Here is A Guide To Build Seamless User Experience For Your Android App

Last Updated on: February 21, 2024

Have you ever paid attention to how you eat a bowl of cereal? Several things make a mundane task like eating cereal enjoyable; like the crunch of the cereal, the temperature of milk, added fruits and nuts, the bowl and spoon used for eating, the depth of the spoon, etc. 

Cereal is a product and how you eat it is an interface and together, they create the User Experience.

“User Experience”, also abbreviated as UX, is the term that consists of two keywords; User and Experience. As a whole, the term user experience defines everything that a user sees, feels or experiences when he is using a mobile application. 

UX can be defined as the most influential factor in human-machine interaction. When a user lands on an Android app, everything that affects his or her perception of the app contributes to the UX of the app. User experience is the term that is often used with User Interface or UI. People tend to confuse UI and UX as both the terms are often used together. However, both of them have different meanings. 

While User Experience emphasizes making the mobile app enjoyable and engaging for users, the User Interface focuses on the look and feel, as well as the overall presentation of the app.

Stages of Developing Android App User Experience (UX):

Developing the user experience can be an overwhelming experience for android app developers as it consists of multiple tasks. However, improving user experience can be simpler and more convenient once we break the whole process down into manageable portions. 

Phase 1: User Understanding

Phase 1 consists of achieving a thorough understanding of the target users. It is further divided into two parts: User Persona and User Journey Mapping. 

1. Creating User Personas:

Before you dive into creating the user experience for the app, as an android app developer, the first and foremost step you need to take is to create a user persona. User personas are documents that consist of important information about app users. They include users’ demographics, psychographics, areas of interest, taste, preferences, social status, etc. 

At first glance, you might feel that you do not need all this information, but that’s farthest from the truth. To create a wholesome user experience and keep your target users engaged with you for a long time, you need to thoroughly understand the user persona and implement its insights to the fullest extent in the android app’s UX.

2. Mapping User Journey:

The user journey is the typical behaviour of the user with the product. The user journey map identifies the typical actions users take when they land on an Android app. According to the user’s behaviour, journey maps can be categorised into the following types:

Customer Journey Maps: Shows user’s interaction with the android app. The actions they take after landing on the app, sections they visit frequently, the functionality they use the most, etc.

Service Blueprint: It’s a simplified representation of the functionality and interface of the app. It consists of different phases in which the user will get the desired service or output from the app.

Experience Maps: Experience maps define all possible scenarios of experience that a user might have when he lands on the app.

Mental Model Diagrams: Mental model diagrams represent how the target users experience the app that we are designing. It includes their intent, motivation, attitude, goals, etc.

User Journey can help you predict user behaviour and help you design the user experience accordingly.

Phase 2: Designing Wireframes

Once you have understood the user personas and user journey, you will have ample insights to start working on the UI/UX wireframe of the app. A wireframe is a proposed layout of how an app is going to look and feel.

User Experience should consist of three major components: Usefulness, Usability, and Desirability.

Usefulness refers to the utility of a mobile application, whether it’s solving a problem for users or fulfilling their needs.

Usability refers to the ease of using an app. Whether they can navigate through the app easily and find everything they need conveniently.

Desirability refers to the desire that will make users download and use the app.

A great user experience lies between these three factors.

Phase 3: Testing

Once there’s a wireframe ready, it’s also crucial to test it amongst a focus group that will consist of your dummy target users to understand their feedback and make all the necessary changes. 

Don’t just stop at wireframe testing as your wireframe might go through some iterations. Once you have finalised a prototype, you can demonstrate it to the focus group to record their reaction and feedback. While developing a user experience, testing is a crucial process. As user experience depends solely on the interactions of users on the app and whether or not they are going to like what they experience. 

Therefore, it’s crucial to test the wireframe and prototype beforehand to get an initial idea of whether the user experience is going to work.

Phase 4: Implementation

Once you have done the testing, the next step is to implement the changes that you observed during the testing phase. In the implementation phase, the app becomes ready to launch after adopting and implementing all the required elements. 

Phase 5: Evaluation

The app development process is dynamic. As the user behavior changes, the developers and businesses also need to make changes in the different elements of their apps, including the user experience. Once the app is launched, you can run audits to explore users’ feedback in terms of user experience and keep improving to keep the users engaged.  

Why User Experience (UX) is Important for Android app:

Now that we have a clear understanding of user experience and its development phases, let’s explore why it is important for any Android app. Here are the following reasons that make the user experience an important element of android app development.

1. Refine Customer Satisfaction

The user experience affects customer satisfaction. User Experience is exclusively based on what customers need in a mobile app. So when a customer interacts with an android app that consists of everything they were looking for, it boosts their satisfaction.  When UI and UX are properly aligned with customers’ needs, wants and desires, the app is set to perform well and become a success. 

2. Enhance Customer Engagement

A user will not stay on an app for sufficient time even after downloading it if the app does not have a satisfactory user experience. What users experience while interacting with the app defines whether they will stay on the app or not. If multiple users abandon the app in a shorter time because they do not get any excitement or utility when they interact with the app, then the engagement of the app can take a dip. 

However, if the app is smooth, well made, and has an intuitive UI/UX, it will improve user engagement. 

3. Improve ROI

By now, all of this must-have starting to make sense for you; 

Good UX= Higher Engagement= Customer Satisfaction= Good Reviews= More Downloads= Better ROI. 

Everything is ultimately connected with the User Experience. If your users are satisfied with your app and find it highly engaging, then they will spend more time on it and will also recommend it to their friends and family. Therefore, a good user experience will ultimately help you to improve your ROI. 

4. Boost Popularity

Do you ever wonder how some apps get extremely popular and loved by users? Good user experience can be one of the reasons for it. When users find an app engaging and delightful in terms of user experience, they tend to recommend it to their friends and family, leave good reviews and ratings, and spread positive word of mouth.

5. Increase Brand Awareness

A good user experience can help in increasing brand awareness. Your app’s brand awareness can be increased through the good word of mouth of your users and their ratings and reviews on the app store. Good reviews and ratings on the app store will improve your overall app store rating and encourage more people to download your app. 

Simple Tips to Improve the User Experience (UX):

When you follow this proper process of user experience, there’s a high chance that your app’s user experience will turn out to be great. However, there are still some tips that you can keep in mind for improving the user experience:

Keep your app design simple:

Too many elements in your app might confuse users and thus, will negatively impact their experience. To improve the user experience, you would want to make sure that your app has a simple, clean and intuitive design so that the users can easily navigate through the app and find everything they need conveniently. 

Maintain consistency throughout the application:

Consistency is one of the key elements of user psychology. When a user observes consistency in the elements of your app, they get the feeling of convenience, reassurance, and reliability. On the other hand, inconsistencies in the app might lead to user frustration. 

Improve the “search” feature:

Users come to your app with a specific goal in mind. A great way to improve the user experience is to make it easy for the users to search for different elements and help users to find the element they came looking for. 

Smoothen the transitions:

Smooth transitions add to a good user experience. You can use good animations in your app’s transitions to keep your users hooked while they are transitioning from one segment to the next. Using innovative ways to smooth transitions will help in improving the user experience. 

These are some of the easy tips that will help you to improve the user experience of your android app. While you are working on the user experience, make sure that rather than focusing on what you want to design, focus on what users want to experience. 

User Experience is derived from the interactions users have every time they use the mobile application. The role of android app developers is crucial in understanding the user and creating a great user experience, as well as defining the amiability and engagement of the android app.  

Get in touch with the team at Systango to create and implement a good user experience for your Android app.