Mobile App Design Essentials

💎 Accessibility For Designers Checklist (PDF: https://lnkd.in/e9Z2G2kF), a practical set of cards on WCAG accessibility guidelines, from accessible color, typography, animations, media, layout and development — to kick-off accessibility conversations early on. Kindly put together by Geri Reid. WCAG for Designers Checklist, by Geri Reid Article: https://lnkd.in/ef8-Yy9E PDF: https://lnkd.in/e9Z2G2kF WCAG 2.2 Guidelines: https://lnkd.in/eYmzrNh7 Accessibility isn’t about compliance. It’s not about ticking off checkboxes. And it’s not about plugging in accessibility overlays or AI engines either. It’s about *designing* with a wide range of people in mind — from the very start, independent of their skills and preferences. In my experience, the most impactful way to embed accessibility in your work is to bring a handful of people with different needs early into design process and usability testing. It’s making these test sessions accessible to the entire team, and showing real impact of design and code on real people using a real product. Teams usually don’t get time to work on features which don’t have a clear business case. But no manager really wants to be seen publicly ignoring their prospect customers. Visualize accessibility to everyone on the team and try to make an argument about potential reach and potential income. Don’t ask for big commitments: embed accessibility in your work by default. Account for accessibility needs in your estimates. Create accessibility tickets and flag accessibility issues. Don’t mistake smiling and nodding for support — establish timelines, roles, specifics, objectives. And most importantly: measure the impact of your work by repeatedly conducting accessibility testing with real people. Build a strong before/after case to show the change that the team has enabled and contributed to, and celebrate small and big accessibility wins. It might not sound like much, but it can start changing the culture faster than you think. Useful resources: Giving A Damn About Accessibility, by Sheri Byrne-Haber (disabled) https://lnkd.in/eCeFutuJ Accessibility For Designers: Where Do I Start?, by Stéphanie Walter https://lnkd.in/ecG5qASY Web Accessibility In Plain Language (Free Book), by Charlie Triplett https://lnkd.in/e2AMAwyt Building Accessibility Research Practices, by Maya Alvarado https://lnkd.in/eq_3zSPJ How To Build A Strong Case For Accessibility, ↳ https://lnkd.in/ehGivAdY, by 🦞 Todd Libby ↳ https://lnkd.in/eC4jehMX, by Yichan Wang #ux #accessibility

This is a masterclass in contrarian app design. It argues speed and convenience create a thin connection between your product and user. This Duolingo loading screen is a perfect example. Turns out long onboarding flows and loading screens can actually INCREASE retention. Cinematic, animated onboarding experiences teach users to appreciate the craft of your app. Be a symphony that steadily unfolds, not a ringtone that rushes to the chorus. Instead of minimizing "time to delight", you take time to make users feel seen by collecting their preferences and teaching them your utility. This thoughtful friction becomes a switching cost and moat. Similarly, loading screens let you coil the spring. Studies show half the joy of a vacation is the anticipation of counting the days til departure. So when you reward a user, create a crescendo to the climax of sound, light, and haptics. Duolingo runs the adorable animation of their mascot bursting through the clouds before you level up. The win is more satisfying when you wait for it. The best part about funding brilliant founders like Besart Çopa is learning from them. Read his whole blog post in the comments, and see his craft in action in First Voyage's self-care companion app Momo.

You are using a platform that approves access and triggers automated actions. Then something goes wrong and nobody can explain why. Trust-by-design starts there: people need visibility and control before damage spreads. The practical point is simple. A platform does not earn trust only because it works on a normal day. It earns trust when people can understand what happened and how to stop the same issue from spreading. Transparency is the first layer. Users and teams should be able to see which action was taken and which rule made it happen. Without that visibility, even a secure platform can feel like a black box. Accountability makes the system governable. When approvals and corrections have clear owners, problems do not disappear inside the workflow. They can be reviewed, fixed, and learned from. Security then has to protect daily use, not only the perimeter. Data flows and system connections are where real operational risk enters, especially when automated actions depend on them. Human control is what turns trust into practice. People need a real way to pause, question, or correct a decision before the platform scales an error. #TrustByDesign #DigitalTrust

