As my Mobile App Development course is moving on from Swift and iOS development to Kotlin and Android development, we were asked to read Principles of Mobile App Design: Engage Users and Drive Conversions by Jenny Gove, the UX Research Lead at Google. The following principles stood out to me when reading.

Priciple 4: Make it easy to manually change location.

Summary: There are times when users need to find a store that’s not located nearby. Make manual entry of location and straightforward.

Good Example: The transportation app Transit lets you drag anywhere on the map to change your location to see transit lines at whatever location you want quickly. I also allows you to manually enter an address.

Priciple 19: Match the keyboard with the required text inputs.

Summary: App users appreciate apps that provide an appropriate keyboard for text entry.

Good Example: When creating a new contact in iOS’s Contacts app, the keyboard for fields differ. The phone number entry is a phone keypad, the email keyboard includes an @ symbol next to the space bar, and the URL keyboard includes no space and instead has ., / and .com shortcuts.

Principle 24: Let the user control the level of zoom.

Summary: Users want to be able to control the level of zoom when they view an image. They can become frustrated by apps that zoom in at a preedetermined magnification level. In particular, wee see instances of this when the zoomed-in view forces the user to look at a specific part of the item or takes the image partially off-screen. Put users in control by allowing them to zoom in as they prefer.

Bad example: Instagram does not allow users to have full zoom control. You can pinch in a bit but as soon as you let go the image snaps back to its original zoom level.