Healthcare apps are transforming the patient-care paradigm, offering multifaceted benefits for patients and medical professionals. These apps provide real-time health monitoring, instant communication channels, and many functionalities tailored to individual needs. From secure symptom checkers to instant appointment bookings, these apps elevate the healthcare experience, combining technology with wellness. 

Key takeaways:

• Key features of an effective healthcare app include secure messaging, medication tracking, appointment bookings, and interactive symptom checkers.
• Navigating the design challenges of healthcare apps involves addressing regulatory constraints, system integrations, and ensuring stringent data security.Adopting tools like UXPin Merge can optimize the design process, ensuring high-fidelity prototypes that mirror final product functionalities.

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What is a Healthcare App?

A healthcare app is a digital tool designed to address health-related needs, from wearables to mobile and web apps. This mobile app technology is especially significant for on-the-go healthcare solutions. From booking doctor’s appointments to monitoring vital signs, these apps streamline health management processes for patients and healthcare professionals.

Designing a healthcare mobile app is a delicate process, considering the importance of the data it manages. Beyond medical interventions, these apps also promote overall wellness by providing resources for preventive care. 

Medical applications are crucial in bridging the gap between patients and health services. They provide real-time health monitoring, data-driven insights, and efficient communication channels to improve patient outcomes and enhance healthcare efficiency.

What are the Benefits of a Healthcare App?

Healthcare apps have revolutionized the way patients and medical professionals interact, bringing forth a range of benefits that cater to modern-day healthcare demands:

Benefits for patients:

• Immediate Access: No more waiting in queues; patients can book or reschedule appointments in seconds.
• Health Tracking: Seamlessly track vitals, medication schedules, etc.
• Personalized Insights: Get tailored health advice based on real-time data.
• Secure Communication: Safely discuss health concerns with healthcare professionals.
• Digital Records: Access medical histories, prescriptions, and test results anytime, anywhere.

Benefits for providers:

• Efficient Scheduling: Automate appointments, reducing administrative tasks.
• Real-time Monitoring: Oversee patient health metrics as they come in.
• Data-driven Decisions: Use gathered data for more accurate diagnoses and treatments.
• Improved Outreach: Connect with patients, send reminders, or share health information easily.
• Cost-effective: Reduce overhead costs through automated processes and streamlined workflows.

What are Some Features That a Healthcare App Should Have?

The healthcare tech industry is broad, with many features and user interface design possibilities. Here are some features you might consider based on your product’s purpose, user needs, and goals.

Appointment and procedure bookings

• Instant Bookings: Allow patients to schedule, reschedule, or cancel appointments within moments.
• Smart Calendars: Integrate doctor schedules so patients view real-time availability.
• Notification Alerts: Send reminders for upcoming appointments or procedures to reduce no-shows.
• History Tracking: Record past appointments and procedures for easy reference.

Remote consultations

• Video Consultations: Enable face-to-face consultations without physical constraints.
• Secure Messaging: Offer encrypted chat options for patients to discuss health matters privately.
• File Sharing: Facilitate the secure exchange of medical records, lab results, or images.
• Billing Integration: Process payments for online consultations.

Medication Tracking and Reminders

• Digital Prescription Lists: List down medications prescribed with their timings and dosages.
• Timely Alerts: Notify patients when it’s time to take their medications.
• Refill Reminders: Alert patients when they need to refill a prescription.
• Dosage Information: Provide details about each drug, its side effects, and interactions.

Symptom checkers:

• Interactive Questionnaires: Guide patients through questions to evaluate their symptoms.
• Immediate Triage: Based on symptoms, suggest if a user should seek immediate care, consult remotely, or book an in-person visit.
• Integration with Professionals: Facilitate a quick consultation booking if a symptom indicates urgency.
• Educative Content: Provide relevant information about the identified symptoms, potential causes, and preliminary care steps.

What are the Challenges of Designing a Healthcare App?

