UI Design Archives

Calculator Design – How to Prototype a Functioning Calculator with a Design Tool

UXPin — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 15:02:24 +0000

Calculators break down complex numerical problems into user-friendly solutions. This guide dives deep into calculator UI design, navigating its multifaceted dimensions, from types and fundamental principles to the nuances of mobile vs. desktop design. We also explore how designers can use React components in the design process to test complex calculator functionality.

Key takeaways:

Effective calculator UX design seamlessly merges utility with user experience, enhancing user engagement.
The type of calculator—simple, scientific, financial, or graphing—dictates its application and targeted user base.
Core design principles, such as simplicity, consistency, and intuitive layout, underpin successful calculator interfaces.
Adapting calculator designs across devices, from mobile to desktop, demands unique considerations like touch inputs and cross-platform consistency.
Leveraging React components in the design process through platforms like UXPin Merge offers dynamic interactivity, bridging the design-development gap.

How do you design interactive calculator prototypes using React components without writing a single line of code? Discover how UXPin’s Merge technology bridges the gap between design and development to significantly enhance prototyping capability for better testing and outcomes.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

What is the Function of a Calculator in UI Design?

Calculators help users do instant, on-the-spot numerical computations. Its primary function is to offer users a streamlined interface to input data, perform operations, and see results without leaving the primary application or platform.

Digital products rely on key UX metrics like engagement, completion rate, etc. When needed, presenting users with a calculator UI improves these vital metrics, increasing the product’s business value while serving user needs.

Types of Calculators in UI Design

There are four types of calculators designers can use:

Simple
Scientific
Financial
Graphing

Simple calculator

Common use cases:

Meal planning apps (calculating total ingredients)
E-commerce platforms (quick price additions or subtractions)
Note-taking tools (swift arithmetic on written content)

The simple calculator handles standard arithmetic operations—addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Designers use this type when embedding a quick calculation feature in applications like note-taking tools or basic finance apps.

Scientific calculator

Common use cases:

Educational apps for high school and college students
Engineering applications (computing formulas or solving equations)
Physics or chemistry simulators (calculating reactions or forces)

The scientific calculator aids complex computations, from trigonometry to calculus. It’s essential for applications targeting students, engineers, or professionals dealing with scientific tasks.

Financial calculator

Common use cases:

Mortgage calculators in real estate platforms
Salary calculators in job portals
Investment calculations in stock trading apps
Loan interest and payoff calculators in banking apps

Financial calculators help with operations like interest calculations, annuities, or ROI evaluations. Designers embed these in banking apps, investment platforms, or e-commerce sites to assist users in making informed financial decisions.

Graphing calculator

Common use cases:

Educational platforms teaching algebra, calculus, or statistics
Market trend analysis tools in stock and forex trading platforms
Research tools for data scientists visualizing complex datasets

A graphing calculator visualizes mathematical equations, showcasing graphs and plots. Predominantly found in educational tools or advanced analytical platforms, it allows users to grasp trends, intersections, or data relationships through visual representations.

What are the Principles of Good Calculator App UI Design?

Simplicity and clarity:

Users require a straightforward interface to easily input data and get results without unnecessary options or distracting visuals.

Example: Apple’s native calculator app focuses on essential functions. Users can instantly understand and use a clean, minimalist layout without wading through extraneous features.

Consistency in design

Uniform button shapes, colors, and typography facilitate swift navigation and reduce cognitive load.

Example: Apple’s calculator iOS app groups arithmetic operators–addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division–by colors, allowing users to identify and apply them without thinking.

Intuitive layout

An intuitive layout draws from familiar calculator designs and arranges functions logically, aiding rapid data entry and function application.

Example: Financial calculators often position compound interest or annuity functions prominently, reflecting their frequent usage in monetary contexts.

How to Design a Calculator’s Layout & Structure

Grid layout and the arrangement of keys

Establish a grid layout to ensure logical button placement. This foundational design aspect arranges buttons systematically, with most calculators displaying characters in a recognizable four-column by five-row grid. When users see this familiar format, they don’t have to think about how to use it.

Hierarchy of operations and functions

Prioritize operations based on frequency of use. Positioning common operations, such as arithmetic operators, at easily accessible points optimizes user experience. This approach ensures that primary functions stand out, guiding users seamlessly through their tasks.

Importance of spacing and grouping

Implement precise spacing between keys to minimize accidental presses. Group functions by similarity to aid swift location and use. Users can intuitively navigate and select the needed operations when you group related buttons, such as all trigonometric functions.

Designing for different screen sizes and devices

Adapt your calculator design for versatility. A responsive design adjusts and optimizes its layout depending on the device–i.e., smartphone, tablet, or desktop. Ensure your calculator remains user-friendly and maintains its functionality regardless of screen size.

How to Use Visual Design to Improve Calculator User Experience

Color psychology in calculator design

Choose shades that invoke precision, reliability, and clarity, such as blues and grays. Complementary colors can differentiate functions, while muted tones minimize distractions. Always prioritize user comfort and focus.

Typography and readability

Select typography that enhances legibility. Fonts with clean lines and ample spacing ensure users can quickly discern numbers and functions. Consider weight and style variations to distinguish between primary actions and secondary information.

Iconography for functions

Craft icons that immediately convey purpose. Simplify complex ideas into recognizable symbols, ensuring users identify functions at a glance. Uniformity in icon style and size promotes a cohesive look and avoids misinterpretation.

How to Enhance Your Calculator UI with Advanced Features and Functionality

Memory functions and history logs

Memory functions and history logs help save users time by storing calculations for later use, allowing for quick reference or modifications. For example, a financial analyst working on yearly projections might use memory functions to save critical figures and easily refer back to them, streamlining their workflow.

Custom themes and personalization

Custom themes and personalization options enhance the comfort of prolonged usage. For example, a user might switch to a dark theme to reduce eye strain.

Integrating AI and voice recognition

AI and voice recognition integration accelerate input and aid in accessibility. For example, with their hands occupied in a lab, a researcher might voice a complex formula and, with AI assistance, receive instantaneous results and scenarios, optimizing productivity.

How Calculator User Interface Design Differs for Mobile vs. Desktop

Designing for touch vs. mouse/keyboard inputs

For touch, prioritize larger, discernible buttons, ensuring they’re tap-friendly. Conversely, you can optimize for precision for mouse and keyboard-driven interfaces with compact layouts and keyboard shortcut functionalities.

Utilizing mobile features

Integrate haptic feedback to confirm input or signal errors, providing a tactile response for mobile app users. Harness gestures like swiping to clear entries or pinching to toggle between basic and scientific modes to streamline user interactions.

Optimizing cross-platform user experience

Users should transition seamlessly between mobile, desktop, or wearables (iOS, Windows, Android, etc.) without relearning the interface. Utilize unified native and web design principles, maintain consistent functionality, and prioritize data synchronization for those using multiple devices.

Calculator UI Design Inspiration

Here are five calculator designs we found on Dribbble.

Example 1: Simple calculator design by Hikmet Atceken on Dribbble.

We like how Hikmet uses the full screen for this simple calculator example. There is adequate spacing between buttons, and Hikmet uses subtle colors to differentiate functionality and hierarchy.

Example 2: Neuromorphic design by Mariana Konstantynova on Dribbble.

Mariana’s savings calculator uses a trendy neomorphism style–perfect for targeting a younger audience. This aesthetically pleasing UI catches the eye, encouraging engagement.

Example 3: Mortgage calculator design by Paramveer on Dribbble.

Paramveer’s mortgage calculator is an excellent example of incorporating many features and functionalities into a compact viewport. Paramveer uses a mix of mobile-friendly components, like sliders and buttons with large touch targets, to optimize the mobile experience.

Example 4: Good example of using color by Ramona Tăbuşcă on Dribbble.

Ramona uses color brilliantly to allow for consistency in light and dark modes. The calculator’s functionality is separated into three distinct color groups, making it easy to identify which buttons to press.

Example 5: Mortgage calculator design by LLT Group on Dribbble.

The LLT Group’s mortgage calculator is an excellent example for users on large screens. The use of whitespace, hierarchy, font size, and color makes it easy for users to identify key values and digest data instantly.

How to Improve Calculator Prototypes With React Components in the Design Process

While image-based design tools like Figma or Sketch are powerful UI design tools, the designs are fundamentally static. These tools can visualize the calculator’s aesthetics but fall short of simulating its intricate interactivity. Creating an effective interactive calculator takes hours of prep and setup–taking valuable resources from actual prototyping and testing.

UXPin is a code-based tool. Instead of producing vector graphics, UXPin renders HTML, CSS, and Javascript behind the scenes. Designers can also import live components from React, Vue, Ember, and other Javascript-based libraries via Storybook–including foundational elements, patterns, interactive widgets, and UI templates.

Using React components in the design process via UXPin Merge proves pivotal for complex, interactive applications like calculators. React’s component-based structure means every UI element is modular and reusable, allowing for real, live interactions within UXPin–without writing any code.

This dynamic interactivity mimics the final product much closer than any static design tool can. As calculators demand immediate and precise feedback to user inputs, such real-time functionality testing becomes indispensable, ensuring that design and function align seamlessly.

Using React’s live components in UXPin via Merge bridges the gap between design and development, letting designers test actual functionalities in real-world scenarios. This difference accelerates the design-validation loop and reduces the chances of oversight, ensuring a robust and user-friendly calculator app design.

Go from static and time-consuming to fully interactive, fast, and effortless with UXPin and Merge technology. Visit our Merge page for more details and how to request access.

Discover Merge

The post Calculator Design – How to Prototype a Functioning Calculator with a Design Tool appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Best Design Conferences in 2024

UXPin — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 14:41:13 +0000

One of the best things about being a part of the design community is that most designers love to exchange ideas, spread knowledge, and share their experiences regardless of their seniority level. You can be a starting designer or an established thought leader, and it’s almost a given that you find a design conference that may teach you something new.

What’s also great about UX conferences is that not all of them target the UX/UI community, but the people who work with them on a daily basis. Product managers, developers and other professionals who work closely with design can find an event for themselves.

Increase design maturity with UXPin Merge. Build a more collaborative design process and bridge the gap between designers and devs by using a single source of truth in your prototypes: interactive components. Discover more about UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

January 2024 Conferences

QRCA 2024 Annual Conference

QRCA stands for Qualitative Research Consultants Association. The conference covers research methods, tools, and lessons that will prepare designers for the next era of qualitative research.

Date: Jan 22-25, 2024
Free: No
Where: Virtual & Denver
Audience: UX researchers, marketing researchers
Common topics: qualitative research, research methods, research tools

UX360 Research Summit 2024

We will welcome the third edition of a conference dedicated entirely to research. The line up includes UX researchers from top companies: Google, Meta, Dropbox, Delivery Hero, and more.

Date: Jan 30-31, 2023
Free: No
Where: Virtual
Audience: UX researchers, UI designers, UX designers
Common topics: research, design strategy, human-centered design

Design Matters Mexico

Join Design Matters and listen to Mexican designers telling you about local design and the intersection between technology and humanity.

Date: Jan 31-Feb 1, 2023
Free: No
Where: Mexico City
Audience: UX researchers, UI designers, UX designers
Common topics: inclusivity, design future, technology

February 2024 Conferences

What about the second month of the year? We’ve found a couple of conferences that may catch your eye. Let’s see them.

AXE CON 2024

Sign up to attend a virtual accessibility conference focused on building, testing, and maintaining accessible digital experiences.

