Who doesn’t appreciate good mobile design? Design plays a big role in the success or failure of an app. Users are not just looking for mobile applications that are useful but also ones that are aesthetically pleasing and intuitive.
Good mobile app designs take advantage of the tiny screen space that others view as a limitation and result in applications that attract and engage the users.
If you are wondering what apps with excellent UI design look like, check out this list as we’ll share with you some of the best mobile app design ideas.
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Utility Apps
Utility apps are among the most widely-used type there is. Their main purpose is to either perform a task easily or provide a solution to a specific problem.
LastPass Password Manager and Authenticator
Author(s): Marvasol, Inc.( now owned by LogMeIn)
Image Source: LastPass
If you have a hard time remembering your passwords (who can remember them all anyway?) you’ll find LastPass useful. It’s a secure password manager, and one of the best ones you can find. It keeps all of your usernames and passwords in a ‘vault’. Whenever you need to log in to any website, LastPass will autofill it for you!
Its latest UI update has a more streamlined structure that allows users to store or share information faster than they could before.
Presence
Author(s): People Power Company
When an app allows you to take live feeds from an old phone and offers such features as motion detection, it’s surely something that you should use or at least try. This cloud-based video surveillance app not only offers impressive functionality but it is also designed beautifully. Its ‘Home’ and ‘Away’ modes that automatically record when you’re out and stops when you’re home, make using this app easy and convenient.
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Lifestyle Apps
Lifestyle apps aim to help improve their daily life. It may be connected to real estate and interior design, self-care, parenting, fashion, and hobbies.
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Navigation Apps
As the name implies, navigation apps’ purpose is to help you navigate – find accessible roads and guide you until you reach your destination.
Google Maps
Author(s): Jens Eilstru Rasmussen and Lars Rasmussen
You’ll be hard-pressed to find another navigation app that can compete with what Google Maps app can offer, from giving real-time ETAs and automatic re-routing when there’s an accident or road closure, there’s really not much else you could want from a navigation app. The simplicity of its design makes it easy to use even when one is driving.
Waze
Author(s): (Original author)- Waze Mobile and (Developer) Google
Waze has its own band of loyal users as well – mostly those who prefer a more playful interface and prioritize avoiding traffic, police traps, speed cameras, and more. It also offers alternate routes. It also has a gamification element that allows users to contribute to its data by reporting any traffic obstacle.
b. Food and Drink Apps
Anything that covers food, including cooking, baking, healthy food, eating out, recipes, nutrition facts, restaurants, and more fall into this category.
NomNom
Author: Marc-Antoine Roy
This food recipe app attracts food lovers everywhere with its interactive pages and features that allow users to explore, save, and share their favorite recipes easily. It has a neat interface that is user-friendly.
Tasty Burger App
Author: tubik
This modern food app allows users to order ‘traditional’ burgers straight from the menu or customize their own burgers! The use of high-quality photos of scrumptious burgers captures the interest of their users. Additionally, the color contrast used for this app is simply perfect.
c. Health and Fitness Apps
Apps that track and analyze one’s heart rate and other health condition, help manage stress and those that monitor one’s physical activities belong in this category. Also included here are apps for Zumba, yoga, pregnancy progress tracker, and more.
Headspace
Author(s): Andy Puddicombe and Richard Pierson
Headspace is an app for people who love to meditate to relieve stress. Users of this app, including Emma Watson, raves about it. The design of Headspace is pretty simple, light, and overall, very pleasant.
My Fitness Pal
Author(s): Albert Lee and Mike Lee
My Fitness Pal has been a leader in its category for some time now thanks to its seemingly unending capabilities that its users stay loyal to. It has a straightforward design that is intuitive enough even for new users.
d. Other Lifestyle Apps
Snapguide
Author(s): Daniel Raffel and Steve Krulewitz
This app is similar to Pinterest, except for the fact that you can find how-to steps for each item you find here. Avid DIYers are big fans of this application. Its clean design and gesture-controlled navigation make it a breeze to use.
3. Entertainment Apps
Entertainment apps are made for the sole purpose of, well, providing entertainment. Whether it’s music, games, video streaming, and others, if it adds fun to your day and you use it to relax and be amused, it’s an entertainment app.
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Music
Spotify
Author(s): Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for a few years now (or you’re my mom) you probably have heard of Spotify. This app is not only known for its massive music collection but also for its ultra-hip UI design. Its use of color gradients, for one, makes using this app such a satisfying experience.
Pandora
Author/Creator: Tim Westergren
The magic of Pandora’s design is the emotional experience that it provides its users. Its interactive approach of asking users to choose what they like and dislike and using that feedback to come up with a personalized playlist is just amazing.
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Books
Kindle
Author(s:) Amazon Developer Services
You don’t have to own an actual Kindle to enjoy its perks, thanks to the ‘kindle’ app. It comes with a comfortable interface and access to more than a million books. Amazon Whisper works in this app so readers don’t have to worry about losing the last page they’ve read.