Healthcare apps offer design teams more challenges for patient and provider-facing interfaces than the average digital product. Designers must navigate the regulatory constraints and complex system integrations. Here are some key challenges to consider and plan for.

Regulatory and Compliance Considerations

Healthcare app design offers many challenges and complexities in processing and storing user data–the most sensitive and protected information globally. Here are some things designers must consider to stay compliant.

HIPAA and Data Privacy:

• Strategy: Prioritize user data safety from day one. Design the app structure so sensitive patient information remains encrypted in transit and at rest.
• Consideration: Understand HIPAA’s guidelines and make the app infrastructure compliant, ensuring that third-party integrations adhere to these standards.

FDA and Medical App Classifications:

• Strategy: Clarify the app’s medical classification, as it sets the foundation for regulatory compliance.
• Consideration: Is the app intended for diagnosis or treatment? Does it influence medication? Answers dictate FDA requirements and oversight.

Global Considerations:

• Strategy: Adopt a globally-aware design stance. Familiarize yourself with varying healthcare rules in targeted regions.
• Consideration: Countries differ in healthcare regulations. An app successful in the U.S. might require modifications for the EU due to the GDPR.

Integrating with existing systems

Healthcare product developers must deal with complex integrations and systems, each with rigid security and restrictions. Here are some of the systems designers must consider and research.

Electronic Health Records (EHR):

• Strategy: Seamless data flow is vital. Ensure the app can effortlessly pull and push data from and to EHRs.
• Consideration: Beyond integration, think about data accuracy and real-time updates. Mobile app users shouldn’t experience information lag.

Pharmacy systems:

• Strategy: Create an intuitive bridge between the app and pharmacy databases, ensuring quick medication data access.
• Consideration: Can users easily order or refill prescriptions? The smoother this process, the more value the app offers.

Insurance and billing platforms:

• Strategy: Financial elements in healthcare can be intricate. Simplify the design to allow straightforward navigation of insurance claims and billing details.
• Consideration: Offer summarized views, detailed breakdowns, and instant support options for financial queries.

Ensuring security and trust

Healthcare apps must have security features and protocols comparable, sometimes stricter, than banking or finance apps. Designers must incorporate features that secure app access while reassuring users their information is safe. Here are some considerations for designing robust healthcare applications.

End-to-end encryption:

• Strategy: Design the app with a security-first mindset. Use robust encryption methods to safeguard patient data.
• Consideration: Every piece of patient information, no matter how trivial, needs protection. Never compromise on encryption.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA):

• Strategy: Incorporate MFA to provide an additional security shield, deterring unauthorized access.
• Consideration: While MFA enhances security, ensure the process remains user-friendly and not overly complex.

Transparent data practices:

• Strategy: Be upfront about how the app uses, stores, and shares data. Design a clear, concise privacy policy and make it easily accessible.
• Consideration: Trust is hard to gain and easy to lose. Be open about data practices; users will be more inclined to trust the app.

Accessibility and inclusivity

Accessibility and inclusivity are paramount for healthcare app development because their purpose is to serve everyone. Understanding user needs and limitations is crucial to ensure user interfaces accommodate all user groups.

Implement WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) Standards:

• Strategy: Aim to comply with WCAG 2.1 AA standards as a minimum benchmark.
• Consideration: Utilize accessibility tools like axe or WAVE to evaluate the app’s accessibility levels. Rectify identified shortcomings.

Voice command integration:

• Strategy: Enhance usability by incorporating voice command functionalities, beneficial for visually impaired users and those with motor disabilities.
• Consideration: Integrate with voice recognition platforms like Google’s Speech-to-Text or Apple’s Speech framework.

Captioning and transcripts:

• Strategy: Provide captions and transcripts if your app uses audio or video.
• Consideration: Collaborate with transcription services like Rev or use automated tools like Otter.ai. Ensure accuracy and clarity.