Happy Global Accessibility Awareness Day everyone! It's a great day to remind people, that, accessibility is the responsibility of the whole team, including designers! A couple of things designers can do: - Use sufficient color contrast (text + UI elements) and don’t rely on color alone to convey meaning. - Ensure readable typography: support text resizing, avoid hard-to-read styles, maintain hierarchy. - Make links and buttons clear and distinguishable (label, size, states). - Design accessible forms: clear labels, error help, no duplicate input, document states. - Support keyboard navigation: tab order, skip links, focus indicators, keyboard interaction. - Structure content with headings and landmarks: use proper H1–Hn, semantic order, regions. - Provide text alternatives for images, icons, audio, and video. - Avoid motion triggers: respect reduced motion settings, allow pause on auto-play. - Design with flexibility: support orientation change, allow text selection, avoid fixed-height elements. - Document accessibly and communicate: annotate designs, collaborate with devs, QA, and content teams. Need to learn more? I got a couple of resources on my blog: - A Designer’s Guide to Documenting Accessibility & User Interactions: https://lnkd.in/eUh8Jvvn - How to check and document design accessibility in your mockups: a conference on how to use Figma plugins and annotation kits to shift accessibility left https://lnkd.in/eu8YuWyF - Accessibility for designer: where do I start? Articles, resources, checklists, tools, plugins, and books to design accessible products https://lnkd.in/ejeC_QpH - Neurodiversity and UX: Essential Resources for Cognitive Accessibility, Guidelines to understand and design for Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Autism and ADHD https://lnkd.in/efXaRwgF - Color accessibility: tools and resources to help you design inclusive products https://lnkd.in/dRrwFJ5 #Accessibility #ShiftLeft #GAAD

Accessibility in development isn’t about adding extras, it’s about writing better code from the get-go. Simple habits that can help are: ✅ Use button elements for buttons → <button> works everywhere, while <div role="button"> needs extra work (and often breaks). A button being a better button if it's a button, wow can you imagine? ✅ Label form fields properly → <label for="email"> ensures everyone knows what they’re filling out, including screen readers and autofill. ✅ Make clickable areas big enough → Small touch targets frustrate everyone, especially on touch screens. ✅ Don’t remove focus styles → If you hide focus indicators, keyboard users get lost. Instead, make them your own: design them to fit your UI and brand design. Don't forget that they still need to pass 3:1 color contrast. ✅ Test with a keyboard → Speaking of focus indicators: Can you navigate your site without a mouse? Well, have you tried? This is where the custom focus indicator will either shine or embarrass you. Good code isn’t just functional, it’s usable. And that’s what sets great developers apart. Accessibility isn’t an add-on, it’s what makes you great at your job.

I spent 5 years scaling Superhuman's white glove, concierge onboarding. …and another 2 years rebuilding it in product. My biggest lessons on effective product onboarding: It must be *opinionated*, *interruptive*, and *interactive*. ••• 🧐 Opinionated There's a million ways to use Superhuman, but only one correct way. We had unopinionated steps in the onboarding, like teaching "j" and "k" to navigate. But what really matters is Inbox Zero. Marking Done. Our most extreme form is Get Me To Zero — a pop-up that practically coerces you to Mark Done *everything*. This experience gets an astonishing 60% new user opt-in. New users want to experience something different; they want to learn. We pruned away the bland, and left behind pure, unfiltered opinion. Exactly what made our concierge onboarding effective. 💥 Interruptive We've all seen them before: checklists, tooltips, nudges. Inoffensive growth clutter that piles up in the corners of your app. We shipped all this and more. But it had precisely zero impact. Our most impactful changes were interruptive: on-rails demos, full-screen takeovers, product overlays. Arresting user attention is critical: if an experience is tucked away in the corner, it will be ignored. If it's ignored, it may as well not exist. 🕹️ Interactive You can't be Opinionated and Interruptive without being Interactive. It's a crime to force users to engage with non-actionable information. Instead, provide functionality: an action to take, setting to toggle, CTA to click. It's more fun AND users build muscle memory. There is something to do in every step of our onboarding. Perhaps that's how we get away with an onboarding nearly 50 screens long 🤭 ••• Final thought: if you're struggling with this flow, simply watch new users. Note all the places you want to jump in — there's your onboarding 👌 s/o to the very thoughtful Superhumans building this: Ben ✨Kalyn Lilliana Kevin Peik Erin Gaurav 💜 #plg #onboarding #activation

