Tag Archive for: Design

6 Tips for a Better UX/UI Design

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Your application, whether a web application or a mobile app, gives your clients and users the first impression of your product or company. Emerging evidence shows that well-designed UI and UX can drive your sales and conversion rate by double. So, you must ensure that your application is attractive and user-friendly.

It is important to note that the user interface (UI) is not the same as the user experience (UX). User interface (UI) focuses on the platform or interface that the user interacts with. UX, on the other hand, is the overall aspect of the application. It is the emotional experience of the user after interacting with your application.

The overall goal of UI/ UX design is to ensure that it is efficient, easy, and smooth for users to interact with your web or app.

Here Are Some Tips For A Better UI/ UX Design:

1. Know your users

You cannot go blindly into designing the UI/UX of your website. You need to identify who the target audience is and what their needs are. So, to design a product that will entice your users, the first step is user research. Having an idea of what your users need will help you to design a better UI/UX for your product. Keep your user needs in mind when designing.

2. Keep things simple

Your website or application should not require a map or a navigation guide. Simplicity in UI/UX design means making it easy for your users to interact with the product (content, images) captured in your application. You can guide your users using some features such as icons, showing tapping, and hovering. Make everything simple and clear.

3. Accessibility and functionality

As a UI/UX designer, do not just focus on aesthetics and forget some important aspects such as functionality and accessibility. Yes, looks are important but pointless if your users cannot comfortably use your platform. Strive to ensure that every element in your design functions properly and icons are easily accessible.

4. Offer feedback

Imagine clicking or pressing an action button, let’s say, ‘buy now’ or ‘send in an app’ but you don’t get an update. You’re just left there guessing that the process went on smoothly. Frustrating, right? As a designer, it is your responsibility to ensure that you update your users, and offer timely visual feedback.

If a submission has been sent successfully, tell the user that the submission was successful. If an order has been made, update the user’s cart. If something is loading, show the user that it is loading. This way your users know exactly where they are in your app. Don’t underestimate the power of these simple messages when designing UI/UX.

5. Prototype before you implement

Can you imagine designing everything and then realizing it doesn’t work as you expected? To avoid this, you should create a model of the product you’re designing and test it. This process is known as prototyping. You can easily and comfortably fix the errors before you design the real product.

6. User testing

Remember that you’re not designing for yourself. So, you must ensure that you get real users to test your design. Don’t assume that users are like you and will have a similar experience as you when interacting with your interface.

The target users come from different backgrounds and have different beliefs and mindsets. That’s why you should test your app with users who are not your relatives and friends. As a result, you’ll get honest opinions about their experience.

These few tips alongside what you already know will help you improve your UI/UX design. Most importantly, don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Even the best of us do. It is the only way to learn!

NS804 – Streamlining Your UX and UI Design!

NS804 is a trusted provider of superior mobile app design and development solutions. At NS804, we help individual businesses and large corporations design functional and responsive mobile apps – from inception to completion.

Contact NS804 to know exactly how you can achieve superior UX and UI design.

 

What Makes a Good UI Design? 7 Features

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The user experience is the most common front-end, interactive feature in any app, website, or dashboard. The user interface supports all human-computer interactions.

The user interface provides a navigational platform to control software. Think of a user interface as an application programming interface that links users and a computing system, the back-end.

Although a user interface can take many forms, it accomplishes two fundamental purposes:

  • conveying information from users to machines
  • conveying data from machines to users.

The most important features of a great user interface design are:

1. Simplicity

Simplicity is the centerpiece of any navigation. Easy navigation depends on a highly simplistic user interface. So, the user interface design must be succinct: it must communicate the most with the least. The designer must ensure less navigation and fewer mouse clicks to accomplish any app or website task. It’s important to add new features only if they’re essential and bring substantial value to the application.

2. Consistency

Your user interface must deliver consistent browsing and search results. Consistency achieves stability and eliminates ambiguity and information chaos. Designers should apply size, typeface, and style conventions to screen components to improve readability and learning.

