Mobile app design agency

Mobile isn’t a smaller desktop. With a limited screen, navigation has to be ruthless, and you can usually only do one thing per screen. Primary actions should be easily reachable, which on a large phone tends to mean the lower part of the screen. Forms should use the right keyboard, autofill wherever they can, and ask for as little as possible.

Respecting platform conventions helps, because people carry habits from all the other apps they use. iOS and Android have different patterns for navigation, back gestures and system dialogs, which are set out in Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and Google’s Material Design. You can still have a strong brand, but changing the way people expect to navigate tends to cost more than it gains.

The first minute decides a lot

Many users give an app very little time before deciding whether to keep it. Asking for notification permission on the first screen, before someone sees any value, tends to get a refusal. A better approach is to ask at a moment when the reason is obvious. Similarly, let people try the app before forcing them to register, if your product allows it. We test those early moments on real devices with real people, then hand over to development.