Mobile application development has come forward by passing other software developments within a short period of time. The reason behind that is all most all the people in 21st century want to manage their day-to-day work using handheld devices with their busy lifestyles. Therefore, every respected company has its own mobile app(s) to keep easiness in the life of people who engage with them.
But before designing and developing a mobile app, there are some key points that we should know as a part of a software development team that helps to increase the usability of the target audience of the app. If any software development team ignores these points when designing and developing an app it causes frustration of the end-user and potentially abandon the use of the application.
So, let’s get to know about some key points that help to increase usability of the target audience of the mobile app which we are going to develop.
- Transparency of the system status.
When users are using the mobile app, they should have 100% system status awareness or visibility. Therefore, the system that we develop should keep informed the user about what is going on? Each and every step need to have appropriate feedback and it should visible to the user within a reasonable time. Purpose behind this point is to stop keeping users in the dark even for a single moment once they login into the app.
- Freedom of controlling the app.
Doing unintended things is the normal behavior of people. Therefore, the user who is using the app should have freedom to control the app. If user take an action that he/she unintended to take the mobile app should have ability to undo and redo what they did. And also, when user make a mistake then he/she should allow to correct it without reading lengthy explanations or dialogues.
- Keep consistency throughout the app.
Once we are going to develop a mobile app (or any other software product) it will be an excellent product only if we maintain consistency throughout the app. Otherwise, it causes confusion to the end-user of the application. Consistency is one of fundamental principles in UX designing. According to the principle, we should focus on visual consistency, functional consistency and external consistency. It means fonts, buttons, texts, labels should be uniform and interactive elements should work in a predictable manner in the app. And also, when designing an app, we should consider how to keep consistency across the other multiple products as well. Then users can use the app with their existing knowledge that they have gained by using different mobile applications.
- Be the equal of the real world.
When developing a mobile app, it is a must not to use any technical jargon in the UI of the app. Mobile app should not be a thing that is tiring to the user. They should have the feeling of living in the real world when they are using the app. So, every mobile app conversation, information needs to appear in the UI in a natural and logical order.
- Error Prevention
To increase usability of a mobile app, error prevention does a considerable contribution. To make this a reality inside a mobile app tester have the highest responsibility because their the one who can identify all the flows that can be caused to generate an error and guild developers to eliminate error-prone conditions from the app. To make this the development team has the responsibility to resist the actions that would take by the end-user rather than sending a good error message after taking the action by the user. If there is any flow that cannot eliminate it is good to get user confirmation before committing the action.
Finally, if the development team can think of these points as a team within the software development life cycle the end result or the product would be one that audience embrace willingly as expected by the team.