3. Intuitiveness

Intuitiveness is the most important detail of a great UI design. Intuitiveness means that users can easily learn your interface and quickly pick it up. Intuitiveness implies the ability to get accustomed to your app’s interface, element spacing, and overall layout. Intuitiveness means something that can be understood easily and applied with ease.

4. Familiarity

Familiarity is a critical feature of a great UI design. While many designers aim to create intuitive designs, few stop to ask themselves what does an intuitive design mean? Well, intuitiveness means making things understandable and easy to remember. Creating a great user interface concerns familiarity. Designers must aim to create apps that deliver personalized user experiences. Aiming for familiarity will reinforce your app design.

5. Responsiveness

A great user experience must be responsive to users’ needs. Today, most website visits come from mobile endpoints, which is surprising given that it’s convenient to leverage an Android or an iPhone. You encourage users to visit your website frequently and stay longer by having a mobile-responsive interface. Responsiveness is about reducing the latency time and offering a rewarding experience.

6. Clarity

Clarity is an important element in the user interface design process. Clarity signifies that you know what you’re doing and that the interface or platform your users leverage is trustworthy. Achieving clarity in user interface design involves consistency, truth, and simplicity in your messaging. If you aim for consistency, it’ll be simple for users. In addition, if you eliminate ambiguity and incorporate only relevant elements, your interface will be rewarding.

7. Attractiveness

Attraction is about aesthetic appeal. Attraction concerns making elements and layout appealing for prospective and existing users. Attractiveness aims to make the site enjoyable and thrilling to navigate. You can make your site or app efficient, simple, easy to use, and concise – but it will only do well by making it attractive. Your clients or prospective users will not only use a stirring interface; they will look forward to using it once again.

Contact NS804 to achieve a great UI design.

 

New App Design Ideas: Types Of Life Saving Apps

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Coming up with new app design ideas can be a headache. It seems as though whatever idea you come up with someone has already done it, possibly very similar to your idea too. We’ve all been there, but a true appreneur and even enterprise level developers should see it as a positive challenge.

Don’t become too focused on coming up with a completely new app design idea or concept. Sometimes putting your own unique spin on an existing idea is exactly what the market needs.

1. Tracking Patient Data

Often users will favor an app because of a single part of its functionality. Tracking patient data apps are in abundance, but this can mean there is demand in the niche. Find out what users love about existing design ideas, and add your own unique value to the app.

Medication conflicts, auto suggestions based on symptoms entered or even statistics on if a patient’s visits are becoming more frequent. This will enable you to create a new app design idea from an existing one.

2. Health Monitoring With A Wearable 

Similar to tracking patient data apps, health monitoring apps are everywhere. But many fall short of any real use case and don’t meet the requirements of users. How does someone monitor health effectively just using a mobile app? They require too much user input and don’t give enough information in return.

Generic push notification apps like those for this use case can become ignored and unnoticed, not useful if you have a health problem. An application can thrive by utilizing the extended functionality that monitoring with a wearable can bring. Wearables are no longer limited to just watches, there are many new devices bringing health monitoring to the next level.

3. Manage Specific Diseases 

With the extended development into new wearables, there might be a demand for a specific disease or condition that can now be monitored effectively. It’s all about the niche, in modern app development trying to have a broad coverage leaves many lost in the pool of others.

Look into specific diseases and health conditions supported by new technology advances. Find out who is being left out, see what their struggles are and where the pain point lies. This will enable you to create an app with a good use case and be an early presence in the niche.

4. Personal Medical Reference 

The actual app design in regards to UI and UX can also be a factor when creating a new app design idea. Medical reference apps that show first aid, cpr and allergy symptoms are already on the market. But often the information is not presented well and confusion could cause more harm than good.

Apprenuers might have the development capabilities, but design and user experience can suffer. Enterprise level development companies like NS804 are veterans and bring expertise that is highly important. A modern UI presenting the information in a clear way can be a new idea in itself. Especially when conveying crucial information about a topic such as life saving techniques like CPR.

