The Simplest Approach to App Design
How to easily and quickly design your MVP (no guesswork required)
What’s your plan for designing your app?
I’m talking about its visual appearance, the experience it gives your users, and the way they perceive your app.
Have you ever asked yourself...
What will they think when they land on the first page? How will it make them feel as they navigate? Are they likely to stick around and keep using your app...or not?
Design is tricky.
It’s why we tend to bring it up in emails, YouTube, blog posts, the Bubble forum, and even Facebook groups.
But, just as you’ll do with any other “tricky” aspect you face when developing your app, you need to find a way to adjust. To adapt, learn, and implement.
Here’s a fun fact...
According to Blue Corona marketing company, 48% of people cited design as “the number one factor in deciding the credibility of a business.”
And you’ll find statistics like that all over the place.
So, you know design is important. There’s no questioning it.
But while actually building your app is technical — there are specific processes, steps, and procedures for getting from point A to B — designing your app is different.
Despite what many believe, it’s not really about putting illustrations of fun cartoon people and graphics on your pages. It’s not about finding a good-looking color palette. It’s not even about having a fancy logo or font choice.
It’s about so much…
Less.
...Let me clarify.
What is Good App Design?
Honestly?
It depends.
Let me ask you…
At what point are you in your app’s journey?
Are you at the very beginning, where you’re working on an MVP and have yet to launch a product?
Have you launched and are now in the testing and iterating phases?
Are you past the initial testing and iterating phases, and are now “honing in” on what’s working?
These are important questions because the answer will dictate what “good” design should mean to you.
For the sake of this article, we're going to assume you’re in the beginning stages with your app. Right now, your focus is on getting a working product into users’ hands so you can gather feedback and quickly improve.
That means defining “good design” can lead you into a trap. Because in this case, less is more. Less is so much more.
We see far too many people getting caught up with making their app look good before they even move into building anything. They spend time and money on logos, graphics, color schemes, and more.
But at this stage, all that does is muddy the waters
Instead, simplify your approach.
Don’t spend time looking at color wheels or following design ratio equations (please).
DO spend time thinking about your users.
Here’s how…
Start with a Common Sense Approach
Before we dive in, I want to clarify that color palettes, ratios, and technical design principles are important. I’m certainly not downplaying that in any way.
What I am saying is, if you’re building an MVP, your focus should be elsewhere. It should be on creating a usable app that works. And that’s it.
The first step in reaching that goal is to use a common sense approach.
Instead of focusing on the look of your app, think about making things obvious to users (like navigation, for example).
See, the design of your MVP doesn't need to be fancy.
Instead, focus on usability.
Usability is kind of like "common sense."
Let me put it in a really simple way…
When you see a door leading into a store somewhere — if the door has a handle on it, you'll probably pull to open it.
If the door has a flat metal surface, you'll probably push.
Those door makers designed their doors for usability. They knew people would expect to either push or pull, and they designed the doors to intuitively tell people which action they needed to take to get the end result.
Simple, but effective.
And apps are no different.
So, if coming up with a fancy design is delaying the development of your app, stop thinking about design.
Think about usability instead, and do everything you can to NOT make users think.
Let’s build off that...
Make it Intuitive
Part of not making your users think involves not reinventing the wheel.
In other words, follow convention in your design.
Have you seen trends in how you interact with apps and websites?
Yes. Definitely!
And so have your users.
Think about the times you’ve experienced trends — maybe how buttons on apps and sites stand out, and how you always know where to click, even if you’ve never seen the page before. Or how you always know where to look for the menu, and you always scroll to the same spots on a page to look for things like terms of service or contact info.
Every now and then, though, you come across sites breaking these conventions. And while it’s usually meant to make them stand out, it normally just causes you — the user — to think.
You have to look around for the buttons, move your mouse around to find a menu, or just give up when you can’t find a simple contact email within 20 seconds.
At this stage, it doesn’t really matter how your pages look. If users can find what they need, your MVP is serving its purpose (which, in reality, is to test your concept and idea).
Keep it Simple
Always, always keep it as simple as you can — your design, your copywriting, your development...everything, really.
Simplicity is key for you right now, and that couldn’t be more true when it comes to design.
There’s a very real thing called information overload. Remember how web pages in the early 2000s had a lot going on? Links everywhere, 10 different buttons, a bunch of graphics, and more text than you’d care to ever read?
You don’t really see that anymore, and for good reason.
It’s just too much.
Now, you see simple, clean layouts and uncluttered designs. You see pages meant for skimming (because that’s how people use apps and sites these days) and navigation-points with single goals instead of “choose your own adventure” journeys.
Give users exactly what they need, but make a serious effort not to load them up with information unrelated to their goal or task at hand. It’ll just overload them, thus turning them off from using your app.
If you want to dive deeper into designing for usability (we strongly encourage it), take a look at Steve Krug’s book, Don’t Make Me Think. The couple points above only graze the surface of the kinds of (very simple) tactics you can use to better design your app, and the book is a great resource for expanding on them.
Keep it Familiar
You are not a designer.
(I’m guessing here...and maybe you are, but if you’re reading this...you’re probably not).
That means trying to understand how to truly “design” an app (aka do what paid designers have trained many years to do) is going to drastically hold you back when it comes to releasing an MVP (see other "dos" and "don'ts" for building your app here).
That also means you need to find simple ways around not being a professional designer.
The first step is to focus on simplicity and usability like we talked about above.
The next is to keep design familiar all across your app.
So, if your CTA (call to action) on your homepage is a bright blue, make your other CTAs bright blue, as well.
As users interact with your app, they’ll come to look for bright blue buttons when they want to take a positive action. This can hold true from the initial signup CTA, all the way through to the CTAs allowing users to take key actions within your app.
The same applies to other things, like button placement.
Let’s say you have a simple user onboarding flow that takes users through 3 screens with simple demos. At the bottom of each screen is a bright blue “next” button.
Throughout the onboarding, users will come to expect to take “positive” actions via buttons placed in the same position on the next pages.
So, after those initial 3 onboarding screens, why not keep your next CTA in the same location to make it obvious to users what they should do next?
Familiarity isn’t just reserved for buttons — this should be implemented all throughout your app. Keep your design consistent so users know exactly that to expect and do.
Use White Space
Not sure how to fill all that space on your pages?
Well...don’t.
Just like it feels refreshing to walk into a bright, clean, and airy room, it feels the same to land on an app with white space.
We talked about information overload above, so you already know the benefit of making sure your app is uncluttered.
Using white space goes beyond that, though. It helps narrow a user’s focus so they can hone in on exactly what you want them to do.
Less white space generally means more options (more content, more clutter, etc). Less white space means fewer options (or a single option). And that’s a good thing. It keeps users from having to think too hard about what to do next.
Stick to the Basics (for now)
We’ve talked about “just in time learning” before, where you only consume the information you need to take the next necessary step toward reaching your goal.
We apply that same principle to building MVPs.
Only focus on the absolute most critical parts of your app right now — the ones absolutely necessary to reach your next goal (your next goal...not your end goal).
Trying to get fancy with design or comparing your MVP app to someone else’s software they’ve been building and perfecting for 10 years will hold you back.
So remember:
- Start with common sense
- Make it intuitive
- Keep it simple
- Keep it familiar
- Use white space
You’ve probably picked up on a theme throughout this article…
It’s all about simplicity.
Keep it simple now. Get fancy later.