The design and development industry has been drawing a lot of attention from businesses for the innovative ideas they are introducing via these apps to attract user attention. When businesses think of arranging a unique kind of promotion strategy, apps hit their list as it doesn’t consume too much of time to formulate a great app idea and then present it to the audience. Once the idea strikes the team as a whole, they next proceed with the development of the app (how it would be presented to the audience).
Audiences or users are the main criteria that decide an app’s survival. So what can the developers do to ensure that the users approve an app? This task is simple – providing a seamless user experience. An app development process revolves around various parameters that you must be taking into account in order to provide a great user experience. Let us discuss some interesting and simple tips for android app development process to provide an appealing user experience.
What happens at the launch
What happens at the first launch counts as part of the experience! It is imperative that the first impression of your app carries the user through all the points ensuring that they enjoy their experience throughout and wish to be part of this venture forever. This actually brings us to ponder thoughts on how this is quite similar to the experience provided across a website – app development draws inspiration from website development – when it comes to creating a connection with the users. So what is required at the first launch? (Remember, your users have neither the time nor patience to figure out how your app operates or check out the user guide.) Answer the below-listed questions before you move on with the launch of your app:
Where have they reached?
What are they supposed to do here?
What are they required to do further?
If you have answers to these questions, you will be able to tell your users why exactly and what are they supposed to do here, and how it can help them.
Think from the Perspective of the User
Of course, you are the developer – so rather than thinking of the app development process from your perspective – it is important to think from the customer perspective.Rather than all these complicated details, it is important to think of it in terms of how people are using their smartphones – maybe, you could imagine your customer or user seated in a café trying to figure out this app with one hand, while the other hand holds the coffee. With the help of one or two thumbs, they are navigating through the app. Remember, they are holding their coffee in one hand and if you have implemented a number of other complex input methods, such as flip, scroll or touch – then, you have to ensure that you provide your people with the provision to navigate across the screens.
Colors and contrast
It is always an excellent idea to think of the colors and contrast that you implement within your app. You would have already created a big and beautiful screen with awesome shades in the background – but, the background of your users would not be the same as that of your app. The users might not be in a location favorable for your app. So you should be considering all these factors when designing your app. Taking into consideration all these factors, you should be thinking of how your screen and interface should be developed in favor for your people. It is imperative that your people are able to distinguish colors from one another. The effect of reflections is so intense that the elements of your interface might vanish (when your people are not in a location favorable to your app).
Now, this means that you have to sprinkle in contrast that would help differentiate various components under any condition. Introducing contrast does not mean that you cannot bring in a lot of colors or throw away all the beautiful details, but you can add something like a fallback option, which will help retain the color code of each component. Now you can always bring about improvisation to your app’s appearance by adding every small bit of information, which will ensure that your user interface is wonderful.
You can further improvise your interface by introducing a hierarchy, which displays the most important characteristics very clearly and with brightness. Also, don’t forget to clear off any clutter.
The Wait Time should be Reduced
In the world of web or mobile, it is important that you do not force your people to wait for a long time. Unless it is the internet connection that might interrupt the access to an app (that is available online), regardless of their location, they want access to it continuous. It is important to check the wait time of your app – how long your app is causing the people to wait until it loads and they can perform the required action. Precisely, let your people enjoy the experience, with a great user interface that renders faster results.
Of course, the app might need huge packages of data for the performance to gear up. All this will happen in the background, but you need to ensure that there is no waiting time involved in this. You can add the ‘pressed’ and ‘selected’ states to your buttons, progress bars for longer loading times and for shortened loading times, you can always add spinners. All this should replace the black screen that you are planning to present your user with in case of any other concerns that might arise. Rather than presenting your users with a black screen, you can always provide them with further info on how long they have to wait.
Landscapes are the most important aspect
This is one of the best tips for android app development because Android device is bound to be made up of one or more basic orientations. People have different mindsets and based on their choice, they might prefer either the portrait or landscape mode – more often, people are likely to choose the landscape mode – usually, it favors the physical keyboards. As you might be aware, Android tablets are preferred a lot these days – so, people with a pull for landscape orientation will increase slowly. Don’t think of the landscape orientation as providing a wider view of these lists. If you use this device in a landscape orientation, the user experience differs from all other orientations. In fact, using two thumbs for interaction makes typing easier and you just have to move your eyes from left to right, which is a lot easier than doing it from top to down. For a content-heavy app, the landscape mode from left to right is an excellent option.
The Ecosystem of Your App
You can with ease design a special and unique app, which would take up not one but many operations simultaneously – we can define it as a one-stop solution for a depository of needs. Now it is time to think of all the activities that your smartphone can perform – calls, texting, saving contacts, browsers, photos, videos, maps, emails, GPS and what not. But, what is it that it can do that no else can do? Here is where you can strike an impression of creating a difference like no one had done. Any user likes to have something different – to flaunt, to enjoy and mostly to experience the best. Where does your app fall in this category? Users would want to use their mobile device for more than one app. They need something out of a box. Give them an option where they can move across your app to another app and to the web as well.
Uniqueness counts
How do you think your app differs from others? Are you even aware of the fact that there are more than 200,000 android apps available? How would people identify yours in this crowd and choose it for their needs? Also, there are a number of identical apps – to make sure that your app hits, it should be different from all others.
As we have discussed, it is who provides difference and uniqueness, that people prefer to choose among others.
There are more than 200,000 apps on the Android Market. You might ask yourself how to stand out between all the quite similar offerings. If you set out to build the next boring Sudoku game in black and white or the next note-taking-app based on the official code example, you will have a hard time getting some decent download numbers. Okay, so if you are trying to add uniqueness to an existing app, it would be great – think of it in terms of what other apps do not have and then modify it. Or think of creating an app that has never been thought about in the market.
Whatever you do, ensure that you are bringing about uniqueness.
Testing
This is the most important step – also when you test your app, always understand that you cannot satisfy each and every one. But you must be sure that you have tried all the different tactics that your people might use when working with your app.
