10 Essential Guidelines for Mobile App UI/UX Design

If you want your mobile app to be successful, implement these UI/UX design practices into your process.

It’s no secret that mobile phones are the primary means of communication and accessing the web. Desktop views and app versions are great, but there’s a higher chance of users accessing your app through their phones. Thus, neglecting your app’s mobile view lessens its chances of success, irrespective of its functionality or use.

So, what should you watch out for to ensure optimum aesthetics and keep your user hooked? In this article, we’ll explore the most important mobile app UI/UX design guidelines for designing a successful mobile app.

Imagine walking into a room with several bold contrasting colors and flashy furniture. Chances are you’ll instantly feel overwhelmed and exit the room. This describes any user’s reaction to an unnecessarily complex interface or design.

Simplicity and minimalism are key to keeping your app as attractive as possible. Avoid using heavy, clashing colors, ostentatious elements, or garish icons and fonts. Instead, maintain a clean interface with simple but intriguing designs and adhere strictly to design color theory.

Users are more likely to interact with your app on their mobiles than on a desktop. So, always consider the appearance of your app on various mobile devices and screen sizes.

Optimize the contents of your pages for smaller screens with more fluid layouts, relative font sizes, and scalable graphics that retain quality. Rather than fixed elements, use those that can comfortably adjust to any screen’s size without negatively impacting the design.

To implement this, it's worth learning about breakpoints and media query CSS tricks.

Feedback can be visual, like effects and animation, auditory, or tactile in the case of haptics. An app without feedback or interaction is boring and drastically reduces the user’s satisfaction and experience. However, incorporating them into your mobile UI design communicates the success of the user’s interaction with your app.

For example, loading bars are great options for giving users insight into background processes or page loading. Also, error messages indicate mistakes or issues and help the user resolve them.

No matter what form of feedback you choose, ensure it’s descriptive, engaging, and enhances the user’s clarity. Remember, feedback is an auxiliary element, so it shouldn’t be overpowering or distract from the page’s main message.

No app is complete without a good navigation bar, but unfortunately, this is one of the most deficient areas in most mobile UI designs. Navigation allows for an excellent user experience and improves the user’s interaction with the app.

User-friendly navigation should be simple, direct, and consistent across screens. It should be visible and distinct from its background, especially for hamburger menus. Don’t use amateur colors to improve its visibility; instead, maintain your page color combinations.

Your navigation bar must also be responsive and not look congested on mobile screens. To implement this, you can use basic some responsive web design principles.

When people quickly glance at any page with information, they tend to grasp more visible, bolder text faster. This shows the importance of content hierarchy, as communication is one of the major purposes of a design.

Content hierarchy is simply arranging the contents or elements of a layout in order of their significance. In other words, the most important text or feature should be the boldest and most visible.

Primary content like titles, banners, navigation, or headlines that communicate your app's general purpose should come first. Next comes your secondary content like subheadings, tertiary specialized text, and finally, supporting content like footnotes or contact information.

Poor arrangement of these sections will inevitably confuse your user, leading to poor user experience.

There’s nothing more frustrating than a slow-loading page with features that take some time to show up. While this can sometimes be attributed to a poor internet connection, it could also result from large-sized elements and graphics.

To maintain engagement on your app, ensure you optimize your media and graphic files for reduced load times. Use modern image-compression tools that reduce your graphics and image files without compromising their quality.

Additionally, check your use of web fonts, as these can slow down your loading time. Of course, creativity is important when designing, but remember to consider size and effect before incorporating any element into your design.

Most people operate their mobiles with one hand; thus, your app must allow for one-handed use to increase user experience. Frequently used elements and controls like forms, navigation bars, and search bars should be placed in the thumb’s accessible area. This will prevent the user from constantly switching grip to accommodate your app’s layout.

Other tips for one-handed use include vertical scrolling, thumb-friendly element sizes, and a floating action button. Depending on the purpose of your app, the floating action button lets the user quickly access an important call-to-action.

Whether you’re designing for Android, iOS, or any other mobile operating system, always follow the platform’s stipulated guidelines and design language. Examples include Android’s Material You and Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) for iOS.

Doing this helps your user become more familiar with your app and maintains its consistency with other apps on the platform. All apps have a unique style, and yours should too, but avoid over-customizing the platform’s recommended colors, icons, and style guides.

Maintaining a consistent pattern in your app is highly important for user experience and interaction. Design elements like color, typography or font, icons, and logo placement resonate with all users—and lack of uniformity quickly throws users off.

Choose your app’s color palette and ensure you maintain those colors on all screens. This also applies to other visual elements like font size and style, icons, and logos.

Lastly, your element placement is as important as the elements themselves, so maintain a consistent layout or order. For extra caution and harmony, you can use a grid system.

User testing (also called usability testing) is the process by which users test-run and interact with an app to give feedback. This is important as it provides insight into a typical user’s mindset, needs, and pain points. On the other hand, iteration involves incorporating this feedback to improve the app’s interface and functionality for a better experience.

These processes help you refine your design to make your mobile app more user-friendly and increase its chances of success.

Much work goes into creating stunning mobile UI/UX designs, beginning with understanding its fundamentals. Familiarize yourself with the essential principles of mobile design using notable online courses, books, and design boot camps. Most importantly, this field evolves daily, so never stop learning, and always apply your newfound knowledge.

Joshua is a staff writer at MUO who's been passionate about technology since 2018. Starting in 2021, he's been sharing his expertise on career navigation in the tech industry through his writing. Joshua previously worked as a social media manager but has since pivoted to freelance writing, intending to also build a career in UX writing. In his free time, you can catch Joshua diving into random topics or experimenting with new recipes.