Power Apps has demistified app building, and created a legion of citizen builders. This is a great thing, after all who is more familiar with the process than end users? Allowing the subject matter experts to design and build solutions is the way of the future. However, as I'm sure many of you have already realised, there is more that goes into app building than knowing the business requirements. User Experience (UX) design is an entire profession, with a wealth of resources available online to learn from.
At IMBII we've learned a few key ingredients to building successful apps, which I'll share below.
1. Build interactive user guides into the app itself!
Classroom-based and instructor-led trainings don't cut it anymore for introducing new software. As users, we're introduced to new applications every day in our personal lives, no training required. At IMBII, we prefer to include our user guides right in our apps via a "How to use this app" button. With clickable actions to view next steps, the user is led through each screen and functionality throughout the app. This is a lot of work upfront, but your users will thank you.
2. Build IT support processes into the app
How do users know who to contact if/when there's a bug or something goes wrong with the app? Just as you can build in your training, why not also directly introduce the "Help/Support" button to send a ticket to your organistion's IT helpdesk? You can even prompt the user to add more info and include keywords to help your first line support categorise the ticket.
3. De-clutter your apps with responsive buttons.
With UX, less is always more. I try to keep my screens clean and clutter-free, but sometimes it's near impossible. There are just too many necessary buttons. One helpful feature I now work with is responsive buttons. After a few hours of building your first app, you've probably already noticed the "Visible" attribute on your buttons, which you can set to true or false based on other buttons or conditions in your app, but you can also use this conditional logic on the "y" attribute as well, meaning you can have certain fields move around your app depending on whether other fields are visible or not. This is how I create filters that expand or roll-up when the user clicks the ^ icon.
Bonus tip:
Colour blind users have difficulty distinguishing between red and green, so try to avoid this combo.
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