Mobile app design is decided in the first 3 seconds

Mobile app design isn't web design shrunk down. Touch-target size (44pt minimum), thumb-zone (the comfortable thumb-reach area), gestures, native component behaviors (iOS swipe-back, Android back button) are all mobile-specific. Designing without knowing them produces screens that look pretty but feel exhausting.

Our approach: before building a design system in Figma, we set up a 'foundation kit' referenced from iOS Human Interface Guidelines and Material Design 3. The brand identity rides on top, so the foundation is solid.

Among the thousands of designed apps, the few that survive past day one do so because of onboarding quality. The 'aha moment' — the first time a user gets value from the product — must happen during onboarding, not after.

We design onboarding as 3–4 screens, fast to skim, skippable but capturing the necessary minimum information. We time 'intrusive' requests like push notification permission and location permission correctly; otherwise users reject them before even using the product.

To avoid producing new colors, new typography, and new button variants every time a screen is added, we build a component kit in Figma. All button variants (primary, secondary, tertiary, destructive), inputs, cards, modals, and navigation components come from one source of truth.

This kit also lives on the development side — design tokens (colors, typography, spacing, motion) sit in a single theme file in the Flutter or React Native project. Future design tweaks ship in code in minutes.

App Store and Play Store screenshots are mobile app design's continuation in the store. The product value is told in 5 seconds; weak copy raises user-acquisition cost.

We prepare the asset kit in Figma: device-frame mockups, strong headlines (typically 5–7 words), short copy explaining why each screen is shown. Separate kits per language; with our ASO team (when available) we A/B-test titles and descriptions.