UI(User Interface) is indeed one of the most indispensable parts of every website design. In-line with this fact, a huge majority of website owners have started putting special emphasis on designing user interfaces that can add a touch of elegance and professionalism into dull and boring web portals. Creating a good mobile User Interface for a website/app isn’t everybody’s cup of coffee. One needs to follow a planned methodology for developing a mobile UI design that can highlight the different assets of the website/app in a brilliant manner. Through this blog, I’ll be sharing with you some of the remarkably effective methods that can work wonders for all kinds of Mobile UX/UI projects.
Table of Contents
Analyze the type of audience
Just like app users are regarded as a ubiquitous set of users that have similar intentions and skill-sets, there are several distinct user groups that have an entirely different set of intentions and expertise. Thus, while creating the UI for a mobile website, it is utmost essential for you to pay special attention to the kind of audience; the website/app is catering to. You need to follow different methodologies for designing a mobile UI for the novice users as well as the tech-savvy population. Ensure to make the UI in a manner that even a novice user is able to navigate through the web pages without making any kind of touch errors.
Never forget to standardize UI elements
While designing a mobile UI design, make it a point to list out all the elements that you’d be including within the UI. Whether it’s the title bar menu, the pop-up windows, alerts, buttons or photos, icons etc., standardizing these elements is something you can’t ignore for sure. Opt for creating style guides of fonts and sizes, which will further allow you to work out the details in your UI mockups in a much more flexible way.
Never confuse between the mobile app/website’s navigation, layout, flow and taxonomy
A large group of mobile UI/UX designers often tend to get confused when it comes to designing the navigation, layout etc. You must remember that if the mobile app/website’s flow is confusing, all your efforts invested into improving the usability factor would simply be wasted. Since, for the users, navigation is everything, a little negligence on your part will probably lead to your app/website getting abandoned by people who would otherwise turn to be loyal visitors.
Avoid overloading the UI with visuals
Over-design is perhaps one of the most common and the oldest design problems that are being faced by mobile app UI designers. Stuffing the UI design with a wide array of slick and shiny visuals is what has actually made the mobile UIs look un-professional and un-appealing. In an attempt to make the UI look, feel and work differently, the designers often ignore the importance of using standard mobile UI design conventions. They tend to disregard common design principles that are claimed as the sure-shot tools for designing eye-catchy and easy-to-understand User interfaces. I recommend you not to re-invent the wheel and stick to the traditional mobile UI design guidelines that will allow you to deliver an outstanding mobile UI(user interface).
Pay attention to the button size
As a fairly obvious advise, you need to look into the usage of the correct button size. Since button sizes are usually limited by the size of our fingers, keeping them too small will make it difficult for the users to touch them accurately. Remember, buttons with width below 1cm are usually harder/slower to touch. So, mathematically, ensure that the size of a button is proportional to square root of the probability that an expert user would want to select it.
Placement of UI elements is yet another key source of concern
The decision to place the UI elements primarily depends on how the target users would be holding their smartphones. Since a majority of mobile phone users hold their device using their thumb as the primary finger for pushing buttons, it is advised to place the primary UI application buttons towards the bottom of the device screen. Moreover, all the critical and frequently used buttons must be placed towards the bottom-right corner of the screen.
Concluding Words
Well, there’s a lot more involved in creating remarkable mobile user interfaces. The aforementioned tips are just a crème of the best tips. Hopefully, you’d have found these tips useful enough for building a mobile user interface that’s capable of receiving several accolades.
