Mobile Design
For the past 4 years I have been going through the digital media arts major at Duquesne university, and have therefore done a lot of designing projects. Many of these projects focused on creating the layout for a website and thinking about how a user would interact with it; and every time I would do one of these my professor would point out something that i neglected to think about every time, “now how would that look on a phone?”. This has been consistently pointed out to me because my professors know that designing for mobile has become a necessity as people are spending more and more time on their phones each year.
Mobile use is increasing
Its not only that people are using their smartphone with a greater amount of frequency, the number of people who own smartphones is also increasing exponentially.
According to the Pew research center, “Americans today are increasingly connected to the world of digital information while “on the go” via smartphones and other mobile devices”. They have found that today, the vast majority of Americans own a mobile device of some sort. to be specific 97% of Americans own cellphones with 87% owning smartphones.
With the usage of smartphones going up, having a good grasp of mobile design gets more important every year.
Tips for effective mobile design
There are several resources available to help you improve your ability to create an effective mobile design.
One such resource is Thoughtspot, who provide an article that describe the best practices for effective mobile app design.
Make the design intuitive- the nature of mobile phones users makes them impatient, so you want to layout your design so that your users have to put forth as little effort as possible to achieve their goal. another way to be intuitive is to not put too much information on the screen, mobile screens have less space to work with so you need to be mindful of where you put your info
Get rid of clutter- Reducing clutter will improve comprehension, so get rid of anything in a mobile design that isn’t absolutely necessary. Its a good idea to reduce the information of any one screen to allow for one primary action.
Simple navigation- There is a tricky balance to the navigation portion of an app where you want it to be discoverable and engage interaction with the content without it taking too much space on the page. You also want navigation to be general enough to accommodate the needs of the majority of the app’s users. Navigations should be present on every screen and indicate to the user where they are on the app
One handed operation- people often use their mobile phones with one hand so its a good idea to make your design with this in mind. Make sure that critical operations of the app are reachable with the thumb
Don’t just use the web experience- Don’t use the same assets that would be used on an apps web counterpart. A mobile app is an entirely different experience from a website and requires its own unique design to keep it intractable. For instance, instead of using links, use buttons as they are easier to press with your finger
Sources
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/
https://www.thoughtspot.com/thoughtspot-blog/15-mobile-app-design-best-practices