What Great App Design look like
Today’s designers are considering the emotions people feel when interacting with their product and how those emotions drive them to take one action over another. Design for apps involves more than smartphones and tablets as they also exist in PCs, watches, smart TVs, just about everywhere. A business Insider study revealed that today’s teens are spending about six hours a day on their phones much of which spent in apps and those teenagers are turning to apps with their simple and focused UI.
Apps are personal and go beyond function. There exist an overwhelming number of alternatives in the app stores so that it is more than just “there’s an app for that” where the users decide what to download onto their devices and therefore the app design is about appealing to user emotions. As great app design further humanize design, businesses are increasing relying on apps to create more engagement with their consumers. More companies are taking their business strategy to apps. App design to business’s today is about how to communicate their brands and keep their brands consistent across new patforms.
In general, the gap between poorly designed products and well-designed products is shrinking. There will be always a large gap between great design and “good” design, but in general the bucket of “good” products is getting bigger.
App experiences continue to expand from smartphones and tablets to watches, smart TVs and PCs. Not only are consumers more open to these sorts of experiences, but there are more apportunities for apps to reach consumers in ways that are more relevant to them. With all of these facts, app design has become much more complex and involved. With the increasing complexity of app design, we’ve seen new tools emerge that tackle the specific needs of app desighners like Sketch, a design program created to address the specific needs of UI designers. Prototyping tools like Flinto and Principle, as well as Marvel and InVision are removing the technical barries of entry for animations and interactions and empowering designers to create connecting experiences in new days.
In a way these new tools are helping give as-of-yet under recognized concerns in app design a foothold with designers. Accessibility, in particular, has moved beyond the buzzword it was over the past couple of years with new color and contrast tests like color safe. These tools are helping app designers realize the accessibility, especially for users with slight disabilities, is no longer an afterthought. In general, the gap between poorly designed products and well-designed products is shrinking. There will be always a large gap between great design and “good” design, but in general the bucket of “good” products is getting bigger. As there exist now more than one way of creating an app, the app design is now more important than ever to make an app great.