Google Play Books
Author(s): Google
It’s among the few book apps that are not just easy to use but is also interactive. It allows you to download any book or audiobook you want for convenient reading or listening. It doesn’t hurt that it recommends books based on what you’ve finished reading.
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Videos
Netflix
Author(s): Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings
The app that everyone thinks of first when you say “video streaming”. Part of what makes this application so successful is its incredible color scheme and layout, plus the simple navigation process. Of course, the amazing selection of movies and TV shows helps ensure that it stays at the top of the list.
Amazon Prime Video
Author(s): Amazon
Amazon Prime Video is Amazon’s entry for the video streaming app category, and it’s faring well. The app has a gorgeous design and the grid-like layout that they used feels so familiar fo long-time Amazon fans. Its major difference from the Amazon app itself is its dark background which went the opposite direction of the marketplace giant’s white background.
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Game Apps
Alto’s Odyssey
Author(s): Harry Nesbitt
The graphics and UI added to its extremely polished gameplay make Alto’s Odyssey one of the best gaming app, design-wise. Its clean and visually minimalistic design can keep you engrossed for hours.
Firewatch
Author(s): Campo Santo
Firewatch is proof, once again, that going the minimalistic route in design is not bad at all. It delivers exactly what the player needs to interact with its world, no more no less.
4. Education Apps
From teaching the alphabet, colors, phonics, vocabulary, to more specific ones like languages, geography, and more, education apps is all about imparting knowledge and doing it in an interactive manner.
ABC Reading Eggs
Author(s): Blake eLearning Pty Ltd.
This multi-awarded app helps children aged 2 to 13 learn how to read through interactive games, guided lessons, and a collection of more than 2,000 digital books. It is beautifully designed and has all the elements you’d want from an education app, complete with detailed progress reports and instant results.
Coursera
Author(s): Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller
Coursera caters to those who wish to continue learning without paying the high prices of universities. It has a smooth UI design that is simple and features a well-organized syllabus. ]
5. Business Apps
Ass you can guess, business apps are for professionals looking for ways to make their business activities easier. There are business apps for job searching, hiring, collaborative work, and more.
Expensify
Author(s): David Barrett
Have you ever imagined that there would be an app that is dedicated to logging expenses? Well, Exapensify is that exactly. This is a life-saver for small business owners and managers of bigger companies. It’s intuitive and straightforward that you can use the app with ease the first time you use it.
Slack
Author(s): Stewart Butterfield, Cal Henderson, Eric Costello, Serguel Mourachov
Slack is a tool that many start-ups and larger companies are using right now. This app is useful especially for teams that need to ‘get together’ to work on their tasks. Its design is simple enough to use and because it somehow works and the convo threads in Slack look like Twitter streams, most users get that feeling of familiarity when they use it.
6. Finance Apps
Apps that are all about money are called finance apps. These apps allow users to perform transactions wherever they are. There are budget apps, financial management apps, mobile banking apps, investment apps, and others.
Wallet
Author(s): uixNinja
This financial app’s purpose is to help its users manage their money. It is beautifully designed, with the use of color gradients and contrasts. Its interface is both simple and sophisticated at the same time, thanks to the perfect combination of minimalist icons and colored geometries.
Current
Author(s): Stuart Sopp
An app that teaches financial responsibility to teenagers, Current does its job with a straightforward UI complemented by cool fonts and bright colors which are a hit to the younger demographic this app is for. This financial app is comparable to a debit card entrusted to a teenager but is still ultimately controlled by a parent.
7. Sports Apps
Apps that belong in this category all have to do with sporting activities. They can be score trackers, training apps, and sporting event apps.
The Athletic
Author(s): Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann
This app is perfect for avid sports fans who are looking for in-depth coverage of their favorite games. The writers for The Athletic cover both major leagues, including NBA and NFL, as well as some collegiate and local games. It has an attractive UI and navigation is quite easy.
Bleacher Report
Author(s): David Finocchio, David Nemetz, Bryan Goldberg, Alexander Freund
Why follow all those sports teams when you can just focus on the ones that you do like? This, perhaps, is what the creators of Bleacher Report were thinking when they came up with the idea for this app. The design is simple but effective. You can easily choose your favorite teams and franchises, and the app delivers real-time notifications. They offer photos, scores, stories, and videos.
8. Medical Apps
If you compare them to health and lifestyle apps, medical apps are leaning more towards medical treatment and professional healthcare.
Epocrates
Epocrates has millions of downloads under its belt – a testimony of how useful it is and how great its clean and crisp UI is. The free version is an excellent resource for medical info but if you want something with richer features, you should get the paid version.
UpToDate
Author(s) Dr. Burton Rose,
A must-have for all physicians, this app offers a wealth of medical information that can greatly help with one’s practice. It provides answers to clinical questions in real-time, too. The design is simple and uncluttered which is exactly what you want from a medical app.
9. Magazine and News Apps
This category includes all those apps that provide content that you usually find in newspapers and magazines. Most of the time, they are digital versions of printed publications.
Apple News
Author(s): Apple Inc.
