Desktop vs. Mobile UX/UI Design: How Layout Changes Everything
Mobile apps have become so dominant in the current tech climate—both in terms of user stats and in the minds of companies—that desktop apps have languished. Today, desktop layout design is almost a lost art. Many new designers who grew up on their phones think about desktop as an afterthought to mobile, and it really shows.
Yet when we compare desktop vs. mobile, desktop applications are still more capable and powerful than mobile—and companies who squander this capability are making a strategic mistake.
Here’s how to optimize your app’s desktop layout UX in the era of mobile.
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Different Platforms Solving (Mostly) Different Problems
Mobile’s selling point is its convenience. Desktop’s selling point is its functionality. And both are about meeting the user’s needs.
Let’s look at their differences. Most people talk about desktop vs. mobile in terms of screen size and available space for the UI whereas a desktop layout has room for multiple layers as well as large menus and numerous onscreen controls. This is important, but it’s far from the whole story. Here are some other key mechanical factors that are critical to understand.
User Input
Desktop apps use a keyboard and cursor—including functions like mouseover hovering—and long-form typing is much easier and faster. Desktop apps are excellent for complex, varied user input.
Mobile apps use poking and swiping, and sometimes shaking or acceleration. Mobile apps are excellent for delivering content and services that do not require sophisticated user input (both conceptually and literally).
Workflow Type
Desktop apps have simultaneous access to several menus, toolbars, and navigation options. Their challenge is to not conceal functionality or hinder usability through poor desktop layout design.
Mobile apps are almost completely linear. Their challenge is to correctly anticipate the user’s next action so that the user is just one poke or swipe away from taking that action. The desktop vs. mobile divide is very noticeable here!
Format Considerations
Desktop apps can reasonably expect to be able to use audio cues and feedback, extensive animations, and other facilitative resources delivered as part of the desktop layout UX. The focus is mainly on the application and its operations.
Mobile apps increasingly have access not only to the aforementioned accelerometers but to other environmental information like weather sensors and to personal information from other apps installed on the device. The focus is mainly on the user and their circumstances.
Desktop Apps Should Be Desktop Apps
You can see that desktop and mobile really are two different platforms—not two different sizes of the same platform—and that mobile and desktop layouts are different creatures with different strengths.
What this means is that, with American audiences (where virtually everyone has both a phone and a computer), desirable services paired with good app design will naturally shepherd your users to the correct platform. This has major implications for desktop vs. mobile app design.
The first question to ask when you are optimizing an app for desktop is, Why are you designing for desktop?
Reach more users?
Offer cross-platform convenience?
Avoid looking like you have a blind spot?
Facilitate complex tasks and workflows?
Only the last of those reasons—facilitating tasks and workflows—is consistently worth sinking a lot of money and energy into. The others don’t take advantage of the desktop vs. mobile divide and have better solutions that won’t require you to build and maintain a good desktop layout UX.
You can reach desktop users using your website; you don’t need a dedicated app. We offer full web development services to help with this.
Cross-platform convenience is nice, but it’s usually not a great expenditure of resources as long as the same functions are already available on your website or mobile app.
Avoiding the appearance of a blind spot is a job for your branding and content teams, not your developers. Never create a desktop app just so that you can say you have one.
Is Your App Getting Away from You? Get Expert Consultation
Not sure what your app wants to be or where it is going?
Struggling to find a good desktop layout design?
Having trouble focusing the design of your app on your strategic goals?
At Soluntech we consult with clients in dozens of industries from fleet management to healthcare, helping them realize the full potential of their apps. Schedule a free pre-consultation with us and ask what we can do to help you!
Optimizing for Desktop Means Anticipating User Intent
Here’s another difference in desktop vs. mobile: People are going to use your app for their problems and their workflows—not your intended workflows per se. This means you need to know what people are actually going to want to use your app for, leading to two critical questions:
What problem is your desktop app trying to solve?
How would a typical user want to use your app to solve that problem?
These questions aren’t just critical for the app’s eventual success: They’re critical for understanding how to optimize your desktop layout UX in the first place, and how to structure the underlying service itself!
A desktop app should not be a bigger version of a mobile app. Its applications should be ones that people would specifically prefer or otherwise need to use a computer to do. Usually, that either means complicated tasks requiring UIs that offer many controls and commands or simple tasks that have many choices and branching points or that require a lot of typing.
Another way of putting it is that the optimum desktop layout UX for your app is the one that delivers your services to users the way they want to use them. That’s very different from the mobile app paradigm of giving users very little choice or customization over how they use the app.
At the end of the day, perhaps the biggest difference between desktop vs. mobile is the user’s level of control.
Partner with Soluntech on Your App’s Desktop Layout Design
Soluntech is a different kind of player in the software consultation and development space. We are friendly, collaborative, flexible, and creative.
We work hard to de-risk our projects and protect the budget you spend on us with development costs up to 80% less than many companies charge. We are laser-focused on ROI, with an average 21× ROI for our clients over two years. And we know our stuff, with a project success rate of 91%. Check out our case studies.
Our small team offers competitive, transparent pricing, and unlike many big consultants, we are more than happy to serve small businesses. Whether you’ve got a head count of one thousand or just yourself, we can scale to meet your needs and budget.
Contact us to discuss your desktop layout design or consult on your mobile app.