Design Strategies to Minimize Mobile Usability Issues in Navigation Design Patterns

Recent development in mobile technology has significantly improved the quality of life. Everyday life is increasingly becoming dependent on mobile devices as mobile applications are targeting the needs of the end users. However, many end users struggle with navigating mobile applications, leading to frustration, especially with sophisticated and unfamiliar interfaces. This study focuses on addressing specific usability issues in mobile applications by investigating the impact of introducing a floating action button (FAB) and icons with names at the bottom in popular applications such as YouTube, Plex, and IMDb. The current research includes three studies: Study-1 explores the navigation issues that users face; Study-2 measures the experiences of the users with improved navigation designs; and Study-3 compares the results of Study-1 and Study-2 to evaluate user experience with both existing and improved navigation designs. A total of 147 participants participated and the systems usability scale was used to evaluate the navigation design. The experiments indicated that the existing design patterns are complex and difficult to understand leading to user frustration compared to newly designed and improved navigation designed patterns. Moreover, the proposed newly designed navigation patterns improved the effectiveness, learnability, and usability. Consequently, the results highlight the imperativeness of effective navigation design in improving user satisfaction and lowering frustration with mobile applications.