Mobile app design has long been the exclusive domain of information technology developers. Marketing inputs such customer expectations have rarely been incorporated in app design. There appears to be no structured process for developing new apps similar to new product or service development. This has resulted in extremely high churn rates new apps. For example, research shows that 80-90 percent of mobile apps launched in the app stores are abandoned just after single use (Goyal, A. 2019,  April 22). Similarly an average mobile app tends to lose somewhere around 77% of Daily Active Users just within three days of its installation (Manchanda, A., 2020, March, 25). When we contrast this high churn rate with fairly high average development and launch price tag i.e. $270,000 (Macnaught, S., 2016, July 25) the need for following a rigorous design structure becomes obvious.

There exists vast marketing literature on the rigorous new product / service design techniques which can easily be imported to improve new mobile app design. This papers explores the combined use of quality function deployment and discrete choice modeling, two techniques that have been shown to be very effective in product/service area, to improve the aesthetic design of mobile applications. Employing fractional factorial designs we run choice experiments on student sample representing millennials and Generation Z.

Goyal, A. (2019, April 22), Top reasons why mobile apps fail to make a mark in the market retrieved from https://www.businessofapps.com/insights/top-reasons-why-mobile-apps-fail-to-make-a-mark-in-the-market/).

Manchanda, Amit (2020, March, 25) 10 Major Causes That Lead to Mobile App Failure retrieved from https://www.netsolutions.com/insights/10-major-causes-that-lead-to-mobile-app-failures/

Macnaught, Stacey (2016, July 25) Most Mobile Apps Fail: Make Sure Yours Doesn't retrieved from https://www.inc.com/stacey-macnaught/most-mobile-apps-suck-how-to-make-sure-yours-doesnt.html