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Our client has a lot of mobile apps, some are only for internal employees, some are client-side. But they have lots of internal and external products in which we need to maintain a balance in between visual design consistency (to show that this is THIS client's product app) but also the users need to know which apps is which.

Did you have a situation where this happened to you?

What would be the best UX strategy for a client's many mobile apps?

Should we change only the app icon and the app name and maintain for ALL the apps the same visual design? For exampple: I was looking at UBER and they change a little the colours for the uber driver and for the uber client but our client has many more products and not only 2.

What do you suggest?

Thank you in advance,

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    You can take a look at how Stack Exchange sites do it, as a reference. – Alvaro Nov 8 '16 at 16:33
  • Obviously you don't want the designs to be totally identical or completely different, but in between there is quite a range of options, and I think this is driven by customer requirements. What is more important to the client: consistency of brand, or differentiating the apps? – user31143 Nov 8 '16 at 17:00
  • Are these mobile apps (i.e. native platform instead of a wrapper) or just websites adapted for mobile view? When you want to maintain visual consistency, you have to first define what you want to be consistent with (i.e. platforms, brand, products/services) and then you can define a strategy. – Michael Lai♦ Nov 8 '16 at 22:42
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You need to maintain consistency in structure, while at the same time keeping the different apps distinguishable.

Your example with the client/driver differences for Uber showcase visual distinction between the two apps, but likely within the app, they maintain a similar structure and flow, even though they might contain different functionality.

With having, in your case, several different apps, it needs to be a priority to make sure the user can very quickly identify which app they are using, without having to scan and see what functionality is available to them, and make a conclusion to which app they are using. For Uber, you mentioned they use different colors. In that way, I can now automatically know which app I am using simply by seeing the color theme, without having to sift through different controls to know. Consistently located app specific labels and/or icons can be another method to communicate which app they are using.

The consistency in structure is the key to allowing the user to operate all of your apps, regardless if they have used all of them or not. By doing this, you can have users better use your apps, as they grow more familiar with the environment you have created across the different apps.

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