5 Mistakes to Watch Out Against While Designing for Mobile

January 29, 2015
/
5 Mistakes to Watch Out Against While Designing for Mobile

1. The app not meeting user expectations
Bringing new users ‘on board’ is perhaps not as easy as you might imagine. Different users have different sets of expectations. An app’s future can often be decided during the very first interaction with users, when they access the app after having downloaded it. Some users might expect a tutorial to show them the various functionalities of the app and to welcome them. Others might expect the app to let them be on their own at the earliest and let them figure out things as the try out the app. It can be an onerous task to design for preferences that are clearly conflictive and many apps lose users at the very first screen because of that. You should not have users sign in without coming to know of the value that the app has to offer them or have them fill in registration forms of considerable length. It’s not a good idea to block their way to the content they are looking for by your efforts towards branding or by animated splash screens. To make user engagement smoother, you can get routine sign-in out of the way and provide fast log-ins through social media ids. instead.2. Not providing users a logical set of steps to use the app
Give your users clear paths to accomplish what they want to. The number of users who abandon your app in the initial stages will come down considerably if you offer a logical set of steps for them to follow. If your users derive value from the earliest stages of using your app, the proportion of new users who become active ones will be much higher than otherwise.3. Not providing appropriate visual clues
Often you can understand the action that you need to take to use an object even before you actually start using it. However, the visual clues upon which you base your perception of how to use an object may not always be perfect. In the case of screen-based graphical interfaces, the designers have to be even more careful about providing appropriate visual clues therefore. For mobile apps, where there usually are no pointing devices (such as a mouse), the effect is even more pronounced. Here are a few design-related principles that you should follow:- Go with conventional usage – You should choose allowable interactions and user interface controls that are in accordance with convention. You are quite likely to fail even if you think the new method you have implemented is better, if you don’t follow convention. That is because conventions change rather slowly as most people don’t prefer change.
- Utilize Metaphors – Metaphors are bound by cultures and regions and, so, every one may not understand these. You can ensure usability by conducting the requisite research to confirm that users understand the metaphors you use. It is, in fact, the only way to confirm that.
- Use text to explain the action required – Generally, people comprehend words faster than graphics. Having an action described in words in place of an icon is quicker for both experienced and new users to interpret. However, the scenario is different for international adoption. There it is best to use graphics along with text.
- Ensure that the conceptual model you follow is coherent – The same principles should be applicable across the interface, once a part of a gesture or the interface is learnt by the user. The issue of initial learnability remains, but coherent conceptual models still are necessary and valuable. It is through the use of metaphors, words and convention that users become familiar with your model.