This is a very simple and easy design as part of the basic design understanding - Advanced stage is obviously different, right? But this one has got a solid "golden proportion" and gestalt principle of "law of symmetry" applied in it. Golden Proportions are devised carefully with the abstract representations of "Heart, Peacock, Galaxy, Fish, Parrot, Cormorant wings spread, Pelican Wings" and so on. Rationale below is very specific to this simple design. Header Section: The "Health Report" header is placed using the golden ratio, aligning with natural scanning patterns for a welcoming, easy-to-navigate app. The "Health Summary" sub-header also follows the golden ratio, ensuring immediate notice after the main header. Heart Report Section: The heart report's graphics fit within a golden rectangle, providing balanced and aesthetically pleasing spacing. Key metrics like SYS (systolic) and DIAS (diastolic) values are placed at golden ratio intersections, drawing attention where needed. Vital Signs Section: Metrics for BPM and Oxygen levels are within circles that fit the golden spiral, highlighting these critical data points as focal points for quick cognition. This alignment ensures a natural information flow from the heart report to the vital signs. Health Recommendations: Recommendations are within the golden ratio framework, seamlessly transitioning from numerical data to textual information. The list format, influenced by the golden ratio, ensures clarity and ease of reading. Download Report Button: The "Download Report" button is placed at the end of the golden spiral, naturally guiding the user's eye and increasing interaction likelihood. Gestalt Principle of Law of Symmetry Header and Summary: The centrally aligned "Health Report" and "Health Summary" headers create balance and stability, reducing cognitive load and organizing the interface. Symmetry in Data Presentation: Heart report and BPM/Oxygen levels are symmetrically aligned side by side, grouping related information for easier processing and comparison. Symmetry in Health Recommendations: Recommendations are centrally aligned, enhancing coherence and structure. This symmetry aligns with typical list presentations, improving readability and comprehension. Cognitive Adoption and Alignment Golden Ratio: The golden ratio ensures key elements stand out without overwhelming users, aiding in quicker comprehension and retention. Law of Symmetry: Symmetry reduces visual complexity, making the interface approachable and less cluttered. Consistent alignment of elements ensures predictability and reliability, fostering user trust and confidence.

💡4 Components of Information Architecture Information architecture is the art & science of shaping information in a product to support usability and findability. IA design is about providing the right amount of information needed at a given point of user flow. Information architecture design has four components: 1️⃣ Content organization ✔ Hierarchy: Organize content into a clear and logical hierarchy. Use categories and subcategories to structure information in a way that reflects how users think about the content (user mental model: https://lnkd.in/dzwuYZf3) ✔ Card sorting: Card sorting helps understand the user's mental model. Conduct card sorting exercises with users to understand how they naturally group and categorize information (https://lnkd.in/dE7dQtDP)  ✔ Flexibility: Design the IA system to accommodate future growth and changes in content. Allow for easy addition and reorganization of information. 2️⃣ Navigation Good content is irrelevant if people can't find it. That's why good navigation experience is a cornerstone of product design. ✔ Simplicity: Keep navigation simple and intuitive. Avoid overloading users with too many options at once. Use a three-click rule to inform your navigation design decisions. ✔ User pathways: Design clear pathways for users to follow. Ensure primary tasks are easy to find and complete. Conduct tree testing to test navigation early on in the design process.  ✔ Communicate current location: Let users know where they are within the system and how they can navigate back or to other sections. ✔ Responsive design: Ensure the navigation system works well on all devices, including mobile and tablets. 3️⃣ Search ✔ Relevance: The top 3 search results get around 60% of all clicks. Focus on the quality of the top 3 results for popular queries. Use search analytics to understand what users are searching for (i.e., top 20 queries) and use techniques like keyword matching, synonyms, and semantic search to improve accuracy.  ✔ Filters and facets: Allow users to refine their search results through filters and facets, such as date, category, or popularity. ✔ Autocomplete: Autocomplete feature helps minimize errors during query typing. 4️⃣ Content labeling ✔ Clarity: Use clear, concise, and unambiguous labels that are easily understood by users. Avoid jargon and technical terms unless the audience is familiar with them. ✔ Consistency: Use the same terminology across different sections and features of your product. ✔ User testing: Test labels with users to ensure they are meaningful and intuitive. Use techniques like A/B testing to compare different labeling approaches (https://lnkd.in/dgTfc2En) 📕 Information architecture design, step by step: https://lnkd.in/dNgKwkS7 🖼 How to design IA by Lyssna #UX #design #IA #uxdesign #UI #uidesign