Provide Keyboard Navigation:

• Strategy: Ensure the app is navigable via keyboards for users with motor disabilities.
• Consideration: During development, enforce tab order and keyboard focus rules.

Language and localization:

• Strategy: Consider non-native speakers. Offer multiple language support and ensure clarity in translations.
• Action: Collaborate with localization services. Avoid direct translations–context is crucial.

How to Improve Healthcare Product Design With UXPin Merge

Step 1: UX Research and gathering requirements

Start by understanding the healthcare domain and your target audience. Conduct surveys, interviews, and field studies with end-users and healthcare providers to gather insights. Engage with experts from the healthcare industry for deeper insights. This research will guide the design process, ensuring the app meets user needs and regulatory requirements.

Step 2: Sketching and paper prototyping

Map user journeys, sketch UIs, and create paper prototypes of user flows to develop ideas and insights to guide the digital design process.

Step 3: Digital wireframing in UXPin

Use UXPin’s built-in User Flows library to design the app’s information architecture. Draft a wireframe version of the app’s interface. Map user flows and layouts using UXPin’s Forms and Shapes to identify structure and navigation.

Step 4: Choose a design system that meets your needs

Import React or other JavaScript framework components directly into UXPin using Merge. You can also use one of UXPin’s built-in Merge libraries to begin prototyping immediately, including Fluent UI, Ant Design, MUI, and Material UI.

Using code components during the design process helps maintain UI consistency while streamlining designer/development collaboration.

Step 5: Create high-fidelity mockups

This phase emphasizes refining the app UI to make it intuitive and visually appealing. Transition from wireframes to high-fidelity interactive Merge components. 

Merge creates a drag-and-drop environment with styling (fonts, colors, sizing, etc.) and interactivity (states, APIs, etc.) programmed into UI elements–far better than any UI kit in Figma or other image-based UI design tools. These Merge components mirror those in the final product and ensure your designs align with what’s feasible in development.

Step 6: Interactive prototyping

Implement screen transitions, navigation, animations, and interactivity using UXPin’s Interactions. Set component-level states, styling, and interactivity via UXPin’s Properties Panel. Merge pulls these properties from the component’s props defined in the design system’s repository, so designers and engineers work within the same constraints.

Step 7: Gather stakeholder feedback

Share interactive prototypes with stakeholders to gather feedback. Stakeholders can view and interact with prototypes and annotate feedback using UXPin’s Comments. They can assign comments to specific team members who mark them resolved after appropriate action.

“Our stakeholders can provide feedback pretty quickly using UXPin. We can send them a link to play with the prototype in their own time, and UXPin allows them to comment 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, Product, UX, and DesignOps thought leader.

Step 8: User testing:

Using Merge’s interactive components for testing means users and stakeholders can interact with prototypes like they would the final product. These realistic user experiences give design teams valuable, actionable insights to iterate and improve, allowing them to solve more usability issues during the design process.

Share the interactive designs with a varied group of testers. Capture their feedback to pinpoint areas of improvement, ensuring the healthcare app’s user experience is intuitive and caters to the needs identified during your initial research.

With UXPin’s Mirror app, you can test prototypes on iOS and Android devices to ensure designs meet platform-specific needs and requirements.

Step 9: Design handoff to developers

Document your component usage, design guidelines, and best practices for developers and future projects. Using React components in the design process means devs require less documentation and explanation. UXPin produces production-ready JSX so engineers can copy/paste to start development. This streamlined process paves the way for smoother app development.

UXPin is a full-stack UI/UX design tool with everything design teams need to execute complex projects like healthcare apps. Merge technology enables designers to prototype with code components and get meaningful insights to iterate and improve while enhancing collaboration with engineering teams.

Bridge the gap between design and development to simplify complex interactive digital products with UXPin and Merge technology. Visit our Merge page for more details and how to request access.