5. Mental Health Reach Out 

A hot topic currently. The pandemic of covid-19 has had a big impact on people’s mental health, and it’s a rising issue in general modern day already. Apps with instant messaging, video and other forms of communication that allow social connections are top of the app store.

Being able to reach out with confidence with a mental health issue to a support point can be exactly what people need. Providing an app that connects with professionals, counselors and others to aid in mental health treatment will be a powerful and helpful service in modern day.

6. Emergency Health Details 

Diabetics have special jewelry designed to give details on their condition and people with certain allergies have similar items. There are an uncountable number of allergies; some people are even allergic to the medicine supposed to help. This is why there is a need for these items. Apps can also fulfill this role and there is a big demand for it, they can open it up for many more emergency health details.

Health details need to be available in case of an emergency, ER teams and first responders know to look out for this information. They even check phones for emergency contacts like relatives. Apps can support everyone, no matter what health condition Android and IOS app design ideas can support apps on lock screen.

7. Travel Medical Records 

Health details are important. When travelling it can be crucial especially if you have a health condition to keep accurate details on what medication or allergies it entails. Medication and allergies can translate very well into a majority of languages. 

Having an app that can store your medical records, and offer translations into other languages can be very valuable to many. Diabetic, asthmatic, allergic to paracetamol, for example, can all have very severe effects if the wrong medication is administered.

8. Symptom Tracking 

Searching up symptoms can leave people in dismay. The results can often always point to the worst case and be unhelpful. A journaling style app could not only assess symptoms, but also track them across a time period and make suggestions based upon the data provided. 

This can become a new app design idea, if you give the option to also change suggestions based upon location for example. Tracking diseases and illnesses could advise on a course of action in early stages that a hospital visit is required. It could alternatively insist medical advice is sought out from a pharmacist about helpful medication. (If you are concerned about symptoms, it is always best to seek medical help promptly).

9. Telemedicine 

Telemedicine is becoming popular; it is even starting to be offered on benefit plans by companies. On top of medical apps available there are new app design ideas around this new innovative way to seek doctors’ advice. To a certain extent a doctor can make a good assessment of a patient’s condition over video as if they were in the same room.

The importance of remote health visits too is accessibility. They save time for everyone, and you could have a 15-minute doctor’s appointment before going to work in the morning. They can provide those with difficulties of getting to a doctor a much-needed way to get help and advice.

10. Nutrition Coaching 

Forget diet apps. This is where you really need a unique spin on an idea in the oversaturated niche that is nutrition. Create a new app idea with customized approaches to improving overall nutrition based on current health and goals. Instead of dieting it can be a way of helping people understand what vitamins and other nutrition they are lacking or missing out on.

Tracking nutritional information like iron, magnesium, vitamin A B C and even fat or sugar intake can help with overall health. This avoids the app sounding like another conventional diet fad, and instead gives value where the user feels they are improving themselves and living healthy.

11. Custom Fitness Coaching 

There has been a huge surge in downloads in custom fitness apps, this is mostly due to the pandemic. A new idea has sprouted and there is a common trend amongst the top downloaded. Both general fitness and customized fitness apps have introduced videos. This allows the app’s content to be truly unique from others on the market.

People use videos online for their fitness, the added benefit of an app is the extra functionality it can provide. Not only can it supply the videos, but the user can opt to tailor the course and content to their style and track certain metrics or statistics. The app can offer incentives like goals and achievements to boost morale, often needed to increase engagement and sustain continued use of the app.

At NS804 we understand the challenges of new ideas and user engagement. If you have an idea or are looking to discuss any app related development Get in touch. Let us turn your ideas into what could be a life saving app!

