Why app design defects should not be “won’t fix”. Part 2

We continue the topic of design defects. In case you missed the first part of the article, you can read it here.

Graphic description

There is another group of graphic defects connected not to usability, but mostly the application functionality itself.

Among them: FPS rate (frames per second). Is it good enough for high-performance games? Does the application display properly both in portrait and landscape orientations on the screen?

This group of possible defects is a must-know for any mobile QA engineer since they are official mobile development compliances.

The most useful and known among them are iOS Human Interface Guidelines (iOS HIG) and Android User Interface Guidelines (Android UIG).

These documents could help provide serious arguments in discussions with developers about potential “won’t fixes.”

Recommendations presented in these docs are not strict rules, especially for Android, but they are really useful in terms of user interaction and pretty stable for a long time with minor changes, which is a good sign that they are truly functional.

Below you can find a selection of such recommendations concerning design and a small part of the whole list. For the full version please see the original documents:

• The app should not contain depictions of gratuitous violence (iOS)
• The app should not contain materials advocating against groups of people based on their race, religion, disability, gender, age, etc. (iOS)
• The app should not contain sexually explicit or erotic content, icons, titles or descriptions (Android and iOS)
• Use illumination and dimming to respond to touches, reinforce the resulting behavior of gestures, and indicate what actions are enabled and disabled (Android)
• UI elements should have 8dp spacing (Android)
• Touchable UI components should be laid out along 48dp units (Android)
• Custom UI elements should not be used for a standard action (iOS)
• UI must be optimized both for Retina and non-Retina displays (iOS)
• UI elements from different versions of iOS should not be mixed (iOS)
• The app must not contain materials or services that facilitate online gambling (Android)

THESE ARE just a few examples of usability and graphics recommendations that are presented in the official documents for iOS and Android – easily accessible when needed to state your case with developers during “won’t fix” discussions.

If nothing else, remember this: even if the application is extremely good in terms of the idea, if fonts are too small to read, colors are too bright, backlighting of important areas is absent, and other usability challenges exist, users will not get past the exterior to experience the gem on the inside.

The article Why app design defects should not be “won’t fix” was published in Mobile Marketer online edition.