Mobile app design Checklist, that can evaluate usability of your app
Published on 07 May 18
Shahid0
The world of smartphones is vast and is undoubtedly expanding with every passing day. In the year 2014, there were 1.57 billion mobile users worldwide, while by the end of 2015, they grew to 1.86 million.
While the application user base is continuously increasing, the competition and the people’s expectations are also getting bigger. To sustain in such scenario, it is important for the mobile app developers and startups to ‘serve the best’ to the application users available worldwide.
What is needed?
The famous quote, ‘prevention is better than cure’ is what you need the most here. Rather than relying upon the numerous modi operandi to fix the bugs and to make the application worth usage, it is better to perform usability tests for your mobile app design. You have to be up-to-date as per the mobile app design trends also.
You need to have the answer to these questions:
How to ensure which tests are to be performed, and why you need them the most particularly? To get your answer to this question, you need to:
1. Speak the user’s language, not technical
The first thing you need to do is to forget your technical language and speak the way users do. Wear their shoes before you begin scrolling through your mobile application. Finding a technical excuse for things, or keeping the ‘artistic hidden secrets’ behind what has been served won’t serve your purpose for the long run.
2. Check if it’s simple and consistent
Relate the phrase ‘keep it simple and consistent’; yes it implies consistently simple and also recommends keeping the labels and buttons clearly and with uniformity. Any form of inconsistency in terms of shape, design, and text might in future irritate or distract the users.
3. A number of buttons/links
While going through the applications, track the number of buttons and links you have added in the application. Excess isn’t always beneficial, keep them only to the extent they are required. Using excess of them may push off users from your application.
4. Error messages must not be in technical terms
If you have done that presuming it to be a sign of ‘transparency’, get rid of it before your launch your application. Users don’t get the technical terms, and they need to know the issue in a language that they can understand.
5. Contrast
Add the required blend of contrast, so as to highlight and separate the bright and dark areas of the image. With the perfect essence of contrast, you can highlight the areas as per your requirement.
6. Readability
This includes the font style, size, and the color. Ensure that the text can be read easily and it doesn’t require much effort from the user’s end. Also at times, the text hides behind the thumb of the user, which restricts the message to reach them the way you want.
7. No ambiguity
The most complex part of the language is that there are words and phrases with more than one meaning. If during the usability test you notice any such text, consider replacing it.
8. Option to turn off auditory feedback/sound
Though they do have significance, but at times these might irritate some of your app users. To prevent this, you can add an option to mute these sounds.
9. Are you guiding them how to recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
Problems get bigger when the user either doesn’t understand them or he has no idea on how to resolve it. If the issue is small, and can be resolved by the user himself; Share with them and further guide, this will help you build trust and retain users over the long run.
10. Easy to view and retrieve instructions in future
Sharing the instructions, in the beginning, is good, but keeping an option to go through them in future is better. Users might need the instruction manual anytime in the coming days.
11. Include a ‘save’ icon after making any change
This might sound a minute integration, but in return, it can convince the user that the changes he has made are done.
12. Allowing option to confirm while deleting something
This might resemble the first one at first glance, but it is far more important. At times the user might by mistake hit the delete icon, and at such instances having a confirmation message may avail him the right to correct the same.
Conclusion
The aforementioned 12 points play a significant role and need to be checked at the time of evaluating the usability of your application. However, at the time of testing mobile app design, no matter how good mobile app developer you are, do not forget to wear the shoes of a user and then test the application.
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