How UX Fits Into Mobile App Design

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Mobile App Design and UX

Indeed mobile app design is no simple-feat. There are many elements to consider at the onset of developing a mobile app. Generally, beyond the function of the app itself, designers answer questions like, “how will the app feel?” or “what will the mobile app experience be like?”. These are questions that are addressed through a variety of components known as the user experience, or UX.

Firstly, components that make up the user experience include visual design and usability. Further, these components break down into a wide variety of elements. Specifically, the visual design incorporates symbols, logos, the color scheme, and how much contrast there is. Meanwhile, usability refers to more functional aspects of a mobile app.

Mobile app usability refers to a series of components that simply make the app more user friendly and intuitive.

Visual Design

The visual design of a mobile app is any and everything that appears on the screen. In other words, the visual aspect of the mobile app is one of the most critical. Visual design is the very first aspect of your mobile app that new and potential users will interact with. Hence, it’s also going to leave your users with their first impression of the app. Just like in life, it’s important that users walk away feeling good after their first interaction with your mobile application.

The visual design is also crucial because of the way it reinforces a brand. The app design should include an aesthetic that supplements the existing brand perception and further improves customer loyalty.

Usability in Mobile App Design

Usability is extremely critical in building a successful mobile app. This term refers to the way a mobile app operates. In other words, how the different functions of the application are utilized by the end-user.

There is a variety of important factors that create usability within a mobile app. Developing a strong information architecture is one of the foundational building blocks of a mobile app with a high usability score. Information architecture is the way that information is organized and accessed within the mobile app. In other words, information architecture defines the operations used to access information stored throughout the mobile app.

To streamline this part of the design process, some mobile app designers will develop from templates, or use low-code tools that shorten the overall project length. Whether you’re coding entirely yourself or using the help of low-code tools, however, crafting an intuitive and user-friendly information architecture will surely elevate your mobile app to the next level.

Perfect the UX in Your Mobile App Design

Nobody is perfect, but we can all strive for perfection. Design a mobile app that delivers the best possible user experience with the help of the experts at NS804. NS804 is the premier source for information on user experience, information architecture, and everything mobile app development, dedicated to making mobile app development services more accessible than ever before. Vist NS804 today to start realizing and creating your dream app of tomorrow.

What Will Make The Users Happy? Five Key Elements Of Great UX Design

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There are many elements of mobile app design that need to come together for an app to be successful. One of the most important ingredients to building a strong mobile app that attracts a massive user-base is UX. UX, or user-experience, defines the way users interact and engage with the mobile app.

A great UX is certainly the product of five distinct key aspects. The aspects laid out here compose the five pillars of user-experience design. In following the principles of these five pillars, or five key elements of UX, mobile apps are sure to be user-friendly. In addition to being intuitive and user-friendly, mobile apps should also be built with efficiency and beauty in mind.

The large mobile app market makes UX even more important. More competition forces companies to think about the end-user first. With the user experience driving the core of mobile app design, the companies that provide the best UX will rise above the rest. These companies will perform better in terms of brand perception, overall user base, and other valuable metrics.

In fact, Springboard has the users’ needs as the number-one priority in UX. This shows how important it is to think about the user first in UX design.

The Five Key Elements of UX

Jumping into the five key elements of UX, the pillars of user-experience are defined, and a clear theme develops. The five key elements of UX design are:

  • Information Architecture
  • Interaction Design
  • Usability
  • Prototyping
  • Visual Design

Breaking these five pillars down further, the core components of each individual aspect involved in creating an excellent UX can be identified, and optimized. Therefore, optimizing the entire UX process from top to bottom. In taking a closer look at each of these UX pillars, it becomes clear that they all share one common thread. In each of these elements, it’s clear that the end-user is the priority in UX.

Information Architecture:

Guiding users to the information they’re searching for. Assisting users in the effective completion of tasks. This is what information architecture (IA) is all about. Usability.Gov defines IA as, “the organizing, labeling, and structuring of content in an effective and sustainable way.”

