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Here are five tips you should keep in mind when designing and developing your mobile application development, regardless of platform.

1. Weigh the Options — Mobile App or Mobile Website

Do you need a mobile application, a mobile website, or both? Before even starting the design process, you need to figure out what format or formats are best suited for your goals. Sometimes this can be really easy. For example, if you want to build a utility or game, you may be better served building a native application rather than worrying about how different mobile browsers will interpret your content.

Other times, the distinction isn’t as clear. For instance, at almost Vietnam mobile application development, we have both a mobile optimized website and applications for the iPhone and iPad. The mobile optimized site is available on a variety of devices, while the iPhone and iPad apps are designed to provide a more full experience to our users on those platforms. Because Mashable has a tech savvy readership, it makes sense for us to have our own standalone mobile app. However, depending on the app idea or business at hand, a mobile app may not be fitting.

Here are some questions to think about when deciding between an application and a mobile-optimized website:

• Do you already have a full-featured website? If the answer is yes, how many of those features are you looking to integrate into the app? If your app is going to be largely a re-creation of your website, you may want to focus on creating a mobile site first.
• Is this an app that can be used without an Internet connection? Some examples include note-taking or calculator apps. If so, a mobile application makes more sense.
• Are you going to be integrating with other parts of the mobile operating system, like the dialer, the GPS and the mail client? If this is the case, consider building a native app.

If you’ve decided to move on with making a mobile app, the next four tips will help you with the design process.

2. Consider Where Your App Will Be Used

Once you’ve decided to make a native mobile app in almost software outsourcing services, you’ll want to consider where your application is most likely going to be used. This is important because where and how an application is used can directly impact how it can be designed.

For instance, if you have an application that is going to be used while walking around — a geo-location app or an app that takes advantage of a device’s GPS — making sure that core app functions are easy to see and access is very important.

Likewise, if your app is used to sell products or services, make sure that the price and the “buy” or “add to cart” buttons are large enough so that they can be easily accessed.

If you have designed an app that may be used while sitting on a train or in a stationary spot, make sure that text is readable and legible and that it is easy to move through content.

3. Be Aware of Various Screen Sizes

Even on the same mobile platform, screen sizes and resolutions can vary based on device type. For instance, the screen size and resolution on the HTC Incredible is different than that on the HTC EVO 4G. Consequently, for an application to have a consistent look and feel across both devices and across a variety of other devices, user interface elements and graphics need to be scalable.

Likewise, the iPhone 4 sports a higher resolution screen than the displays on the iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. However, because the big difference is in pixel density, the same amount of screen real estate is used. Basically, two pixels on the old iPhone displays equals one point on the new retina display. Josh Clark, author of the fantastic new book Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps, has written a must-read post about designing for the iPhone 4′s retina display.

The Android Developers site has a great guide for supporting multiple screens on Android and a look at how to best achieve screen independence so that your apps will run and display properly on a number of different display types.

4. Follow Existing UI Conventions

On desktop computers, there are certain user interface elements that make a Windows app a Windows app or a Mac OS X app a Mac app. There are user interface conventions tailored for mobile apps as well. While you don’t have to follow these guidelines 100% of the time, sticking with consistent methods of displaying data and interacting with content will make your app easier to pick up by end-users. Following these conventions will also ensure that your app is consistent with the other applications already on a mobile device.

Each major mobile platform has documented user interface guidelines. Apple, for example, has a very extensive overview of iPhone Human Interface Guidelines, detailing and offering examples of standard UI conventions that should be considered when building an iPhone app.

While not nearly as complete, the Android UI team has its own User Interface Guidelines, complete with overviews of icon, widget, menu, and activity and task design guidelines.

Likewise, RIM has a complete section on its site for UI Guidelines for BlackBerry devices, including sections on touch screen BlackBerry devices, the different theming systems available for BlackBerry, and how to handle the trackball or touchpad.

5. Design for Touch

In almost all cases, mobile apps are going to be used while in someone’s hand. Therefore, designing your mobile app around touch and ergonomics is very important.

Think about how you hold your phone in your hand. Now, think about where you thumb sits.That’s why many applications have main menus and selectors at the bottom of the screen and content near the top of the screen. Apps with that type of layout are designed for touch, and yours should be too.

Beyond button layout, think about how you want to indicate touch feedback — physically or visually. While the BlackBerry Storm tried the whole clickable screen thing, the truth is, haptic feedback (such as vibrations), while great for games or for alerts, doesn’t usually work very well for touch-based devices like mobile phones.

Instead, use visual cues to show that an item is either touchable or has been touched. For instance, think about how the various keys on the iPhone keyboard grow in size when you touch them. That increase in size is feedback.

Lastly, designing your apps so that they take advantage of gestures, like swiping forward and back, pinching to zoom and pulling-down to refresh, can add a lot of usability to your applications without taking up tons of space for a designated button.

Your Thoughts

What do you think new designers and developers should consider when designing a mobile application? Whether your tips are from a designer, developer or user point of view, let us know in the comments below.