How Important is a Mobile App UX Design for Startups?
Which person would you like more – good-looking or a smart one? Kind or beautiful? What a stupid question – you would say – I like people who are beautiful outside and in! It’s a strange thing to choose between these notions.
Ancient Greeks even invented a great concept called kalokagathia, which means balanced combination of physical and spiritual merits. While Herodotus had an eye on human merits, we as a mobile UX design company know the merits that means a lot for your startup. While the app’s features are priority, UX design is often neglected due to various reasons, which hampers many startups from bounteous development.
What’s that?
User experience (UX) describes the person’s feeling while interfacing with a system, which may be represented by a web site, application, desktop software etc.
Those guys who deal with UX – UX designers – learn and assess how users feel about the product in terms of usability, design, utility, ergonomics, system performance, accessibility etc.
Have you ever surfed around an app that contained all the information you needed at that moment, but which made you wait for almost a minute before all details and multimedia were loaded? Or have you ever filled up a long form, and the system forced you to complete it again from the scratch just because you entered the phone number in invalid format? We bet you had such experience and we agree it is annoying. It’s not that this app is bad. But you will just not get back to it. That’s the power of mobile app user experience design, which was somehow neglected by people who were there to build custom product.
Who are those people, by the way?
First of all, let’s pick the wheat from the chaff, and differentiate between UI and UX designers.
User interface (UI) designers are responsible for the interface, interaction and visual aspects of design. They take care of colors, typography, graphics and layouts. It should be understood that UI designer is not the one who creates wireframes or prototypes. When UI designer starts working, the wireframes should already be ready. He may suggest replacing some graphic elements as well.
User experience (UX) designers are those who create wireframes and layout prototypes, however, the specter of their work is not limited by these. In fact, they are responsible for delivering every positive side and every promised property of the product to the end user. It is important that UX designers are able to change some layouts’ parts in the process of development. For this, they do field research, accurately learning true user’s needs, create user personas and do detailed analytics. They identify roles, perform storyboarding, build user flows, create a mind map, create wireframes and, finally, design working prototype. It’s a kind of magic, isn’t it?
There is a common misconception that designer’s primary skill is Photoshopping, while in fact it’s rather the ability to define and describe a scenario, which is needed for the storyboarding stage. UX designers are appreciated for generation of ideas for better visual representation.
Good design leads to success
Besides designers for hire, there is an entire cohort of people – so called design founders – who stood at the origins of startups that later obtained world popularity and leadership in their fields.
The most popular video sharing portal – YouTube’s was founded by Chad Hurley and Steve Chen in 2005.
Daniel Weinand as co-founder and Chief Design at Shopify, Canadian online store, popular worldwide.
Khoi Vinh founder of Etsy – trendy peer-to-peer e-commerce site where one can buy handmade things.
No wonder that these projects gained so much support and popularity. Such giants like Facebook and Twitter, having already won global affection, are constantly investing millions into UX research in order to stay competitive and keep to the top of customer's’ satisfaction.
While contemplating over mobile app ux design for startups, let’s take such prosperous companies like Apple and Microsoft. Who can say that some of them offer poor quality services or lack features? No one, we guess. But more users choose Macs for their smartphones exactly because they made a bit for a blue chip design on top of all that.
User experience design for a mobile app is based not just on cute buttons and picturesque fonts. It’s about the smart disposition of all elements when they all magically form in a responsive and usable mosaic of the product, beautiful in colors and forms.
Latest design trends
As for today, mobile app users are enjoying the recent trends in mobile design, such as:
• Bigger phone screens. Apart from making visual elements bigger, designers should consider how users hold their devices in order to make it comfortable for people’s thumbs to access all important navigation parts easily. Yes, the bottom right-hand corner would be bingo.
• Wearables are a sweeping market. Tiny screens on the wrist, which just a while ago were just a fitness devices for fans, has been winning the hearts of more people, who like to feel fancy with Apple Watch or Android Wear. Since these devices’ use differentiates from phones or tablets in quick glances we throw on them, the task of designers is to take care of clear typography and color contrast.
• More movement. Moving elements are floating modern applications. Today’s phones are powerful enough to use HTML5 animation, which has already been used on desktops for a while.
• Simple colors and blur. One of the today’s trends in mobile UX design is soft color palettes and smooth contrasts, often combined with the diffuse background. This perfectly matches overall minimalism trend that reigns in of flat mobile app design.
• Swiping. This mean of interaction with your mobile pal is much more natural than tapping its screen. Look how Tinder, a dating service made a profit. While you search for interesting people to get acquainted with, you just have to swipe left and right – and that’s it!
Keep calm and make an awesome design, buddy!
Well, a good designer costs a good price. However, a will to hire UX designers is not something you should economize on. Startuppers often throw all resources to coding, marketing and conferences, while well-designed product is already half the battle, which will release businessmen from many cares. If you find resources for proper coverage of design services, your efforts will be repaid a hundredfold.
Good and sensible user experience is often left unnoticed, however, when it is bad, users instantly react with dissatisfaction and abandonment. Today’s consumer is becoming more and more demanding, so if you truly want to satisfy your user’s needs, you have to meet their expectations not only with regards to functions, offered by your app but also to the high level of user expectations towards mobile app UX design. This leads to growing loyal customer base and media coverage, aspired by any marketer.
How important is UX design for a startup?
When you start your business in the sphere teemed with competitors like sharks in the water, UX design can become that determinant thing that would allow you standing out from the crowd with your product. Let’s say, you are offering email service or chat messenger. With thousands of competitors that offer all set of features, your app may win people’s hearts due to its simple and comfortable design.
So, in this sea full of sharks you get a dolphin, ready to help to keep your business afloat and pushing your boat up forever. Metaphors aside, having a person responsible for design at hand is crucial for business. There should be a person dedicated to enhancing the best user experience, no matter which title they wear. That’s because user experience is not something that is done once and then forgotten about.
However, remember that applicability is above anything else. No design will save the product, if people do not feel to need it. Fortunately, there are so many things to be satisfied. Mick Jagger knew something when sung about that. And we just keep on doing our job, design, and play, and … get satisfaction!
Wanna we satisfy you? Ask for more our Lead UX designer Eugenia at [email protected]. Put 'design for me' in a subject line.
