Mobile Application User Experience: Best Practices Checklist

Mobile applications are an integral part of our life. Nowadays, we all spend lots of time on mobile phones as the use of various mobile apps are very handy and convenient. Hence, every company wants to have its applications available on the mobile phones of every user. Once they have their mobile application, then they upgrade it frequently and keep adding new features. There are two major mobile application platforms available, Google Play for Android phones and the App Store for iPhones. Below mentioned best practices are equally applicable for both the platforms as these are based on good User Experience.         

 

1.       The splash screen is an essential part of Mobile Apps. The splash screen should be displayed for long enough to read the text or view the graphics on it.

2.       People use different screen sizes of mobile phones according to their preferences. Apps should be adapted to the different screen sizes, and all buttons and menus should be easily clickable. For example, the application should work properly with 3.5 inches to 6.5 inch display in phones

3.       Please ensure that soft keyboard automatically appears, if the user's main action is to enter some text

4.       To provide optimum user experience, each screen of the app should be appropriately visible and accessible in every display mode (landscape and portrait)

5.       Ensure that the back button to move to the previous page or Home button to move to the landing page of the app should be available in every screen of the application, for optimum user experience.

6.       The app should behave as intended if there's an incoming call or SMS. Mobile OS gives high priority to phone functionality over the apps

7.       The app should behave as intended if the mobile device resumes from the lock screen or sleep mode

8.       The app should behave as intended if the mobile device is shaken or jerked

9.       Your Apps should have inbuilt functionality to detect "Battery low" status. Please ensure that the app does behave as intended if the "Battery low" message appears on the screen

10.   If the internet is required to run your app, then the app should have inbuilt functionality to detect "Internet Not Available" status. Please provide an appropriate message to users accordingly.

11.   Verify that the app does behave as designed/desired if the device is connected to the internet through Wi-Fi. Please test your apps thoroughly for both Mobile internet and Wi-Fi

12.   Please ensure the application communicates with a Webserver. If the network coverage fails, the application should automatically reinitiate the communication, once the coverage is re-established

13.   Make sure when the device is suddenly powered off, the application does not corrupt its data, and the last data is saved correctly, especially if the app supports image capture.

14.   Tap on the screen ten times at different positions to check if the application works normally and does not freeze.

15.   The application should provide an option to change the UX settings; for example, the user should have the option to set the font size and select between light or dark theme.

16.   The application should work properly in all versions of Android and iOS, which were released in the past five years. For example, Android 10, Pie, Oreo, Nougat, Marshmallow, Lollipop, KitKat and iOS 13, 11, 9 to cover 80% of mobiles user

17.   The application should work properly in all the devices of the 2G, 3G, and 4G networks.

18.   Check the device storage after the app is uninstalled to ensure that the application data is entirely removed.

19.   If the screen requires data entry on a specific field, designers should mark the required fields with a red asterisk and display a friendly warning if the data is left blank.

20.   If the screen contains date, numeric, currency or other specific data types, ensure that only valid data can be entered.

21.   If the application intends to save data at the backend server, then it should prompt users about data saving confirmation before moving to another record or screen. Same way, it is a good practice to ask the user to confirm before deleting his/her data. Moving ahead, the users should be allowed to turn off specific confirmations if they need.

22.   If fatal errors occur while using the app, ensure that the application writes those errors to a log file or a database table for later review and bug fixes. Log every detail of the error like the devise information, user information, and the date/time of the error etc.

23.   Sometimes apps use specific file formats like PDF, Word, Excel and PPT, which requires an additional application to open these formats. If these applications are not preinstalled on the mobile, the user will not be able to open these files. Proper information should display beforehand in such scenarios

24.   In some cases, the app uses 3rd party integration like Bank Payment getaway, Facebook authentication etc. Entire process cycle should be appropriately tested with adequate exception information

25.   In case the app has to function offline, its usability should be checked without an internet connection. The data should be able to sync in with backend database upon internet availability if required. 

26.   We cannot ignore the Security consideration of the app. All the essential security features like data encryption, secure socket layer (SSL), API security etc. should be enabled in the app. Application Security is a big topic, and it is not possible to cover all the aspects in this article 

27.   Excellent performance is the major criteria of an app's success. The app should meet all the performance considerations. Performance SLA should be defined in the stage of requirement signoff

28.   The app is also used by the elderly and differently-abled people. Your mobile app should cater to the special needs of users by providing Accessibility features.

 

Above mentioned points are mostly related to user experience only. Functional test cases are separate, which need to run separately to meet the business requirements of the application. One can also use this list as an app testing checklist before providing signoff to the application development vendor or internal testing team. Mobile technology is continuously evolving, and we should always sync in with the latest changing trends. The ultimate goal of every application is to provide a remarkable user experience.