Best practices make for a more likely used and well rated app. Many apps are never used after the first few days – so using best practices will help increase the chance of it being used.
Identify your audience. Know what they need, and how they want/plan to use it.
Design for context of use. The interface will need to change depending upon what they are doing, and where they are doing it.
Work on creating an intuitive interface. Don’t make them think.
Use the platforms advantages.
Use clear, concise, and consistent labels.
Don’t use “clever” at the sake of ease of understanding.
Support expectations of personalization.
Long scrolls (usually) trump multiple screens – especially if each screen has to load from an external server. Background loading expected data can improve performance.
Mobile App Design—Best Practices was originally found on Access 2 Learn
