Minimum user Rating 10 tips for new mobile apps

Article Description: summarize the 10 key points of Android phone application UI design.

Author: Guenther Beyer

Recently, many developers have moved into the mobile phone field, and small teams have been able to conceive of excellent and unique ideas, and the use of spare time is enough to develop applications.

Each development cycle will sooner or later come to the application near completion of this point. What are we going to do next? Have you ever heard the word "user experience"? Here are 10 tips to improve the quality of new phone applications before they are released, maximizing the potential of the application, and minimizing the adverse results of user-rating and low load.

1. First Open Experience

There are a lot of similarities between good websites and mobile apps. Both of these can quickly attract users or visitors. If this is not done, users are likely to turn to alternative alternatives. Most users don't want to waste time figuring out how to run an application or read a complex tutorial. They will choose to give up the application.

When the application is first opened, the same 3 questions emerge in everyone's mind: Where am I? What can I do now? What can I do next?

Try to get applications to respond to these questions immediately. If you can tell the user that this is the right product for them in the first few seconds, they are bound to dig deeper.

Gowalla (from Phandroid)

(Gowalla has a good first-time opening experience.) The passport opens slowly so that you can instantly view your personal information, immediate advice, and more actions and notices. ）

2, convenient input mode

Think about how you use your mobile device: The developer's phone lies quietly on the flat desktop, connected to a PC with a large keyboard, and perhaps fully turned on the backlight. Now, think about how others use their smartphones: walking in the bustling streets, holding a cup of coffee in one hand, and holding the device in the other, trying to figure out what they like best about the team.

For most of the time, people use only 1 thumbs to perform navigational applications. Do not be stubborn with multi-touch and similar complex input methods, consider scrolling and touch mode more. Allows people to quickly complete the screen and information between the switch and navigation. So they can quickly get the information they need, and cherish the user's input every time.

Tasko (from Phandroid)

(All you need is a simple touch and input text to add new tasks to the Taskos application.) Of course, you can also modify many settings, but these are only optional operations. ）

3. Contrast degree

Your development environment may be a large screen with the appropriate lighting room, but the user can use the application of the environment is not the case. Although we do not want to, we do often need to use mobile devices in a sun-strong environment. This situation will be to our view

Look at the screen has a great impact, the interface design should take this into account. In these poor conditions, may result in the loss of details, color discrimination, some elements due to the sun reflected completely disappeared.

This does not mean that you can only design the interface into Black-and-white style, discarding all the beautiful details in the UI design. This simply means that the important elements should have sufficient contrast to enable them to be easily identified under such conditions. If you want to paint code elements, add a simple text label option. If you want to use small details and information to improve the appearance of your application, that's fine, just make sure your UI is still working without these elements.

Set a clear level for the interface, display the most valuable features large and bright, and remove any unimportant content completely.

SoundHound (from Phandroid)

(Although SoundHound has many options on the screen, the main features are clearly presented at the top of the interface with bright and bold fonts.) ）

4, do not let users wait

No one likes to wait, especially in the mobile world. We take the equipment to the train, respond to the emails quickly, or look at the weather forecast when we get out of the house. We use the time gap to do these little things in exchange for more time doing what we really like to do. Don't let people wait for your application to do something. Improve application performance, change the UI, and make the user's desired results appear faster.

Of course, everyone understands that some tasks take some time to execute, or that applications need to download some large volumes of packets from the network. But don't let the user wait without meaning. Make them feel that the task is in the process of being executed. To add a "select" or "pressed" state for a key, you can add a rotation symbol for a shorter load time, and you can use a progress bar when loading time is longer. But never let a user face an empty screen.

Waiting is always distressing. At the very least let users know how long they have to wait.

Google reader--waiting (from Phandroid)

(Google Reader app displays a small rotation symbol at the top of the device, and the symbol appears whenever the application loads in the background, so you realize that you may need to wait for a while.) ）

5, do not forget the landscape rendering way

Sometimes, you may forget that mobile devices do not have a single vertical rendering. While most people can adapt to only vertical-mode applications, some people do prefer to use their devices horizontally, especially those with physical keyboards. With the popularity of Android tablets, the number of such users may gradually increase.

Do not assume that the landscape pattern simply widens the application interface. The horizontal use of the device has a completely different user experience. In this case, you can interact with the screen with two thumbs. The input becomes simpler, and in most cases you will read from left to right, not from top to bottom. In fact, if your application requires a lot of reading and text input, then definitely have a good horizontal pattern.

The horizontal experience is completely different for the user. You can use this wider layout to present the information in a completely different way. For example, a key previously located above the screen can be moved to the side of the screen. With a wider screen, maps, charts, and pictures can present new information.

YouTube app (from Phandroid)

(Build and improve one screen orientation before making another.) Pay attention to the pros and cons of each layout, and use and improve wisely. Youtoube uses the official version to design different layouts for different directional patterns, both of which work perfectly in their respective aspect ratios. ）

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