Are You Thinking About Making A Mobile App?

Are You Thinking About Making A Mobile App

Are you a developer and are you working on making a mobile app? Are you currently creating the user interface for your application? Here are a series of tips that could make you comfortable! What differentiates two or more apps that aim at the same user target is the User Experience (UX) that is the set of sensations experienced during the use of an application. To guarantee a good UX, it is necessary to start from the realization of the user interface, also known as User Interface (UI).

The user interface is the means by which users interact and communicate with the application. It consists of a series of textual and graphical elements, which allow navigation between the sections of the app. So it is not a simple layout, but it is also designed according to the feedback of the actions taken by the user.

Many novice developers are often faced with difficulties related to the design of a user interface that is appealing, easy to use and functional. To this end, we offer you some suggestions to help you in your work!

I (our) 10 tips for making a market-tested mobile app

In the preliminary phase of the development of an application, it is very important to analyze the UI of those who are already competing on the market (obviously if there are!), Listing the distinctive features of your application that can generate a competitive advantage. This step is crucial because the risk of ending up in the limbo of applications-surrogate is very high. This analysis allows to obtain greater awareness of what users expect in terms of user experience. It is therefore not advisable to start from scratch, without having analyzed the dominant formats (or models) in the mobile app world.

Choose how many sections the app will have

When you are ready to make an app, once you have defined all the features contained in the application, it is advisable to design the number of sections that you will need to create, counting the number of steps or actions that each individual intention of the user requires to be brought complete. For example, it is advisable to try to make the application core service reachable from the first screen. Even when the app has many features, it is necessary to give greater and immediate emphasis to the main functions, while the more advanced options can be made reachable with a greater number of steps.

Choose the type of layout that best suits your app

There are 3 main types of layout:

• Linear Layout. Composed of elements arranged in one direction, then vertically (vertical orientation) or horizontally (horizontal orientation);
• Table Layout. The elements are enclosed within rows and columns of a table;
• Relative Layout. The distribution of the elements is much less rigid, as is the navigation, and the layout is dynamic, able to change according to the size of the screen.

In general, the three types of layouts do not preclude any functionality, but the choice of one rather than the other can improve the user experience of some applications. In this sense, to make an app, the relative layout is particularly recommended, because it allows a rather harmonious adaptation on screens that are very different from each other and the elements seem to be less constrained within prefixed schemes.

Want to make a functional app? Do not always think about menus and sub-menus

As already mentioned above, it is important to be able to make accessible the main function for which the application was created from the first screen. To do this, you can call up the menu using a special button at a later time, without necessarily taking up an entire screen. Obviously, this as well as other advice, depends on the nature of your application. A fitness application requires the user to choose from the menu among a variety of workouts, challenges and tutorials based on their needs, while in a weather forecast application it is advisable to show short-term forecasts immediately of the place where the user is located and that the search for other locations can be done with a special command.

Take advantage of the action bar to make an app!

The Action Bar is a rectangular band located at the top of the user interface and contains some quick access features. Inside the action bar you enter interaction and navigation options that the user may want to access on any screen of the application. The contents of this bar are usually the icon and / or the name of the application (which here have the mere title task), two actions such as “search” and “access”, and the Action Overflow, which allows access quickly to other elements not present on the Action Bar.

Choose the design language carefully, to make an app the best

There are different design languages, i.e. methods for conceiving words, images and signs according to a precise philosophy at the base. A language that has established itself in recent years thanks to its innovative capacity is Material Design, created by Google and designed to reconcile the classic principles of good design, based on physical materials, with new technological innovations. This language aims to overcome the traditional Flat Design, the Metro Design by Microsoft typical of the first iPhone. The Material Design Brand a timely and complete synthesis of the results of scientific research on color perception, on the use of dynamic elements to keep the threshold of user attention high and on the application of typographic principles to show hierarchies among elements (such as the use of bold, color contrasts and shadows ). The final effect of the application of Material Design is an interface that recalls the properties of paper and the natural use of lights and shadows. To actually see the application of this design language, you just open any app Package G Suite of Google!

Use grids and key lines to define the layout

The layout, to maintain a visual coherence in all the sections of the app, must be based on grids and key lines. The grids allow precise and constant spacing between the elements and between these and the edges of the screen. Key lines allow a distinction between different groups of elements and tools.

To make an app, it designs navigation well

The next step is the navigation design. By navigation we mean the set of movements that the user makes between the screens of the app to complete a specific action. Navigation follows three directions:

• Lateral, when you scroll elements of the same hierarchical level (for example the elements of a menu);
• Vertical, when accessing the elements of a larger group (for example when opening a folder containing files);
• Inverse, when you go back from the chronologically performed navigation.

The reference theme

When you go to the actual design process of the user interface, you have to choose a reference theme. The theme, whether produced by a third party or yourself, involves using the same range of colors, the same fonts and the same ratio of size between the elements of each section. In short, this is the application of the same style to each screen. Without a theme, it would be difficult to make the user’s experience consistent with the use of the app from a visual point of view, and each section would seem to be extraneous to the others.

Use the colors of your brand (or those of your client)

To make the brand recognizable it is very useful to use a theme with colors that refer to those of the brand.   If the brand does not have a logo with particularly harmonious colors or otherwise unsuitable for a mobile application, it is advisable to put the logo in the lower part of the screens, or even only in the main screen. The important thing is that the user recognizes the brand without being too intrusive!

Remember that colors have meaning

There are some colors that have a universally understandable meaning. One of these is red, which allows you to easily highlight error messages, just as green is used to indicate the proper functioning of a function. The call of a certain color to indicate a function or a feedback is very important because the user is used to associating a color with a positive or negative event. Another very intuitive example is the yellow or orange color, which usually indicates an unfinished process.

Author Bio:

Megan Max was born in Los Angeles; her services are great and amazing enough that made her known as a great video animator. She completed her degree from London and now serving as an animator at Animation Sharks. She would love to tell the whole world that she is the most beautiful artist within herself.