User experience has already become a watchword for app development and design professionals across the globe since it is the UX that helps an app sustain and grow as a business and emerge as a brand. App Ui/UX Designer know that the user experience (UX) quality is key to differentiating a great app from a commonplace and a bad one. While the great app excels in almost every parameter of UX design, a commonplace app is restricted by the design cliches practiced hundreds of times by apps of all sorts, and a lousy app makes the user experience complicated for the users.
So, we are more or less aware of the qualitative parameters that separate the good app from the bad one. Let us go into more details of these quality considerations.
Table of Contents
Information Overload vs. Minimalism
The popularity of minimalist design principles can be attributed to the inpatient audience that does not want to hang on for longer than a few seconds. This is why a fast-paced and lucid design that is capable of loading within microseconds helps so much in retailing the users onboard. Moreover, minimalist design with fewer design elements and byte-sized content helps customers focus on the products and services they need instead of getting distracted.
In contrast to the above, information overload makes the app UX suffer traction and engagement. Too much information and too many visual distractions on the app screens reduce the page loading speed and prevent the users from concentrating on the content and functions they need. This Thus results in a bad user experience. A commonplace app fits somewhere in the middle between these two characteristics.
Difficult and Helpful Onboarding
It is not difficult to assess why so many first-time users of apps never return. Among several reasons, complicated and challenging onboarding is one of the leading reasons to prevent user engagement. When a user lands on an app for the first time, he or she must find it helpful for the respective purpose. But if the user finds it extremely difficult to engage and use the app, the UX will suffer terribly. This happens with so many apps that don’t give enough attention to the user onboarding process.
The easy and simple onboarding process, on the other hand, helps users to engage with the app quickly and get the best value of the app in no time. For example, a photo editing app for first-time users can provide on-screen guidance about navigation and how to use various features as the user progresses from one screen to the other. Good onboarding also minimizes the registration process by allowing users to log in with social credentials or providing minimum information with two fields.
Web-like Navigation vs. Context-aware Navigation
Easy navigation is a crucial element of good UX design that many apps miss out on. A lousy app UX fails to understand the difference between web-specific UX design and app UX design. Naturally, navigating from one page involves some confusion and exercises to find out the right page or function.
A quality UX design, on the other hand, ensures that the users can effortlessly get to know the next step and can navigate to the required page without loitering around or wasting time in finding things. A great UX design helps users find things contextually when and where they need them.
Disregarding the Thumb-rule vs. Thumb-rule Centric Design
The Thumb zone has evolved as one of the key elements of modern user interface design principles simply because many people prefer accessing content or navigating on the screen by the use of the thumb. These are common interactions for the app users, from scrolling the content with a thumb to tapping on the functions and the CTA links with a thumb while holding the device single-handedly. Naturally, the UI and UX designers need to address this thumb-zone in their UI/UX design.
Some apps place the clickable buttons and links in screen areas harder for the users to click and interact. These apps often make it difficult for the app users to scroll the app with a thumb while browsing the content. This prevents many users from using mobile devices single-handedly. This is an example of a bad UX design where the thumb zone or the thumb rule is not taken care of.
In complete contrast, good UX design effectively addresses the thumb zone to allow more comfortable single-handed usability and interaction while holding the phone with just one hand. Great app design by keeping the thumb rule in mind always places the clickable links and buttons closely within reach of the thumb besides allowing the users to navigate and scroll the page with easy thumb movement.
Non-validated design vs MVP development
Today’s app market is crowded with all sorts of apps with a faulty user interface, underperforming functions, performance issues, and other problems. Well, most such apps have resulted from the non-validated design. Bad UX is mostly created when you build an app with all the intended features and design elements and launch it as a finalized product in the app market.
In contrast, the smart app endeavors now prefer the MVP development or Minimum Viable Product approach, focusing primarily on launching an app with a minimum range of valuable and elementary features. After validating through the user experience and feedback over time, these apps bring further changes and add value in terms of features or design elements.
Conclusion
Quality user experience largely depends on how you embrace these design and development principles used for delivering sophisticated user experience in apps. On the other hand, the bad UX undermines these principles in design and development practices.
