One design rule? No way.
Designing a mobile app might be a challenge if you don’t understand certain basic design principles. Yes, outstanding design often breaks the rules and pushes limits. But knowing the fundamentals can help you create a product that not only looks good but also functions well, engages consumers, and ultimately benefits all parties.
Failing Information Architecture
How do you plan your app’s architecture? Do you start with the most important or the most specific feature? Many of us make the error of not designing an app’s Information Architecture. To do this correctly, you must understand both the mobile platform and the user. Remember:
Put the most popular material or features on top! This is known as popularity prioritizing. You can only learn this by studying the app’s user.
Using complex navigation is another significant no-no when creating your app’s Information Architecture. Have you heard of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)? That generally translates to minimalism. Don’t overcrowd the app, and make sure each has quality material.
Finally, I would encourage you to keep your article’s link count to a minimum. I know it’s mainly for SEO, but too many links can throw off viewers. All of these approaches work together to create a fluid Information architecture.
Designs that are Ignoring Core Issues
Okay, let’s start with a question. Why do you think people download an app? Because they face some problems and decide to get help from an application. We usually download editing apps to edit pictures. It’s the same for every other application. Apps are the solutions to our problems.
When designers are designing applications, they cannot at any cost overlook the core issue it will be addressing. Remember that the app you are developing must address the core problem and achieve the goal. If your app’s preferences align with the consumers, it turns out to be the best application.
However, usually, the success of a mobile application depends on how quickly and effectively it resolves a particular issue.
Hard to find any Design Consistency
An excellent UI design is consistent. It must excel in all aspects of your software. How does it go?
Consistency Violation 101 is not using the same font type across screens. This single design philosophy comprises language, UI elements, site layout, functions and features, especially visual components like colour and typeface.
Consistency is one of the problematic principles to achieve. It’s crucial to recognize where you can be inconsistent with optimizing the general user experience. Overall, the character is critical for minimizing extra learning for your users, but don’t allow it to stop you from experimenting with design ideas where a minor inconsistency makes sense.
Also read this: 10 UI Mistakes to Avoid When Developing A Website
Content on your App is Screaming
Well, we have observed and experienced great applications. However, the only thing bad about them is the content. The content is not spoken in a civilized manner. Instead, it is screaming at its users. The content plays a significant role in the success of an application.
Inconsistent, flawed, and inappropriate content brings failure to the application. You should not put in effort for designing the application if you plan to ignore the placing of the content (text). It would help to use the correct font size, style, and colour scheme to make the application well put and neat.
It will add a wholesome feeling to the UI and enhance the overall user experience. Most for granted Text design principles include:
- Compromising readability for the sake of aesthetics
- Ignoring consistent line lengths
- The use of the Grid is undervalued
- Unneeded whitespace is filled with text
- Proper spacing is ignored
Overcrowded Features
This is primarily determined by the complexity of the concept, although it is still essential to keep it as simple as possible. Overcrowding your app with features may result in the user being disinterested or even frustrated. Moreover, it degrades the overall performance of the application. Having stated that, you are adding two issues into your app’s user interface.
A: Complications
B: A user interface that is slow to load
These issues contribute to a negative first impression, which results in users abandoning your website immediately. It is preferable to start with a few features and construct the app around the significant elements that serve the most critical functions to the visitors rather than many features. After then, if necessary, you can request updates for later versions of your application. This is referred to as designing for need-to-know material, and it is pretty compelling.
Bad Color Pattern
Yes, without a doubt! I believe that everyone understands the importance of selecting the appropriate colours for your app; yet, the irony is that people often talk about choosing the right colour, but despite a great deal of effort and thorough preparation, they almost always choose the wrong colours.
When designing for mobile UI, this is one of the most prevalent and potentially fatal mistakes people make. In addition to that, I’d like to make some adjustments to the contrast settings. I concentrate solely on contrast because failing to apply the appropriate difference makes reading the text difficult and often impossible!
Make use of contrast to distinguish the text from the background colour easily. The rest of the time, if you use tools to assist you in creating colour combinations rather than choosing colours randomly, you will be a lot closer to selecting colours professionally and will do marvels. Give it a shot!
Ignoring Native Design Components
Another thing to keep in mind is to be sensitive to the differences between the user interfaces of different mobile devices. Every mobile operating system has its own set of design principles for the user interface. Apple and Android are currently at the top of the rankings in the mobile world.
When designing for native platforms, it is critical to adhere to the operating system’s specifications to achieve your app’s highest possible design quality. Why? Because users are emotionally attached to the native operating systems, anything in conflict with the rules causes friction and serves as additional learning for the user, which is undesirable.
Whenever possible, you should incorporate native design components in your design. It will make users feel satisfied and at home. We learned from this that the design interface should have a natural feel to it.
A Professional Advice!
Mastering the perfect user interface of a mobile application is not a one-time endeavour; instead, it is a continuous process that evolves in response to your users’ changing wants and expectations. To conclude this post with some expert guidance, we know a fantastic mobile app designer with a wealth of proven expertise.
Chandler Faye has designed award-winning user interfaces for several mobile applications, and he is presently employed by CitrusBits, the top-rated mobile app firm in Southern California.
She makes the following recommendation:
- Ensure that your material has enough breathing room by including padding around the text and significant body of the document.
- The margins, padding, and typefaces should be consistent across all of the screens in the application.
- Users see the misalignment of buttons or the placement of text, so keep your storyboards as straightforward as possible at all times.
- Clickable UI elements, such as icons, should ideally be exported in the shape of a square transparent PNG with the icon centred vertically and horizontally on the page. Because the icons will scale and look uniform across your project, all PNGs should have the same proportions.
- Unless the case necessitates otherwise, always utilize aspect fill for pictures unless otherwise specified.
Final Words
An app’s user interface (UI) is not a single thing. To achieve an optimal balance between UI and UX, various design approaches are employed. If you don’t do this, you won’t be able to do it correctly on a mobile app.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the limitations of the design?
Design constraints are requirements that must be met for a project to succeed. When it comes to establishing a project, design limitations help cut down the options. Design limitations may sometimes appear to be a drawback, yet they help Mould the task to meet the client’s particular requirements.
What constitutes a poor app UI?
This can happen for various reasons: Poor target audience analysis and a lack of understanding of the pain issues that need to be addressed. Too many tools that aren’t fixing the main problem or a lack of capability could tackle consumers’ specific issues.