The ever increasing popularity of mobile applications has sent savvy Web Designers back to the drawing board. The IPhone, the Android, the Blackberry and a slew of electronic media moguls are redefining what effective Web Design means in the here and now.
Because of the rapid dissemination of mobile applications, Web Designers are quickly revising their design principles. Below you will find three additional core principles that should be kept in mind to effectively design for the mobile environment. These are addressed in recent posts, but we believe their importance requires multiple entries.
1) Simplicity
Due to the reduced size of the mobile screen, the design should be limited in its’ complexity. Although a website can fairly easily be ported to the mobile device, it is not usable due to the information load on your typical website. Mobile design requires a new way of looking at how a user behaves and how the experience needs to change to enable use via the interface.
2) Familiarity
Take advantage of user’s current knowledge and memory of concepts, features or symbols used throughout the web and OS interfaces today. For example, the user is familiar with a recycle bin or waste basket to delete files, maintaining this metaphor would increase the likelihood of a user inherently understanding the principle of moving items to the ‘trash’. In short, don’t rethink the wheel, just improve on it.
3) Messaging
System to User collaboration is more than merely alerts/errors. There must be constant communication between mobile applications and the user to keep the user informed of what is happening through system feedback/content delivery. In addition, the inherent functionality of a mobile device plays an instrumental part in the messaging due to voice-based applications for the iPhone.
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