Foreign practical information! 6 methods to help you design an excellent APP

Many people are full of praise for Parable's design, and their first reaction is to ask: "Where did you find the designer?" Our answer is that we don't have a dedicated designer, but everyone in the team participates in the design. Most people find this answer unbelievable.

Great design comes from consistency and detail, and in fact, every team can achieve this as long as they are disciplined enough. Here, I summarize some experiences of Parable's visual design, which will help us design beautiful applications.

brand

Branding is the cornerstone of app design. It answers the question, “How should users feel when using your app?” First, you should determine which are your main target groups or industries: children, teenagers, professionals, mothers, students, doctors, designers, seniors, etc. The design style of the app must be consistent with the brand in order to establish stronger brand recognition and reassure users. For example, a social app designed for seniors should use large fonts, while a stock trading app should strategically use a security lock icon to make users feel safe. If possible, you should also consider finding a mascot for your brand. A mascot can personify the brand and strengthen the impression that the app leaves on users.

[[146820]]

Color Scheme

The color scheme determines the image of the app and should be an extension of the brand theme color. It is the core of the visual design because these colors are used in all visible places of the app. First, you need to choose a theme color that can enhance the brand image. For example, Evernote’s theme color is green. Then, you should create a color scheme around this theme color. Bright colors can attract people’s attention, so they are suitable for consumer-oriented applications; neutral colors can make people focus on the information itself, so they are more suitable for professional applications. Parable’s theme color is "Tangelo Orange", so we chose grayscale as the main color scheme, which is also in line with our usual fashion creativity. Another example is SnapChat, which uses a gorgeous bright color scheme to attract teenage users.

Intuitive

In a highly competitive app market, there is no time for users to carefully appreciate your app - we value "love at first sight". The best apps are those that let you understand their functions at first glance. A useful little trick is to study how those popular apps do it and try not to confuse users. Then, thoroughly test all interactive links and fully optimize the app. Before reaching the most important interactive link, the user should have no more than three operation steps, for example, it only takes one click to post to Meerkat and three clicks to post to Instagram. Some platforms that users are familiar with have specific interactive methods, and using them often works well.

Post to Meerkat in one click, and to Instagram in three

Pleasure

The first criterion for users to evaluate apps is experience. To gain loyal users, you must provide some unexpected pleasure. Over time, these pleasant experiences will leave a deep impression on users, making the app an essential part of their daily life. The animations that appear when clicking to share in Pinterest and Parable, as well as the animations when refreshing SnapChat, are all good examples.

Pinterest’s sharing animation, SnapChat’s refresh animation, Parable’s sharing animation

Refining

Excellent visual design is all about detail, and every pixel is perfect. First, let's talk about typography. Fonts are the face of your app, and a good font can make your app stand out. You can carefully select one of the more than 50 iOS fonts; of course, if you can buy and make your own fonts, that's even better - in short, don't hang on to the default font tree. Serif fonts are good for long articles; san-serif fonts can use more font sizes without making the page look crowded. Condensed fonts can fit more text on the screen, but they will look weird next to regular fonts. Next, let's talk about icons. Icons that can accurately convey emotions are the best. You can use some free icon resources and then modify them slightly in Photoshop to make them your own icons. When creating solid-color icons, stick to a single color to avoid crowding and confusion for users. Finally, let's focus on visual assets. The post-skeuomorphic era has made asset development simpler. We should try to render in code to minimize the size of the app package. When adding assets, you need to make sure they match the screen size correctly; one of the signs of poor quality is pixelation of assets.

Path and Flipboard are examples of pixel-perfect design. However, be aware that if a paragraph mixes a bold compact san-serif font with a serif font, it will appear unbalanced on Flipboard.

Path and Flipboard

simplify

Developers always like to add some complex navigation interfaces or use irrelevant information, which makes the interface a mess. This is simply frustrating for users. Keep everything simple! The screen layout should be kept clean, and the information should be arranged in layers, with the important ones on top and the unimportant ones at the bottom. Only highly relevant details should be displayed, and statistical tools should be used to analyze which actions are useless, and then delete them. You can learn from Apple's philosophy: perfection is perfection without any superfluous things. Analyze the simple Pinterest personal homepage below. It puts users and block display areas together, and the most important follow and like buttons are carefully placed in the right place. To be the best application, you need to implement this principle more deeply and make the content dynamic, such as hiding the navigation bar with animation when scrolling, and hiding buttons in multi-step interactions.

Pinterest personal homepage interface

Every app has different goals, but there are commonalities to good app design. Follow these steps when designing your next app, and send me your thoughts on Twitter (@amitpaka).