Tuesday 17 September 2013

Learning about user experience from app stores

Always try to catch a Nick Jones presentation if I can at Gartner events. This ones on App stores, and what we can learn from them

100bn apps will be downloaded from app stores this year. Some will be rubbish, some will have wow factor. How do we get wow factor from our apps?

Key user experience (UX) lessons from app stores:

Emotion matters - happiness, engagement, wow factor
New design principles are emerging - design for partial attention, interruption, expose experience rather deliver functions
New devices and habits enable new opportunities - eg using tablet while watching TV, mobile apps controlling drones
Watch for new ideas - eg6 second video clips,

Understand and design for user context
Understand context of user. Where are they, what are their goals, attitude, which device is nearest. What are their habits and preferences. If don't understand context, get a lot of things wrong.

A mobile experience is more than pixels behind glass. More senses ar engaged, audio, haptics, accelerometers, voice.
A user experience is not a user interface. Lot more dimensions to it. Aesthetics important, as is end to end process.
Design for issues outside your control, eg battery life, network performance, data quotas,
Think end to end user experience.

Some dos and dont's
1. Do invest more in testing — it doesn't end once you ship the app

2. Don't "mobilize" your website or portal - generally stuff on website not designed for mobile. Putting the website on a mobile device is not an app.

3. Do ensure the user understands and approves of what you're doing,
e.g., location tracking, asking for access to system resources

4. Don't provide everything users ask for. It's not economically sensible to
respond to every request. Also produces apps which are overly complex.

5. Do provide a feedback mechanism. App stores are social networks, users
tell you what they like and hate

6. Don't add too many features, good mobile UX design is about providing just enough functionality

7. Do experiment with new ingredients in the recipe, e.g., mobile + social

8. Do understand platform rules and expectations, eg a lot of android users don't have sophisticated phones

9. Do design apps for minimal (or zero) support

Some of best mobile designers use different principles, eg HEART
Happiness
Engagement
Adoption
Retention
Task success

Good UX apps will improve process efficiency and effectiveness, employee and customer satisfaction.
Need to put pressure on vendors, increase weighting of UX when selecting products
Use agile life cycles, iteration is important.
Simple features can create wow factor. Eg app to read and submit gas meter reading utilises flash on phone as torch to see it with.






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