Tips To Increase Usability Of A Mobile Application

By Author: Susan Smith
Total Articles: 132
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Every year thousands of mobile applications are created and uploaded to the app stores for sales or download. Among these, some instantly capture the attention of the target audience, while others are declared as failures. Software developers often fail to build a mobile app that will rank high on the usability scale. In fact, there is no clear guideline on how to ensure and enhance the usability of mobile apps. According to research studies conducted by mobile marketers, hardware problems are the chief cause of low usability rate of mobile applications. Therefore, both the software and the hardware aspects are to be taken care of for building an app that is more usable than others. Listed below are few factors to keep in mind to increase the usability of mobile apps:

Color and contrast of the app – The latest models of mobile devices selling in the contemporary market are equipped with LCD screens which have color and contrast properties. This inspires software developers to create apps using nuanced colors. However, this makes it difficult for users to look through the features of the app in poor light conditions. ...
... A developer must remember to use color schemes that are highly contrasted while writing app content or drawing imagery; the app widgets must also be differentiated using solid as opposed to shades or outlines of colors. The usability of mobile applications rises when simple graphics are used and the extra frills are removed.

The mobile app resolution – With mobile phones of multiple features being introduced in the market, it has become difficult for a software developer to build mobile applications that are compatible with the resolutions, features, and display screens of these devices. In fact, assessing an ideal app resolution is one of the most difficult aspects of building a successful mobile application. The trick that mobile market researchers recommend the developers to follow is to minimize the app content and enable making the app information bigger on the device display screen.

The font size of app information – The screen size of mobile devices is small when compared to the traditional desktops and laptops. This is the reason why the font used for writing app content should also be small in order to fit in the screen. Since developers can do nothing about the default font size that comes with a mobile device, they must try to make app fonts as large or as small in order to be compatible with a device’s screen. This leads to enhanced utility and usability of the mobile application.

The app button functions – Most often all the functions of a mobile application are not utilized because users are confused about which button indicators to use in order to enable complete usage. The software developer can build a detailed section in his/her mobile application describing the app button functions. In this way the user can run the app without trouble and thus enjoy maximum usability.

Keyboard inputs can be minimized – According to research reports, users find it difficult to use the keyboards on their mobile devices. Lack of moving space in physical QWERTY keyboards of mobiles causes hassles. App developers must thus minimize keyed inputs to enhance usability rates.

A flexible mobile app and one that has simple features is the most usable software tool, say researchers.

The author is associated with one of the top mobile application development companies, iPhone apps development and mobile app developers Dallas firm