The post Healthcare App Design in 9 Steps – Overcome UX Challenges for Health Industry appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Mobile navigation refers to designing and implementing menus, controls, and interactions that enable users to navigate a digital product’s content and features. It encompasses the placement, visibility, and functionality of navigation elements, such as menus, icons, tabs, and gestures.

Well-designed navigation facilitates intuitive and effortless user interactions, allowing users to discover and access the desired content or functionality easily. Conversely, poor navigation can cause frustration, confusion, or high bounce rates, leading to a negative user experience and possibly abandonment.

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What is Mobile Navigation?

Mobile navigation is a set of UI elements that help end-users move through the app or mobile website, access desired pages, and find information quicker. Those UI elements include buttons, icons, and menus. Most mobile apps and websites use familiar mobile navigation patterns. Let’s explore them.

Types of Mobile Navigation Patterns

Designers should carefully evaluate their product needs to determine the most appropriate design pattern for optimal user experience. Here are six common navigation patterns designers use for mobile interfaces.

• Hamburger Menu: The hamburger icon is a popular navigation pattern that consists of a horizontally stacked icon resembling a hamburger. When tapped or clicked, it expands to reveal a hidden menu with navigation options. Designers use the hamburger pattern for its space-saving benefits and ability to provide access to secondary or less frequently used features.
• Tab Bar Navigation: Tab bar navigation is a horizontal bar of tabs used to segment and organize content. Each tab represents a different section or category, allowing users to switch between them with a single tap. Tab bars provide quick and easy navigation, making them ideal for applications with distinct sections or workflows.
• Bottom Navigation: Bottom navigation patterns are fixed to the bottom of the screen with 3-5 primary destinations. Each item typically includes icons or labels representing different sections or pages. A bottom navigation bar offers easy access to primary features and promotes thumb-friendly interaction, making it suitable for apps with few top-level destinations.
• Navigation Drawer: The navigational drawer slides in from the side or top of the screen with a list of navigation options. Designers often use navigational drawers for websites or as secondary navigation to complement the bottom nav for a mobile app.
• App bar: The app bar, also known as the top bar or action bar, is a navigation pattern located at the top of the screen. It often includes the app’s title, logo, navigation icons or tabs, and additional actions or settings. The app bar provides quick access to essential features and context-specific actions and can serve as a consistent element throughout the app.
• Gesture-based navigation: Swipe gestures involve horizontal or vertical swiping motions to navigate between screens or interact with content. Users can use swiping for tasks like navigating image galleries, switching between tabs, or revealing hidden menus. It provides a natural and intuitive way to navigate forwards and backward between screens, enhancing the overall user experience.
• Full-screen navigation: Full-screen navigation utilizes the entire screen to display navigational links, providing a focused and immersive experience. It often involves gestures, such as swiping or tapping, to reveal menus, navigation elements, or content.
• Floating action button (FAB): The floating action button is a prominent circular button that floats above the content and provides access to the app’s most important or frequently used action. It can be used for tasks like creating new content, initiating a chat, or making a call.

Key Considerations for Mobile Navigation Design

Here are three things to consider when choosing a mobile navigation pattern for your app or digital product.

Account for limited screen real estate

Designers must consider the limited screen real estate to select the correct pattern, prioritize nav items, and streamline the design for optimal usability.

For example, collapsible menus or combining navigation items under a single menu icon (such as the hamburger menu) can help save valuable screen space while still providing access to critical sections of an app or website.

Plan touchscreen interaction

Mobile navigation design must account for touchscreen interactions, such as taps, swipes, and gestures. Designing touch-friendly navigation elements with sufficient tap targets and intuitive swipe gestures enhances the user experience.

For example, utilizing swipe gestures to navigate between screens or implementing thumb-friendly navigation buttons makes interactions effortless and intuitive.

Think about user context and goals

Understanding the user’s context and goals is vital when designing mobile navigation. Organizing navigation options based on user preferences, location, or the stage of their journey can improve usability.

For example, a food delivery app could prioritize search functionality on the home screen during lunchtime when users are in a buyer’s mindset, while during off-peak hours, it could promote discounts and specials to encourage more sales.