Structuring content in UX design is really an art form. Designers must consider many aspects. Aspects such as information location, and process-flow. These two aspects of the user-experience will dictate a lot of design factors. Therefore, designers must understand things like where users will look for information. Additionally, designers will need to understand how users will want to get things done within the app.

Interaction Design:

Interaction design is exactly that. The design of the interactions between users and products. In other words, this relates to the way that users engage with a mobile app. These engagements can also be broken into five distinct categories:

  • Words: Words are obviously any text that appears to the user. However, this category also includes system-messages, content-labels, and any other written content.
  • Visual Representations: Visual representations can be anything from color-schemes, to integrated media, and of course custom-design. This also relates heavily to branding. Designers should make it a priority to align color schemes and mobile-app visuals with the brand.
  • Physical Objects/Space: The physical objects category relates to the way users interact with the mobile-app. In other words, the platform or medium: Laptop, smartphone, etc.
  • Time: Time is a little bit more abstract, but it refers to the evolution of media contained in the app, or software.
  • Behavior: Finally this relates to the actual functionality of the app. How do users use the app, and what reactions do they have while engaging with the app?

Usability in UX:

In simple terms, usability means putting the design to the test. This refers to the data-collection process that happens when a UX has been significantly developed, and is ready for some real user-feedback. This data highlights important insight on design decisions previously made.

As a UX designer it is important to be the champion of the people, so to speak. This includes pointing out flaws, or user-frustrations in mobile-app UX. After finalizing the first version of the UX, designers can employ a myriad of tactics to gain real user-feedback. Some of these tactics include conducting lab-based studies, one-on-one interviews, tele-surveys, and focus-groups.

The data and user-feedback collected from these various data-pools will be extremely valuable in the ultimate design of the mobile-app. This feedback should influence decision making moving forward, updates to the existing UX, and bring about edits that likely should have been included in the first iteration.

Additionally, user testing provides key insights into how to market the product or mobile-app, and user behavior.

Prototyping:

Furthering the feed-back and design-finalization process, prototyping is an excellent, and cheap way to test product viability. Releasing a prototype is a great starting point as it provides a place for iterations. One can incorporate stakeholder feedback, and get real input on the functionality of their design.

This also enlightens and emphasizes and of the user-feedback that was garnered earlier in the data-collection stage from focus-groups, one-on-one interviews, and other data-collection tactics. Not only does the prototype allow for users to give additional feedback, it also offers a strong representation of what works and doesn’t work in the current design.

Prior to this stage, many of the design choices were probably based on theory, rather than practicality. Between the usability testing, and the prototyping stages, designers and mobile-app publishers should start to gain a good idea of where their design stands, and what needs improving.

Visual Design:

This is likely what immediately comes to mind when most think about UX. Visual design is a crucial aspect of an excellent UX, as has already been covered, yet it’s still only one of the five pillars that make up the principles of excellent UX design. The purpose, however, of visual design in UX is to provide the user with visuals that are both engaging and informative.

Visual design is important as it can establish a reputation for the mobile-app, and customers will start to recognize that brand. Visual design can also be extremely influential in the marketplace as far as determining demand for a product or mobile app.

For a long while, it was thought that mobile-apps had to be designed with one aspect or the other, aesthetics or useability. However, recent studies have shown that the two are actually in a positive correlation. More simply stated: the easier a mobile-app is to use, the more room there is for incredible visual design. Vice versa, an incredible visual design can actually improve useability, and guide the user through the process-flow, while also providing an engaging and aesthetically pleasing experience.

In UX design there are simply loads of variables to consider. Following these five pillars of UX design will ensure that your mobile-app, website, or any other design is both efficient, and intuitive. Providing users with a superb experience that stands out from the competition should be every designers goal.

NS804 has experience designing apps in nearly every marketspace, for nearly every type of user. Dedicated to making mobile-app design services more accessible than ever before, get in touch with NS804 today and get the conversation about your mobile-app idea started. NS804 offers additional help in designing an optimal user-experience, and top-to-bottom mobile-app design services.