Mobile App Interface Design

6 Steps Enterprise Blueprint for Mobile App Prototype It is essential for designers and developers to have a deep understanding of building an app and launching its prototype. This understanding alone can assist in differentiating your startup from the rest. It can give startups a competitive advantage while pitching their app to potential investors. The venture capitalist Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm behind Box and Foursquare argues in his Pmarca Blog Archives ebook that due to poor pitch quality, investors have to use referrals to source startups. VCs only meet startups through their networks. The reason behind this is, too many startups that they could meet are non-professional and uninformed. That's why those other startups are not fundable. The entrepreneurs who go into the VCs meetings prepared, have an advantage. The most important question founders ask a mobile app design company is what they must bring to the pitch. A deck may look great, but it's better to have an actual working prototype.Andreessen agrees by saying that the best thing to walk in with is a working product. Otherwise, a beta or prototype would be better if we can't get to a working product without raising venture funding. It might be a website that works but hasn't launched already, or a software mockup with partial functionality.Now, the question remains: how to leave a lasting impression with a prototype? In this blog post, we will understand the 6 steps we can take to create a mobile app prototype and leave a lasting impression on Investors. So, let's begin. 6 Steps to Creating a Mobile App Prototype: 1. Research On The Problem The first step to creating a quality app prototype is to ensure that we have a problem worth solving. The problem can extend from simple boredom issues from the app (such as games) to a corporate requirement (for the B2B market). This first step may sound straightforward, and indeed it is. But it's a surprising fact that most people come up to mobile app design services just because their ideas seemed “cool”. Just because an idea seems “cool” is not a good reason for building an app. The reasons to build an app can be to make the communication easier, or to solve an existing problem. While working with the clients, take them through a process that enables uncovering the purpose of the app. If possible, work on understanding the industry as a whole. Then understand the competitors, business goals, audience goals. Dig dip into understanding the features of the app that truly matters to their audience. After having a clear idea of their audience and the pain points the app solves, begin to design the user's journey. All of the above steps may take considerable time. They are the most overlooked steps in the process. That's why many of the apps in the app store are in the bin. Also, Read | Choosing A Suitable Mobile App Design For Your Business 2. Identify Key Functionality Requirements After identifying the problem, begin to brainstorm the product requirements. It's a simple and fun exercise to list down the hundreds of different features your app should have. And that's exactly what we have to do! Before building your iOS app or Android app, create a list of the features that make up your ideal app. Then begin to prioritize those items. Prioritize them by analyzing which features are the most important to your target audience versus what would be nice to have. Take the top three to four features on your priority list and design your app with that in mind. Add other features after getting an idea that it resonates with your plan, and your app is something people actually want. 3. Create Sketches Of The Primary Screens After figuring out the highest priority features, begin thinking through the user experience. One of the best ways of crafting the user experience is to draw a few rough sketches. Sketches of how the primary screens should look and feel. After we have the sketches, we are able to build out the screens we envisioned in more detail. Related Sketching With Free Hand And Digital Tools 4. Turn Your Sketches Into Wireframes After having sketched your primary screens, begin to wireframe your sketches. A wireframe is a low-fidelity, simplified outline of your product that consists of lines, boxes, words, and sometimes descriptions. It serves as a framework of where your app will go rather than the final look and feel of the app. 5. Turn Wireframes Into A Prototype Share your wireframes with a handful of people to test your product and gather feedback. We can turn low-fidelity wireframes to a basic prototype. Then we can share it with the target audience, friends, peers, manager, and boss for feedback on the app. Prototyping makes the product more real for investors. It also gives your testers the ability to get a real feel for what it would be like to use the app. It also prepares your developers with a better sense of the intended UX before finalizing the design. 6. Translate Wireframes Into Final Designs Finally, it's time to transition from simple and grey wireframes to pixel-perfect designs. Hire a mobile app design agency for a faster and seamless transition.In each scenario, some designers use Sketch to create their app designs while others use Illustrator. After having the final files, update your prototype to make it look and feel like it's live. Sharing Your Prototype With Investors After all that hard work, it's time to be ready for the big presentation. The first step is to land a meeting with an investor. The best way of doing this is through a referral. In case of no referrals, reach out to an investor through a cold email, which is one of your better options. Conclusion It's not easy to transition from an app idea to functional requirements to sketches to mockups to prototypes. The process takes time, and for a beginner, it could take months to get to the final stage. That's why contact our UI UX design services to get things done at a fast pace without losing the quality. Image source: Google images