Date: Feb 20-22, 2024
Free: No
Where: Virtual
Audience: designers
Common topics: accessibility, UX

Product World [Hybrid]

Product conference that concerns itself with sharing the product success stories from tech product professionals at Silicon Valley’s top tech companies.

Date: Feb 21-29, 2024
Free: No
Where: Virtual and San Francisco Bay Area
Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
Common topics: collaboration, leadership, growth

ConveyUX 2024 [Hybrid]

Learn about what is going on in the world of user experience in this AI-driven era.

Date: Feb 27-29, 2024
Free: No
Where: Virtual and Seattle, US
Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
Common topics: design process, design future, AI

HUCCAP 2024

At the same time as ConveyUX, there’s a Human-Computer Interaction Conference hosted in Rome, Italy. Join to discuss HCI matters in an interdisciplinary environment.

Date: Feb 27-29, 2024
Free: No
Where: Virtual and Seattle, US
Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
Common topics: human-computer interaction.

March 2024 Conferences

Leading Design New York

One of the design conferences by Clearleft will be hosted in New York.

Date: Mar 20-21, 2024
Free: No
Where: New York, US
Audience: UX designers
Common topics: career, leadership, future of design

UX Copenhagen [Hybrid]

It’s the 10th edition of annual “Human Experience” conference. This year it will examine overconsumption and tackle degrowth.

Date: Mar 20-21, 2024
Free: No
Where: Virtual & Copenhagen, Denmark
Audience: UX designers, UX researchers
Common topics: UX design, leadership, future

ACM IUI 2024

Interested in AI for design? If so, you can’t miss out on this conference! It focuses on the advances at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).

Date: Mar 18-21, 2024
Free: No
Where: Sydney, Australia
Audience: product designers, researchers
Common topics: information architecture, artificial intelligence

April 2024 Conferences

Information Architecture Conference

It’s one of the leading conferences for information architects, designers, and others who create and manage UI and information environments. This year theme is to examine the impact of AI on information architecture.

Date: Apr 9-13, 2024
Free: No
Where: Virtual
Audience: product designers, researchers, product managers
Common topics: information architecture, artificial intelligence

UX Research Festival [Hybrid]

Being a brainchild of UXInsights, the largest UX research communities in Europe, UX Research Festival invites you to Breda (in the Netherlands) to hear out amazing talks about UX research.

Date: Apr 15-17, 2024
Free: No
Where: Virtual and Breda, Netherlands
Audience: researchers, designers
Common topics: UX research, ResearchOps

May 2024 Conferences

CHI 2024 [Hybrid]

This year’s annual ACM Computer Human Interaction conference is hosted in beautiful Hawaii. It embraces the theme of Surfing the World – which means reflecting the focus on pushing forth the wave of cutting-edge technology and riding the tide of new developments in human-computer interaction.

Date: May 11-16, 2024
Free: No
Where: Virtual & Honolulu, Hawaii
Audience: researchers
Common topics: research tools, research methods

UXDX Community USA [Hybrid]

UXDX is a popular conference for UX designers, developers and product people around the world, sharing with them collaboration ideas.

Date: May 15-17, 2024
Free: Yes
Where: Virtual and on site
Audience: UX designers, UX researchers, developers and product managers
Common topics: leadership, collaboration, design system

UXLx

Join fellow designers in sunny Lisbon. Soak up UX knowledge, network with like-minded individual, and hone your design skills.

Date: May 21-24, 2024
Free: No
Where: Lisbon, Portugal
Audience: designers
Common topics: UX, design process

From Business to Buttons 2024

Spend one day in Stockholm to discuss user experience and customer expaerience. Great conference for business-savvy designers.

Date: May 24 2024
Free: No
Where: Stockholm, Sweden
Audience: designers, product managers
Common topics: design process, design impact, leadership

WebExpo

Travel to Prague, an extraordinary European city, to join fellow web designers, developers, marketers, and more discussing innovations in web design and development.

Date: May 29-31, 2024
Free: No
Where: Prague, Czechia
Audience: designers, developers, product managers
Common topics: web design, front-end design, UX

June 2024 Conferences

DRS 2024 BOSTON

Hosted by Design Research Society, this conference is about 4 Rs: resistance, recovery, reflection, and reimagination, which we’re sure are relevant to the state of design in 2024.

Date: Jun 24-28, 2024
Free: No
Where: Boston, US
Audience: design research
Common topics: research, leadership, future of design

August 2024 Conferences

UX Nordic [Hybrid]

Sharpen your skills and nurture your growth as a UX researcher, designer or writer. Meet other design professionals and explore your interests.

Date: Aug 28-29, 2024
Free: No
Where: Virtual & Aarhus, Norway
Audience: UX researchers, UX designers, UX writers
Common topics: design process, leadership

UX Australia [Hybrid]

It’s the 16th edition of UX Australia. The conference focuses on UX, product and service design, and the surrounding disciplines of research, content, operations, management, and more.

Date: Aug 27-30, 2024
Free: No
Where: Virtual & Melbourne, Australia
Audience: UX researchers, product managers, product designers
Common topics: research operations, leadership, research methods, research tools

November 2024 Conferences

Leading Design London

Let’s meet in London to discuss design.

Date: Nov 6-7, 2024
Free: No
Where: London, UK
Audience: UX designers
Common topics: career, leadership, future of design

May 2023 Conferences

May will be the month for on-site UX and product conferences. Let’s see where we can travel to. Are you ready?

Product Day by ADPlist

Elevate your career in product design with ADPlist. The conference has four tracks: entrepreneurship, career growth, trends, and groundbreaking work, so everyone can find something for themselves.

Date: May 10, 2023
Free: No
Where: virtual
Audience: product designers, product managers, design leaders
Common topics: design career, design leadership, innovation

DIBI Conference

DIBI stands for Design it, Build it, and it’s one of the best conferences in the UK for everyone who’s involved in the product development process.

Date: May 11-12, 2023
Free: No
Where: Edinburgh, Scotland
Audience: product designers, product managers, design leaders
Common topics: design process, design leadership

UXistanbul

Organized by UXServices, this conference is a place for gathering Web3 enthusiasts and designers interested in the field. Come and join them online on Discord.

Date: May 22-26, 2023
Free: No
Where: Virtual
Audience: product designers, researchers, product managers
Common topics: NFT, metaverse

ACE!

This Polish conference has two tracks: Agile Software Development and Product Design & Management. Yet, there will be a lot of content for product designers, too.

Date: May 18-19, 2023
Free: No
Where: Kraków, Poland
Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
Common topics: leadership, product strategy, product growth

June 2023 Conferences

That month looks very exciting for those of you who got used to participating in events from the comfort of their homes. In other words, there will be a few interesting online design conferences and meetups.

UX STRAT Europe

Date: Jun 5-7, 2023
Free: No
Where: Amsterdam
Audience: product designers, researchers
Common topics: design strategy, future of design

Pixel Pioneers

It may be just a day-long, but the Pixel Pioneers is fully-packed with inspirational presentations from leading UX/UI designers and front-end developers.

Date: Jun 16, 2023
Free: No
Where: Bristol, UK
Audience: product designers, developers, researchers
Common topics: human-centered design, inclusive design, future of design

UXPA 2023

Looking for inspirational talks? San Diego’s UXPA conference may be your cup of tea. It is a design conference in the USA.

Date: Jun 20-22, 2023
Free: No
Where: San Diego, US
Audience: product designers, researchers
Common topics: human-centered design, leadership, research

July 2023 Conferences

The summer season is on, but there are a few exciting events coming. Curious what are they?

ProductCon

Organized by Product School, ProductCon is a 1-day conference for product people who want to learn more about managing products. This is an online design conference, so you can watch it whenever you are.

Date: July 2023
Free: Yes until April 2023
Where: Virtual
Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
Common topics: leadership, product innovation, collaboration

HCI INTERNATIONAL 2023

That international conference on human-computer interaction that is usually held in Gothenburg, Sweden, but this year it will be hosted in Copenhagen, Denmark. We highly recommend to attend. It’s a great treat for the interaction designers.

Date: Jul 23-28, 2023
Free: No
Where: Virtual
Audience: product designers, researchers
Common topics: human-centered design, research, leadership

#mtpcon Digital Americas

The summer edition of the Mind the Product conference for both Americas.

Date: Jul 10-14, 2023
Free: No
Where: Virtual
Audience: product designers, product managers, developers
Common topics: leadership, future of product, product growth

August 2023 Conferences

UX Australia 2023 [Hybrid]

You don’t need to be located in Australia (but if you are, we’re jealous) to attend this. Designers from the vast fields like UX, product and service design, research, content, operations, etc. meet to discuss product design.

Date: Aug 22-25, 2023
Free: No
Where: Sydney, Australia
Audience: product designers, UX researchers, content designers
Common topics: design process, leadership, DesignOps

‍UX Nordic [Hybrid]

Almost on the exact same date, another conference is taking place – UX Nordic. This one is great if you want to hone your skills and to grow as a user experience designer in 2023.

Date: Aug 24-25, 2023
Free: No
Where: Aarhus, Denmark
Audience: product designers, researchers, content designers
Common topics: accessibility, case studies, design process

September 2023 Conferences

SmashingConf Freiburg 2023

Are you a UX Architect, UI Developer, or a Product Designer that needs to work a lot with engineers? You can’t miss this UX design conference that oh-so-smoothly merges development and design.

Date: Sep 4-6, 2023
Free: No
Where: Freiburg, Germany
Audience: product designers, developers
Common topics: accessibility, web development, design process

The UXConf 2023

Brought to you by The School of UX, The UXConf has an incredible lineup. Designers from Hotjar, TripAdvisor, HubSpot, Skyscanner, Goldman Sachs, Eurostar, and more will walk you through important UX-related topics.

Date: Sep 13, 2023
Free: No
Where: London, UK
Audience: product designers, UX researchers
Common topics: tutorials, design process, tools

UX+ Conference 2023

Gain creativity and inspiration by attending Asia’s biggest UX conference in 2023. This year’s theme is “Redefining the UX path: embracing growth, inclusivity, and impact.”

Date: Sep 17, 2023
Free: No
Where: Manila, Philippines
Audience: product designers
Common topics: design leadership, design process, design future

Design Matters Copenhagen [Hybrid]

This well-known design conference advertises itself as, “Made for designers, by designers.” And it truly is so! We highly recommend you attend it, but if you can’t, check their library of talks.

Date: Sep 27-28, 2023
Free: No
Where: Copenhagen, Denmark
Audience: product designers, UX researchers
Common topics: tutorials, design process, leadership

October 2023 Conferences

See October conferences for designers and product teams.

World Usability Conference

Let’s meet in Austria and discuss usability with other UX professionals and participate in talks and masterclasses where handpicked speakers share meaningful hands-on insights.

Date: Oct 10-12, 2023
Free: No
Where: Graz, Austria
Audience: product designers, UX researchers
Common topics: design process, usability, sustainability

Productized Conference 2023

Come to Lisbon for a product conference that gathers people interested in product development, design thinking, and product management. It is an exciting two-day event for anyone who works in SaaS or enterprise solutions.

Date: Oct 11-12, 2023
Free: No
Where: Lisbon, Portugal
Audience: product designers, front-end developers
Common topics: design process, design thinking, product growth

Push UX 2023

From Lisbon travel to a lovely Munich to meet like-minded UX professionals that will discuss design research, presentation, and other aspects of daily UX designer’s activities.

