2010s have finally proved that UX influences your marketing results not less than price strategy or advertising campaign. Apple breakthrough and success to a great extent relies on high usability. But following general UX trends not always works well for you. In this article we will cover some UX tendencies of mobile applications that popular though ineffective. Get inside to learn more.
1. Gesture manipulation
Why: No gesture language is established.
More and more apps use gestures to save space on the screen. With multi touch integrated in almost mobile devices, it seems to be a good idea. But in fact it is not. The reason is that there’s no general language established about it. Besides, many people can just not notice the additional functions. How many Users you think use swipe in this Mail App?
So unless you are Tinder and the main mechanic of your app is swipe, you’d better avoid gestures in the interface.
2. Hamburger menu
Why: Extra effort for Users
Recently everyone got obsessed with hamburger menus (as if they were real hamburgers!) Of course, it is such an easy way to hide all functions and not think about finding special place for them. But easy is not always good. Though hamburger menus are efficient, they push User into extra clicks every time they need something, so the best decision here is to add some most used functions in the additional menu, just as below.
3. Icons, icons, icons
Why: Too many icons get Users puzzled
Icons definitely work great for mobile applications, but not everything can be told with icons. There are plenty icons that well-known by any user (e.g. ‘star’ for ‘favorite’ or ‘plus’ for ‘add’), but if it gets further, it not always easy for User to understand what the action will be, which not only creates discomfort, but also complicates app manipulation (everyone was told in the childhood not to press buttons, if you don’t know what they do, right?) And you know how important it is for mobile app to be convenient.
Like what would you expect this button to do?
Or what was your first idea when you saw this Instagram icon for messages?
So we are sure that icons are not the field for experiments. This is the first place in UX where you definitely should go with the flow. And if you really have to use icons, just put text next to them.
We hope that this article has showed some deceptive UX trends and with our help you will be able to make your mobile apps much better.
Questions? Comments? Let’s talk about them in the comments section below.
