Do You Need Mobile Design Expertise?
Mobile apps look simple, but when it comes to designing a user interface (UI), it’s a challenging process, especially if you haven’t done it before. First of all, both Apple and Google have design conventions and “ways of doing things” that you should follow, if for no other reason than everybody already knows how certain widgets and controls work. Apple and Google have written guides and Apple’s document is called iOS Human Interface Guidelines. It’s not something you can read in one sitting and you will need to refer back to it every few months because it does change.
Secondly, Apple has specific requirements for UX design and if they think your app lacks aesthetics or has poor usability, they might reject it. But more than this, you want your app to be successful and this is harder than it looks. Tim Cook says, “It’s easy to add. It’s hard to edit. It’s hard to stay focused.” This is very true. The biggest mistakes people make with apps is they try to do too much. This is seen frequently with Enterprise apps and the reasoning behind this is that they want to put everything in one place, but this is incorrect.
If you look at Apple and Google’s apps, they don’t have everything in one place, but each app is separate and task-specific. They built an app for mail, a separate one for calendar, and someone else has created a separate RSS reader. This is much different than PC apps where you can find all of those functions bundled up into one application, such as Microsoft Outlook. Many new app designers make mistakes like this and that’s where MobileCast Media can come in to guide you.
With MobileCast Media we can work with your team to guide you or we can handle the whole process. We have the creative skills and experience designing apps from small startups to 100,000 person companies.
When it comes to designing an app, you want to make it future-proof as much as you can. This means designing and architecting it so that when a new device with a new screen size comes out, it won’t break your app. In keeping with best practices there are frameworks provided by Apple and Google for handling graphics and screen sizes, but many low cost developers don’t know about them or use them in their apps. At MobileCast Media, we are at the forefront of best practices and in some cases have relationships with the user interface people at these companies, so you can be sure your app is designed correctly.
A large component of what we do has to do with educating you the client. Many times the client or a team member will have an idea that sounds good in theory, but is not advisable to implement in practice. We can educate you on these issues as they come up and we can frequently cite industry examples illustrating our points. This is important, because without course correction, an otherwise good app may be likely to fail. This could be caused by a number of different reasons such as poor ux design.
Finally, what we pride ourselves on is our understanding of user experience (UX). This is the overall experience that the user has when using your app and it’s very important to get this right. It is said that Apple’s products sell so well because they are so simple and intuitive and these are components of UX design. We feel strongly that a good UX design is what drives revenue for a mobile app.
Fill out the form to the upper right to contact us and see how we can work with you to design your mobile app. Contact us today!