Apple News is a preloaded up on all iOS devices. Its users praise it for its UI. It focuses greatly on gorgeous images and videos that do load quite fast. It partners with National Geographic and The New York Times so fans of those will find their content on this ap. There are certain categories like politics, technology, and more, available on Apple News, too.
Magzter
Author(s): Girish Ramdas Vjayakumar Radhakrishnan
Magzter provides its users with access to over 6000 magazines. Its 26 million users prove that you don’t need a complex design to be embraced by your users. Its tagline,” tap. read. Enjoy” is an apt description of what you can expect from the app – no-fuss and straightforward magazine reading experience.
10. Photo and Video Apps
Any app that allows you to capture, edit, manage, share, and store photos and videos fall into this category. They are those apps that you use to add stickers and special effects, apply filters, and create unique social network posts.
Snapseed
Author(s): Nik Software and now owned by Google LLC
For mobile editing, this is one of the best apps out there. Despite being feature-packed, it is still able to maintain a modern and minimalist look. Its slim fonts and the rectangles that bear the names of the features give this app a clean and uncluttered feel.
LumaFusion (iOS)
Author(s): Zac Duvall and Chris Morrissey
LumuFusion is among the most professional apps for video editing that you can find right now. It has powerful features yet a straightforward interface that won’t overwhelm or intimidate.
11. Productivity Apps
Mobile applications that help you get your work done with the least effort possible and improve your time management skills belong to this category.
Trello
Author(s): Atlassian
This project management app makes managing tasks (and people) enjoyable. It is very usual and intuitive and users don’t have trouble figuring out how to find their tasks, thanks to the “cards” system that Trello uses.
HootSuite
Author(s): Ryan Holmes, Dario Meli, David Tedman
Hootsuite provides answers to the problem social media marketers everywhere deal with. Now you can craft social media posts and schedule posting, which makes social media marketing so much easier and less time-consuming.
12. Travel Apps
Travel apps are those that make planning your journey (and your actual journey) a breeze. Some of them are trip planners, itinerary generators, flight and hotel online marketplaces, and more.
Hipmunk
Author(s): Steve Huffman and Adam Goldstein
Hipmunk’s cartoony design makes it fun to use. But don’t be fooled by its fun interface because it performs a lot of tasks efficiently, from helping you search flights and hotels, it also offers such details as the duration of the flight, stops, and more. There are also last minute hotel deals that you can take advantage of.
Hotels.com
Author(s): Davit Litman and Bob Diener
Making hotel reservations and modifying them if needed is so much easier with Hotels.com. The design is simple and the color scheme used is eye-catching but not too loud. The white background sets the photos of the hotels and rooms beautifully.
13. Social Networking Apps
Social networking apps need no introduction. The only thing that needs discussion is whether or not you are using the best one there is. Whether it’s for posting photos, videos, or just simply connecting with peers and family, a social networking app’s design should make connecting with others easier.
Author(s): Mark Zuckerberg with Andrew McCollum and Dustin Moskovitz
Facebook is not without its own share of flaws, but even with those, it remains one of the most popular social networking apps. One of the reasons for that is its UI design which doesn’t require one to think hard about how to use it. Of course, being around for years now means most people already know most if not all of its elements and features so they don’t have to figure out how to navigate it.
Author(s): Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger
The social networking app choice of people who love looking at photos and videos. It’s easy to use. Its users can easily upload photos, scroll to view others’ posts, and there’s really no learning curve at all.
14. Weather Apps
With weather apps, you don’t need mean girl Karen’s ability to tell if it’s going to rain or not. The best ones can tell you that and so much more.
Weather Timeline
Author(s): Sam Ruston
Users of Weather Timeline sing praises for its beautiful design. It is modern and elegant, and the choice of colors is truly excellent. Plus, their widgets are customizable! It has all the tools you could ever want from a weather app.
1Weather
Author(s): OneLouder
Image from: PC Mag
1Weather is among the most aesthetically-pleasing weather app right now. Both casual users and people who are serious about keeping track of the weather find it easy to use. You can get basic info at a glance while having the option to check more in-depth reports.
15. E-Commerce Apps
Online shopping has become the giant industry that it is today thanks to E-Commerce apps which makes making online purchases that much easier.
Warby Parker
Author(s): Fueled
The app for this prescription glasses e-commerce giant has made ordering glasses easier than ever. The design is clean, charming, and stylish. You can spend hours checking out their products and you won’t get tired of it! Plus, it offers the option to choose 5 frames to be delivered to your place so you can try them all and pick the one you love. It’s brilliant!
Shopify
Author(s): Tobias Lutke, Daniel Weinand, Scott Lake
An app that allows users to do product inventory, track sales, fill orders, and even respond to disputes, among others, without leaving the platform – what’s not to like? It’s not just functionality that users love about Shopify. The fact that you can make your own online store in minutes just proves how easy it is to use this platform.
There may be different app categories with varying designs. What may be an effective design for one category could be inapplicable for another. However, the key is to make sure your design is simple, responsive, fast, consistent, and fun to use. Hopefully, these mobile app design ideas will help guide you in the right direction.
Which apps do you think have the best UI design? Which ones are your favorites? Share your thoughts!