After so much of speculation, the most awaited Apple Watch has been finally launched on April 24, 2015. With the release of Apple Watch, one thing is pretty clear that the number of devices to be considered while designing mobile applications is only going to increase in the future.

The advent of smartphones and tablets, and the evolution of their applications have amazingly revolutionized the lifestyles of the majority of people. And, the Apple Watch epitomizes a brand new chapter for introducing a way in which people interact with technology. While offering a terrific personal experience, it has also made it challenging for UI designers to scale their design to efficiently target a variety of audiences using desktop, tablets, smartphones and wearables.

Is The Challenge Is Only To Display Content Perfectly On Different Screen Sizes?

The proliferation of mobile devices has incessantly increased the need of responsive design. Today, most of the designers prefer a responsive approach to ensure a surefire performance of their app, especially web-based content, on any device. As, this design technique considers the screen size of a targeted device, instead of pixel-perfect layouts, to adjust the flow of content accordingly on various resolutions, it delivers a prolific design solution.

Since, the prime aim of a designer should be to design an application that allows consumers to seamlessly interact with your app via a device that best caters to their needs, the design challenge is not just to appropriately reach different screen sizes. For this reason, designers are now endeavoring to generate contextual experiences.

Contextual Design – A Forword

By carefully considering various devices, you may observe that the most crucial aspect of the design is missing out there. For designing an absolute experience, it is necessary to understand the context that how your users expect to use the device. For instance, both tablet and smartphones embrace different functional relationship; smartphones are ideal for performing short tasks, while tablets are more preferred for accomplishing extended tasks, like watching movies, writing articles, etc.

The Apple Watch also demands the same awareness while designing. Since, it is needed to be worn over the wrist and its size is dramatically smaller than any other mobile device, designers must keep in mind that Apple Watch apps will be used more frequently, but only for a small run. This is the Contextual Design that not only ask designers to concentrate over the screen sizes, while designing for mobiles, but also take the user behavior into account.

1. The user behavior includes,

2. How users intend to interact with the device.

3. How much time users are willing to spend on the device.

4. Where users will prefer interacting with it.

A mobile designer must focus on these key factors as these are supposed to have a great significance while designing for advanced mobile devices.

Moreover, since the Apple Watch has been designed to work in collaboration with an iPhone, it further makes the app designing more complex, as your users will not be able to execute your app in an isolated environment. The Apple Watch is more likely to be preferred only to meet certain requirements at a particular time. It, thus, encourages one to focus on system-based design.

The system-based design involves considering the touch points and gestures supported by the device, this will help ensure a seamless user engagement with your app. It is also advisable to make it certain that your design is contextual to various form factors of the targeted device.

Consistent Application Flow is imperative

For a seamless user experience, it is essential to establish a smooth flow of actions between various screens of an application. There must be a flawless relationship between the screens. To attain this in an optimal fashion, you can implement art boards to precisely frame the flow of your app.

Apple Watch features a holistic design with blurred boundaries between the apps and device. It allows users to conveniently interact via the built-in Digital Crown and Force Touch. Moreover, agile user interactions can be ensured by taking the display area and the way this wearable is used (position on a user’s wrist) into account. All these attributes demand a smooth screen flow and simple actions for a valuable performance.

The Anticipated Mobile App Design Future

I hope, it is quite clear now that designing apps for mobile devices is not only accommodating the content into a plethora of screen sizes. However, it is needed to be accomplished with a greater precision by developing a rational system that can take the contexts of use into account by traversing through various devices. And, by the virtue of this system, designers can lay down an incredible user experience with the best suitable transitions to assist users and appropriately responding to user’s actions.

Fortunately, there is no dearth of cutting-edge design tools that are capable of reducing the design complexity and delivering ultimate benefits to design for modern mobile devices. Designers can, thus, reap the benefits of getting exposure to the increasing number of screens.