The importance of user experience cannot be underestimated when practicing app design. You can hire the best software development company to create your app or website, but you will not get great results if you fail to provide a great user experience. With so many decisions to make, it is hard to know where to start in designing your web app. Applying tried-and-tested best practices can help you structure the process and see what is important.
If you want to make your app or website successful, you need to follow the best app design practices. At least one of every two users will not engage with a company if that means dealing with poor mobile UX design. Sometimes, creative designers may look to push the boundaries with their design ideas and often have to filter for relevance by asking the most important question in the field, which is: Which is a good app design practice? This blog will answer that question and how to become great at app design.
To-Do List for App Design
In today's digital age, web apps offer users interactive methods of manipulating information and elements in order to accomplish their tasks in a dynamic, full-scale manner. There are no one-size-fits-all best practices for stellar web app design. Every practice should be adapted to your user and business goals. But once your priorities are clear, these practices mentioned below will guide your workflow and ensure every design decision delights your users.
1. Focus on solving user problems
Web apps do not just provide users with information but they let them accomplish tasks. That means understanding your users’ jobs to be done is quite important in web app design. User needs should inform your entire web app design process, from ideating your key features to validating design concepts and building an effective user experience and user interface.
So how can you implement this best practice? Simply by talking to your users, and keep talking. You should run user interviews, send out surveys, and dig deep into which problems users want your web app to solve. Once you have created user personas and customer journey maps, make sure you keep updating them. User needs will change and develop as they use your web app.
Google Docs is a great example of solution-focused web app design. The design idea solves a major user problem, which is allowing different people to collaborate on the same document either at the same time or at different ones. The UX and UI are based on empowering users to navigate features that solve their problems. Google Docs also does a great job of responding to new user needs as they arise. For example, their team discovered that many users want to be able to continue using web app features when they have low or no internet connectivity, so they developed robust edit-offline capabilities so that users could keep doing tasks even when they are offline.
2. Design for Everyone
Accessibility forms the basis for best app design practices. You need to design for everyone and anticipate all the possible use cases in your design. Users can hold a smartphone in the left or right hand, or even with both hands. The best app designs provide a clean layout with the most important interface elements visible and accessible no matter how users hold their smartphones.
You should be very careful about placing buttons and other elements in the lower corners and at the top of the screen. These places are the hardest to reach, creating a lot of difficulties for users, so focus on avoiding them.
3. Place One Action per Screen
The smartphone screen is small compared to the desktop, which creates many difficulties for UX designers. Add a few additional items on the screen, and suddenly users feel overwhelmed. The best decision here to make is to divide the process into simple actions and dedicate a screen to each one of them.
For instance, if you are designing an app for booking hotels, you can split the process into selecting dates for staying, selecting a location, a suitable hotel, and so on. Each action should be placed on a separate screen to make the process more user-friendly.
4. Create a Clean & Uncluttered Design
Spacing and paddings should be at the center of your design. Staffing all the elements on a single screen is a sure way to failure. A cluttered design is one of the reasons why users abandon an app. Adding white space helps create a well-structured design that is attractive to the eye. Therefore, you will help users concentrate on what you want them to focus on while avoiding distractions.
5. Draw on tried-and-tested design patterns
Excellent app design strikes a delicate balance between tradition and innovation. If your design is too novel, it can confuse users. They will not be able to navigate effectively if you do not offer familiar elements. That is why drawing on established web app design patterns is a good best practice so your users intuitively understand what to do.
For example, you could standardize your design for checkout or signup forms with simple, clearly labeled fields and autofill patterns, use a traffic light color system for alert icons by putting warnings or error statuses in red, less urgent advisory alerts in yellow or orange, and success notifications in green, deploy familiar navigation patterns or using split-screen design to introduce users to two different user paths
6. Build in responsive feedback cues
To interact with your web app features efficiently, users need to get a clear response every time they take an action. Make sure that your design is responsive to user behavior, and incorporate feedback cues that show users the results of their actions.
When they click a button, for instance, they should see an icon or feel a click sensation that confirms their click’s been registered. Design buttons and CTAs to change color or size when users hover over these elements. When a state is loading, use a classic loading wheel or transition pop-up. For important actions like adding a product to their cart, a pop-up showing users what’s been added, along with the quantity, provides extra reassurance.
Bottom Line
With these practices mentioned above, you are more than ready to upgrade your app design work. You just have to follow these guidelines and in no time you will see a major improvement you will have accomplished.
