What does good mobile design mean today?

prashanthi vadla
4 min readNov 4, 2022

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Mobile design has evolved rapidly over the past two decades and user expectations have changed a lot. In this article, I want to discuss 8 things that users will expect about mobile apps in 2022.

1. Good usage is a must

A few years ago, good usability was one of the most important features that separated good mobile design from bad. Since then, the situation has changed dramatically. Today good usability is an integral asset of mobile design. Users will not tolerate apps with bad usability. When users interact with poorly designed products, they uninstall them or leave negative reviews like this.

Guidelines created by Apple, Google and other large companies, as well as indie designers, make it easier to develop products with excellent usability.

2. Excellent customer support service

When it comes to customer experience, poor customer support service is one of the most important areas of complaint. This trend is evident when you read user reviews on the AppStore. Every second 1-star review is about poor customer support.

Users expect to be able to solve their problems without leaving the mobile app. A typical example of poor mobile design is when the app launches the Mail app when the user selects the user support option and invites the user to write a message.

A customer support service should be integrated into the product, Mobile application development companies allowing the user to resolve the issue without leaving the app.

The use of chatbots in customer support service is worth mentioning. People hate interacting with robots (especially when the robot is poorly designed), so it’s always a good idea to provide users with a real customer support specialist to help them.

3. Delight is overrated

The fancy visual effects that are so popular in the Dribbble community no longer work for real users. In the past few years, product creators have raised the bar and released several apps with exceptional aesthetics. As a result, fancy effects do not attract users. When users see a visual effect that takes weeks

or months to create, they think, “Okay, that’s cool, but what’s next?” When users are deciding between two competing apps, A and B, and A has exceptional aesthetics, but B offers more practical value, users will choose app B.

Fancy visual effects in mobile design. Image by George Finnbogason

Does this mean you shouldn’t invest in creating a nice visual aesthetic? No. But you need to prioritize your efforts and invest in good activities first. Consumers’ value in using your product is measured by the actions they can take using it, not the visual pleasure they get.

|Read more : List of top mobile app development companies in texas

4. Better personalization

Personalization is about learning about users’ needs and providing more content and features that users love. We still have a lot of potential to create better personalized experiences in 2022. For example, here’s what the Netflix home screen will look like in 2022. It still forces users to manually dig into a large library of movies and spend a lot of time finding a relevant title. As a result, it’s much easier to spend more time looking for the movie you want to watch than actually watching it.

Netflix mobile app home screen in 2022

5. Contextual Artificial Intelligence

AI assistants are integrated into many modern mobile apps and take center stage (literally) in many of them. When you launch the app, one of the options in the bottom tab bar is a bubble that activates the smart assistant. But are mobile users using AI assistants? Cross Platform application development company in Virginia Sure, but not as often as mobile designers think.

Cryptocurrency Wallet Assistant — Concept by Eric Sobichowski

Instead of making the AI ​​assistant the primary UI element, it’s better to make the AI ​​contextual. It does not necessarily appear on the home page but should always be ready to support users in specific situations.

6. Omnichannel experience

Users must decide how they want to interact with your product. They want the power to choose a device to use in a particular situation. In one case, users want to use a mobile app; Android application development companies in Vancouver In another case — they switch to desktop because it is more convenient.

A good example is online shopping. Browsing the list of products on mobile is easy, but as soon as you find a product you like, you want to switch to desktop to complete the operation as it is more convenient to check the details on the big screen. The transition to different mediums should be seamless — the app helps users continue from the moment they stop in another medium.

Always think holistically about the user journey. Analyze each stage of the journey to understand where the user wants to switch to a different medium.

7. Apple Pay and Google Pay Payment Methods

Do you support Apple Pay and Google Pay? If not, I have bad news for you — you’re more likely to abandon the wagon.

Apple and Google Pay streamline the checkout experience. Think of Google Pay and Apple Pay as shortcuts you offer your customers. Shortcuts help reduce interaction cost and help users complete the operation much faster and with minimum effort.

8. Valuable Augmented Reality

“Everyone has added AR support in their apps and we need to add AR too! Quick, think about where we should add it. Like any other technology, AR is only good when it provides value to users. Having AR in an app for the sake of AR is not good. You should only add AR support if you have specific cases where you would benefit from using AR. A good example is Ikea AR, which lets you see how a certain item fits into your interior.

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