The Prominence of Mobile UX Design
Market Overview
As per @comscore, usage of mobile overtook desktop usage way back in 2014. This has led to a widened gap between devices, with the rise in mobile usage doubling the loss seen on desktop. The increase in mobile traffic has made mobile user experience one of the most important factors in the success of a product or website. Mobile UX encompasses the subjective experience that a user has with a mobile app. This is inclusive of both the good and the bad experiences, as well as emotions of the customers.
As per a recent report by Inc42 Media, there are:
· 842 Million Smartphone users in India
· 305 Million users are doing online transactions in India
· 323+ Million are the total number of rural internet subscribers
· 3.24 Billion UPI transactions recorded in India
· $1.2 Trillion is the total value of UPI transactions till July 2021
· 60% internet penetration in India
Mobile User Experience (UX) Design
UX design is the process of creating and developing a product that is delightful to interact with users, thus providing a meaningful and relevant experience. It is not only limited to interaction, content, sound design, but also includes the complete customer journey process. One should not confuse between User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX). There is a close interaction between UI and UX, however both are not the same.
“…the average app loses 77% of its Daily Active Users within the first 3 days after the install.” — Andrew Chen (https://t.co/GyyGaFVfZh).
Why Is Mobile UI/UX Design Important?
The UI designers create interactive visual content and graphic designs. UX goes beyond the purely graphical representation of the UI. It’s also concerned with designing the experience in the entire journey that users have before, during and after using the app.
The elements of good UX design
Useful: The product, website or app needs to have a purpose for the target audience keeping in mind users’ needs and wishes.
Usable: The app needs to be self-descriptive. It will help organizations to capture psychological and behavioral aspects of users’ interactions with different products.
Desirable: The app needs to evoke positive emotions and appreciation. The ‘desirability factor‘ has a huge impact on the organization’s image, brand, reputation as well as the emotional response it gets from the user.
Findable: Navigating through the system must be easy and self-descriptive. Moreover, users must find important information quickly.
Accessible: App should easily be accessible irrespective of user’s age, ability, situation, and area of context.
Credible: Users must trust you and your product.
Reason to Have An Efficient Ul/UX design
App owners always prioritize on coming up with an efficient Ul/UX design for building the best app. This requires thorough research and prior planning in order to understand the needs of the users and the problem you intend to solve with your app. Organization needs to come up with a design that works taking into consideration the needs of the customers.
Below are the reasons why organizations need a good design for their apps.
Enhancing customer satisfaction with improved ROI
A great design provides the customers with engaging content and easy navigation, thus making the customer satisfied with the services of the application. Satisfied clients will always recommend about the app to others, leading to an increase in the customer base. Besides this, customers also become loyal to the brand and become returning buyers hence increasing the ROI for the business.
As per Nielsen Norman Group (https://www.nngroup.com/), when the customer experience is prioritized through UX improvement, it raises a company’s KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) up to 83% in conversion lift.
Understanding your audience
Organization needs to understand the needs of the clients before creating UI/UX. This means the design is created with the focus to reach out to the target audience. Organizations also have prototypes to build Ul/UX designs based on different customer segments. It is important to understand the requirement of the audience, convert the prospective customers into loyal and returning customers, hence increasing actual sales.
From the customer perspective, there are three positive levels of customer satisfaction. At first- When a company meets the customers’ expectations. Second- Moving up a level above by exceeding the expectations. This is the phase where customers start earning trust and loyalty for the product. Third- This is where organizations need to strategize wherein, they can shape customers’ expectations. As per Interaction Design Foundation (https://www.interaction-design.org/), this has been termed as ‘Expectation Engineering’, a key area of focus for organizations to stay relevant.
Building effective brands
Investing in an efficient Ul/UX design helps in increasing customer satisfaction hence ending up with happy clients. People like working with brands that make them happy. This increases the credibility of the business wherein customers also tend to have good relationships with the company and the brand, thus resulting in increasing growth and value for the business and the brand name.
