What are best practices for mobile UX?

I think you should always include and consider general best practices in user experience design when designing for mobile, as they are foundational. Know your user, test your designs, refine based on user testing… all these should be applied when working on mobile. Now, mobile specific best practices:

Keep context in mind. Whatever you are designing for a mobile device will be used "on the go" and you need to identify a "context model" that is applicable. I had a good example recently when I was debating a mobile design with a colleague. The colleague had created a very simple stepped approach at data entry which on the surface was fine… but it was designed without thinking of the context of use….when the user would be using the screens, and what their focus would be. This context pointed towards a different design approach.

Align with device conventions. If you are designing an app for an Android phone do not use iPhone like controls, and vice-versa. Users have "learned" the interaction patterns that is used on the device, and forcing a convention different than what they understand will produce confusion and difficulty where it can be avoided.

Test on the device whenever possible. Either create a clickable prototype or have one of the development team code a thin front-end. Testing interactions on a touch screen requires you to actually TOUCH the screen… any other test method will only give you a partial and hollow result. And test "in the wild" if possible.

Don't try and mirror the online experience. There are functions that, frankly, don't make sense to provide in a mobile app. On a recent mobile project we had requirements that mandated that a comprehensive administrative set of functionality should also be available on the mobile app – I'm talking about account permissions, rules around who gets to use what functionality, you name it.  We interviewed users and found that if we had designed all these screens they would be hardly be used, and that the more appropriate mobile design would be a much smaller subset of what was requested.  We COULD have spent a lot of time and energy supporting the initial requirements… but understanding usage patterns and context lead us to a more appropriate mobile solution.

Know your platform. You can't design for the iPhone if you don't know how it works… And how it doesn't. Every platform has its strengths and weaknesses, and you should know what you are working with.

Design for the "Immediacy of Now." Users often have to quickly accomplish one core function in a mobile app – make a payment, check for new messages, etc. Surface that function in an obvious way and make it simple and obvious. Design to support this user’s core need, and don’t add superfluous functionality that distracts from this core.

See question on Quora

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