Tips for mobile app designers to develop a usable mobile app

The issues with usability of mobile phone apps loom large. There are no clear cut app developer’s guidelines on app usability. The diversity of different handset models make it difficult to define a standard for the app’s usability factor. Usability issues arise out of hardware problems, while some can be tackled by the software developer, there are some things which are impossible to solve. The following are some solutions to the major hardware problems.

1. Screen resolution- As there are many new mobile phones in the market, each having different features, display screens and resolutions, which makes it impossible for the developers to assess the ideal resolution your app needs to have. Placing too many features in your app will only worsen the app. The trick to solving this issue s to put as little info as possible on the display screen and then make it big.
2. Colors- the latest mobile phone have LCD screen with amazing color and contrast capabilities. This tempts the programmer to use nuanced colors without an idea that smart phones are to be carried everywhere and is used in light conditions. Poor light conditions will cause difficulty for the user to perceive the subtle color and it becomes hard for the user to read the information on the display screen. Therefore, app developers have to use high contrast color schemes and differentiate widgets with solid colors and not just with vaguely outlined color boxes. Avoid using unnecessary extra fills and use simple graphics instead to provide your app more utility value.
3. Buttons- Most of the smart phone users do not make a complete use of their phone, as they do not understand all the button functions of their phone. Therefore app developers have to ensure that your button indicators make good sense to your end users. You have to include a detailed help section in your app, which cite the entire button functions, so that your user will run your app without any trouble.
4. Fonts- Most of the mobile phones have fonts which are very small to be read easily. The screens have small size and so the fonts have to be small sized too to fit in. As a developers you cannot make the phone’s default font size change, but you can try to make the fonts large for your specific app. This will increase the usability quotient of your mobile app.
5. Cursor- Mobile phones differ from computing devices, in the aspect that they cannot be manipulated easily with cursors and pointing devices. As most of the latest mobile phones have touch screens and use a stylus, trackball or track pad, each one if different in the way they are handled. It will be hard for the end users to drag and drop objects on the screen of mobile devices with tiny screens, therefore you have to avoid including functionalities in your app which will not be supported by those devices. Make anything on the screen clickable and enlarged to help users as they will be able to handle the app in a better way.