Date: Oct 19-20, 2023
Free: No
Where: Munich, Germany
Audience: product designers, UX researchers
Common topics: design process, design leadership, product growth

George UX Conf [Hybrid]

Are you designing a FinTech or banking app? Then, this UX design conference is a must-watch. Connect with experts in the field coming from Revolut, Wise, Deutsche Bank, and more.

Date: Oct 19, 2023
Free: No
Where: Vienna, Austria
Audience: product designers, UX researchers
Common topics: design process, design leadership, product growth

November 2023 Conferences

Web Summit Lisbon

Come to a sunny Lisbon to participate in lively discussions on web design and development.

Date: Nov 13-16, 2023
Free: No
Where: Lisbon, Portugal
Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
Common topics: web design, web development

UXDX APAC 2023

It’s yet another UXDX event, but this one is an Audio-Pacific version. It’s dedicated to Product, UX, Design and Development teams that want to find a way of working together.

Date: Nov 14-16, 2023
Free: No
Where: San Diego, USA
Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
Common topics: product direction, scaling design, validation, product growth

7th Design Thinking Summit [Hybrid]

Get inspired and discuss innovations in design thinking in Europe. Discuss the methodologies of managing design systems and discover innovations that make human-centered design even more relevant in 2023.

Date: Nov 15-17, 2023
Free: No
Where: Prague, Czechia
Audience: product designers, UX designers, developers
Common topics: design thinking, design process, leadership

ProductCon San Francisco

Another Product School’s ProductCon is happening in November. It is a 1-day product design conference for those who want to learn more about managing products and the future of product management.

Date: Nov 16, 2023
Free: No
Where: San Francisco
Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
Common topics: leadership, future of product management, product growth

Which Design Conferences Are You Attending in 2023?

It seems as if 2023 is going to be full of inspiring and educational content coming from the best speakers in design and product management. Have you found a conference for you? We will definitely keep you posted if any new event comes our way.

Use the knowledge that you acquired from design conferences in practice. Instead of working in siloed environment, unite your team with a single source of truth: interactive components that can be used across design and product. Discover more about it. Check out UXPin Merge.

Discover Merge

The post Best Design Conferences in 2024 appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

10 UX UI Design Trends that Will Dominate 2024

UXPin — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 14:34:28 +0000

Personalization, scrollytelling, data storytelling, and buttonless UIs are some of the most exciting 2023 UI design trends. Our research has also noticed an interesting UX UI trend toward larger screens, with Instagram improving its desktop experience to accommodate the growing demand.

Create high-quality, fully functioning prototypes to test your UI design ideas with UXPin. Sign up for a free trial to explore UXPin’s advanced features today!

Top UX UI Trends in 2024

Trend #1: AI-integrated Design

From brainstorming design solutions, constructing research plan to complex UX design decisions, artificial intelligence is becoming integrated into the design process. ChatGPT took most industries by the storm and design is no different.

In 2023, designers shared prompts left and right and design tools like Framer and other integrated AI processes to help users come up with initial UI to iterate. We believe that AI-integrated design will be a thing that will help put most repetitive tasks on autopilot. Let’s put our energy into solving complex problems, right?

Trend #2: Cross-Platform UX

While cross-platform UX isn’t new to most of you, it will be taken to another level in 2024. Last year we reported that apps like Instagram have upgraded their desktop versions to take advantage of large-screen monitors. YouTube, on the other hand, embraced TikTok-like stories format, making it better suited for hand-held devices.

An approaching trend is personalization within cross-platform experience. Apps want to stay relevant and give the users content that they may enjoy to make them stay longer.

Trend #3: Location-Based UX

The buzz around location-based experiences is growing. The apps that offer it will be the epitome of user-centric design next year, as users are starting to value experiences that are both personalized and effortlessly convenient. Picture this: having public transport recommendations more suitable to your lifestyle.

AI takes center stage in shaping the future of location-based experiences. It helps predict user movements and behaviors. Product teams may use AI to anticipate user preferences, intuitively suggesting relevant places, events, or services—often before users actively seek them out.

Trend #4: Animated Icons

Animated icons have officially made their grand entrance into iOS17, injecting life into your Apple apps. Whether you prefer solid icons or lean towards the elegance of outline icons, now is the time to infuse movement into your visual elements.

Get ready to breathe new life into your interface with animated icons that resonate seamlessly with the dynamic spirit of iOS17.

Trend #5: 3D Visual Elements

Are you trying to visualize complex data, building a UX of a VR app or trying to enhance brand recognition? Include 3D elements in your work! Such interfaces are going to be big in 2024.

3D elements help designers draw the user’s eye and add depth and realism that draws users in. We can’t say what originated the trend but some of the designs look like something that was created using Midjourney – another AI tool.

Trend #6: Emotionally Intelligent Design

Emotionally Intelligent Design means creating products, services, or experiences that take into account users’ emotions. It acknowledges and addresses the emotional aspects of human interaction with technology. Examples of emotionally intelligent design might include features like empathetic error messages or interfaces that adapt to users’ moods.

Key aspects of emotionally intelligent design include:

Empathy: Understanding and empathizing with users’ needs, desires, and emotions. This involves considering the user’s perspective, emotions, and potential pain points throughout the design process.
Anticipation: Predicting and responding to users’ emotions and needs before they explicitly express them. This can involve using data, user research, and intuitive design to anticipate user reactions and proactively address potential issues.
Feedback and Communication: Providing clear and supportive feedback to users, acknowledging their actions, and communicating effectively. This includes using language, visuals, and interactions that resonate emotionally with the user.
Adaptability: Designing interfaces that can adapt to users’ emotional states or changing needs. This might involve customization options, personalization features, or dynamic content that responds to user behavior.
Inclusivity: Recognizing and accommodating a diverse range of users with different emotional responses, cultural backgrounds, and preferences. Inclusive design ensures that products and experiences are emotionally resonant for a broad audience.
Ethical Considerations: Ensuring that design decisions consider the ethical implications of the product or service, including potential emotional impact. This involves avoiding manipulative practices and prioritizing the well-being of users.

Trend #7: Focus on Typography

The latest trend in typography for 2024 can be summarized in three words: big, bold, and capitalized. It’s fantastic strategy for UI designers looking to grab users’ attention. Even the global web trends website, Awwwards, uses capitalized bold typography for its homepage H1 and header callout.

UI designers also mix typefaces and styles to emphasize words or draw users’ attention. For example, this hero from Lacoste’s Draw it Yourself campaign uses bold capital styling combined with solid and outlined text for its H1.

Tennis star Venus Williams also uses big, bold, capitalized typography throughout her website design. The font helps reinforce Venus’ status as a strong, dominant world number one.

If you want to stand out and position your brand as a dominant market leader, big, bold, capital typography can help achieve that in 2024! For a softer, calmer approach, you can use thin, condensed, and capitalized lettering–like this example from the Aussi-based creative initiative Hip Opera.

Take your UI design to the next level with UXPin–the world’s most advanced design and prototyping tool.

Improve user testing and get meaningful stakeholder feedback with fully interactive prototypes that look and feel like the final product. Sign up for a free trial to explore UXPin’s advanced prototyping features.

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App Icon Design – 5 Amazing Ideas from Tech Companies

UXPin — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 13:30:34 +0000

One of the most critical choices any app development company will make is the design of the app icon. Good icons are inviting and will increase interaction, while a bad design can slow down adoption and make users less likely to use it. Their first impression will be your app’s icon – it’s what they’ll first see from whatever store they first download your newly-released product, and it’s what they’ll look at every time they launch it.

Getting the right depiction is not just nice to have; it’s essential if you want your app to be successful. Fortunately, when it comes to crafting icons, there are plenty of places and companies from which to draw inspiration. In this article, we’ll talk about what five top tech companies are doing for app icon design – and what you can learn from these amazing designers.

Key takeaways:

App icon design needs to meet a combination of criteria, including aesthetics, functionality, brand representation, and platform-specific considerations.
When considering designing your own icons, consider tips by top companies, such as Apple’s emphasis on simplicity or Microsoft’s Fluent Design System balancing innovation with legacy.

What is App Icon Design?

App icon design involves creating the perfect icon for your app. It often encapsulates the app’s brand, purpose, and primary features, distilling these elements into a simple, memorable image. Consider color choice, shape, and scalability factors when designing an app icon.

Furthermore, designers must keep in mind platform-specific guidelines. iOS, Android, and other operating systems have unique design standards to ensure a coherent user experience. We’ll discuss those in more detail when we look at what popular tech companies do for their app icons.

In essence, app icon design is a blend of aesthetics, functionality, and brand representation, all confined within a small visual space. Given its impression on users and the limited pixel space, getting the best app icon design is crucial.

What Top Companies Say about App Icon Design?

When it comes to design, there’s a lot to learn from the top tech companies as they often employ some of the highest-talent designers on the market. And their market leader position means they usually can set some of the trends. Here’s what Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Atlassian, and Google are doing for app design.

1. Apple

Many people regard Apple as the leader in design. From iconic devices to amazing apps, countless companies look to them for inspiration. Like many platform developers, Apple lists their best practices online. In terms of icon design, here are the three key takeaways from the brand.

First, simple is better. Think about all the memorable icons you’ve seen. Let’s take Facebook or Twitter’s old logo. These are simply a bird and an “f,” respectively. Now, think about Apple’s designs. Apple Music, for example, is nothing but a couple of notes. Each of these icons embraces simplicity. Remember, these graphical depictions tend to be pretty small on user devices. Crafting intricate details gets lost quickly. Great app icon design is bold and recognizable – it’s simple and easy to spot in a sea of apps. Think about how you can make your icon design process result in something simple!

Next, remove text, if possible, or at least keep it to a minimum. Only include text if it is a vital part of your brand. Too many people want to include a company name or a tagline, but that’s often hard to read, especially on smaller devices. Keep your app icon graphical, if possible.

Finally, consider your platform and create alternate app icons if necessary. What looks good on iOS with the rounded corners may not look as good on Android with the circular design. By considering (and tailoring your app icon, too) the platform, you’ll create a unique but unified experience, no matter where people use your app.

2. Microsoft

Microsoft’s Fluent Design System encapsulates the future of user interface and experience design, all while ensuring a profound connection with the company’s historical roots. Regarding app icon design through Fluent, there’s an evident synthesis of past, present, and future – something that designers of modern apps should consider!

Fluent-based icons go beyond mere aesthetics. While they embrace depth, light, motion, and materiality for a modern and interactive user experience, there’s a foundational respect for Microsoft’s legacy. The challenge lies in striking a balance: how does one innovate while respecting and recalling the iconic imagery from earlier software generations? Microsoft wanted to create a facelift for their products while keeping much of that history. Here are a couple of rules they applied:

Going beyond monochrome. Microsoft’s answer is layered and dynamic icons that nod to the past. These icons maintain familiarity, ensuring long-standing users feel at home while drawing new users with their contemporary look. Color palettes resonate with both legacy themes and modern design paradigms. The textures and materials are current and modern but reminiscent of a tactile, real-world experience.

Balancing legacy with innovation. If your company is not entirely new, there’s much to learn from what Microsoft did with Fluent. In the design process for your app icon, nodding to your company’s history while simultaneously conveying your company’s fresh, new app is vital. By looking at what Microsoft did with Fluent, you can see how to balance that rich history while conveying the bold future you want for your app and company.

3. IBM

People may not think of IBM when they think of apps, but they have developed a compelling design system called the IBM Design Language. Designers should consider a few things that IBM has noted, as these concepts serve as guidelines for our app icons.

