Best Practices for Designing Mobile Applications

How to design for non-touch screen devices?

Mobile application interfaces offer unique challenges when designing for the user experience.  Limited screen size, navigation restrictions and broad audience experience levels pose hurdles that, if not carefully considered, can derail even the most valuable applications.  With developers and carriers racing to offer customers the ability to do just about everything on their mobile phones, observing some basic usability guidelines smooth the path for both application designers and end users.

Chicago-based user experience firm User Centric, Inc. has been a frontrunner in the evaluation and design of mobile applications. Based on insights from over 125 mobile projects and 4,000 participants, they offer some best practices for mobile application design.  These guidelines include:

• Make scrollbars and selection highlighting more salient
• Increase discoverability of advanced functionality
• Use clear and consistent labels
• Icons should not save space at the expense of user understanding
• Support user expectations for personalization
• Long scrolling forms trump multiple screens on mobile devices

Although designing for both novice and expert mobile users can be a tricky process, mobile application interfaces can be easily validated through usability testing.  Conducting usability testing throughout the development life cycle helps ensure that the final application design not only satisfies customers, but saves the company from costly redevelopment efforts.

Full article with expanded guideline definitions can be found at www.UserCentric.com/mobile-applications.