Why UX matters at every level of mobile app design

Customer experience, or user experience, is such an important part of mobile app design that it’s earned its own acronym – UX. The popularity of mobile apps means that the primary point of contact your customers have with your company is often not your website or your high street shops (if you have these), or even your social media pages, but your mobile app.

Your mobile app – symbolised by the cheery little icon on your customer’s phone or tablet – is the interface that matters most between you and your target market, and the key to growing your online sales revenues. 

This is why UX matters at every level of mobile app design. A user-centric approach to development ensures that your application is entertaining, useful, and – crucially – meets the expectations of its audience.

Usability

Usability is the linchpin of a good UX. Put simply, if your customers can’t use a feature, it might as well not exist. ‘Usability’, however, isn’t simply a matter of making sure that all your app’s features work correctly. It’s more of a design philosophy that focuses primarily on the needs and wants of the target user. By employing user-centred design, your app interface becomes more intuitive, relevant, and straightforward to use.

This is one of the reasons why we emphasise thorough research before spending any money on app development, including market research to understand your target customers’ preferences and behaviours, and iterative testing to validate your design decisions.

Simplicity

Henry David Thoreau’s expression ‘simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!’ resonates deeply in the field of UX design. Tablet and phone screens are quite small in the scheme of things, so the best app designs are often the most straightforward, removing unnecessary clutter to create a more relaxing and enjoyable experience. By utilising white space, clear typography, and simple colour palettes, you reduce strain on the users’ eyes and minimise cognitive load, making it easier for your customers to digest information and take action. This clear and simple design approach also draws greater attention to essential brand messages and creative detail, ensuring that your value proposition isn’t lost in the noise.

Intuitive

Imagine a shop with its aisles poorly labelled, no prices on products, and staff unavailable. This scene – possibly the worst nightmare for shoppers – is a good metaphor for an app with poor or unintuitive navigation. You don’t want your users to feel like it’s 10 PM on Christmas Eve at their local supermarket – clear pathways, logical organisation of content, and consistent design elements help your customers know where they are and how to navigate your app. By ensuring that the next swipe or click is predictable and readily available, you encourage a sense of control, which can significantly raise the overall user experience.

Accessibility

A good mobile app must be accessible to everyone, irrespective of their location, abilities, and cultural context. In the field of UX design, accessibility includes ensuring that disabilities – whether auditory, motor, cognitive, or visual – do not, as far as possible, hinder a user’s enjoyment of your product. The best way to achieve this is to recognise that design does not occur in a vacuum. Customers are situated in varied contexts that affect their day-to-day experience of your content. This context could be their physical environment (e.g. their train commute to work), their emotional state, or even their broader cultural background. Assuming nothing about your user’s context is essential for an inclusive UX – this could involve offering a night mode whereby the interface becomes darker to reduce eye strain, or providing content in multiple languages to cater to a linguistically diverse audience.

Mobile App UX Design Services From Glance 

To find out more about how mobile app design can affect and enhance your user experience, please get in touch with one of the design specialists at Glance today by clicking here.