10 Mobile UX Design Principles for Beginners

Introduction

By a statistics of 2022, more than 78% of people of the world use smartphones. If you're designing an app for mobile devices, there is no way you overlook its details.

For beginning with UX design for mobile, you need not be overwhelmed with a bulky rule book. There are some pretty simple, easy-to-integrate, and important mobile UX design principles that you can stick to.?And in this post, we've crafted exactly those 10 rules that are solely for a mobile UX beginner. Let's take a minute from whatever we're doing, and go through the whole post.?

10 Tips for Perfect UX Design for Mobile

1. Kill The Clutter, As Much As You Can

Clutters are likely to place at those important spaces of a screen, where users are focus at first place. Too much information at the clutter section is, therefore, wasting up the valuable attention of your users. Specially in mobile devices where you're not given with too much space to waste.

Get rid of everything on a mobile design which is not necessary or less necessary. This will definitely improve comprehension.

One rule of thumb is to use just one primary action in every screen. This will make it easier for the user to use, learn and navigate with much more ease.

One good example is the Uber app. They know that the intention of the user is to take a ride. So, they don't overwhelm the users with tons of other information. Instead, they utilize the whole screen to provide Geo-based data and pick up information.?

2. Design for Different Operating Environments

Mobile devices have a lot of diversity in terms of shape, sizer and operating systems. So, when it comes to mobile UX designs, the ‘one size fits them all' theory doesn't work anymore. It's obvious that you've to cater to each of these device's interface, environment, and navigation.?

Let’s take some practical examples to talk about.?

iPhone is a device with only a single button for multiple purposes. But on the other hand, Android phones offer multiple buttons for user's interaction. This will definitely lead you to design different interfaces for both of these operating environments.?

3. Design for Different Screen Sizes As Well

Screen size is also an important fact to keep in mind. A whole new term called ‘responsiveness' in brought into the syllabus in this regard. Taken that for granted, you need to make sure that your app suits the smallest screen sizes, the largest mobile screens and everything in between.

4. Design Tap-targets In A Finger-friendly Way

When a user is surfing through a page on mobile, it's hard for them to hit targets which are smaller than their fingertips(specially the thumb). As a designer, you should pay some serious attention to this fact.

An average measurement for a thumb-friendly button is around 7-10mm so that they can tap it with ease. Having a little extra space than the thumb size is essential, as it allows the user to fit snugly inside the target button. When the edge of the buttons will be visible to the user's that would be ideal design to go with.?

On an additional note, make sure that there are enough spaces when two or more tap-targets are placed close to one another.?

5. Be Smart with the Colors

When it comes to mobile UX design, colors play a great role. It doesn't only put some life in your application, but also deals with the user's mood, tone, and conversion decisions.?

Take an example from the food industry. According to color Psychology, the best color scheme to design a food delivery app is Red. In fact, if you have a look at the apps of McDonald's, KFC, Coca-cola, you will find enough proof behind the theory.?

Colour is known as a catalyst to tease a person's appetite and mood. No matter whichever type of mobile application you're developing, there are some specific color-codes to optimize your UX with.

6. Go an Extra Mile with Gestures

Nowadays, buttons are not only the only way to initiate the user's interaction with a mobile app. There are tons of gestures which will help you to get around.?

Even a novice designer is familiar with some of these gestures- double tapping, pinching, scrolling, and sliding etc. Implementations of those gestures can impressively boost UX.?

Let's talk about this very concern in the case of Instagram. In the early days of Instagram Mobile app, zooming in or out was not possible. Eventually, they've implemented a number of gestures, where zooming in or out by pinching was one.?

When they implemented this feature in their next updates, users were clearly seemed to obtain a better UX.?

To spice it up, you might consider adding some animations whenever a gesture is performed by the user. Some gradient effect for ‘Reloading by Pulling Down' can be a good example of such a visible presentation of gestures.?

7. Design Your Interface Based on Hand Positions

Steven Hobber conducted research on the usage of the usage of mobile devices. What he found was- 49% of the users use a thumb to get done with anything in their smartphones. Based on the research, we've figured out a certain area on the screen, where it's pretty much easier to access by thumbs.?

The most frequently used items of a mobile app are the top menu, the common actions, the frequently used controls etc. While designing, try to keep these items within the easy-to-reach zone of the mobile screen. This will induce more thumb-to-screen to interact

8. Have Room for User’s Feedback?

No matter how smart and well designed an app is, there are some users who will be pretty happy with it, and some will not buy it at all. To know how well your product is working on the users, you need to measure its success.?

Receiving actual feedback after a set of actions performed by the user will directly provide you with the information of what's working and what's not. You will get to know what to add, cut off or change.?

9. Minimize the Essence of Typing

One of the common behaviors of mobile device users is, they don't like it to type for any information unless it's with a real person. So, if your mobile app has some forms or user's input field, keep that number under control.?

Instead of taking every input from typing, you can use autocomplete to make it easier for the user. Personalized data can also be a good option. Either way, your goal is to let the user input bare minimum of information through their keys.?

10. Let the User Be In Control

It's 2019, and people like to control whatever they have to deal with. If it's a mobile app, you need to allow users to make decisions that personalize their experience.?

We are talking about allowing users with options to change settings, interface, layout, color scheme, notifications. In case of any viable changes that user make, you can provide a notification or warning. But still, the power should be in their hands.?

Apart from the controls, you can integrate status and other similar feedback to let them know what's going on. If it requires signup to continue with the app, allow them to use it as guest users in first place.?

Summary Line

We're at the end of the post, and hopefully, you've enjoyed it. The rule of thumb of mobile UX design is- make it as easy, smooth and seamless as possible for the user. You can try putting yourself into the user's shoe before finalizing every action you take.