A constantly hooked phone screen comes with numerous exciting opportunities for building an experience of a lifetime. These opportunities help marketers to understand the emotional and transactional behaviour of consumers while operating a smartphone. A well-mapped UI/UX process could be a game-changer for the user as they will only get the favourable experience and also, the companies will be investing in the right direction rather than experimenting with their grim chances of landing somewhere great. According to Truelist, every $1 invested in UX results in a return between $2 and $100. That gives an impressive return on investment!
Let us understand how you can bring a change in the mobile experience by simply taking the assistance of advanced, yet easy to implement UI/UX technology.
Tailor-made solutions
There is nothing better than a familiar experience on a newly installed application. If you can make the user feel that the application is developed keeping their needs and expectations in mind, you will be winning over within no time. According to Claris, 74 percent of the customers saw an increase in productivity due to a custom app, and 81 percent reported a reduction in inefficient tasks.
A customized application for your business will work according to your research and the behaviour of your target audience. With mounting competition, developers have started introducing multiple UIs for the different target audiences so that the connection with a mobile application remains intact. The below is an example of customized UI, the left one is clean and subtle and the right is more vibrant and comes with more functionality. Offering customization of this kind is always suggested.
Mobile phone experience
While planning to provide an optimized user experience, it becomes crucial to look ahead of the desktop sites and work on mobile phone experience. According to Truelist, 74% of people are likely to return to a website if it is optimized for mobile. For optimizing the website according to a device, parameters like quick loading, mobile-friendly popups, image optimization, efficient navigation help you make an impact during the initial encounters. Once you impress the user with technical expertise, you may plan for converting the user into a loyal customer with time.
Heuristic evaluation
This evaluation is widely used to test the usability of a website or an application. You must test your application against every Heuristic parameter before the official launch in any case.
In 1990, web usability pioneers, Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich published the landmark article “Improving a Human-Computer Dialogue”. It contained a set of principles—or heuristics—which industry specialists soon began to adopt to assess interfaces in human-computer interaction. This model guides you to test on 10 parameters and come up with an application that ticks all the boxes. The below image summarises the usability Heuristics so that you don’t make any mistakes related to UI design in the times to come.
Interactive UI/UX
You are not catering to the robots but the actual humans with emotions, reactions, expectations and feedback related to their experience. This gives you a chance to come forward and behave like a sensible application that is smart in real. Interactive UIs can learn from the user’s pattern and do every bit to make lives simpler by providing the most desired benefits with ease. While interacting with an application, users must not feel alone and see an activities participation of the application in the process. The below example suggests how you can make the journey of account creation interesting using some simple animations.
Source: UXDesign
Strategic user experience
The intent should move to reduce the number of taps(clicks) so that the outcome becomes effortless(close to it) during the process. It starts from efficiently mapping the user journey and understanding, what should be displayed first or which pop-up annoys the most. Even if you generate revenues through advertisements and they are to stay then also, there is always a space to do that without disturbing the primary role of the application. Advertisements should only come up after a while when the user gets a taste of the services offered by you. The below screenshots show a comparison where 4 taps could have been a single gesture for getting the directions on a smartphone. Optimization like this makes UI a competitive field for the developers.
Source: LukeW
Optimized icons and elements
Rather than making people remember the icons and elements of your application, you should be able to design in the direction of every element being completely understandable without putting in much effort. When people can recognize the icons, they will automatically feel at home and won’t look for any other application in the application store. Whenever a new user tries to get on board, he/she is never in the position to invest hours in comprehending the environment of the application; if you can serve everything on the platter, there is a chance of not getting uninstalled within a few minutes. The new logos of Google have set an extremely bad example when we compare them with the previous ones. Now every logo is identical making it difficult for users to navigate.
Source: TechCrunch
Standardization
At first, we talked about customization, now we will discuss how you can customize while being standard in your approach. The approach to iconography, colour finalization and every other element should be following a standard, resembling the brand value, the correspondence with the purpose of the application and also, the familiarity with the user interaction. This uniformity will reduce the chances of any confusion coming in the way of a delightful user experience, and will also create an image of a user-centric development environment. The below design of a dashboard uses minimum colours but uniformly to depict the clear representation of data. The representation is so subtle still catches the attention as it comes with a standardized design language.
Source: Design your way
Simplicity
If we talk of today, being simple is to stand out when every brand is trying and extending their arms to absurd ideas and unrealistic approaches that do not have any industrial application but are different without being useful in any dimension. Going out of the way will attract headlines for some time but will never yield you results if the application is of no use. If you keep things simple and optimize the user journey with simplicity, you will achieve those headlines while retaining the ever happy user base. The below UI design from Rebecca Noren for ‘Workout Tracker’ is simple, elegant and still different in its approach. The clean design makes it easier for the users to navigate and work around the application.
Conclusion
It comes out that the prime motive of a UI/UX designer should be to design a simple to use application with the least complications and only useful tools, light on the head of the users. Achieving the same requires years of research & development along with the support of a specialized team working towards a common objective. Initially, the research costs of mapping the user journeys and comprehending the requirements mount up but with time, the cost negates as the application development and maintenance cost comes down due to an optimized and well-researched application design. Whenever you think of an application or website to be developed, look for a specialized UI/UX designer before any other human resource.
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