UI is no longer an option for you as the mobile app designer; it is the first thing you need to look at when developing a mobile app. If your app takes 1 minute to load, and that of the competitor takes 30 seconds to load, the users are surely going to move towards the competitor’s app. Similarly, if your app requires the user to use their brain, and understand every information before processing ahead, then they might switch to another app that is more intuitive and easy for them.

If you are planning a mobile app, then the design should be friendly and in sync with their needs. Here are a few things that would help you optimize the user interface and make the design friendly for the user.

Start With Decluttering The Screen

We want to provide as much information as possible to the user in that small screen. However, the truth is, the user will leave your mobile app if you overwhelm with that amount of information. The complexity of the design and the complications in using the mobile app increase with the cluttered screen. The best way to battle it would be to avoid cluttered screens. Include information that you believe will enhance the usage of your app and lead to engagement. Remove unnecessary information that takes up a lot of space.

Even the buttons and other interface interaction elements should be built to the minimum for better usage. There is always a read more or show more button that can be included to detail out the information. Maintain white space as necessary throughout the screen.

Breakdown The Tasks

When you have everything on a small screen, it makes sense to break down the tasks and get users to complete the tasks faster. A number of subtasks to complete a single task is way easier and friendlier than getting a single task that is long and tedious.

Normally, you will see a step-by-step checkout planned for the mobile e-commerce app solutions. The first step is to add the details and confirm the cart, then add the address details, then make the payment and finally get the confirmation. The logical flow will improve the engagement, keep the user rooted to your app, and finally improve your conversions.

Make The App Look Familiar

It is important to place the user on familiar grounds, instead of making them guess along the app.t That’s why you should always use screens that look and feel familiar. For instance, what’s new, search results and login screens are normally present in every app. If you use them in your app, the user will apply their previous learning to use your app, thus reducing the app’s learning curve.

Keep The Forms Short And Easy

If you ask users to input the information on a small screen, then you might make the users leave your app as soon as they arrive on it. Apart from causing user attrition, long forms are also error prone. The best way to deal with it is to keep the forms short and easy. Here are a few tips that can make form filling on app easy and user friendly.

Ask the users to fill in just the basic information, which you need to complete the task.
Provide the user with input masks. This way they would know what they need to enter in the input field, and finally reduce the error
Use the autocomplete features in order to smartly complete the tasks. You can use tools that allow you to complete the tasks automatically.
Validate the field values while you are filling it so that the users are allowed to correct the fields while filling them out.

Keep The Design Consistent

It is important to keep the design consistent so that your user feels less confused while using your mobile app. Here are the elements that you need to keep consistent if you want to improve the mobile experience.

Keep the app’s visual elements consistent. The choice of colors and typography plays an important role here. You may want to choose one or two at the most colors to design your mobile app. You can use colors that are used in your logo or, choose colors that are in sync with the colors in your logo. Use warm and pleasing colors to make sure the user feels good while visiting your app.
The typography should be chosen such that the words are legible and the app content makes sense. You may want to keep the typography simple in your app. Make sure the typography elements are consistent throughout the app.
The functional aspects of the app should be consistent. If you are using buttons in your app, make sure the buttons are similar across the app. Use the same color to define the buttons as well. Same goes for other functional aspects of the app.
Apart from the app, the other digital assets of the brand should be designed in a similar way. For instance, the website or the other ventures should be designed in accordance with the brand principles to keep the simplicity of the design intact. The users can use their previous knowledge of the brand’s assets to use the mobile app or other digital assets.
Make sure your mobile app is in line with the native operating system’s guidelines. For instance, you may want to design an iOS app similar to the Android app; however, the guidelines for both the platforms are different, and you may want to consider that before you design the app.

Handling Error Messages

This is an important consideration when designing the mobile app. You need to keep the error messages simple and easy to understand. A message such as “an error has occurred” or something as simple as this would help the user know that they have committed a mistake and try to correct it faster.

You need to mention, where and what went wrong. In some cases, you may evne have to mention why.

Accessible Interface

You may want to make the interface more accessible for all possibilities. Take into account color blindness, blindness and other aspects of accessibility into consideration when designing the mobile app. Most people cannot see the color changes or are unable to detect the color changes in the mobile app. If your app cannot handle these issues, your design can fail for these users.

The Navigation

It is important to keep the navigation as easy as you can. For instance, if the user wants to go back to the particular screen, from where they navigated to the current screen, the back button should be prominent. This will reduce the confusion and get the user to use the app with ease. The home button and other navigation buttons should be prominent on the screen. They should not think twice when making the choice to navigate; it should be intuitive. You should organize the structure in a way that the user can navigate to their screen in minimum taps and gestures. The navigation pattern should be simple and consistent.

Summing It Up

It is important to keep the animation simple and minimum. These are just some of the design aspects that you need to consider when developing a mobile app for a business. It is important you handle it from the user’s perspective. Design the app such that it can be easily handled by the users, keeping their usage patterns in mind.

Coruscate designs mobile apps for the user, keeping their usage behavior and other patterns in mind. We have successfully developed applications for a wide range of businesses in diverse industries. If you have an idea that you want to develop from the scratch, connect with us.

Our team will help you transform it into a workable app. If you just want to discuss more on mobile app designs or wish to know more about getting an idea up into a design, connect with us. Our experts would be more than happy to contact with you.

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Ways To Improve Design Process In A Persona Defined World

Vishal Virani — Thu, 24 May 2018 07:23:51 +0000

In the modern, digitally driven, contextual and mobile-first world, your customer-first attitude will help you scale and grow better. Most businesses believe they are giving the customers what they need but, who is actually asking them if they need the product you are creating or not. Very few actually study the customer’s pain area, and develop products.

