5 great websites for mobile app design inspiration
Mobile app design is a constantly growing field, and as with the field of web design, there is always a need for quality design inspiration.
As with most other areas of design, if you find yourself stuck on a design issue often the best way to overcome it is to look at other great examples of mobile apps that deal offer similar solutions and draw inspiration from them. Of course, when looking for mobile app inspiration, it is important to always keep in mind the client for whom you are designing for, as well as the goals of the project.
Thankfully, there are dozens of examples of sites that gather the best examples of mobile app design that you can use for your own inspiration.
In this article, we look at five of our favourites websites where you can find great mobile app design inspiration.
1. iOS Human Interface Guidelines
iOS Human Interface Guidelines is a treasure trove for iOS User Experience and Human Interface guidance. This site will help you to familiarise yourself with all of Apple’s control types and interaction methods for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch.
A particularly useful resource on this site is the layout proportions guidance, which will tell you how to design in accordance to Apple’s exact layout proportions for details such as top bar, list items height and tab bars. The smaller details often mean the most in mobile app design!
2. Android Material Design Guidelines
If you are building an app for Android, Android Material Design Guidelines is where you will find all of the important Material Design documentation. The guidelines offered on this site are well worth a detailed read as the level of specification is highly detailed and they cover all aspects of Android UX-UI design.
Android Material Design Guidelines is a really useful resource for helping you to understand the differences between designing for both UX and UI and helping you to make sure that your mobile app concept is catering for both. No matter the device you are designing a mobile app for, taking into account the smaller design elements, from navigation button-styles to variations in text input to keyboard height differences, will make all the difference when creating a truly native experience for the mobile app user.Enter your text here …
3. Pttrns
Pttrns is a huge compilation of examples of excellent mobile UI. Here you can find some of the best screen designs for iPhone, iPad, Android and Apple Watch. If you are ever stuck on a mobile app UI design issue, a quick glimpse through Pttrns’s archives of screens to see how some of the biggest organisations are dealing with similar usability issues is the perfect way to solve your own design UI issues.
4. Colour Lovers
If you are working on a mobile app design project and your client hasn’t provided you with their colour palette, then Colour Lovers is a very useful resource. Beginning a mobile UI design without a palette can be very frustrating for a mobile app designer, and because colour choice is about preference, a designer without the client’s colour palette may be left to make colour choices based on their own favourite colour schemes, which can lead to disappointment if the client disagrees with their choices.
Colour Lovers helps designers to overcome this issue by providing a selection of colour palettes with good contrasts by searching through thousands of existing compositions, or alternatively, providing guidance to creating custom colour sets.
5) Pinterest
We are all familiar with Pinterest, the web’s best source for image collections covering virtually every topic imaginable. With its impressive archives of images, Pinterest also makes for a brilliant design inspiration resource. If you find that you are having a creative off-day, or your mobile app design inspiration isn’t coming easily, have a look at some of Pinterest’s offerings. From a UI design perspective, you can find thousands of different styles spanning mobile, web, desktop, and so on.
Now, over to you…
We hope that you find this list of mobile app design inspiration useful. If there are some great mobile app design inspiration websites that we have missed out in this article, or you have examples of your own inspiring mobile app or website design, then we would love to hear from you.
For more information about our mobile web app design and development services, please visit our mobile app development page. Alternatively, if you are looking to begin your own mobile app project, but are unsure where to start, get in touch today for a free project consultation.