Central to their icon design philosophy is the categorization into four distinct groups: “stroke” and “fill” icons, hero brands, third-party logos, and the unique IBM Plex app icons. This concept hints at something very critical for app icon design – space. Is your icon a stroke icon? A fill one? How are you using the app icon’s available space, or are you using negative space? These are essential considerations.

Additionally, IBM applies the same grid for all icons. Designers craft every IBM icon on a pixel-based grid measuring 32px x 32px for uniformity. This serves as a foundational guideline, ensuring each piece of artwork snaps perfectly into place. However, designers are encouraged to make fine-tuning adjustments during creation to achieve the desired shape.

IBM also maintains icon consistency by creating icon groups. This is vital if you have more than one app because it lets people subtly know that your company is behind all of them. It is not just IBM that does this, of course – so do Apple and Microsoft. You can often tell which company is behind an app just by looking at the icon!

If you’re a designer, it’s worth flipping through the IBM Design Language, as it has many fantastic pointers to achieve the perfect design.

4. Atlassian

As is often the case with any visual art form, various designers and companies have different perspectives. Atlassian emphasizes some things the previous companies have not mentioned – accessibility and avoiding inundating users.

In today’s modern world, accessibility is not a nice to have. It’s a must. Ensure your app’s icon is accessible. This means it should adhere to WCAG contrast ratios and there should be no text with unfamiliar icons. You want people to immediately grasp what your icon and app are about, regardless of their abilities.

Additionally, Atlassian also encourages people to avoid going overboard with icons. Keep them simple and clean to minimize “icon fatigue.” People look at dozens of app icons daily, and if yours is too visually cluttered or intricate, they will tune out from your app rather than lean into it.

5. Google

Like all the companies above, Google also significantly emphasizes its icons through Material – Google’s app icon design system. While Material has numerous paradigms, three that designers should consider stand out.

First, think about color. The Material guidelines specify which colors to use for active and inactive icons. Additionally, you should differentiate between active and focused versus just active. Designers often leave out the focused state, especially for apps with touch capabilities.

Next, make complex icons legible. As the companies above note, these must be readable, and Google is no exception to this policy. If you need to adjust icons to ensure they are legible and clear, do so, even if they are system icons.

Finally, Google’s system icons with Material are bold, symmetrical, and minimal. They convey just the amount of information necessary for the user to determine what the action behind the icon does. This design principle is worth considering with your app icon design.

For example, the icons below show just enough information to convey their meaning without being overly complex.

Use UXPin to Prototype Your App Icons

UXPin is the leading solution for crafting user interfaces and prototyping apps. It is also one of the best ways to prototype your app icons and see how users will react to them before finalizing every single little detail across multiple platforms. As you can likely see from the examples above, companies put tremendous thought into app icons to ensure they convey the right message and feel for an app.

If you’re in the design phase for your app, try UXPin for free and prototype your perfect app icon!

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Map UI – The Most Popular Layouts and Design Tips

UXPin — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 16:50:32 +0000

Maps are integral to app design, shaping how users interact with location-based services. From ride-sharing to local discoveries, intuitive map UIs make these experiences seamless and user-centric. As the intersection of geographical data, UI map design, and digital evolution unfolds, mastering the art of Map UI becomes essential for modern products.

Key takeaways:

Effective Map UI design bridges complex geographical data with an intuitive user experience.
Balancing aesthetics with functionality is pivotal for user engagement and satisfaction.
Adapting to various screen sizes and ensuring accessibility is essential for broad usability.
Customization options in tools like Mapbox and Leaflet allow for brand-specific map experiences.
Interactivity, such as panning, zooming, and layer toggling, enhances user navigation and exploration.

Design intuitive map UIs with UXPin’s advanced interactive prototyping features. Sign up for a free trial and design experiences your customers will love with UXPin.

What is a Map UI?

A Map UI, or Map User Interface, is a visual component displaying geographical information. Location-based services are pivotal in modern digital products–from hailing rides to discovering nearby restaurants–so making them accessible, interactive, and user-centric is essential.

As digital products evolve, so does the demand for visually appealing and functionally robust maps. Balancing aesthetics with functionality, a well-designed Map UI allows users to navigate, explore, and engage with their environment seamlessly. It bridges the gap between complex geographical data and an intuitive user experience, making it crucial for modern digital products.

What are Popular Map UI Layouts?

Full map

A full map covers the entire viewport of a device or screen. It’s immersive, offering users a complete view of the geographical scope. For example, navigation apps like Waze or Google Maps use full maps to ensure drivers get an unobstructed view of their route and surroundings.

Partial map

A partial map occupies only a section of the user interface, typically combined with other UI elements such as text, images, or filters. Travel blogs might use this layout to show a specific location while providing content or insights alongside the map.

Reference map

Reference maps display natural and human-made landmarks without emphasizing specific data. For example, a city tourism app might employ a reference map to show general locations of attractions without going into detailed analytics about each spot.

Embedded map

Designers integrate embedded maps within a larger content structure, often within articles or product pages. For example, an online article about the best coffee shops in New York might use an embedded map to pinpoint locations, allowing readers to visualize the spots within the article’s context.

The Basics of Map UI Design

Understanding map UI elements

Labels: Textual annotations on maps help identify locations or features. For example, city names, street labels, or landmarks ensure users can easily recognize and navigate areas.
Points of Interest (POIs): Specific locations or landmarks users find helpful or intriguing. POIs could be tourist attractions, restaurants, or historical sites.
Routes: Visual representations of paths or directions from one location to another. Routes are essential in navigation apps to show users how to reach their destination.
Overlays: Data layers placed over a base map to provide additional context or information. For example, weather maps show rainfall or temperature variations across regions using overlays.

Map scales and zoom levels

Ensuring the correct scale and zoom level is pivotal for map utility. Scale dictates how much of the real world is represented on the map, impacting detail and clarity.

Zoom allows users to access granular information, like street names, and zoom out for broader views, like city overviews. Consistent legibility, irrespective of zoom, guarantees user confidence in navigating and utilizing the map.

Cross-platform considerations for map UIs

When designing Map UIs across platforms, understanding the nuances of each is crucial to ensuring a consistent and optimized user experience for mobile applications and desktops.

iOS: Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines offer a clean and minimalist approach. Focus on native components, maintaining consistent iconography, and leveraging features like Force Touch for map interactions.
Android: Adhere to Material Design principles, capitalizing on Google’s extensive tools and resources. Consider device fragmentation and ensure map elements scale effectively across screen sizes and resolutions.
Web: Prioritize responsive design to accommodate both mobile and desktop views. Given the diversity of browsers and devices, testing is essential to ensure map functionalities work seamlessly and consistently.

How to Design Maps for Different Use Cases

Navigation apps

In navigation tools, the prime focus is routes and the user’s current location. It’s essential to provide clear, unambiguous pathways, minimizing distractions. Dynamic updates, such as traffic alerts or alternative route suggestions, enhance user experience. Designers ensure the user’s current position remains prominently visible, facilitating real-time navigation.

Local business directories

When designing for business directories, it’s pivotal to spotlight businesses and relevant reviews. The map should clearly indicate business locations using distinct icons. Integrating review scores or popular tags directly on the map lets users quickly decide which establishment to visit without switching user interfaces.

Event and festival apps

For events or festivals, maps are vital in guiding attendees and assisting with health and safety. These maps must pinpoint stages, facilities, restrooms, and emergency exits. Visual hierarchy, aided by color coding or icons, can help attendees quickly locate what they need, ensuring enjoyment and safety.

Real estate platforms

Displaying properties requires filters like price range, property type, proximity, and amenities. Designers emphasize clear location markers and only show properties based on users’ filters to streamline the search process.

Travel apps

Travel maps cater to explorers, highlighting landmarks, popular tourist spots, and suggested tour routes. These designs should offer rich visuals, using custom icons for different attractions. Additionally, directly integrating quick-access info or audio guides on the map can elevate the tourist’s exploration experience.

How to Approach Map UI Layout and Composition

Adapting to screen sizes

Mobile: Prioritize essential functions, use widgets where necessary, and streamline controls for touch.
Tablet: Utilize larger screen real estate but remain touch-optimized.
Desktop: Offer expansive view with detailed controls, capitalize on hover interactions.

Positioning map controls

Zoom: Place in an easily accessible location, typically bottom right or left corner.
Map Type: Allow toggling between satellite, terrain, and standard views with clear icons.
Orientation: Provide intuitive rotation or compass tools, especially vital for mobile users.

Balancing information density:

Prioritize essential info: Surface the most relevant data to the user’s current task.
Use layers: Allow users to toggle between different layers of information.
Streamline visuals: Use distinct markers and icons to avoid overloading with text.

Responsive map layouts:

Portrait: Stack controls and ensure key map regions remain visible.
Landscape: Utilize width for broader map views and reposition controls for easy reach.

How to Design Map Interactions

Here are some typical map UI interactions and how designers should approach mobile app vs. desktop/web design.

Panning and scrolling

Panning lets users explore different regions on a map, while scrolling ensures fluid navigation within a digital product.

Mobile: Implement touch-drag for smooth panning; consider a locked map mode to prevent unintentional scrolls.
Desktop: Utilize click-and-drag for panning and ensure the scroll wheel doesn’t interfere with page scrolling.

Zoom in/out:

Zoom functionality lets users go closer or further to a specific location.

Mobile: Implement pinch gestures for zooming and provide visible “+” and “-” buttons for touch functionality.
Desktop: Use the scroll wheel for zooming in/out and include “+” and “-” controls as an alternative.

Click/tap interactions

Direct interactions allow users to access more information or perform specific tasks on the map.

Mobile: Ensure touch targets are large enough and provide immediate visual feedback upon tapping.
Desktop: Highlight clickable areas with hover effects and employ cursor changes to signify interactivity.

Routing and waypoint setting:

Users often need to visualize routes or set specific points using location markers on maps, especially in navigation apps.

Mobile: Enable touch-and-hold to set waypoints and use clear icons and visual paths for route displays.
Desktop: Implement click-to-set waypoints and provide drag-and-drop flexibility for adjusting routes.

Layer toggles

Layers allow users to customize their map view, displaying only relevant information.

Mobile: Use intuitive icons for layers and ensure toggles are easily accessible without cluttering the user interface.
Desktop: Position layer controls on the map’s periphery and use tooltips to describe each layer’s content.

What are Map UI Design Techniques for Accessibility

Color contrast and legibility

Effective map design ensures that all users can digest information and complete tasks. Optimal color contrast ensures that labels, routes, and points of interest are visible against their backgrounds. Prioritize high-contrast color schemes and routinely test legibility across different devices and lighting conditions.

Not every user interacts with map apps visually or with constant internet; offline functionality is essential. Integrating voice user interface and screen reader compatibility ensures visually impaired users can access and understand map data. To optimize for these tools, use semantic markup, provide descriptive alt text, and regularly test with leading screen reader technologies.

Keyboard navigation

Some users rely solely on keyboards for navigation. Guaranteeing that all map functions–panning, zooming, selecting waypoints–are keyboard-accessible is pivotal. Use focusable elements, provide clear visual feedback for keyboard selections, and follow best practices for keyboard shortcuts.

What are Some Tools and Platforms for Designing Map UIs?

Mapbox

Who uses it?:

Instacart home delivery service
General Motors in-car navigation
Rivian electric vehicles
AllTrails hiking app
AccuWeather weather app

Mapbox stands out for its flexibility and customization options. It lets designers create unique map experiences tailored to specific brand identities or user needs. With its suite of design tools and a robust API, Mapbox suits those who need more than the standard map look and crave deep integration capabilities.

