An evaluation of the effectiveness of design principles in a mobile application

Abstract

The development of mobile application for smartphones has increased in the past periods, mobile phones have become an essential part of our contemporary life and helps us with our day-to-day tasks. Developing mobile application has shown to be time consuming and challenging, developers are struggling to overcome performance and interface issues. The purpose of this research were to assess what design principles contributes to a good user experience on mobile devices. To accomplish this, a mobile front end for an online search system for rental apartments with the importance of considering design principles and user-centered design was developed. With the help of interviews and feedback we optimized and improved the application in order to achieve a good user experience. The developed product showed to perform well, provided the core functionality and followed specific design principles that was needed for this research. We identified certain design principles that contributes towards a good user experience on mobile devices. However, the application have areas it can improve in such as performance and indicators, these could later be improved in a future study. The user experience showed to be more enjoyable on the mobile application compared to the webbased application.