Best Practices for Mobile Navigation Design

• Apply clear labeling: Use descriptive labels that accurately convey the purpose of navigation elements, ensuring users can easily understand and navigate the app.
• Leverage icons and visual cues: Utilize recognizable and intuitive icons along with visual cues to assist users in understanding the navigation options and actions available.
• Keep consistency across screens: Maintain a consistent navigation structure, placement, and style throughout the app to provide familiarity and ease of use.
• Prioritize important actions: Organize navigation elements based on their importance and relevance, emphasizing primary actions and minimizing clutter for a seamless user experience.
• Responsive and adaptive design: Ensure the navigation design is responsive and adapts to different screen sizes and orientations, providing optimal usability across various devices.
• Think about accessibility: Implement accessibility features such as appropriate color contrast, sufficient touch target sizes, and support for assistive technologies to make navigation inclusive for all users.
• Collect user feedback: Conduct user testing and gather feedback to evaluate the effectiveness of the navigation design, making iterative improvements based on usability testing results.

4 Common Mobile Navigation Pitfalls to Avoid

Hidden or obscure navigation elements

Avoid hiding essential navigation elements, such as menus or buttons, behind ambiguous icons or gestures. Users should easily locate and access navigation options without guessing their purpose.

For example, using an unlabeled obscure navigation icon without clearly indicating its function can lead to confusion.

Overloading the navigation with options

Avoid overwhelming users with too many navigation choices, as the interface can be cluttered and confusing. Prioritize essential options and simplify navigation to provide a focused, streamlined experience.

For example, a messaging app with numerous secondary navigation options and submenus can become overwhelming and hinder the core messaging functionality.

No or unclear feedback

Provide users with clear visual or interactive feedback when interacting with navigation elements. Visual cues, animations, or haptic feedback can confirm user actions and help them understand the system’s response. For example, highlighting the selected tab in a tab bar or providing microinteractions when users tap a link enhances user feedback.

Poor usability and discoverability

Understanding the impacts of discoverability and usability is crucial for designing intuitive mobile navigation. Users must know how to navigate user interfaces and access a product’s key features. For example, you don’t want to bury your app’s most essential features in a multi-layered dropdown menu where people are unlikely to find or use them.

Advanced Mobile Navigation Techniques

Gestural navigation and interactions

Explore innovative gestural interactions for navigation, such as swiping, pinching, or using multi-touch gestures. Utilizing a user’s device interactions creates a more intuitive user experience, giving your product a competitive edge. For example, a news app could allow users to swipe left or right to switch between articles or pinch to zoom in on images.

Voice and AI-powered navigation

Integrate voice user interactions and AI capabilities to offer hands-free navigation. For example, a VUI within a recipe app could guide users through the navigation and provide voice-controlled commands for hands-free cooking.

One-handed navigation

There are many instances where users use mobile devices with one hand. Designers can prioritize navigation items to meet user needs and even offer the option to optimize the experience for left-handed individuals.

Interactive Mobile Navigation Prototyping With UXPin

Build fully interactive prototypes with UXPin to test and optimize your navigation patterns. With UXPin’s advanced prototyping features, designers can create complex UI components and navigation interactions to enhance prototyping capabilities and solve more problems during the design process.

For example, this multilevel dropdown menu offers intuitive interactivity to replicate the final product experience accurately.

Designers can use UXPin Mirror (for iOS and Android) to test navigation prototypes on mobile phones–like this smart home app example demonstrating card and list navigation. Mobile app users can also swipe left and right on the cards to utilize gestures.

UXPin’s mobile triggers for Interactions include tap, double tap, swipe (left, right, up, down), press hold, and release hold. Depending on state changes and other interactivity, designers can also program many system/app triggers.

Discover how interactive prototypes can enhance your testing capability with UXPin. Sign up for a free trial to explore UXPin’s advanced features.

