UX Design Tips for Beginners – The Mobile
According to a survey held in March 2021, about 62% of people own a mobile phone worldwide. That means any product you design will appear on the mobile screen as more than half of the population depends on mobile devices. From banking to shopping to getting directions, developers have created a mobile app for everything. Therefore, the more mobile apps surface in the market, the more difficult it becomes to design apps that are suitable for every device.
Mobile UX design features a design whose primary function is to enhance the user experience by improving the design’s efficiency. A mobile user experience design aims to provide positive experiences to its users when using any mobile device. Creating a UX mobile design is a challenging task. It would require you to study different UX parameters. Well, to simplify your job, we have listed the 10 easy UX mobile design tips to help you deal with UX professionally.
10 UX Mobile Design Tips for Beginners
Below are the 10 quick tips based on Google mobile UX design and Apple mobile interface design tips for every beginner UX designer out there!
Tip#1 – Do a Research.
When assigned any project, it’s wise to do some research before designing the product/service. The concept of ‘think of yourself as your user’ has gained massive popularity among UX designers. However, it’s important to acknowledge it’s not always right. As a designer, you’ve some different expectations from the product, while as a user, your priorities vary. Numerous studies have recommended doing some UX research before designing any mobile app.
A simple way of doing this is to test an already existing top-rated mobile app. Analyze it critically to know which functions are user-friendly and which features should be improved. Another recommended research method is recognizing your users. It will help you understand what sort of mobile interface will please them.
Tip#2 – Practice Minimalism
It is undoubtedly frustrating to see your mobile screen cluttered with multiple options. As mobiles feature a pretty small display than computers, featuring numerous buttons will mess up its screen. Hence, it will affect the mobile interface, which, in turn, will ruin the mobile UX design. So, to avoid this blunder, practice minimalism as much as you can.
Eliminate additional buttons and pages and keep the things that matter. Using different styles for different buttons will also affect the mobile layout. Whereas following a single style throughout the app would provide you a comprehensible mobile interface. Also, keep in mind that you shouldn’t remove the necessary buttons at any cost. Instead, keep one action on a single screen.
Tip#3 – Don’t Forget the Readability!
It doesn’t matter if you’re designing an app, web form, or mobile website. Readability comes first when you are talking about the mobile user experience. Try using fonts that are large enough to read. Using small or obscure fonts makes the text on the mobile screen hard to comprehend. Besides, it’ll increase eye stress, and your user will lose focus immediately.
Choosing the right font for your mobile app or website can be a tiring process. Therefore, to minimize your efforts, you can take help from Google fonts and make your content more readable and appealing.
Tip#4 – Break the Text!
Studies have shown that a long screen layout is the best way to engage your users. However, when filling out a form or signing up for something on mobile, breaking the text into individual sections is a sensible practice. It is because, when we have to complete the task, we focus just on the results. Hence, if the text is lengthy, more than half of the users tend to exit the app.
So, break the text into separate sections and display the progress to bind the users to your website. Breaking the text into sections will also save the user time. That is, it’ll help them avoid scrolling up and down every time they want to visit a specific section on your mobile app.
Tip#5 – Design Touch-friendly Buttons!
One particular thing which ruins the mobile user experience is the tiny touch buttons on mobiles. Designing small touch buttons will require your users to use their pinky fingers, and this action will significantly reduce their user experience. Besides, it is hell annoying when you mistakenly tap another icon instead of the one you wanted to tap. Of course, you don’t want your users to suffer just because you didn’t care enough for a touch-friendly button in your mobile layout.
An easy solution to avoiding this problem is to design highly responsive, touch-friendly buttons. You can do so by designing controls of 7-12mm, which are easy to tap. This simple tip will make your mobile user experience to the next level.
Tip#6 – Reduce the Need for Typing
When using touch screen mobiles, people commit more typing mistakes as compared to using no-touch mobile devices. Consequently, they get frustrated quickly and leave the ongoing task. This is one of the pain points that a UX designer should address to improve the user interest. You can minimize this problem by eliminating additional questions from web forms or any page. As a result, it will reduce the need for extra typing. Moreover, you can use the pre-fill option, which lets the users fill in their information by tapping on the anticipated text.
Another impressive way to creating a mobile UX design is to give them options when asking questions. This will allow them to choose between options rather than writing responses by themselves.
Tip#7 – Prioritize Features According to its Usage
A common mistake that most beginner mobile UX designers commit is they struggle to include all website/app features in the main menu. By doing this, they assume they have created a positive impact on their users. Well, the reality is quite different. When a user opens an app or mobile website, they get overwhelmed seeing hundreds of features displayed on the main page. It creates a sense of confusion among the users and negatively affects the user experience.
A good mobile layout prioritizes features according to their demand. For example, you are running an online mobile website featuring health products. Any customer visiting your website would love to skim your products first, and then move onto the checkout tab. Therefore, an intelligent move is to keep the view shop option first followed by the place order tab and then proceed to the checkout option. Remember the primary objectives of your mobile app, and prioritize the features accordingly.
Tip#8 – Never Clutter the Tab Bars
Creating tab bars is a necessary step when it comes to designing any website or form. They let the users jump between different sections at once. When designing tab bars, make sure to create small yet readable tabs. The text on the bars should be understandable on small mobile screens.
You can avoid using icons and texts simultaneously as it takes up considerable space on the tab making the tab look cluttered. However, you can use self-explaining icons to give your mobile website or app a minimalistic touch.
Tip#9 – Take Care of Spaces!
Although mobile screens are comparatively smaller than other devices, it doesn’t mean you should reduce the space between texts and sections. Minimizing the area between the texts will give it a messy user interface, hence, give it a dull appearance.
Give enough spaces between sections and texts to indicate their individuality. Also, increase the text size to enhance its readability, as discussed in tip#2. The content, when opened on the mobile website, shouldn’t intermix. Besides, you should consider the padding size too. Various mobile devices feature a minimum of 15-16 padding to enable a smooth performance on tap.
Tip#10 – Final Testing is Important
After you have applied the above-listed tips and done designing a seamless mobile app. It is possible that your UX mobile design still needs some minor fixing and improvement. To hit the final nail in your mobile UX design, test your mobile app by asking real users to use your app and share their experiences with you.
Evaluate your app’s overall performance by reading the user feedbacks. Take the feedback as a challenge to improve your mobile app design. Searching your app ranking will also give you a fair idea of its performance. You can also use various apps to test the speed of your app/website.
In the end, always remember it’s good to commit mistakes as long as you learn from them.
Conclusion
No matter how much effort you have put into your mobile app or website. It’s crucial to test its usability now and then by conducting public surveys through web forms. With the trend of mobile-friendly apps increasing day by day, you must update your site with the latest user-friendly technology. This will not only enhance the mobile user experience, but the positive feedback will keep you motivated to work harder on your upcoming projects.