In the current market scenario, the business focus is rapidly shifting from intellect (IQ) to emotion (EQ) to build long term relation with the customers. The fight for brand loyalty will get tougher when customers start demanding for more personalized experience. As per a research study by Salesforce, technologies like AI (Artificial Intelligence), ML (Machine Learning), Automation, Big Data have great abilities to take customer experience to a different level. However, as per the research report — 84 percent of customers have higher chances of sticking to a brand where they are treated like a person with empathy and not a number. Organizations are not only focusing on having the best technical engineers on board but also emotionally intelligent people who can bridge the gap between the customers and the complexities of new technologies. This in turn has led to higher demands for UX experts who can help organizations in building effective brands with a user-centered approach in digital product development.
As per Motista (https://www.motista.com/), Customers having an emotional connection with a brand have
· 306 Percent higher lifetime value
· Stay with the brand for an average of 5.1 years vs. 3.4 years
· Recommend brands at a much higher rate (71% vs. 45%)
Saving time and money
If you invest in a great Ul/UX design, there is a minimal chance that your clients will find any problem with your application. Upgradation of products requires investments in terms of time and money. A perfect product will not need frequent upgrades and therefore saves you money and time you would have spent on developing an update.
As per the research conducted by IBM Design, “A rule of thumb is for every $1 of investment in UX research, company saves $10 in development and $100 in post-release maintenance.” As per the above research, the 1:10:100 rule for change will cost organizations $1 in doing the initial research, $10 in changing the design and $100 in changing the product. Therefore, companies are strategizing to be in the users shoes every step of the way, thus making the organization more relevant and trustable with higher ROI.
Market Trends of Mobile UX Design 2022 & Beyond
Data Visualization
Data visualization in mobile designs allows customers to have better interaction with the data based on their preferences, thus making the experience highly personalized.
Microcopy
Copy is an integral part of UX design. Organizations are ensuring to combine the power of copy with designs to keep the engagement levels higher for the customers.
Neumorphism & Glass morphism
Neumorphism has been a highlight for most of the digitized organizations and is inspired from skeuomorphic design, that focuses on solid colors, subtle contrast, and shadows. Most of the product owners are using neumorphic designs to develop different kinds of products and apps. On the other hand, Glass morphism is gaining much popularity amongst product owners as it is like a glass-like look and liked by the audience.
Gamification
Gamification is the need of the hour. Organizations that are building Super Apps are applying game mechanics into the UX designs to see a considerable increase in daily active usage thus increased user engagement.
Augmented & Virtual Reality
Mobile apps that are based on AR and VR will see a continuous rise in the years to come as it is one of the best tools that offers higher interaction between organizations and users.
Air Gesture
As organizations are getting more digitalized, new mobile design trend like Air gesture has created hype amongst the audience that has led them to build better mobile interfaces. Simple hand movement or gesture can change the things on the phone. For instance-a hand gesture might allow the user to take a screenshot of the mobile screen.
3D & Character Designs
There is higher demand for 3D charts and graphs in mobile UX designs that will allow organizations to have better interaction and have lively experience with the audience. On the other hand, character design will not only help in better storytelling experience but also allow companies to build more personalized brands for the audience.
Cross Platform UX
Many of the organizations are aiming to provide cross platform UX experiences with the advent of platforms like Flutter to deliver a consistent experience to its users.
UX Voice Inputs
Voice User Interfaces (VUI) are the primary or supplementary visual, auditory, and tactile interfaces that enable voice interaction between people and devices. Organizations are paying attention to key details like device type, context, constraints, and the environment it is to be used while designing UX for voice-based interfaces, thus crafting unique experiences. Better VUIs helps in creating advanced personalization, better touchless experience and reduce the number of steps a user needs to complete a task.
— — — — — — — —
What is the Future?
Design is perceived as the surface while it is an in-depth study. With the new emerging technologies, there is a huge responsibility for organizations to provide better customer services and keep them engaged. The demand for digitalization within the financial services sector has apparently increased the possibility of creating a digital path for the customers with COVID-19, thus gaining a competitive market advantage. This future digital transformation strategy would be more resilient to provide our customers the best experience. Customer experience is and always will be our priority. And in the coming years, we are certain that the use of the mobile application will only grow. Designing team plans to invest in constant research to identify the new potentials of user experience design and implement them in the mobile application.