If your onboarding feels clunky, confusing, or last-minute… your client can feel it too. The work doesn’t begin after the payment. It begins the moment someone says “yes.” And this is where most people drop the ball. I’ve been there too. Until I started using AI to simplify, personalize, and hold space for my onboarding flow, without losing the human in the process. Here’s what that looks like: Step 1: Welcome, with intention: As soon as a client signs up, I feed their context to ChatGPT: “Write a warm welcome email to a new client who just signed up for [X service]. Acknowledge their goals, set the tone for our work together, and share what to expect this week.” It helps me start the relationship right, with presence, not a template. . . . Step 2: Kickoff kit, custom to them Instead of sending a generic Notion board or onboarding doc… I use AI to create a personalized one-pager: - Their name, goals, timeline - Pre-work checklist - Tools we’ll use - Access links - FAQs based on their niche It makes them feel seen. . . . Step 3: Pre-call prep that’s actually useful If I’ve collected form answers or voice notes, I prompt: “Summarize this client’s challenges and suggest 3 angles I should explore in our kickoff call.” I walk into the call aligned and calm. They feel it. . . . Step 4: Clarity recap - fast After the call, I feed my notes to ChatGPT: “Turn this into a call recap email with clear next steps and aligned expectations. Keep it real, not robotic.” It saves 30 minutes of staring at the screen and helps me build trust in the tiny details. . . . Step 5: Ongoing onboarding, quietly handled Need reminders? Nudges? Status updates? I’ll set up small AI workflows that keep things moving without nagging or micro-managing. Because onboarding isn’t a task. It’s the first chapter of your client experience. You don’t need AI to replace the way you work. But you can use it to hold the edges, so you show up more fully in the middle. That’s what onboarding should feel like. Intentional. Warm. Clear. And deeply human. If you want the actual AI stack I use to support this flow (without feeling cold or corporate), comment "ONBOARD" or DM me and I’ll send it over. Follow Vartika Mishra !

Healthcare apps often overload users. Here are 5 ways to make an app dashboard more engaging: Let's take a look at how Zoe designed their home page with a dashboard. My insights: 1. Show 1-3 metrics. Focus on what matters - weight, blood sugar, activity 👉 Keep it clean and easy to scan. 2. Each metric should have a clear meaning and action 👉 Use colors (green for healthy, yellow for caution) along with easy-to-understand recommendations. 3. Hide complex details on separate pages 👉 Curious users can dive deeper, while others focus on the big picture. 4. Give clear guidance: "Blood sugar slightly high (125 mg/dL) 👉 Aim for under 100 mg/dL. Try reducing sugary drinks." 5. Show numeric comparisons to the user's goals or healthy ranges. App dashboard can empower users, not overwhelm them. Keep it simple and focused ✅ _____ My name is Mary Borysova, I am a founder of the healthcare design studio Health Matters Studio where we help healthcare companies create effective products. Subscribe to my newsletter: https://lnkd.in/eU49Qbsc