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FierceDeveloper

August 11, 2014 Monday

The UX design skills mobile app developers need to work on

BYLINE: Shane Schick

LENGTH: 1107 words

Absolutely every app or mobile game must have what's known as a layered interface. There also should be thumb-focused interactions, simple typefaces and all kinds of swiping. At least, those are some of the user experience design trends that seem to be prevalent today. Developers may need to upgrade their skill set to know what will be hot in mobile UX tomorrow.

Late last month, Google developer advocate Nazmul Idris published a blog post announcing that the company was working with online educator Udacity to create a course called UX Design for Mobile Developers, which will school them in the finer points of visuals and interactions that keep consumers happy and engaged.

Google developer advocate Nazmul Idris uses a Porsche to demonstrate user experience. (Image source: Google)

"You'll learn how to optimize your app, rather than optimizing login/signup forms, and how to use low-resolution wireframing," Idris wrote. "After you take the course, you'll 'level up' from being an excellent developer to becoming an excellent design-minded developer."

Apple has also been trying to increase awareness around UX design, having recently made its iOS Human Interface Guidelines to iBooks, while iOS 7 created a radically different set of expectations on how everything from buttons and colors should be treated in iPhone apps.

Aiming for consistencybr/> The push from platform providers comes as little surprise to developers and other experts in UX design, who suggest that Apple and Google want to ensure that all the products flooding their app stores achieve a more consistent level of quality.

Sethi

"With bad UX, you open up an app, use it for 10 seconds, leave and never come back," said Rishi Sethi, CEO of Method Mill in New York City. His agency offers a framework, dubbed MM1, which promises to help developers to holistically understand exactly how well their approach to user experience is accomplishing its goals. "The best way to increase the value of your app is good design."

Of course, large app publishers may be able to hire entire UX design teams, but indie developers shouldn't see that as an inhibitor, according to Joe Natoli, a UX design coach and teacher based in Baltimore.

"They're no reason [indie devs] can't compete. There has never been more information on how to do these things," he said. "The second reason is, the adjustment you have to make to create great UX aren't as big as most people think they are."

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For example, developers will sometimes tell Natoli they aren't good at "visual stuff." The truth is, they can find someone to help with graphics. UX design goes beyond that, he said. "It's about how people think and why they react the way they do."

Getting inspirationbr/> One of the first areas to consider, said Sethi, is onboarding: What's the perspective of a first-time user of an app? What will they need to understand in order to use and enjoy the app or game? What might be missing or confusing?

"The first thing that we say is to get inspiration," he said. "You need to model your app by looking at what other apps are out there that you like and how they feel to use."

Less is definitely more, he added, pointing to Facebook's recent decision to decouple its Messanger product from the main app. "You're seeing a lot of the big apps making things very simple, so they're really focused on solving a single problem."

Natoli

Natoli agreed. "In many cases, there are too many things on the screen, too much information," he said. "Think about, what does this person need right now to act? And then, what's surrounding or peripheral that needs to be there in order to help them make that decision?"

Of course, in a mobile game, multiple items like scores and time left might need to be there, but it's about prioritizing and emphasizing accordingly. "Alignment is huge," Natoli said, referring to the proximity of text or buttons on a screen. "I've seen a bunch of text where it's center-aligned. That's the worst way you could treat text, because the eye doesn't know how to track it."

Golden Gekko, a large developer in Barcelona with an office in New York and other cities around the world, creates an annual presentation on mobile UX design trends. Kim Peratt, Golden Gekko's head of UX and UI, said its research comes from its own experiences of creating good user experiences, but also from its mistakes. It takes time and experience to understand what's a UX design principle du jour and what's a long-term best practice.

"When one great UX solution has been created, it opens a door for the next great UX solution," Peratt said. "Flat design and blur effects, for example, opens the door for layered interfaces, which opens the door for more thumb-focused navigation and so on." Those things could become common standards in mobile UX for years, while things like fonts and colors are likely to vary with greater frequency.

Consider the wearablesbr/> One factor that may complicate mobile UX is the rise of wearable technology such as Android Wear, Apple's rumored iWatch and Google Glass. However, Rishi said core UX principles can be transitioned as the industry evolves.

"Ease of use, functionality and efficiency work across all platforms. Playstation apps, desktop apps, any type of app--it's all the same thing," he said, adding that paying attention to demographic differences of older vs. younger consumers, gender and other factors is also important. "It's about finding who your target user is and building an experience that will make the user really understand how to use their app."

That's not to say technology changes don't matter, however. Natoli pointed out the rise of the touchscreen created a much different set of expectations around how users should interact with software.

"When we started using touchscreens, your thumb might be covering something important, so we needed to adjust for that," he said. "Those are just the tactical things, though." Peratt said that more important than the UI or graphics of wearable apps will be how well developers help users to easily switch between devices depending on if he or she is on a bus, at work, in a store or on the sofa at home.

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And while Google and Apple may be leading the charge today, the advent of better mobile UX needs to be embraced voluntarily by the developer community itself, Peratt said.

"If you are working as a developer in a company or creating apps or mobile games as a hobby, it all comes down to passion and interest," he said. "It's about investing time to learn and keep an open mind to get great results and to be part of the UX dialogue."

LOAD-DATE: August 13, 2014

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newsletter

Copyright 2014 Questex Media Group LLC All Rights Reserved

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