Understanding Mobile App Design and What Goes Behind a Well-Designed Mobile App

Mobile app design holds paramount importance in app development. It decides how your users are going to interact with your app, what elements they would see, how those elements would appear to the end-user, and much more.

The mobile app industry is expanding each day, and with the easy accessibility of tools and technology to design a mobile app, it is only getting better and better. Every industry vertical, be it Sports, Health, or eCommerce, is looking to design an app that easily fits the requirements of the company and its users.

But what separates a ‘great’ mobile app from a ‘good’ app is its design. In today’s post, we will go through the basics of mobile app design and try to understand the important points for designing a great mobile app.

What is Mobile App Design?

Mobile App Design refers to designing the interfaces and experiences of your mobile app or applying styles to improve its look and feel. Alternatively, a collaboration of User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) design is what we call mobile app design. UI/UX designers ensure that a mobile app looks aesthetically pleasing to the users, is intuitive, and at the same time, helps users perform a task or achieve the desired outcome without any inconvenience.

Important Ingredients for a Great Mobile App Design

A great design is made up of three things-

1. In-depth research and analysis

2. Good UX (Functional) Design, and

3. Good UI (Styling) Design

1. Research and Analysis

Designing a mobile app requires in-depth research and analysis of your target audience, their motivation behind using a particular app, competitor analysis, etc.

Consider yourself as an app user (of a similar app you are looking to build). Try identifying what you feel good and bad about that app in terms of UI and UX. Examine its overall structure. Understanding from the user’s perspective is essential before you design your app.

Next, identify your goals. “What do I want to accomplish? What sorts of problems does the app solve? How is it going to help the end-users?” These questions should be addressed beforehand.

It’s also important to consider which platform you are designing the app for; Android or iOS. Depending on the platform you choose, keep a strict check on their design guidelines.

Without all these insights, it would be challenging for the designers to make the next move, which is-

2. Good UX Design

UX design can be defined as the process of enhancing the user experience by improving the usability and accessibility of the product.

The process starts with creating user personas and user scenarios that provide the image of an ideal end-user and how they would interact with your app to achieve a goal, respectively. Depending on the functionality, it usually requires creating somewhere around six personas and at least two different user scenarios.

Ultimately, both will help a UX designer perceive what the end-user would like to accomplish while using your app. This in turn allows them to prepare wireframes showing the interaction between the user and the app. Wireframes provide an outlook as to how users will use and navigate your app, which the designers can create either using pen and paper or wireframe tools. We would suggest going with the latter. The advantage of using them is they can easily convert your low-fidelity wireframes into high-fidelity ones.

After working around the wireframes, comes the turn of creating mockups and prototypes which can be easier to make if you have used the identical design tool for wireframes and mobile app design else it might take a bit longer.

Once the UX designers are done with wireframes and mockups, it goes through several rounds of a rigorous UX testing process. Testing allows you to eradicate the early UX mobile design issues.

3. Good UI Design

UI design can be defined as the interaction between the product and end-user when presented through a design or an interface. This has much to do with how your app visually appeals to your users.

The objective of UI designers is to create interfaces that are pleasant and easy to use. UI designers make use of the latest trends and tend to represent a brand through intuitive and appealing design formats.

Besides, a good UI design provides a clear message to the users as to what would happen if they click on a particular button. Pay detailed attention to app navigation, typography, and color scheme.

Final Thoughts

UI and UX are correlated or you can say both the design processes go hand-in-hand. User Interface and User Experience design combined with thorough research and analysis can make up a great mobile app design.