C# Disciples
Toronto TacosThere’s a platform for that app
With so many different mobile platforms on the market, a new question has become increasingly relevant: how do brands design for individual mobile platforms? Traditionally, big brand names produce style guides for print and web. However, because the mobile market has grown in such an abrupt and divergent manner, most organizations have not yet produced similar style guides to suit individual mobile platforms. This becomes a real tug-of-war between clients and designers. Clients become attached to their branding, but mobile design is not a subset of web design, nor is it anything close to print.
As designers, we face a growing concern with mobile design because most clients are (understandably) unwilling to let us derive new style ad-hoc guides to match the conventions of specific mobile platforms. Conversely, we are unwilling to simply employ their web standards in the design of a mobile application because, simply put, web standards have no place in native mobile applications. Recently, this has become an issue, not only because the mobile space offers different interaction paradigms overall, but also because each platform is vastly and intentionally different from the others on the market.
For example, the design of an iPhone application will likely not suit Windows Phone 7, and vice versa. The application flow may be similar on both platforms, but because each platform’s interaction differs, the design cannot simply be transferred over. It is important to realize that the users of mobile platforms develop expectations and attachments to their chosen platform’s paradigms. If designers create one app-specific design for all platforms, users often have a more difficult time understanding the application as they will be required to interact with their platform in a non-native way.
As we as designers move forward and begin to design suites of applications across multiple platforms, it is important to both stay flexible and convince our clients that a mobile application is not simply a small website. The client needs to be aware that one of the most significant reasons mobile has grown so quickly in the past two years is because it is a targeted, unique, fun, and intuitive experience. It is also an experience that can only be delivered effectively using the native interaction paradigms of each platform.
Applications are targeted; when delivered well, they provide a very confined set of ultra-polished functionality. Many successful mobile companies have been built on this ethos – Foursquare and Yelp are both prime examples. Their approach has been to do one thing and do it very well. It is essential for designers, and our clients, to recognize that in mobile application design, there is usually a trade-off between compelling user experience and expansive functionality.
Ultimately it is the responsibility of the designer to extract the information from their clients as to the area in which they want an application to truly shine. Simply stated, the “kitchen sink” approach is generally the wrong way to go about designing a mobile application. Instead, hone in on the core requirements that will derive the core user experience. Explain to clients that an ultra-polished, well-thought-out user experience trumps the kitchen sink approach every time.
This does not simply mean designing for one platform and then porting it across to another, it means that the designs need to be specific and targeted to each of the platforms on which they will be deployed. The app can then be ultra-polished on every front – requirements, native interaction, and native design – while taking into account the client’s branding.
The user experience of applications should try to suit individual platforms; meaning we cannot develop one design and call it “cross-platform”. Designers need to spend the time and effort tailoring an application for the platforms on which it will be offered, and ultimately, the quality of that tailoring will be apparent.
Designing natively for each individual platform will yield a much higher success rate than designing one “pseudo cross-platform” application that users will often not understand. It is this type of planning and design process that sets Infusion’s digital agency and UX development apart from other UX studios – our attention to details and our experienced recommendations.