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DE*updated October 2026
I’ve sat in enough design reviews to know that apps rarely fail because of one big mistake.
They fail because of a dozen small screens that never got enough attention.
A login screen with too many steps. A checkout that asks for information nobody needs yet. A settings screen nobody thought through because “it’s just settings.”
Users experience your app one screen at a time.
Each one either earns a little of their trust or costs you some.
If you’re building or redesigning an app, this guide covers the 15 screen types most apps need, what each one is for, and where teams usually get them wrong.
The login screen is how users get into their account. Get it wrong and you add unnecessary friction before anyone has even seen your product.
Give users two clear, equal options upfront: log in to an existing account or create a new one.
I prefer this to opening with “Don’t have an account? Create one!” It doesn’t push new users, and it doesn’t get in the way of returning ones.
Social login is worth adding too. It cuts account creation down to a single tap, so fewer people give up before they’re in.
You also need a good recovery flow.
Users need it often. People still forget passwords, whatever authentication options you offer.
A good recovery flow asks for one thing, usually an email address, and confirms clearly what happens next.
The user is already frustrated by the time they get here, so the screen shouldn’t add to it.
If I had to give one rule for login screens, it’s this: remove anything that isn’t needed to get the user in. Every extra tap is a chance for them to give up.
The home screen is the hub every other screen connects to.
Most users land here first every time they open the app, so I tell clients to spend the most design time here.
A home screen often works as a dashboard.
A smart home app can show temperature and lock status as soon as it opens, so the user gets value before they tap anything.
Don’t overload home screens by trying to show everything at once.
A good home screen stays clear no matter how much data is behind it, and gives users a short path to the rest of the app, often through a search bar at the top.
Two things help most:
If your home screen isn’t the fastest way to everything else in your app, fix that before anything else.
Most users only see onboarding once, but it has a bigger effect on new-user retention than almost any other screen. I’ve never seen someone regret putting more work into it.
Three rules cover most of what makes onboarding work:
For a deeper breakdown of onboarding flows, see our full app onboarding guide.
The profile screen is where users manage who they are inside your app. Returning users often check it first after a long break.
A good profile screen puts identity first: name, photo, a short headline, and a few numbers that matter in your app.
Quick account-level actions, like editing the profile, sit right below.
The mistake I see most often is cramming account settings, personal information, and app preferences into one long profile.
Keep the profile about identity, and move configuration to a separate settings screen.
Users scan a profile quickly, so anything that isn’t relevant right away belongs somewhere else.
Feed screens show a constant stream of content. You’ll find them in social, news, and other content-heavy apps.
Simplicity matters most here.
Every UI element that competes with the content works against the user. Each post needs a consistent header, predictable dimensions, and clear space between it and the next one.
That consistency lets users scroll fast without losing track of where one post ends and the next begins.
News feeds often lead each item with a headline and a short summary instead, so users can decide what’s worth a tap before they start reading.
A feed should let users skim with confidence. If they have to slow down to work out the layout, the feed has failed.
A splash screen is usually the first thing a user sees. Its job is to cover loading time without making the app look broken.
A frozen or blank screen during loading looks like a bug. A branded splash screen tells users the app is working, even when nothing on screen is moving yet.
The design brief is short:
Don’t treat the splash screen as an afterthought. That will come back to bite you later in app store reviews, where users call the app “slow” or “broken.”
Product screens are the core of every ecommerce app.
Their job is to help a user decide whether to buy, so information hierarchy matters here more than almost anywhere else.
A cluttered product screen loses the sale before the user reaches checkout.
On a typical retail product screen, the photo takes the most space. Star rating, color options, and price come next, because those are what buyers scan first.
Description, dimensions, and specs come after, once the user has decided the product is worth a closer look.
A rental listing follows the same logic but weights things differently.
Guest, bedroom, and bathroom counts, plus any discount for a longer stay, get more space than they would on a retail page.
Travelers judge a listing differently from how shoppers judge a product.
Getting this hierarchy right depends on knowing what your buyers look for first, which is where proper market research pays for itself.
Checkout is where your app makes money. A well-designed app that stumbles here still loses the sale.
According to Baymard Institute, the average cart abandonment rate is 70.22% across ecommerce.
In the same research, 18% of shoppers who abandoned an order said the site wanted them to create an account, and 17% said checkout was too long or complicated.
Three fixes address most of that:
Checkout is the one part of an app where a small UX fix has a direct, measurable effect on revenue. I’ve never seen that work fail to pay off.
Statistics screens show users their own data.
Fintech, fitness, and productivity apps rely on them heavily.
The most important principle is visualization: charts and graphs instead of rows of numbers.
A good statistics screen leads with one headline figure, then lets the charts explain it.
I’d cap it at two chart types per screen. Beyond that, users stop reading the data and start skimming past it.
A player screen plays audio and gives the listener control over it. Play, pause, skip, and a scrubber are the minimum.
The best players change their controls depending on what’s playing.
Music gets previous and next track buttons. A podcast or audiobook gets 15-second rewind and skip buttons instead, plus playback speed, which matches how people listen to spoken content.
Audio player conventions are well established.
I’d spend less design time here and more on the screens around it, like your library or feed, where users have fewer habits to fall back on.
The settings screen is where users configure how your app behaves.
The biggest mistake is treating it as a dumping ground for notification preferences, account details, privacy controls, and app behavior, with no grouping at all.
Group settings by function, not by the order features shipped in.
Clear category headers like Account, Notifications, and Privacy let users find what they need without reading the whole list.
Someone looking for notification settings shouldn’t have to scroll past billing and privacy controls to find them.
Calendar screens matter in any app built around scheduling, bookings, or recurring events.
A good one lets users switch between day, week, and month views depending on what they need to see.
A week view is the default for most booking and scheduling apps.
It shows enough detail to pick a time slot and enough context to plan around the rest of the week.
Map screens are essential for apps built around location, delivery tracking, directions, or nearby search.
The map itself should stay uncluttered, with details like distance and arrival time in a compact card.
I like the bottom sheet pattern for map screens.
It keeps the map visible while giving users access to details, search, and filters, and they can drag it up when they want more.
Chat screens are now a core part of app design, whether for customer support, messaging between users, or AI assistants.
Message bubbles, timestamps, and read receipts should be small enough that they don’t compete with the conversation itself.
For AI chat in particular, show clearly when the system is working on a reply. A typing or “thinking” indicator stops users from wondering whether the app has frozen.
Nobody enjoys designing a terms and conditions screen, but a poorly designed one adds friction right at signup.
Break the terms into short sections with clear headings and a one-line summary of each, so users can scan instead of facing one dense block of legal text.
Keep the acceptance action visually separate from the text, pinned to the bottom of the screen, so users can’t scroll past it by accident.
If you’re working out which screens your app needs and how to get them right the first time, that’s the kind of work we do at DECODE.
Our mobile app development team designs and builds the full user journey, from the first splash screen to checkout.
For Norfolk Southern, we built a capacity-planning platform that handles 400,000 daily reservations. The screens users touched every day were where most of the complexity lived.
If you’re building or rethinking an app, get in touch and let’s talk through it.
Marko started DECODE with co-founders Peter and Mario, and a decade later, leads the company as CEO. His role is now almost entirely centred around business strategy, though his extensive background in software engineering makes sure he sees the future of the company from every angle. A graduate of the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, he’s fascinated by the architecture of mobile apps and reactive programming, and a strong believer in life-long learning. Always ready for action. Or an impromptu skiing trip.
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