Keep up with mobile UX trends

  • Published on March 31, 2014
Keep up with mobile UX trends

Constructing an effective website or app requires planning and forethought along with knowledge of the goals and objectives for the site or app. User experience, or UX, is at the heart of this process, and no matter what your expertise is on the subject, it's important to keep up with advances in making designs accessible and useful on mobile devices and apps.

Mobility and productivity
Now that mobile devices have matured enough to showcase the finer points of smartphone UX, businesses are making mobile websites and apps a key part of their online strategy. Designers are now spending more time helping major corporations design apps and optimize websites for mobile devices. Creating responsive websites that adapt their design to mobile devices showcases how different design patterns are needed for mobile devices.

According to CIO, UX for business apps needs to focus on enhancing productivity for businesspeople. People who are using productivity oriented apps are typically focused on getting their work done, and the design of these products must include elements that makes this process easier. UX designers are seeing more multi-platform strategies, such as syncing documents and projects across different devices, and accessing the cloud, are recent developments that UX designers more frequently need to address as they create mobile designs.

End user partnerships
Business professionals who are developing their own apps are more frequently looking to include partners in the apps they create. In some instances, End User Experience reported that companies are after more complete ways to provide their own customers with savvy, sleek solutions. A business that deals in smartphone sales, for instance, might create an app that helps its end users sync with its phone provider. In this case, the designer's role might involve creating an interface that provides the company's consumers with information relating to data usage, the operating plan, the model of the smartphone along with general metrics, such as battery life or signal strength.

Whether developing business apps, consumer apps, or a website, a strong UX must remain focused on the core reason for their existence. Distractions and non-core elements need to be minimized or removed.

The basics are back
As you engage the apps you find useful, and use on websites across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices, consider how they are structured. Many UX professionals agree that the more basic the design, the better the user experience. Part of the challenge in crafting perfect applications is keeping it simple. With UX Training at the American Graphics institute, you'll discover how to refine app and Web designs to create delightful experiences for users.

About the author

 is a user experience designer, Photoshop expert, educator and author based in Boston. She is the author of more than 20 books on design tools and processes, including Adobe Creative Cloud for Dummies, Adobe Creative Cloud Digital Classroom, and Photoshop Digital Classroom. She has been awarded a Microsoft MVP three times for her work with user experience design in creating apps for touch, desktop, and mobile devices.

Jennifer delivers UX training and UX consulting for large Fortune 100 companies, small start-ups, and independent software vendors. She has been hired by Adobe and Microsoft to deliver training workshops to their staff, and has traveled to Asia, Europe, India, the Middle East, and across the U.S. to deliver courses and assist on UX design projects. She has extensive knowledge of modern Windows UX Design, having worked closely with the Windows team to create educational material and deliver UX workshops to key partners globally on behalf of Microsoft. Jennifer works with a wide range of prototyping tools including Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator, Blend for Visual Studio, XD, and Balsamiq. She also works extensively in the fields of presentation design and visual design.