August 23, 2010 in Design by Hyena

Information Architecture design guideline for mobile apps

Information Architecture is the combination of organizing, labeling & navigation schemes within an information system. Content, Context & users are the main areas of focus when we design the information architecture of any applications. The content needs to be scaled down to the minimum for Hand held device IA design. The filtering of content needs to be done, a minimum amount of content has to be provided to the users. Least number of inputs by key strokes is asked from the users.

Some insights for IA design for mobile devices

• Real estate price is too high in handheld devices

The real estate is less in hand held devices. We cannot even think of leaving this idea when moving to the drawing board.

“Less is more in Hand held devices”

• The text “I” in IA of Handheld devices is filtered

Information is of two basic types important & not important in context to a situation depending on the scenario & requirement. The “I” in handheld devices needs to be small “I” instead of the Big “I”. The alphabet “I” is taken as the symbol for INFORMATION here. The stress is use the minimum most important information to play around handheld devices. Asking the users too many inputs is not a good practice.

• Iconic representation of information

Icons are clever way to say long words, after all a picture is worth thousand words. We all are surrounded by icons everywhere. See the image below Handheld devices need intuitive icons that are globally accepted to be effectively used with ease.

• Effective Color combinations can increase the IA of Handheld devices

The focus now days are to provide smaller internet experience to users through hand held devices. The users who are slowly moving towards this trend are well versed with internet technology & personal computers. Taking advantage of this, in an effective manner design the IA in suitable colors. Red text message on internet means some error happened either form your end or system end. Green text message means the good news.

Similar type of color combinations needs to be used in handheld devices. As handheld devices are used in different locations like inside the house, near a water body, in deserts, in icy mountains etc. The intensity of light, falling on the screen will differ; this has to be taken care by appropriate use of foreground & background color usage. If the device is having only two colors like light background & a dark text color then what to do. Here the learning’s can be taken from  earlier non color phones, the way they used to present information focusing on the important information. I.e. making the not read SMS bold & read SMS normal text size.

• Increasing the User Experience on Black & White screens

To provide the basic service to the lower societal pyramid of the people, companies made products that are affordable. A color handset will obviously cost a little more as compared to the non-color one. In some cases, color screens may not be possible or not required, as the utility does not suggest so. To give a better User Experience on non-color phones an effective strategy is to have a static stunning image on the screen as the background. Illuminate it by LED’s on all the sides to make it glow. Display the black text above the screen just placed on the image. Make sure the background image is light enough to display the black text easily. To the user it will be like working on a color screen.

• Importance of intuitive Back button

The users using the hand held devices are coming from an internet background, if not all most of them. They are aware that clicking on back button will take them to the previous screen on the internet however; the case is a bit different here. In case of internet, the previous page information is stored in cache of the computer memory. Hand held device is not designed for such purposes, as there is memory space constraint. Upfront Demarcation of the home link & the back button in handheld devices should be used. Clicking on the home will take the user to the main screen & clicking the back button will take the user to the previous menus.

• Information Depth/Breadth balance

The small screens of mobile Internet devices, combined with the increasing complexity of mobile tasks, create a serious obstacle to usability in the mobile Internet. The complexity of the tasks, the more the number of steps the complex the task completion on mobile phones becomes. The depth of information needs to be kept minimum, instead try to organize the information in a breadth wise structure.

• Circular Key controls Design

The data available on the hand held devices needs to be modified, written, played etc. To accomplish this intuitive & easy keys are required. On the main screen, mostly use of icons is done. The beauty of circular keys is that with one key press you can reach to different section depending on your choice.

• Horizontal layout is dangerous on main page

If the main sections are more & there is a Circular Key available in the hand held device then the best approach is to go for icons. The above approach is appropriate if the only medium for selection is key pads not any stylus/touch screens. Use appropriate icons & displays the name of each icon as the user scrolls through them on top of the screen. In this way, we can represent information easily. Change the color of the text & some areas as the user scrolls through the icons. The color change will grab the user attention towards the name of the section & he can select it properly.

Good to have on main page A bit difficult main page if touch screen/stylus is not present

• Consistency in Handheld device design

Companies usually come up with new models year after year to meet the growing exceptions of the users & market competition. As the company succeeds to sell more of the devices, it should try to achieve consistency in the new designs in terms of labeling & navigation. Most of the cases due to brand loyalty & popularity users upgrade the handheld device from the same manufacture. Consider the case if the manufacture changes the keypad keys & some here & there modifications in navigation scheme. Usability test shows the slower rate of task completion in these new handheld upgrades from the familiar brand users. Maintaining the basic consistency standards will not harm the company much but gain user trust & confidence in the process of usage.

• Lower the rate of screen refresh by horizontal placing of content

It is very important to lower the number of screen refreshes by using intuitive navigation schemes. If screen refreshes while the user is working on the screen he loses the context, as the screen is small to visually attach to his mental model in order to remember.