Area Of Work: Mobile App Interface Design

Ashutosh Chandra

19 Aug 2020

Mobile App Design Strategies for a World-Class UX For a great product, building its features, and functionality is not enough. Users expect the interface to enhance the overall experience, while still functioning perfectly and fulfilling their every need. Agencies that offer mobile app design services can fulfill those needs. The new and Improved buttons, forms, and animations can make an app design feel unique and state of the art. But there is an upper limit to the pace of innovation, which means we should not innovate too far beyond what is widely accepted. Although the feel of these new app designs is different, they must also be familiar enough to be intuitive. There are some commonly accepted standards and principles when it comes to designing mobile apps. In this blog, we will discuss some of the effective mobile app design strategies that span the onboarding, engagement, and retention processes of simple yet functional design. So, let's dive right in. Key Mobile App Design Strategies for a World Class UX: Prompt the Mobile Onboarding Process The final stage of building a product often focuses on the initial stage of the customer's onboarding experience. Sometimes, teams do not spend enough time crafting that “first-mile” onboarding experience for users. Never underrate the importance of designing an amazing onboarding experience. This will immediately set the stage for your product and create a memorable first scene, hypothetically speaking. Also, Read | User Onboarding Techniques To Revamp UX Include Interactive Loading Screens or Skeleton Screens The computational power of our mobile phones outperforms the most expensive computers in the world from only a few decades ago. Yet we still see loading screens. Hopefully, future innovations may eliminate loading screens entirely. But for now, we must handle them with poise. In the loading screen, designers can provide entertainment in the form of subtle animations. Simplify the Mobile User Experience Overly complicated UX design can create an environment of feature creep. Feature creep occurs when the product offers more features than customers need, which complicates and confuse users. A functional design promotes clean and simple design elements. Although the functional design is often associated with hardware, it can equally apply to software architecture. For instance, creating a mobile app that users can navigate successfully almost subconsciously. Related Strategies A Designer Can Use To Simplify A Design Appeal to Intuition It is important to create an onboarding process that educates users about how to use the app. But at the same time, there is no substitute for learning by doing. Most of the users simply opt-out of the onboarding flow, and choose impatience over practicality. Designers build the essential interfaces to account for these users who will not bother with the onboarding tour. This means designing intuitive elements that users can “self-taught” on first use. Design Mobile Forms for Apps Long forms on mobile devices can be troublesome most of the time. Some devices have autocomplete features that make completing forms a breeze. But we can't expect this while designing forms. Chunking is a technique sometimes used for memorization that compartmentalizes information into bite-sized chunks. Phone numbers, for instance, are much easier to remember when broken into combinations of three and four digits, instead of ten. Implementing this strategy to simplifying the process of filling out mobile forms is to break the forms into digestible chunks. Size Elements for Mobile Consider the finger pad size while deciding the size of buttons, text, and other elements within the design of mobile apps. Keep visual acuity in mind. Your app should be clearly viewable from an arm's length away. On average, this is about 36 inches. Mobile app design elements such as graphics, text, and color palettes should be clearly viewable from a reasonable distance. Consider Reachable Thumb Zones Don't forget to consider the positions in which users hold their devices while designing an app. For instance, it's possible users are lying down in bed or walking to work, which can put different levels of strain on finger positioning. Designers must design mobile apps with reachable zones in mind for the best possible user experience in every physical position. When the important features and frequently used elements are in the bottom three-quarters of the screen, it increases engagement and user satisfaction. Conclusion From the user experience perspective, mobile app design is as important as the technical functionality of the product. Our rational senses appreciate the business logic of mobile apps but the app design appeals to our emotions and creativity. Contact Oodles mobile app design services for more assistance.