Google Maps API

Who uses it?:

Too many to mention! Most home delivery, ride-sharing, and automotive applications.

A familiar choice for many, the Google Maps API allows seamless integration of Google’s vast map database into apps and websites. Designers often opt for it due to its extensive documentation, widespread user familiarity, and rich feature set. It’s ideal for projects that benefit from Google’s vast Points of Interest database and street view functionalities.

Leaflet

Who uses it?:

Foursquare cloud-based location technology platform
Pinterest social media application
Facebook social media application
Evernote productivity app

Leaflet is the go-to web service for designers searching for a lightweight, open-source option. It’s particularly valuable for embedding interactive maps with custom layers into web projects. With its plugin-rich environment and compatibility with various mapping services, Leaflet is preferred for projects that demand performance without overhead.

How to Design Better Map User Interfaces With UXPin

Maps are highly interactive, with many microinteractions and animations. With UXPin’s advanced features, designers have many triggers and user actions, including mobile devices and desktops, to create realistic map UI prototypes.

UXPin’s interactive prototypes enable design teams to test complex UI patterns and components, including maps, to solve more usability issues during the design process.

Go beyond static UI kits and enhance your design process with the world’s most advanced digital product design tool. Build an interactive map prototype with UXPin. Sign up for a free trial.

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What Is MUI and What Do You Need to Know About It?

UXPin — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 17:03:15 +0000

One of the questions organizations ask themselves at the start of a new project is, “do we adopt a component library or start from scratch?” There are pros and cons to weigh, and it depends on the project’s scope and priorities.

One of the most popular component libraries is MUI – a comprehensive React UI library modelled at first on Google’s Material Design UI.

We’re going to take a look at MUI, why you’d want to use it, what makes it different from other component libraries, and how you can get started designing your next project.

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What is MUI?

MUI is a massive library of UI components designers and developers can use to build React applications. The open-source project follows Google’s guidelines for creating components, giving you a customizable library of foundational and advanced UI elements.

MUI also sells a collection of React templates and tools, giving you ready-made user interfaces to tweak for your project.

Why Would You Use a Component Library Like MUI?

Designers often use UI kits to build new products or feature add-ons for existing projects. These libraries allow designers to drag and drop the components they need to design interfaces quickly.

Let’s explore 7 reasons why you would want to use the MUI component library.

1. Faster Time-to-Market

In today’s highly competitive tech landscape, time-to-market is a metric that organizations always seek to optimize. A component library gives designers and developers a massive headstart with thoroughly tested UI elements ready to go.

Designers can drag and drop elements to build user interfaces and customize components to meet product and branding requirements. Design teams can spend more time designing great customer experiences rather than getting bogged down building and testing UI components from scratch–a process that increases time-to-market significantly!

Usability testing is much faster because designers can prototype, test, and iterate quickly. If a user interface isn’t working during testing, they can make changes on the fly, drawing from a massive library, to get instant feedback from participants and stakeholders.

When it comes to the design handoff, engineers can install the component library and copy/paste changes from prototypes and style guides to develop the product without starting from scratch.

2. A Single Source of Truth

One of the biggest design system governance challenges is maintaining a single source of truth. It’s not uncommon for product teams, UX designers, and developers to have out-of-sync design systems–resulting in errors, rework, and massive headaches and challenges for DesignOps.

Using MUI’s component library can significantly reduce these challenges while creating a single source of truth between design and development. Designers and engineers will still have separate design systems (image-based for designers and code for engineers), but MUI gives them the same starting blocks.

When using Merge with UXPin’s code-based editor, designers and engineers use the same design system components synced via a single repository. Any updates to the repo sync back to UXPin, notifying designers of the changes. You can connect Merge using Git for React component libraries or Storybook for other popular technologies.

3. Design Consistency

Consistency is vital for user experience, building trust, and brand loyalty. Using the same UI components allows designers to increase consistency while minimizing errors and rework.

4. Scalability

Scalability is another vital product design factor. If you’re building a design system from scratch, designers must design, prototype, and test new components before scaling the product.

With MUI’s comprehensive UI library, designers can search for the components they need to prototype and scale right away. Engineers can copy/paste the identical React components from MUI and customize them to the designer’s specifications.

MUI X includes a library of advanced React components teams can use to scale complex products even faster, including data grids, date pickers, charts, pagination, filtering, and more.

5. Easy Maintenance

A component library like MUI comes with detailed documentation for installing, using, updating, and customizing components. Designers and engineers can use this framework to maintain the organization’s design system, making it easier to establish governance systems and protocols.

MUI also provides how-to guides for migrating from one version to the next. So, organizations can take advantage of the latest UI styles, technologies, and trends whenever MUI releases an update.

https://t.co/OoMuzMpoMf 🚀MUI is a powerful library with extensive documentation. Check out how easily you can access the documentation in UXPin Merge. 🎉 Request Merge access and use MUI.

Many thanks to @MUI_hq 🙌#uxpinmerge #mui #reactlibrary #FrontEndDevelopment pic.twitter.com/CtAq2Y9bmJ
— UXPin (@uxpin) January 27, 2022

6. Accessibility

Those experienced with setting up a design system will know the time and money it takes to ensure every component passes accessibility standards. MUI’s designers have taken great care in designing components to meet WCAD 2.0 accessibility guidelines – reducing the work for researchers and designers.

It’s important to note that even when you design interfaces using accessible components, you must still test navigation and user flows to ensure the product as a whole meets accessibility standards.

7. Skills Empowerment

MUI’s open-source component UI library empowers startups and young entrepreneurs to build new products–especially in developing nations where they don’t have the same access to education, mentoring, and skills transfer.

The library is also incredibly beneficial for charities, non-profits, NGOs, and similar organizations who want to develop products and tools but don’t have the budget to invest in a design system.

Anyone can leverage the skills of MUI’s talented designers and developers using the same component library used by Fortune 500 companies to develop sophisticated digital products and compete in a global market.

What Makes MUI Stand Apart From Other Component Libraries?

Google’s Material Design UI is arguably one of the best and most comprehensive design libraries in the world. By building on top of Material Design, MUI delivers a React component library to match.

The ability to easily customize MUI using its Theming feature and the libraries’ excellent documentation make it accessible to build products for multinational corporations or a single developer with a product idea.

Because MUI is so widely used, there is a massive global community of designers, researchers, and developers to reach out to for guidance and support. Added to the fact that React is one of the most popular front-end frameworks, makes MUI an attractive component library.

MUI – Interesting Facts and Figures

Here are some interesting MUI facts and figures:

Note: MUI’s stats continue to climb. These facts were accurate as of Jan 2022.

MUI started in 2014 as Material UI but decided to change its name to differentiate itself from Google. Many people assumed Material UI was a Google product.
MUI has over 2,200 open-source contributors.
There are over 2,3 million NPM downloads of MUI per week.
Over 73,700 stars on GitHub.
Of the 1,488 respondents to MUI’s 2020 survey, 35% of developers worked in an organization with less than five people.
In the survey, 27% of developers use MUI for enterprise applications, while 20% use the library for admin dashboards.

UXPin’s MUI 5 Kit

Using UXPin Merge’s MUI integration, you can leverage the power of prototyping with UI React components.

MUI helps you create designs with fully functioning code components. With a single source of truth, designers, developers, product teams, and others can collaborate more effectively with fewer errors and friction.

Higher fidelity means better usability testing with meaningful feedback from participants and stakeholders. The result? A better overall user experience and increased business value.

Find out more about UXPin’s MUI kit and how you can sign up to request access to this revolutionary code-based design technology: MUI library in UXPin: Design Faster.

Syncing a Component Library With UXPin Merge

With UXPin Merge, you can build fully functioning high-fidelity prototypes with an open-source component library. With complex UI components like menus, forms, tabs, data tables, date pickers, accordions, and more, you can build beautiful and functional layouts in minutes. Check out Merge.

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User Retention – 7 Design Tips to Improve it

UXPin — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 14:38:43 +0000

Today’s digital product users have simply decided that they don’t have the attention span–or the time–to wade through poorly designed apps. Luckily, since designers study users and their behavior, they can help with improving user retention through the right design practices.

In this article, we propose a solution to the customer retention issues that plague user interfaces. The goal is to engage app visitors so that they feel compelled to return. Done properly, casual users stay engaged. Loyalty prospers, followers are born, and an app becomes a daily staple.

Key takeaways:

User retention is a behavioral pattern of users who keep coming back to the site, app or other digital product.
It’s measured as a percentage that reflects total number of users at the start of a period divided by number of active users at the end of the period.
What helps you make design decisions for improving user retention is behavioral science but also usability, customer service, and more.

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What is User Retention?

User retention is when a casual digital browser is transformed into a power user who returns to consume more of what your app or website offers. These users follow this pattern of product or service consumption, staying for longer periods to benefit from the app or website.

More accurately, teams track this metric as a percentage. By tracking this rate, you can help your team focus on improving user retention. You see trends in motion, which lets you quickly spot and address any downturns in user engagement. Following a user retention strategy lets your team meet their objectives and keep the return user statistics in your favour.

How Can Designers Measure User Retention?

By using something as simple as a user survey or more complex analytics tools, developers determine repeat visits. They can also generate ballpark figures by selecting a timeframe and dividing the total number of users recorded at the start by the number of active users at the end of that period.

Here’s a general formula for tracking user retention:

Total number of users at the start of a period / number of active users at the end of the period = user retention rate (%)

With the figure in hand, product teams can discover what resonates with app traffic. Say that there’s a sudden drop in user returns. After speaking to a few users, your team learns that a UI element doesn’t work or is confusing and causes user frustration. The design team can then work on a fix that would remove the blocker in the user journey.

Product teams also commonly review churn rates – more on this later – and other analytics, but it’s the user retention figure that provides the greatest understanding of in-app behavior.

All of this analysis and user querying result in a more personalized experience. In the end, the app doesn’t overwhelm or confuse with information overload or navigation-slowing pages.

How to tell if user retention is low?

Let’s introduce a predictability baseline. Fact: the average customer retention rate after 30 days of app usage is typically 5.6% of users. Designers might use this statistic as a very rough benchmark when rolling out their creations.

That said, when setting their user retention objectives, they should always prioritize their industry-standard rates. You can establish what a ‘good’, ‘average’, or ‘poor’ retention rate means to you after considering several factors, like what your product does, who is the target user, and how much it costs.

So much for theory – now let’s look at some factors that can help keep users coming back.

7 Design Tips on Improving User Retention

Before thinking about your app’s improving retention rate, it’s essential to understand the basics of behavioral science. The Hooked Model, created by Nir Niyal, will be used to illustrate this concept:

The trigger – humans gravitate towards familiar screen anchors. Links, clickable icons or images, emails; these are all habit-forming triggers. They prompt users to take familiar actions. They’ve been “hooked” by a trigger. An emotional component is activated when triggers work as they’re designed to.
Action – this is a key part of the action/reward cycle that drives human interactions. If the action is to be viewed as “good,” a rewarding response is expected.
Variable rewards – we become excited when unforeseen incentives are on the line. Your customers can’t help themselves; they want to click through to another part of your app when they’re tempted by a hidden image or, say, the promise of a discount code.
User investment – interest rises. Your users want to interact with your app, to leave feedback or fill out a form. This final part of the four-phase hooked model equals customer investment and a healthy future for burgeoning users.

Although human behavior lies at the core of UX design practices, the ‘human factor’ can be unpredictable at times, and belongs in another realm altogether. It is crucial that this emotional element is understood.