This is not just true for businesses solving a purpose but also for designers creating web or mobile solutions. They develop the solutions that they believe the customer wants or needs. Most of the customer experience is not warranted for, and results in a drastic customer attrition for the mobile application or website.

If you don’t deliver on the user experience needs, you don’t deliver at all.

The quality promises are fulfilled only when you are able to provide the user experience they are looking for.
We have been and are still users, and have had some troubling experiences accessing a few sites. For instance, certain mobile solutions try to ape their web counterparts, resulting in a big menu that does not fit the small screen. When we try to access the menu, we either end up clicking on the wrong icon or are unable to click at all. The icons are placed at varied distances, and cannot be accessed by the thumb easily.

If you take the Netflix application or the website, it is pretty user-friendly, and you can easily move from one screen to another. If you are watching the series, and you want to go back to the main series page, there is a back button at the top that can be easily accessed while you are in the landscape mode. This user-friendliness needs to be derived out of your application.

A user needs to be defined before you define the design process. We believe that, just as in content you need to write for the different personas, there is a need to define and design for the personas in the design world as well.

Here, we will discuss in depth how you can define the personas and design for them, using what you know and deriving knowledge from techniques you can learn. So, are we ready to start?

Personas and their need

What is a persona? It is basically a representation of the goals of the project by placing the needs and interests of the user in place. For instance, the persona is derived out of a user need or interest, and their motivation as well as the business aim.

For instance, a marketing persona wants to know what motivates the user to make a purchase and the goal is the actual acquisition and conversion.

The design persona is focused on user goals, and helps understand the different types of users planning to use a product. The behaviour of the user while they are on the website, and the real-time activities are best understood through these personas. It helps understand how people communicate, how they access and how they use the particular application or website. It helps in deriving insights for the future. The personas account for the different types of users and their behaviour.

The design personas are based on the different UX attributes of the user:

It will take into account the buying patterns of the user in the present time
It will be more realistic and in accordance with the target market defined
It will be defined based on the user objectives
It will be more contextual with respect to a particular product or service.
It defines the user’s goals and motivators

A proper user persona helps design solutions that are developed for the target audience. It will become the voice of the user, and helps validate the product or service. It also helps focus on the priorities and the elements to be considered when developing.

Now that you are aware of the need and the benefits associated with the persona, let’s start with how to introduce them to your design inspiration.

Always start with what you know

You always know something about the target market. There are issues that you have been facing, which might resonate with the target audience as well. You might want to include that to your persona.

Brainstorm around the problem areas that you believe the persona faces, the personality they are likely to have, and the indulgences and behavior patterns that resonate with your product. You will need to work on at least five personas to start with. This will help you further your research and build insights into the target market.

The design personas you build at this stage are hypothesis that you will be testing and finalizing at a later stage. Make sure you don’t reject any persona idea. Once you have finalized five, after a whole lot of arguments, keep the others that have been defined as backup. They will help you in case the first set goes wrong at the hypothesis testing stage.

How would you define a persona?

A one or two, line description of the persona
State their problem in brief
How the problem would be solved with your product or service
Details that connect the persona with the product

Hypothesis testing

At this point, you will be converting the hypothesis you have established for the persona into reality. Focused group interviews will help you arrive at a conclusion.

You will interview a group of five odd people, and discuss the personas you have developed after brainstorming and understanding the market.

You will need to ask them questions regarding the last time they used a similar product or service. Let’s say you are a online job marketplace, you might want to know what was the main difficulty the user faced when trying to find a job online? What type of websites they tried using? What kind of things they struggled with? How contextual and relevant was the website to them? What were they looking for, and where and how the website they used fell short, in terms of expectations?

A lot of questions need to be prepared, when testing the hypothesis. The questions will end with the problem statement you have defined in the person you derived. You will need to see if the idea of that problem you have defined resonates with them or not.

If at least four of those five people are keen on getting started with the idea, you have laid your hands on the right hypothesis but, if not then you need to change the hypothesis and rework on the persona you have defined.

Finally, you will need to get a demographic prediction done for the user persona you have developed. For this, you will need to ask the group questions that help you establish predictive demographics.

Once you are done with the interviews, it is time to create the final persona for the mobile app user. You should ideally use a combination of the predictive data established through interviews and the actual data established through the performance of the product to define the persona. You can use performance data such as customer database reflecting the values indicated in the persona, the activation and referral rates as well other scores that connect with your product or service.

Use personas in every aspect of work

The personas should become an integral part of your workflow for better processes and quality outputs. If you design for the user you have considered, chances are you will excel with your output.

Make sure you discuss the personas in your meetings. You will need to identify your app’s success with respect to the persona. This will help you develop what truly matters to the persona you have defined.

Persona helps prioritize better. When you are introducing new changes or features, the persona will determine which one should be introduced first and which will not make much of a difference to the user.

During the mobile app design or the website design, it always makes sense to talk about the personas. You will need to design using the user’s needs specified by them during the interviews. This will help in getting useful feedback and incorporating features that upgrade the value of the product or service for the user.

Summing it up

It is important that you keep the persona updated with the latest trends and current design thinking and user needs. You will need to dedicate sometime to build the personas, work on the interviews and validate what you have defined. It is not something you do, while you are taking a break from other stuff. You will need to give full importance and attention to this part of product development, as it will help you define the user for whom you are creating the design.

Coruscate works on user experience design and design delivery while keeping the user’s interests and goals in mind. Our team of designers and developers collaborate to develop a project from the user’s perspective and for the user.

If you have an idea or need to upgrade your project, connect with us. Our team will reach out to you within 24 hours.

The post Ways To Improve Design Process In A Persona Defined World appeared first on Coruscate Solutions.