14 Smart Tips for Great Mobile App Design in 2019
Published On - October 29, 2018
Who doesn’t want a great app for their business!
Yes! Obviously, you’ll be needing a strong app development team to back you up but without a killer design, your app won’t be able to reach that level of success.
Also, in today’s competitive business era, if your app is not the one, users have plenty of other options to opt for. Hence, it is necessary to stand out from the crowd by grabbing the attention of the users. And the app design plays one of the major roles to make the iOS or the Android app into an intriguing one!
Here is a list of the best app designing strategies that have ruled the market in 2018 and also, going to trend in the coming year.
Check out and make your app the best one!
1. Keep the design on a grid
The basis for designing a mobile app is a grid.
Whether you can see it or not, an invincible grid is present on every surface. It can provide you with an impeccable resource to define the spacing. With the help of these grids, you will be able to visualise how the app will look once the design components are complete.
Image Source: creativebloq.com
Well, no one really likes to use an app having misaligned text or crooked pictures. Using the grids, you can set and define the margins on it as your requirements and can ensure that the pictures and the texts are not overlapping with each other.
2. Try to stick with what has worked before
While designing an app, it is better not to try and reinvent the wheel!
No, we are not saying that don’t think in the innovative and creative way! Of course, the new designing ideas are welcomed but any drastic change in the design can confuse the app users.
If you look into the app market, you’ll see that most of the successful apps have similar kind of designs. You shouldn’t design the app in such a way that the learning curve becomes a bit difficult for the users.
Using common design elements is a good practice. For instance, there are several icons and images that are used in most of the apps and assigned to do the same task in every app.
Also, most of the mobile users are quite familiar with some common touch gestures like spreading two fingers apart on the mobile screen will zoom in, moving to the next page on swiping on the screen etc. Now, if you start re-assigning these icons and images along with the gestures, users will get confused!
3. Random colour choices can kill it
Improper colour choices can totally kill your mobile app design!
It is always advisable not to use too much contrasting and bright colours while designing the app as it can hurt your users’ eyes.
As mentioned in the earlier point, you should not drastically change the design pattern with which users are already quite familiar. This is true for the colour aspects as well. For instance, any button that depicts “continue” or “yes”, should be green coloured and any button for “exit” or “no” should be red-coloured.
Any drastic changes in this pattern can affect your conversion rates!
4. You need to understand the screen size differences
You already know what screen resolution is and how it differs with different screen sizes. Still, to be on the same page, you can get to know about screen size vs. screen resolution here.
Well, even devices from the same manufacturer and the same brand can have different sizes, resolutions, and shapes. To understand it in a better way, check out the latest models of iPhones, you will understand what we are implying.
Image Source: newatlas.com
You need to consider other devices like tablets, Smart TVs as well on which, people can use your app. Hence, the app design has to be optimised for most of the available devices.
5. Make sure texts are not running into each other
While being efficient in the mobile app design, you need to make sure that everything is well-placed.
To separate the contents, you can obviously use page breaks or pictures. However, every time you cannot use this route! So, you can show a bit of your creativity here.
You can use some other tricks like changing the font size of your text! Also, you can use contrasting colours, change the font style, change the background etc.
6. Avoid using fancy fonts
First of all, throughout the app, it is better if the font style is consistent. For the headings, or for the different sections, you can use varieties but still, you need to tread carefully.
Also, try to avoid using too fancy fonts. It might look a bit tacky in the app. It is advisable to use legible fonts only.
7. Pay attention to loading speed
The more is the loading time, the more is the bounce rate!
Image Source: thinkwithgoogle.com
If you make the app design too much complex, it can increase the loading time. And with the increasing loading time, the app abandonment rate increases, Hence, making your app design simpler, yet innovative will be more effective.
With improved loading speed, you can ensure enhanced user experience along with improved user engagement. This is definitely a great opportunity to make more money from the app.
8. Explore various resources for the most suitable layout
Well, there is no need to create a design layout from scratch. Plenty of online resources are available to help you in this case. Here are some that you can check out.
9. Use of visual elements
This is the perfect place to show your skills as a designer. To make your app into a brand, using the visual elements is very important. Yes, texts are obviously important to explain things but using eye-catchy visual elements can help to grab the customer’s attention easily.
You can use animations and images to make the app more visually attractive. However, while adding such visual elements, you have to make sure everything is optimised. Otherwise, the loading speed will get affected.
10. You can use negative space
Let the app design breathe a bit!
Putting everything together on a page will make it look more congested and cluttered, which is a major turn off for the app end-users.
It is advisable to leave some space between two different sections and columns. Also, having negative space in margins will be a good idea.
11. Simple prototypes
Well, for the starters, you can start with simple app design prototypes. It will not only help you in saving money and time but also effort.
You can use a mood board to start with the designing. It will help to be the entire team on the same page from the beginning.
12. Use responsive design
While designing an application, you have to consider both the Android users and Apple users. Until and unless the client specifically mentions any particular platform, you are bound to consider both the platforms. Hence, make sure you are making your app responsive in nature for both the platforms.
Video Source: Google Developers
13. Keep in mind the importance of app accessibility
While designing the app, you should not forget about the app accessibility!
You need to consider the elements like button size. Make sure they are perfect in size and also, are rightly placed so that the users can hit the right part of the screen.
You need to consider another fact that not every user holds or uses the phone in the same way. Hence, the design has to be friendly in such a way that both right-handed and left-handed people can access the app effortlessly.
Moreover, there are persons with disabilities like vision impairments. Hence, you need to allow the app users to change the text size on the screen as per their needs.
14. Easy navigation
A part of the simple design is making the navigation process easier for the users.
Different types of menus that go with the layout can be added all over the screen. Also, you can use the expandable accordion menus to save some space. It is better not to let the users do too much zooming, scrolling and side-scrolling in order to see the content of each page. A complex navigation increases confusion among the users and being helpless, they simply abandon the application.
Other than all the aforementioned points, while designing a mobile app, you need to make sure that
- The entire design is running smoothly. It is better if you can outsource the testing to other teams, who are not directly associated (beta users) with the development or the designing phases of the application. Thus, you can get unbiased opinions about the app and accordingly can make the changes.
- You are testing out the iterative design that helps in making the app design more engaging and responsive. You can use software like Inapptics that will help you in getting more information on how the users are using the app and how the design is impacting their respective actions.
- If you thinking about updating an existing design, it is better if you don’t change the design drastically! Otherwise, the users will get confused.
Wrapping up!
Well, designing an app professionally is not a piece of cake!
Probably, you will need to hire skilled iOS and Android app developers and designers for it.
So, are you currently having any app idea in your mind? Not sure how to start or from where to start to make it into a reality? You can get in touch with GetAProgrammer!
We house a team of experienced and professional iOS and Android app developer in Sydney that makes sure you get the full-fledged Android app development services starting from app consultation, development, and design to the app maintenance, and post-launch support.
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