Understand who your loyal customers are

Retained users are potential brand advocates. They’re already satisfied with your app and have the power to draw in more customers. Consider the following:

Track churn rate, which is defined as the percentage of users who have stopped using the app over a predetermined amount of time. If user investment is dropping, you need to find out why.
Know your ideal customer profile but match expectations against real-world results. Using analytics tools and app retention figures, how often do visitors use your app?
What’s the habit-forming trigger in your app?
Can those triggers be recreated on command?

To learn more about the psychology behind habit forming in design, give our dedicated piece a read.

Once you’ve determined the level of user retention you need for your app or website, you can then focus on refining your user experience (UX).

Reward those users who use your product regularly

These incentives aren’t always monetary. In fact, they could be anything, including:

Points (e.g., used to reward returning users of the ‘Health’ app in Apple devices)
Badges (e.g., Facebook groups, where the most active members of the community are given special badges for top contributors)
Discounts (e.g., eCommerce stores that often display discount codes in their app, site, social accounts, or deliver them to customers via email)
VIP status (e.g., language learning app Duolingo puts a heavy emphasis not only on gamifying the studying experience, but also offers VIP status to those who return to the app daily)
Free upgrades (e.g., hotels offering free room upgrades for booking directly through their site or app)
Compliments (e.g. a free ebook for the first 50 users who log into the app on a given day).

Rewards inspire feelings of achievement. You feel like you’ve accomplished something, so you return for more. Customer retention rates increase as users react positively to this sense of accomplishment.

The Stepler app represents a fine example of the reward principle. Points are won every time a user walks, and earn bonus points every time they log into the app. Always on the mind of the fitness enthusiast, because they’re hooked up to a wearable fitness device, the app is accessed regularly.

In this case, the rewards program aligns with the user’s activity goals to build closer ties to advertisers and brands.

Improve usability

Usability is a term that describes the degree to which an individual can use an app, website, or other product to achieve a specific end goal – conveniently and enjoyably. If you spot that a user struggles with completing a process due to a usability glitch, then you need to decide how you can resolve the issue.

To get started, you need to understand if the design meets your users’ needs. If it doesn’t, what’s lacking? A good way to gather answers is by gathering feedback from customers.

Make sure your onboarding is good

Just like when reading a book or meeting someone for the first time, first impressions are everything.

Make sure your onboarding process is smooth and streamlined. First-time visitors to your app should experience smooth sailing through the tasks.

Unfortunately, customers tend to remember problems, whether they’re due to site navigation or some app slowdown incident. Avoid such bad memories by conducting exhaustive dummy-run app tests to iron out the wrinkles. Pair the above steps with a well-designed in-app onboarding flow.

Put a customer feedback loop in place

Feedback is offered to customers as a means of gathering insights and actionable suggestions. To ensure you retain your hard-won customer base, you need a process for obtaining customer feedback.

Not to be skipped when consolidating customer insights, feedback loops play a crucial role in collecting and analyzing user reviews and surveys.

There are several methods to gather customer feedback:

Run a survey like Net Promoter Score®
Request that users participate in focus groups and provide feedback sessions.
Combining all of the above results, the data is analyzed for discernible trends in user behavior.

Use the right trigger

There are a number of tools available for the discerning app designer. From a design point of view, the initial trigger must be functional and aesthetically attractive. Function, of course, is more important than app attractiveness. Both work together to draw in users, though.

A dynamic design is yet another piece of the puzzle that is the human experience. By incorporating interactive elements and visually appealing graphics, users are more likely to engage with the app. Animations and scaling graphics, lines, and color changes – these dynamic elements all serve to engage the eye. Audio cues work just as well as an attention-grabbing device.

Share new feature updates with relevant users

You can use the same design techniques to separate new features and updates from the presence of regular app content. A different font color or a flashing banner directing the attention of a user’s eye causes the static of the familiar to fade while fresh new features stand out.

Kommunicate announces a new feature through a convenient tooltip: It’s a great way to share information without overwhelming the screen with attention-stealing detail.

Conclusion

Tracking user retention is a great way to verify if your app meets user needs. As soon as you notice it going down, you should start to investigate the reasons behind it. You can do it by running a survey or speaking directly to your target audience.

By using a tool like UXPin you can quickly test new features before you proceed into full launch. This way you will ensure a seamless user experience by keeping your designs easy to navigate around, and clutter-free. Try UXPin today.

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Inventory App Design – A Comprehensive Guide

UXPin — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 09:08:32 +0000

Efficient inventory management is essential for the success of any eCommerce organization. Manually tracking and recording inventory using pen and paper can be time-consuming and prone to errors. To overcome these challenges, many businesses are turning to inventory management apps to save time and improve accuracy.

We will explore the key elements of designing an effective inventory app that provides a seamless user experience and enhances productivity.

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Why Inventory App Design is Important?

Effective inventory management is crucial for small businesses and large organizations. It ensures that the right products are available at the right time, avoids stockouts, reduces carrying costs, and optimizes overall operational efficiency.

An inventory management app can significantly enhance these benefits by providing real-time visibility into inventory levels, creating efficient automations, and enabling data-driven decision-making.

UX Design in Inventory Apps

When designing an inventory app, user experience (UX) should be at the forefront of your mind. A well-designed app should be intuitive, easy to navigate, and provide a seamless workflow for users. Good UX design enhances user satisfaction and minimizes errors.

UI Design in Inventory Apps

User interface (UI) design focuses on the visual and interactive elements of an app. It encompasses the layout, typography, colors, icons, and overall aesthetics. A visually appealing and user-friendly UI design creates a positive impression, improves usability, and engages users.

Do You Need to Design Your Own Inventory App?

Nowadays, a lot of organizations pick a ready-made inventory management software, either provided by a SaaS business or optimizing an open-sourced ones. Those out-of-the-box solutions are enough if you sell regular inventory, but if you sell custom products, you might want to build your own web app or mobile app.

Then, you can personalize an inventory dashboard to your needs and get other benefits like:

Competitive Advantage: A custom app inventory system can give you a competitive edge. It can be designed to include unique features and functionalities that set you apart from your competitors.
Scalability: As your business grows, your inventory management needs will evolve. A bespoke system can be built with scalability in mind, ensuring it can adapt to your future needs without major disruptions or the need to switch to a new system.
Enhanced Security: Security is paramount when managing your inventory and customer data. With a custom solution, you have greater control over security features and can implement robust measures to protect sensitive information.
Efficiency and Automation: Your custom app can be tailored to automate routine tasks, improving efficiency and reducing human error. This can save you time and resources, allowing your team to focus on more strategic activities.

How to Design an App Inventory Management System

The development of an inventory app starts with gathering requirements, conducting research, creating wireframes, mockups, and prototypes, as well as collaborating with developers to bring the app to life. It’s vital to ensure that the app meets the functional and aesthetic requirements while delivering a seamless user experience.

Step 1: Analyze Requirements

The process starts with a thorough discussion of business needs, objectives, and the specific challenges you are facing with your current inventory management system (if any). You need to understand your workflows, user roles, and any unique features you require to be able to design the perfect dashboard.

This step also involves studying existing inventory management apps in the market to identify design patterns, usability issues, and areas for improvement. Analyzing competitor apps will help you understand industry standards, identify gaps in the market, and gain inspiration for innovative features.

Some of the features that you definitely want in an inventory management system are:

Real-Time Inventory Tracking: A core feature of any inventory app is real-time inventory tracking. Users should be able to view accurate stock levels, track item movements, and receive notifications for low stock or out-of-stock items. Real-time data ensures that users have up-to-date information for efficient decision-making.
Barcode Scanning and QR Code Integration: To streamline the inventory management process, integrate barcode scanning and QR code capabilities into your app. This feature allows users to quickly scan product codes, update inventory records, and reduce manual data entry errors.
Order and Reorder Management: To enable users to manage orders and reorder inventory seamlessly within the app. This feature should include functionalities such as creating purchase orders, tracking order status, managing supplier information, and automating reorder notifications based on predefined thresholds.
Reporting and Analytics: Provide users with comprehensive reporting and analytics capabilities to gain insights into inventory performance, sales trends, and forecasting. Customizable reports, visualizations, and data export options will empower users to make informed decisions and optimize inventory management strategies.
User Permissions and Access Control: Implement robust user permissions and access control features to ensure data security and privacy. Different user roles should have varying levels of access and functionality within the app. This feature allows for efficient collaboration while maintaining data integrity.

Step 2: Get to Design and Prototyping

Once we have a clear understanding of your requirements, the team will create wireframes and prototypes of the inventory management app. This stage allows you to see how the system will work and make any necessary adjustments.

Here are some essential considerations for creating an intuitive and visually appealing user interface (UI) and user experience (UX).

Information Architecture and Navigation: Develop a logical and intuitive information architecture that organizes the app’s content and user flow. Use clear and consistent navigation patterns, such as a menu bar or sidebar, to help users easily navigate between different sections of the app.
Visual Design and Branding: Create a visually appealing design that aligns with the branding and aesthetics of the business. Use a consistent color palette, typography, and iconography throughout the app to create a cohesive and professional look.
Responsive Design for Multiple Devices: Ensure that the app is responsive and optimized for various devices, including desktops, tablets, and smartphones. Responsive design allows users to access and manage inventory on the go, improving flexibility and productivity.
Streamlined Workflow and Task Efficiency: Design the app’s workflow in a way that minimizes unnecessary steps, reduces cognitive load, and maximizes task efficiency. Use clear and concise labels, tooltips, and error messages to guide users through each task and prevent errors.
Gestures and Interactions: Consider incorporating intuitive gestures and interactions, such as swiping, pinching, and long-pressing, to enhance the user experience. These interactions should feel natural and provide users with a sense of control.
Prototyping and Usability Testing: Once the initial design is ready, it’s crucial to prototype the app and conduct usability testing to validate the design decisions. Prototyping allows users to interact with the app’s interface and provide feedback, while usability testing helps identify any usability issues.

Step 3: Develop the Inventory App

With a validated design, it’s time to move into the development phase and bring the inventory app to life. Collaborate with developers to ensure a smooth implementation process.

Work closely with the development team to integrate the app with the necessary backend systems and databases. This integration will enable real-time data synchronization, data storage, and retrieval.

Step 4: Test the App

Thoroughly test the app in different scenarios and environments to identify and fix any bugs or issues. Conduct comprehensive quality assurance to ensure the app meets the desired performance, security, and compatibility standards.

At this stage, prepare for the app’s deployment by creating documentation, conducting training sessions, and providing ongoing support. User training is essential to ensure that users understand how to effectively use the app’s features and maximize its benefits.

Step 5: Release

The design process does not end with the app’s launch. Monitor user feedback, gather analytics data, and continuously strive to improve the app’s performance and user experience. Regularly release updates and new features based on user needs and market trends.

Once you get confident that your app works great, consider integrating additional functionalities such as predictive analytics, demand forecasting, and integration with third-party tools to further enhance the app’s capabilities.

Streamline app inventory design with UXPin Merge

Now that you have a comprehensive understanding of the key elements of designing an effective inventory app, it’s time to put your knowledge into action.

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7 Constraints in Design and How to Overcome Them

UXPin — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 14:15:09 +0000

Whether you work in an early-stage startup or a multinational enterprise, design constraints limit or influence design projects and the desired output. Seasoned designers understand that true creativity often emerges when we confront and master the constraints that shape our work. In this blog post, we delve into the art of design constraints, a topic close to the hearts of senior designers.

