You can and try to predict people’s behaviour as much as you can, but very often you have to be flexible and you have to tailor your designs.
None of the “good” design matters, if it obstructs people’s user experience. It’s important to get UX right, because there’s such an abundance of apps that unless users really enjoy using yours, they’re going to delete it the first time it’s installed.
Main questions:
- What is the user using my app for? What’s the core functionality?
- Am I doing it just because it’s good or because it’s clever?
- Am I being consistent?
- Can I make it simpler?
- Am I making life difficult for my users?
- Can I teach without teaching?
- Am I treating my users like dumbasses?
Usability
What is the user using my app for? What’s the core functionality?
Once you know what your users want to achieve with your app, then you should make the process of completing that action as friction free, or as few steps as possible. Then afterwards, you can think about asking them incrementally for more things.
Map a user’s journey through your app and think how can you minimize the steps that it takes for them to achieve the main goal. If you do one thing well, the rest is an added bonus.
Asking for permissions
UX is closely tied to psychology. A lot of times you’re trying to persuade users to take certain actions such as stay in the app for longer or make a purchase. We have light and dark patterns.
Ask the user for permissions or to agree to things step by step. Don’t do it all at once when he opens the App. Do it gradually as he gets used to the app or as he needs it.
User Profiling
The thing that you think your app might be about, might not be the thing that users value. You have to know who your users are and what they want to achieve using your app.
The best way to do this is by profiling your users and build a personality into your app by tailoring around your user profiles.
Form vs function
Am I doing it just because it’s good or because it’s clever? When you’re making choices between form vs functions, always go with function. Sometimes when you’re designing things it can be really easy to get lost in your own thoughts and ego.
Always get a second opinion.
Consistency
Be consistent with your brand, app and web. The’re needs to be consistency. A confused user is an unhappy user.
Think about consistency not just in terms of appearance, but also in terms of functionality. If you’re making a website for people to submit their IT problem, don’t make it look like it’s an e-commerce site.
Understand what your product does. What your branding is. What your company is all about.
Simplicity
Can I make it simpler? You should always keep in mind to keep things as simple as possible.
Never ever implement two rows packed of buttons. Don’t do long tutorials of things that should be pretty much intuitive from the go. You don’t have to explicitly tell people about this kind of things. It can feel really condescending.
You have to identify the core objective of the users for using your app and then try to minimize the number of steps that it takes to achieve that. Scrap everything until you’re left with the very basic and then add features and things on top of it as users demand it.
Don’t make me think
Am I making life difficult for my users? We should try and minimize our toll on the user’s brain. Try to make the interface as clear and as least confusing as possible for our users.
When password rules get too complicated and you overload a user’s brain making them think that this is way too much effort, you’ll see your sign-ups drop off. There’s a happy medium between keeping that password secure and encouraging your users to sign up.
Don’t put annoying tutorials from the get go. Give your users tidbits of information instead. Make it contextual. Relevant to the tasks at hand. Show somebody something just as and when they need it. This is how you want to teach users to use your app. Don’t overload their brain with loads of information at the beginning (front loading).
Try to make your wording as clear as possible.
When something’s so ingrained such as pinch to zoom, you cannot try and map that on to something else. It will cause confusion and you will loose users.
Onboarding
You don’t need to make everything so explicit. To use Flipboard you need to swipe up. If after a few seconds the user didn’t interact with the screen, the bottom of the screen will peek up. With this little tiny interaction, the user has learned to interact with your app without any tutorial. Try to teach without teaching.
Idiot Boxes
Interrupt your users’ flow as little as possible or you’d prevent them from having a good user experience. Don’t force pup-ups to confirm actions. Interrupting a user’s flow for no good reason is stopping the proceedings with idiocy.