Application Design Task 1

Eric Chang (0378298)

Bachelor Of Design in Creative Media

Application Design.

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Instruction:

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Lecture:

Week 1:

Why Application Design Matters?

Effective mobile application design is crucial in the current digital world. The widespread use of smartphones has led businesses to adopt a mobile-first strategy. A well-designed app enhances the user experience, which boosts engagement, retention, and customer satisfaction.

Understanding Usability

Usability is a critical aspect of mobile app design, measuring how effectively and efficiently a user can achieve their goals within the application. Key components of usability include learnability, efficiency, memorability, and user satisfaction. To ensure a user-friendly design, it's essential to apply usability principles by optimizing elements like navigation and visual hierarchy. This is achieved through usability testing, where designers observe users interacting with the app to identify and address any issues. Developing practical skills in design tools and user research is also crucial for mastering application design.

Importance of Mobile in Digital Era

Mobile devices are now an integral part of daily life, with over 6 billion smartphone users globally. This has led to a major shift in user behavior, with people increasingly using their phones for a wide range of activities, from social media to banking. As a result, businesses are adopting a "mobile-first" approach, prioritizing the mobile experience in their product design. A strong mobile presence offers a significant competitive advantage, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Challenges in Mobile Design

• Limited Screen Real Estate: Mobile screens are small, requiring designers to prioritize essential content and create clean, uncluttered interfaces.
• Diverse Device Capabilities: Apps must function consistently across a wide variety of devices with different screen sizes, specifications, and input methods.
• Contextual Awareness: Designers need to consider the diverse environments in which users interact with their apps, including factors like location, connectivity, and mobility.

User-Centered Design Approach

• Research & Analysis: The process begins with in-depth user research to gather insights into user needs, behaviors, and pain points.

• Design & Prototyping: Using these insights, designers create prototypes, starting with low-fidelity wireframes and progressing to high-fidelity interactive versions.

• Evaluation & Testing: Prototypes are continuously tested with real users to gather feedback, uncover usability issues, and refine the design.

Key Principles and Challenges

• Unique Challenges: Designers must work with limited screen space , account for a wide range of device capabilities , and consider contextual factors like a user's location and connectivity.
• Usability: This is a measure of how efficiently a user can accomplish their goals. It focuses on factors like learnability, efficiency, and user satisfaction.
• Optimization: A key part of mobile design is optimizing for small screens. This involves creating a clear visual hierarchy, implementing intuitive navigation (like tapping and swiping), and ensuring interactions feel natural.
• Performance: To ensure a responsive experience, designers must optimize performance by minimizing app size, using caching techniques, and optimizing network requests.

Week 2:

User-Centered Design (UCD)

UCD is an overall approach that ensures a product is both functional and enjoyable to use. It's an iterative cycle that involves deeply understanding user needs from the very beginning.

The process involves several stages:

• Discover/Analysis: Understanding business requirements, brand vision, target audience, and creating user personas to define user motivations and needs.
• Define: Ideating the product (like a website or app) and mapping the user's journey.
• Design: Focusing on the user flow (UX) and creating sitemaps and prototypes (UI).
• Validate & Develop: Conducting usability testing and then proceeding with production coding.

User Experience (UX) vs. User Interface (UI)

User Experience (UX)

UX encompasses all aspects of a user's interaction with a company and its products, focusing on their feelings and perceptions. It's about making a task meaningful and creating an emotional connection. The core of UX design is empathy—understanding the user's perspective by focusing on what they truly want and need, rather than what designers think they need.

A great user experience is built on these fundamentals:

• Utility: The product is useful and fulfills a need.
• Usability: The product is easy to navigate and use.
• Desirability: The visual design is appealing and brings joy.
• Brand Experience: The user has a positive overall impression of the brand.

User Interface (UI) 
UI design is focused on the visual and interactive elements of a product. It deals with the layout, colors, typography, and incorporating brand elements to bring the user experience to life visually. The main deliverables for a UI designer are mockups and prototypes that showcase the final look and feel.

Week 3:

Key Principles of Usability

• Consistency: A consistent design is user-friendly because it avoids confusing users with unexpected changes in layout, navigation, or branding. This creates an intuitive experience, strengthens brand identity, and reduces the user's need to relearn the interface on different pages. The main pillars of consistency are the navigation system, page layout, fonts, and branding.
• Simplicity: The interface should be intuitive and effortless to use, minimizing the number of steps required to complete a task. Communication should be crystal clear, using familiar symbols and terminology to eliminate confusion. A technique like "Progressive Disclosure" can help by presenting information in manageable steps.
• Visibility: Important information and interactive elements should be presented clearly, using a visual hierarchy (e.g., size, color, spacing) to guide the user's attention. The design should focus the user on relevant elements and avoid clutter. This includes providing clear visual cues for state changes (like a button changing color when tapped), prominent Calls to Action (CTAs), and discoverable features through well-placed icons and menus.
• Error Prevention: A well-designed product should proactively prevent users from making mistakes.
• Feedback: The app must provide clear signals to users confirming their actions have been registered. 

Common Usability Pitfalls

• Complex interfaces and confusing navigation.
• Inconsistent layouts.
• Unclear Calls to Action (CTAs).
• Inadequate error handling, such as vague error messages.

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Task 1: 

Canva Link

Gopay 2.0 by Eric Chang