This document discusses the importance of simplicity in mobile app design. It recommends focusing on utility, discoverability, and usability. Too many choices can lead to paralysis and dissatisfaction for users. The document suggests prototyping to collect user data and iterate on designs. Methods to reduce complexity discussed include removing unnecessary features, hiding features, grouping related features, and displacing features to other locations. Improving discoverability involves optimizing real estate, order, form, user expectations, and consistency. Mobile strategies to aid discoverability include help overlays, animation, and celebrating user progress.

1. Keep it Simple:
Mobile Design for
Product Owners

2. Agenda
• Introductions
•Why care about simplicity?
• Demo:Timbre
•The Paradox of Choice
• Exercise:Thoughtful Reduction
• Discoverability
• Questions

3. What is Simplicity?
Perfection is achieved not when there is
nothing more to add, but when there is
nothing left to take away.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

4. Simplicity in mobile apps
• Utility
• What problem does the product solve? Is it useful?
• Discoverability
• When the user wants to do something, can they figure out how? Are
useful features easily discovered?
• Usability
• Once a user knows what they want to do and how to do it, can they
do it efficiently, repeatedly?

5. Why care about simplicity?
• The constraints of mobile screen size
require careful consideration of what is
essential.
• 87% of people said ease of use is the most
important thing when it comes to adopting
new technologies. (Consumer Electronics Association, 2002)

6. Why care about simplicity?
• Word frequency of 5-star reviews of top
300 iOS apps

7. Why care about simplicity?
• Word frequency of 1-star reviews of top
300 iOS apps.

8. Agenda
• Introductions
•Why care about simplicity?
• Demo: Timbre
•The Paradox of Choice
• Exercise:Thoughtful Reduction
• Discoverability
• Questions

9. The Paradox of Choice
• Each element of your interface presents a
choice to the user.

10. The Paradox of Choice
• “Too many choices lead to paralysis, poor
decisions, and dissatisfaction...Too many
choices lengthen task completion time, or
keep users from completing tasks.”
— Barry Schwartz,The Paradox of Choice
• “People will complain about a visually
complex page at the sight of it. But they will
also complain if the information they need
isn't immediately available to them.”
— How visual simplicity can harm usability, guuui.com

11. An Unnecessary Choice

12. Which choices are necessary?
• Think about the problem before the
solution.
• Acknowledge the difference between first
time use (“learnability”) and normal use
(“usability”). Consider intended usage
patterns.

13. Which choices are necessary?
• Collect data!
• Repeat usage is the key indicator that a
particular feature provides utility.
• Prioritize features that most people use
most frequently. Be prepared to let go of
things that are used the least.

14. Prototype & Iterate
• Data collection from actual users. Product
owners are generally poor proxies for end
users.
• Motion can’t be properly evaluated in
specifications or wireframes. (Gestures, too)
• Less uncertainty during implementation
phase.

15. Reducing Complexity
• Remove Features
• Hide Features
• Group Features
• Displace Features
— Steven Bradley, vanseodesign.com

16. Reducing Complexity
• Remove Features: Remove
what doesn’t get used and what
doesn’t add anything meaningful to
the essence of the thing you’re
designing.

17. Reducing Complexity
• Hide Features: Some things
shouldn’t be removed, but they
don’t demand our attention at
all times.

18. Reducing Complexity
• Group Features: By placing
features into logical groups, the
group becomes a quick and
easy target, and lets the user
zero in on what he/she wants
to do.
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19. Reducing Complexity
• Displace Features: Move
features and options to
another location.
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20. Agenda
• Introductions
• Demo:Timbre
•Why care about simplicity?
•The Paradox of Choice
• Exercise: Thoughtful Reduction
• Discoverability
• Exercise: Mobile Interactions
• Questions

21. Improving Discoverability
• Real estate
• Order
• Form
• Expectation
• Consistency
— Scott Berkun, “The myth of discoverability”

22. Improving Discoverability
• Real Estate: Pixels are a
limited resource; larger targets
are easy to locate and easy to
touch.

23. Improving Discoverability
• Order: People tend to scan
an interface from left-to-right
and top-to-bottom

24. Improving Discoverability
• Form: Use colors, fonts, shapes,
and other constructions to make
the best use of the real estate
available.
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25. Improving Discoverability
• Expectation: Use forms or patterns that are already
familiar to your users.

26. Improving Discoverability
• Consistency: By using the same patterns and strategies
across an app, you gain discoverability by being predictable.
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27. Mobile App Discoverability
• Traditional desktop software uses menus,
hovers, and right-clicks as a primary
means of discovering application features
• Mobile strategies:
• Help overlays & videos
• Animation / motion
• Celebrate progress

28. Mobile App Discoverability
• Help overlay
• Trouble writing copy for a
help overlay is often a red
flag, signifying a lack of focus.

29. Mobile App Discoverability
• Animation / Motion

30. Mobile App Discoverability
• Animation / Motion

31. Mobile App Discoverability
• Celebrate progress

32. Questions?