Key takeaways:

Design constraints are restrictions that influence the creative and technical decisions made during the design process.
The first step is acknowledging these limitations and that they constrain UX designers from delivering great design outcomes.
Understanding and managing design constraints will minimize adverse effects or eliminate issues altogether.

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What are Design Constraints?

Design constraints are limitations or restrictions in the design process imposed by internal and external factors. These constraints impact the final product, so it’s critical that everyone in the organization is aware of them and considers these limitations before every project.

Common types of design constraints include:

Technical constraints: how a product’s tech stack and engineering team limit design
Financial constraints: departmental and project budgets
Legal and regulatory constraints: laws design teams must follow
Organizational constraints: culture, structure, policies, bureaucracy
Self-imposed constraints: each designer’s workflow and creative decision-making
Talent constraints: designer skills and experience and professional shortcomings
Project-specific constraints: limitations relating to the project, including time, budget, available team members, etc.

We’ll explore these in greater detail and discuss how team members and stakeholders address design constraints.

Technical constraints

Technical constraints significantly impact design projects because they dictate how far designers can push creative and innovative boundaries.

Some examples include:

Device and operating system limitations: iOS and Android constraints, screen sizes, processing power, etc.
Accessibility constraints: how voice control and screen readers impact design decisions.
Performance constraints: the impact of user bandwidth/Internet connectivity, product servers, and tech stacks.
Integrations and APIs: limitations from external services and API requirements.
Tech stack constraints: how front-end and back-end tech impact the design process.

Financial constraints

Financial constraints impact many areas of the design process, including human resources, tools, user research, project scope, and technology. While many see financial constraints as a roadblock, they often drive creative thinking and design innovation through bootstrapping and workarounds.

Some ways financial constraints impact the design process include:

Limiting the scope of each discipline (research, wireframing, prototyping, interviews, testing, etc.)
Limits the number of iterations and testing rounds
Specifies what tools designers use
Determines the size and skill level of the design team

Legal and regulatory constraints

Legal constraints impact content and user data the most regarding UX projects. These laws change depending on the country, so designers rely on advice from legal counsel and stakeholders.

Some examples of how legal constraints impact design include:

Privacy laws: dictate what data designers collect, how they collect it, the legal notices they give users, and how they get permission–notably, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union or the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
Accessibility laws: what designers must do legally to make user interfaces accessible for users with various impairments– for example, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the United States.
Intellectual property laws: copyright for original works, including text, images, video, etc. Additionally, designers must consider whether they infringe on competitor/brand IP, trademarks, and other legal protections.
Industry-specific regulations: some industries, like financial and healthcare, have laws about privacy and security that significantly impact design–for example, login and authentication procedures.

Organizational constraints

Organizational constraints describe limitations imposed on Design by other parts of the company. These limitations often relate to the organization’s values, culture, company vision, and competing interests from other departments.

Some examples of organizational constraints include:

Time constraints: deadlines set by stakeholders can impact how designers research, prototype, and test design ideas.
Brand guidelines: an organization’s brand influences stylistic and messaging decisions.
Marketing and business goals: designers often have to balance user needs with organizational goals, which can limit design choices.
Design system constraints: available components, design principles, style guides, guidelines, and design system governance impact how designers create products.
Organizational silos: poor communication and collaboration lead to silos that hamper progress. These silos often lead to duplicate work, delays, design drift, inconsistencies, and other friction.
Design’s value: how the organization perceives the UX department can impact resource allocation and buy-in, limiting what designers can do.

Self-imposed constraints

Self-imposed constraints come from the designers, relating to the choices and options during the design process, like which design tool they use, the time it takes to complete tasks, and whether they use the product’s design system.

Talent constraints

Talent constraints relate to the skills and specialists available to the design team. It’s important to know every designer’s skill set and expertise so that managers can assign people who complement one another. Understanding talent constraints enables managers to source the right people and when to hire specialist contractors for specific design projects.

Project-specific constraints

Project constraints create design problems that otherwise don’t exist or are rare to an organization. For example, designers might have to complete a project in a shorter timeframe than they’re used to, resulting in adapting workflows or switching tools to accomplish the desired outcome.

How to Overcome Design Constraints

In many organizations, overcoming constraints is a DesignOps function. The DesignOps team must reduce these limitations and roadblocks to maximize the department’s output and organizational value.

This problem-based framework will help overcome design constraints starting with your organization’s biggest challenges. A problem-based approach will allow you to solve a specific issue and its related constraints, thus increasing the impact.

Define the problem: what challenge are you trying to solve? This could be reducing time-to-market or increasing designer productivity.
Identify the constraints: list the constraints related to this problem, i.e., budget, resources, time, technical, etc.
Prioritize the constraints: determine which limitations are most consequential and prioritize accordingly.
Brainstorm solutions: meet with appropriate experts, team members, and stakeholders to brainstorm solutions. Create a list of possibilities.
Evaluate the solutions: consider the pros and cons of each idea and determine which has the highest feasibility with the most significant potential impact.
Choose a solution: select the solution you believe will deliver the best results and put plans in place to implement it.
Test and iterate: create KPIs to measure your solution’s effectiveness and tweak them over time to optimize the results. Don’t be afraid to abandon poor-performing ideas and iterate on new ones.

Define the problem: efficacy vs. efficiency

In a webinar with UXPin, DesignOps expert Patrizia Bertini outlined how practitioners must frame problems to measure results from solutions. Patrizia argues that it’s essential to recognize the difference between efficacy and efficiency because you evaluate these differently.

Efficacy uses qualitative metrics, including:

Empathy and ongoing user engagement
Ideation and experimentation cycle times
Composition of teams’ skills (skill matrix)
Design skills’ distribution
Perceived value of design by cross-functional partners
Designer satisfaction and retention

Efficiency is measurable and quantifiable using numbers, percentages, and ratios:

Tools’ ROI (cost/engagement/adoption)
Testing and prototyping lead time (time)
Number and type of quality reviews
Team productivity (resources utilization)
End-to-end delivery time (time)

Reducing Constraints With UXPin Merge

Traditional design workflows and image-based tools present many constraints for designers–most notably, prototyping fidelity and functionality which have many adverse effects, including:

Limited user testing scope
Inability to spot usability issues during the design process
Fewer problem-solving opportunties
Limited stakeholder comprehension impacting buy-in
Less ability to identify business opportunities
Poor designer/developer collaboration and challenging design handoffs

UXPin Merge solves these issues and many more by syncing your product’s component library to UXPin’s design editor, so designers use the same UI elements during the design process as engineers use to develop the final product.

Merge components are fully interactive and function in UXPin exactly as they do in the repository and final product. This interactivity provides design teams with a component-driven workflow that increases project scope and enables significantly faster testing and iterations.

Merge breaks down silos and operational constraints because designers and engineers speak the same language. Design handoffs with Merge are seamless and frictionless, requiring less documentation and explanation because engineers already have the same component library. UXPin renders JSX, so engineers simply copy/paste to apply these to the component’s props.

Merge also significantly reduces testing constraints. Usability testing participants and stakeholders can interact with prototypes like they would the final product, producing meaningful, actionable results to iterate and improve outcomes.

“Our stakeholders are able to provide feedback pretty quickly using UXPin Merge. We can send them a link to play with the prototype in their own time and UXPin allows them to provide comments directly on the prototypes. UXPin’s Comments functionality is great because we can follow along and mark comments as resolved once we address them.” – Erica Rider, UX Lead EPX at PayPal.

Eliminate prototyping limitations with a code-based design solution from UXPin Merge. Iterate faster to deliver high-quality projects, even under the tightest time constraints. Visit our Merge page for more details and how to request access.

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What is Interaction Design?

UXPin — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 13:41:06 +0000

Interaction design is one of the most critical facets of user experience design. It makes the product’s interface respond to user’s action, aiding in human-to-computer interaction.

Key takeaways:

Interaction design is a multidisciplinary design field that focuses on the interaction between users and digital products, systems, or interfaces.
It involves designing how users engage with and experience a product, with the goal of making that interaction intuitive and efficient.
It’s often abbreviated as IxD.

It’s one of the most challenging stages of UX design process. UXPin’s code-based design tool reduces those challenges by allowing designers to build functional prototypes with extreme fidelity and interactivity. Deliver better customer experiences today. Sign up for a free trial.

What is Interaction Design?

Interaction design is a process of making human-to-computer interfaces (HCI) feel human-like. Interactive digital products create this “human” connection by giving feedback to the end-users. The feedback can be through a scroll-provoked animation, clicked state of a button or transition to another page.

Often shortened to IxD, interaction design uses appropriate interactive elements, such as transitions, microinteractions, animation, but also text, color, visuals, and layout impact users’ feeling and behavior–allowing them to design interactions strategically to elicit the appropriate response.

A good use of interaction design successfully leads to positive user experiences, including:

Greater product satisfaction
Deeper usability comprehension
Faster learnability
A deeper personal connection
Increased likelihood of repeated use

Interaction Design vs UI Design

Interaction design focuses on human-computer interaction, including animations, microinteractions, transitions, search, and other motion-based designs. They decide, for example, what happens when a user taps an element.

User interface design focuses on visual design and aesthetics, including color, fonts, iconography, layouts, etc. They decide what a user interface must look like.

To summarize:

Interaction design is about Interactions and movement
UI design is about visual design and aesthetics

In smaller companies and startups, a UI designer is often responsible for both tasks, while the roles are separate in larger organizations. Like anything in digital product design, the roles and responsibilities can synergize. It all depends on the company, product, and organizational structure.

Interaction Design vs UX Design

Interaction design is a specialized discipline within UX design. Where UX looks at the entire user experience and how everything ties together, interaction designers focus on user interactions and motion.

User experience designers apply UX fundamentals like design thinking, human-centered design, and user research to make decisions. They’re specifically concerned with a user’s tasks, actions, and environment, while interaction designers focus on making the digital product respond to user actions in an appropriate way. They tend to think about what happens when a user clicks a button, types a phrase into a search bar or hovers over an image.

Interaction Design Principles

We’ve chosen our favorite IxD principles from Don Norman’s (co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group) book, The Design of Everyday Things.

Visibility

With many features and limited space, prioritizing visibility is a significant design challenge. Don Norman’s theory is that the more visible something is, the more likely a user sees and interacts with it. Interaction designers must balance visibility prioritization based on user needs and business goals.

A typical example of visibility is prioritizing navigation links on mobile devices. What links are visible via the app bar, and what do designers place in the navigation drawer behind a hamburger menu?

Feedback

Feedback is how a digital product or system communicates with users. Interaction designers have several ways to express this feedback, including motion/animation, tactile, audio, copy, etc.

They must also consider accessibility and how products relay feedback to all types of users and assistive technologies.

Constraints

Cluttered UIs with too many possibilities confuse users and create usability issues. Good interaction design limits (or constrains) user actions to guide them through the product more efficiently.

We see these constraints most commonly with landing pages. Designers strip away navigation, links, and anything else that might tempt users to leave the page, leaving only a prominent CTA or form. Constraining users to a single action allows them to focus on the content that leads to a conversion.

Mapping

Interaction designers must create a clear relationship between controls and their effect on a digital product. The idea is to map these relationships to feel natural to users.

For example, the top button on an iPhone increases the volume while the lower one decreases. This intuitive layout means users don’t have to think about which button performs which action.

The more intuitive and obvious a product is to use, the easier and more enjoyable the experience.

Consistency

Consistency is vital for interaction and UI design. Inconsistency can confuse users and create usability issues. Designers not only have to design consistent UIs and interactions but also consider consistency across multiple screen sizes and devices.