Area Of Work: Mobile App Interface Design

Ashutosh Chandra

24 Jul 2020

Guidelines for Perfect Mobile Design While designing Mobile applications we should take care of the small things because those small things make a good User interface. I am sharing some of the basic mobile design aesthetics which we all should use for better results. There are following points need to take care while mobile design: Reach Area Thumb Reaching Zone: How easy to reach our thumbs to tap areas on a mobile phone's screen. Hard to reach Reaching this area requires uncomfortable finger movements and a lot of stretching Okay to reach Reaching this area requires some stretching. Can be hard for users with small hands Easy to read Reaching this area is very easy on nature and does not require stretching. Platform Guidelines We have to use the right design system for iOS and Android. Both iOS and Android have a different user base. Also never carry UI Elements from e platform another. Apple's Human Interface Guidelines We are already aware of the In-depth information and UI resources to designing pixel-perfect applications to integrate seamlessly with the Apple platform Guidelines Material Design Material design is an adaptable system of guidelines, components, and tools that support the best practices of user interface designs for android. Think device first First, we have to be aware of the “unsafe areas” (notch, camera punch-hole, etc.) Unsafe Area Be careful when designing in these areas, you should not include menu or tab elements in there. Safe Area Everything within the “safe areas” will be visible on different device screens. Font Type and Font Size Every font can evoke different emotions and provide easy readability at the same time. Typeface We have to choose a typeface that works well in multiple sizes and weights to maintain readability and usability in every size Font-Size Use legible font size. The text should be at least 11 points so a user can read it at a typical viewing distance without zooming Contrast Use contrast checkers to prevent color problems, also use 60-30-10 rule which refers to an ideal proportion that is meant to reach a balance among colors Call to Action (Buttons) We have to design finger-friendly buttons because Mistaken taps often happen due to small touch controls Create controls that measure a minimum of 10-12mm (40px) in order that they are often accurately tapped with a finger. Read more:How To Enhance Your Website's UX Design For Ultimate Conversion Rate? iOS Apple recommends a minimum target size of 44 pixels (px) wide 44px tall. Android Google recommends a minimum target size of 48 dp wide 48 dp tall Long Scroll Problems Keep screens as short as possible, using cards with a tap to extend feature or by breaking tasks into screens Tab bars Tab bars are very important for every app, We have to design clear and clean tab bars also name all tabs whenever possible for better user experience. Gestures Tap or swipe mobile gestures? It is very important to choose the right gestures because if sometimes using the wrong type of gesture can lead to a broken UX. Tap Gesture Select or submit Activate Toggle on/off Cancel or escape Enable or disable Swipe Gesture Scroll Pan Dismiss notifications Refresh Paging Conclusion In this blog, I have mentioned a few important rules for perfect mobile design to improve design skills. I hope you've learned something from this post and found useful tips for your design skills.

Area Of Work: Mobile App Interface Design

Aditya Kumar

23 Apr 2020

5 Effective Design Strategies to Build Mobile Optimized Sites Back in 1999, DoCoMo gifted us with the world's first smartphone with internet accessibility. Since then mobile internet connectivity has become widespread and much faster with a wide array of smartphones. Smartphones play an important role in enabling consumers to avail multiple services from booking cabs to ordering products and executing transactions. The proliferation of wireless internet connectivity and mobile phones has opened up several business opportunities. To effectively capitalize them, businesses need to make informed decisions about presenting their offerings to consumers through smartphones. They have two choices - build a mobile application or a mobile-optimized website. It requires them to either opt for mobile app design services or optimize websites for mobile viewing. Although mobile apps have greater usability, mobile sites are more economical and work across mobile platforms. This blog post discusses five design strategies to build mobile sites. 5 Effective Design Strategies for Optimized Mobile Websites 1. Responsive web designs Responsive web designing processes involve the transmission of a common HTML code to all devices. However, CSS is used to alter and adjust the appearance of the site as per different screen sizes and orientation. Recently, a majority of digital businesses have opted for responsive web design services to target their potential audience. The layout of responsive sites enables users to better understand the content and functionality. Also, responsive designs significantly reduce the site's load time by omitting the need for redirection to have a device-optimized view. For instance, Britain's daily newspaper, The Guardian, supports a responsive site to showcase digital news. The site is displayed in a landscape format for desktop view and a portrait layout for mobile users. Usage of responsive web designing technique enables the site to be flexible, intuitive, and adaptive to multiple mobile devices. 2. Content Refinement The limited screen space available for mobile sites causes the content to shrink as per the screen size. Poor optimization squeezes the content and impairs readability, thus leading to high bounce rates. It is essential for providers of UX design services to consciously prioritize and minimize the content for a mobile site. It is advisable to showcase essential information prominently to mobile users as they access content on the move. The Guardian's mobile site displays only the top 5 news categories from the total 10 displayed for desktop readers. Another way to minimize a mobile site's content is to use hamburger menu navigation. However, an industry appropriate approach is needed to apply mobile navigation techniques to achieve improved mobile user experience. You may also like to read- Designing Mobile App Menus for User Navigation Guidelines 3. The parallax effect Parallax effect for web interfaces is one of the latest design trends followed by website design companies. It involves layering of the site's background and content in a way that they both appear independent of each other. Bear Grylls' official site showcases a string of multiple responsive and interactive parallax effects. Although the site is a visual treat for desktop users, the mobile view simply fails to maintain the parallax effect. It is, therefore, essential for UX designers to apply design elements that are adaptive to all screen sizes. It is especially important for portfolio sites, single page websites, and pre-launch websites to correctly use the parallax effect to maximize mobile user experience. 4. Alignment of graphics It is not essential to replicate a website's complete set of graphics on its mobile version. Seasoned mobile UX design services agencies selectively exclude additional images, graphics, icons, and illustrations to optimize content for mobile viewing. Consider e-commerce giant Amazon, for example, they minimize product images for the mobile version of their site. The mobile version displays only the best-sellers or in-demand items on the top and the rest get a place inside mega-menus. 5. One scroll, One section Unlike desktop sites, the mobile view requires users to use upward thumb movements to scroll down an interface. Users can only understand one set of information with a single scroll. It is, therefore, advisable for businesses to follow a 'One scroll-One section' rule while building mobile sites. It involves dividing the entire site into several sections and displaying a complete single section with each scroll. However, it is not a good design practice to forcefully stuff content and graphics into a single section. Excessive information overwhelms users and results in bad user experience. Conclusion UI/UX experts suggest that mobile sites are easy to think through but hard to implement. One wrong design decision can cause businesses to lose significant user engagement. Therefore, digital businesses must conduct in-depth research to understand how their mobile display influences users and impacts their buying decisions. Responsive Mobile App Design Services for smart devices Oodles Studio has a skilled UI/UX design team that builds responsive and intuitive designs for websites, mobile sites, and mobile applications. Our mobile UX design services are available for iOS and Android devices, wearable gadgets, smart TVs, and other smart devices. Connect with our design team to know more about our UX/UI process and deliverables.