Many organizations build a design system or adopt an open-source component library to increase consistency with approved UI patterns and interactions. When designers don’t have to think about these choices, they can focus on the user experience and apply the appropriate pattern to help users achieve the desired result.

Affordance

Affordance tells users how to use something or perform an action. It’s an interaction designer’s job to ensure that it’s obvious to users how to complete tasks using UI elements.

For example, a submit button’s disabled state tells users to complete a form’s required fields before submitting. Using a different color and underline for links tells users which text they can click.

Cognition

Interaction designers must have a basic understanding of cognitive psychology in UX design–attention and perception, memory, problem-solving, and creative thinking. The aim is to design products and experiences that don’t overload these mental processes.

Cognition deals with several design psychology principles, including:

Gestalt principles: how the human brain perceives visuals to create familiar structures.
Von Restorff effect: predicts that in a group of objects, the one that differs stands out or is most likely to be remembered.
Hick’s Law: the more choices you give someone, the longer it’ll take them to make a decision.
The Principle of Least Effort: users will make choices or take action requiring the least amount of energy.
The Serial Positioning Effect: humans are most likely to remember the first (primacy effect) and last (recency effect) items in a list, sentence, or piece of content.
The Principle of Perpetual Habit: people rely on familiar routines and habits–which is why it’s crucial to use universal design patterns.
The Principle of Emotional Contagion: humans will mimic or empathize with the emotions and behaviors of others, including animals and animations–which is why designers use faces (even emojis) to emphasize feeling and emotion.
Fitts’s Law: the time required to move to a target area is a function between the distance and the target’s size.

Dive deeper into cognition in this article: UX Design Psychology Tricks for Design Excellence and this one: A UX Designer’s Guide to Improving Speed of Use. These principles apply to all UX disciplines.

Interaction Design Checklist

We found this helpful interaction design checklist from the US Government’s Technology Transformation Services website, usability.gov. The checklist includes several questions to consider when designing interactions.

Define how users interact with the interface – click/tap, push, swipe, drag & drop, keyboard controls, etc.
Give users clues about behavior before they take action – correct labeling, different colors for links, using consistency for clickable UI elements, etc.
Anticipate and mitigate errors – how do you prevent errors while providing helpful messages to correct problems?
Consider system feedback and response time – what happens after users complete an action, and how soon does that feedback appear?
Strategically think about each element – have you chosen the appropriate element/pattern? Is there enough space between clickable elements to avoid errors? Have you followed design psychology principles (mentioned above)? Scrutinize every decision from a user’s perspective.
Simplify for learnability – make user interfaces and tasks as simple as possible, use familiar patterns, and minimize cognitive-draining tasks and features to simplify the user experience.

Also, check out the IxD Checklist from Aaron Legaspi and Amit Jakhu.

Interaction Design Resources

UXPin–The Ultimate Interaction Design Tool

A lack of fidelity and functionality is a significant problem for interaction designers when prototyping and testing using traditional image-based design tools.

Interaction designers must create multiple frames to replicate basic code functionality, which takes considerable time and effort. With UXPin’s code-based design tool, designers can achieve significantly better results with less effort. Here’s how:

States

UXPin enables designers to create multiple States for a single component. For example, you can build a button with default, hover, active and disabled states, each with separate properties and triggers.

UXPin’s States also allows designers to create more complex UI patterns like carousels, accordions, dropdown menus, and more using a single frame. These UI patterns behave like code, giving interaction designers accurate results and feedback during testing.

Interactions

With UXPin Interactions, designers can build immersive, code-like experiences far beyond the capabilities of image-based design tools. UXPin offers a wide range of triggers, actions, and animations to create fully functional, animated prototypes.

Conditional Interactions allow designers to take prototypes a step further with Javascript-like “if-then” and “if-else” conditions to create dynamic user experiences.

Variables

In UXPin, form fields look and function like the final product. Variables allow designers to capture user inputs and use that data elsewhere in the prototype–like a personalized welcome message after completing an onboarding form.

Expressions

UXPin Expressions take prototyping to another level with code-like functionality, including form validation and computational components (updating a shopping cart). When combined with States, Interactions, and Variables, Expressions allow designers to build prototypes that function like the final product.

These powerful features mean interaction designers don’t have to learn code or rely on engineers to build fully functioning prototypes for accurate testing. With UXPin, designers can build, test, and iterate faster and achieve significantly better results.

Tired of asking usability participants and stakeholders to “imagine” something happening? Switch to UXPin and start prototyping with the world’s most advanced code-based design tool. Sign up for a free trial today.

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The post What is Interaction Design? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Double Diamond Design Process – The Best Framework for a Successful Product Design

UXPin — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 13:27:23 +0000

The Double Diamond design process is a widely used methodology for identifying a problem and developing a solution. This outcomes-based framework encourages creativity and innovation while focusing on the core issue and its impact on end-users.

Key takeaways

Double Diamond is a design framework for developing digital product’s UX and UI design.
The process is represented by two diamonds that symbolize divergent and convergent thinking.
It involves four stages (discover, define, develop, and deliver) that go one after the other, but you can jump between them if needed.

Deliver better products to your users with the world’s most advanced prototyping tool. Sign up for a free trial to explore interactive prototyping with UXPin.

What is the Double Diamond?

The Double Diamond model is a framework for innovation and design developed by the British Design Council in 2003. The Design Council wanted a simple design process for delivering projects, no matter the methods and tools used.

The design framework features two diamonds:

a diamond that represents the problem.
a diamond that stands for the solution.

Designers work within these diamonds. They help them to truly understand the problem and thoroughly test their solutions.

Once designers identify a core issue in the first diamond, they create a design brief as a foundation for the second. The second diamond focuses on prototyping and testing a solution until its ready for release.

The Origin of the Double Diamond Design Process

The Double Diamond we know as a design framework came from the British Design Council, but the inspiration for this process came from Hungarian-American linguist Béla H. Bánáthy’s divergence-convergence model.

Béla’s model looks very similar to the design framework where he used the first diamond to explore an issue widely and deeply (divergent thinking) and then took an appropriate focused action (convergent thinking).

What is a Design Framework?

Design frameworks provide teams with a systematic approach to solving problems and delivering projects. These frameworks include tools, workflows, protocols, and processes that guide designers in delivering a project successfully.

The Four Phases of the Double Diamond Design Process

The Double Diamond design process comprises two diamonds and four phases (also called the four Ds):

Discover
Define
Develop
Deliver

Diamond One – Discovering and Defining the Problem

The first diamond is about UX research and exploration, often referred to as the “problem space”–similar to the empathize and define stages of the design thinking process.

Designers start by researching the problem and user needs. This phase might include reviewing analytics and UX artifacts, interviewing end-users, conducting a service safari, and other early-phase research methods.

In phase two, designers use discovery phase research to define the problem and how it impacts users. Design teams may iterate over phases one and two a few times until they get to the core issue. Some UX artifacts designers might create include:

At the end of phase two, designers create a design brief to guide the second half of the design process towards finding an appropriate solution.

Diamond Two – Developing and Delivering the Solution

The second diamond is about ideating, prototyping, and testing to find a suitable solution.

The develop phase is a busy stage of the Double Diamond framework where teams use various tools and methods, including:

Workshops and brainstorming: gathering as a team to ideate, hypothesize, conduct experiments, and discuss possible solutions.
Low-fidelity design: sketches, wireframes, paper prototypes, and other lo-fi methods designers use to develop and test many ideas quickly.
Cross-functional collaboration: designers meet with engineers, product owners, and other stakeholders to discuss ideas for feedback on possible challenges and constraints.

The development phase is an iterable process of ideation, prototyping, and testing several ideas until designers identify a single solution with the most potential to:

Solve the problem
Align with user needs
Meet budget and technical constraints

In some circumstances, designers choose a single solution or select their best two or three ideas for high-fidelity prototyping and testing in the deliver phase. The first goal is to eliminate those that don’t work until you arrive at a single solution.

Once designers arrive at a single solution, they conduct further testing to refine the final prototype. During this round of testing, designers focus on usability and user experience to ensure the final result satisfies the design brief and stakeholders.

If designers encounter a problem, they return to the develop phase to find a solution, iterating and testing until they find a solution.

Once prototyping and testing are complete, design teams prepare for the design handoff, including documentation, annotations, assets, and other instructions engineers will use to develop the final product for release.

Lastly, design teams must conduct a UX audit and quality assurance to ensure the final release meets the project’s requirements, business goals, and user needs.

Try End-to-End UX Design With UXPin

Prototyping and testing are significant in the end-to-end design process, including the Double Diamond framework. Designers must use high-quality prototypes to thoroughly test potential solutions and achieve accurate results.

Unfortunately, high-fidelity prototyping can be slow with certain tools, which isn’t ideal when testing many ideas in the Double Diamond design process.

With fully interactive design from UXPin, designers don’t have to compromise on quality for speed. They can build high-fidelity prototypes that look and function like the final product. Better prototypes yield accurate results during testing, allowing designers to go beyond what’s possible with image-based design tools.

UXPin also comes standard with built-in design libraries, allowing design teams to drag and drop components to build high-fidelity mockups in minutes. In a few clicks, they can add Interactions to create prototypes with code-like functionality, including:

States: create multiple states for any element, each with separate properties and interactions.
Variables: capture user inputs and take action based on the data to create dynamic, personalized user experiences during testing.
Conditional Interactions: create “if-then” and “if-else” rules to execute different reactions to user actions and inputs.
Expressions: design functions to perform complex operations traditionally only available with code, including form validation, computational components, simulate password authentication, and more.

No matter the framework, UXPin can enhance your design process to create better user experiences for your customers. Sign up for a free trial and discover the possibilities of code-based design with UXPin.

Try UXPin for free

The post Double Diamond Design Process – The Best Framework for a Successful Product Design appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Button States Explained – How to Design them

UXPin — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 09:55:18 +0000

Buttons are pivotal in this experience, acting as road signs for user actions. This guide unravels the complex world of button states, revealing how they facilitate effective user interface design. Learn about common types of button states, design principles, and cross-platform considerations.

Key takeaways:

Button states serve as critical visual cues that inform users of possible interactions within a digital interface.
Consistent design across various button states enhances user experience by providing familiar, easy-to-recognize cues.
Accessibility considerations like ARIA roles and keyboard navigation are non-negotiables when designing button states.
Cross-platform design requires adapting button states to meet the distinct guidelines and user expectations of web, mobile, and other devices like smart TVs.

UXPin’s States lets you apply states depending on different user actions or system changes to enhance testing during the design process. Sign up for a free trial to design with States and other advanced UXPin features.

What are Button States?

A button’s state indicates the element’s current interactive condition, whether ready for a user action or in a non-responsive mode. Understanding these states ensures clear user feedback, highlighting possible actions or barriers.

For example, a hover microinteraction (changes the button style, animation, etc.) suggests a button is clickable, while a grayed-out one indicates an unavailable action. Properly utilized button states streamline user experiences, reduce confusion, and elevate interface intuitiveness.

What are the Types of Button States?

Buttons typically have four to six states (sometimes more) depending on the product and available actions. Here are seven standard states found in modern product development:

Default state
Hover state
Active state
Focus state
Disabled state
Loading state
Toggle state

These states apply to all button types, including:

Primary: The main action button, often bold and contrasting, directs users to the most important task.
Secondary: Less prominent but still important, used for alternative actions that complement the primary task.
Tertiary: Least emphasized, usually for low-priority tasks, often appearing as simple text or an outline.