Area Of Work: Mobile App Interface Design

Sanam Malhotra

28 Jun 2019

Designing Mobile App Menus with User Navigation Guidelines Over 2.1 billion people* surf the web using smartphones. Mobile applications play a big role in enabling users to effortlessly find what they are looking for. They have also become an essential medium for businesses to stay connected with their target audience. The more intuitive a mobile app is, the better engagement it can garner to achieve business objectives. The primary requirement for building intuitive mobile apps is to provide the user with easy and clear mobile navigation. The ‘Menu bar' meets a critical requirement of users to browse the offerings of a business. Therefore, when mobile app developers provide mobile app design services, they ensure that menu items are as orderly and engaging as possible. The idea is to give users full control of in-app navigation and optimize user experience significantly. Industry- appropriate Mobile Navigations in Mobile App Design Services Hick's law says that the more choices we present to users, the longer it takes them to make a decision. Compressed menu designs or minimalist menu options suit businesses with a limited range of offerings. However, UX design services for a large entity such as Amazon cannot include minimalist menu designs. So, what is the best solution to display menu items according to your business size? 1) Mega-menus for Industry Giants Mega-menus are large drop-down lists that display all the major category links of the business services. The items in the list are clickable and take users to the landing page of that category label. Mega-menus are displayed within the ‘Services/Shop/Specialities' tab within the top navigation bar. The list items can be further segregated into sub-categories, to enable users to narrow down their search. Although web design services have enough room for mega-menus, they hinder user experience on mobile screens. Now UX designers have devised effective means way to compress mega-menus for mobile screens. For instance, Amazon has minimized its global navigation inside the ‘Shop by Category' tab. The design technique includes all categories in a vertical list with split buttons to show further divisions. UX designers must avoid displaying items in alphabetical order. They should instead portray the list of items into similar categories. However, the same design technique may not work for organizations whose users are unfamiliar with all of its services. For instance, medical institutes such as BLK hospital cannot compress their services within a ‘Facilites' tab. In such cases, it is critical for the organization to clearly inform users about their specific services. It not only enables users to make a quick decision but also leads to better navigation. 2) Hamburger Vs Kebab Menus for subject-specific organizations Have you ever noticed the menu navigation icon while scrolling through your G-mail or WhatsApp account? Google has smartly minimized the menu choices for its separate business lines within the left-aligned hamburger navigation. The design practice involves an icon with three vertically aligned lines. On the other hand, WhatsApp places the menu on the top-right corner of the screen inside three vertically aligned dots. Both the Hamburger and Kebab navigation are by far the safest and most effective navigation designs for mobile screens. However, it is important to take note of the following tips before finalizing any one of the two menu navigation- Users are better able to skim through the choices if they are displayed in a left-to-right alignment. It is therefore advisable to present menu items in a left-aligned pattern. Experts suggest that displaying the menu categories in an all-caps fashion reduces the legibility by almost 10%. Thus, the category names must be displayed with only capitalized initials. It improves readability and eventually the user experience. Further, the color contrast between the category name and the background of the page must be balanced correctly. It enables users to clearly interpret the text and choose effortlessly. You may also like to read-Best Practices in Typography for Enhancing Brand's Digital Identity Conclusion The menu navigation designs for mobile screens are still in their embryonic age. Mobile app design services are constantly experimenting with a variety of distinct menu icons and displays. However, the above-mentioned tips are evidence-based techniques to significantly optimize the user experience and drive maximum user engagement. Oodles Studio provides Mobile App Design Services for iOS and Android mobiles, smartwatches, wearable gadgets, and other smart devices. Talk to our UX design team for building dedicated mobile applications from scratch and refining existing mobile interfaces. *Study Source-https://www.statista.com/statistics/284202/mobile-phone-internet-user-penetration-worldwide/ Image Sources- Google

Area Of Work: Mobile App Interface Design

Sanam Malhotra

07 Jun 2019

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