The post What is Mobile Navigation? And How it Impacts User Experience appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Mobile navigation is crucial for digital product design as it directly impacts user satisfaction and engagement. Many users access the web on mobile devices, so designers must prioritize mobile navigation to ensure seamless interaction and a positive user experience.

Mobile navigation should be easily accessible and intuitive. Mobile users must quickly locate and understand how to navigate through your app or website. Using familiar UI design patterns such as hamburger menus or tab bars, designers can capitalize on established mental models to make navigation feel effortless.

Due to limited screen real estate, mobile navigation should be small and prioritized but with a touch target sufficient for thumbs and fingers while allowing enough surrounding whitespace to avoid accidental taps. Designers must also consider reach and placement so users can access mobile navigation effortlessly and intuitively.

This article explores various types, examples, and ten best practices to elevate your mobile navigation design game. With a keen focus on accessibility, intuitive patterns, and optimized touchpoints, learn how to captivate and keep users engaged with your app or website through thoughtful mobile navigation patterns.

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Types of Mobile Navigation Menus

Here are some common types of mobile navigation used for responsive web design and native applications.

Tab menu (or tab bar):

A tab menu sits at the top or bottom of a screen, with icons and labels representing different app sections. Users can quickly switch between sections by tapping on the corresponding icon.

Bottom navigation

Like a tab menu, the bottom navigation pattern places the primary options at the bottom of the screen, making it easily accessible for users with one-handed operation.

Top navigation (App bar)

App bars are standard across websites and cross-platform applications, typically featuring a back button/hamburger menu, page title, and other action buttons.

Hamburger menu (or side drawer)

The three-horizontal line hamburger menu is the standard UI pattern for mobile navigation, like hidden drawers and modals. Users tap the hamburger icon to reveal the menu’s items.

Navigation rail

A navigation rail is a compact sidebar menu for tablets, but you also see this navigational pattern in Gmail’s desktop application. Navigation rails offer great space-saving benefits while keeping menu items visible and easy to access.

Floating action button (FAB)

A FAB is a button floating above the main content, usually in the bottom right of the screen, so users can easily reach it with their thumb. Designers use FABs for a primary action within the user interface–for example, Gmail uses a FAB for composing a new email in its mobile app.

Bottom sheets

Bottom sheets display supplementary content and actions on mobile screens. These sheets can be scrollable, allowing designers to offer many additional options and links only when the user needs them (progressive disclosure), keeping UIs uncluttered.

Gesture-based navigation

Gesture-based navigation allows users to navigate a user interface through various touch gestures, like swiping or pinching–for example, iOS app developers can use swipe gestures for forward and back navigation. This gesture-based navigation makes navigating UIs easy and intuitive and reduces the need for a back button to clutter screen space.

Mobile Navigation Examples

Spotify’s top and bottom navigation bars

Spotify’s mobile application provides users with top and bottom navigation links. The bottom navigation features three items, Home, Search, and Your Library. These are the three most important features for users wanting to play music, podcasts, or audiobooks.

Spotify’s header uses an app bar with a settings icon to open the primary navigation drawer, which includes links to many features and settings. The time icon takes users to a “Recently played” screen, and the bell icon opens the latest releases according to the artists and podcasts a user follows.

Google Calendar on Android

Google Calendar on Android uses several mobile navigational UI elements:

• App bar: The top app bar features a hamburger menu, search, calendar icon (takes the user to today’s date), and user’s image to open profile settings.
• FAB: The FAB enables users to create a new event.
• Bottom navigation: Android’s bottom navigation features three standard Android navigational actions, view all open apps, exit app, and back.

Combining these mobile navigation items makes it easy for users to complete most Google Calendar tasks without accessing the navigational drawer. 

Google Maps on iOS

Google Maps has several navigational elements with many actions on a small screen. The top app bar offers a large search field with a microphone icon for voice commands–an essential accessibility feature. The user’s image opens a modal with account-related links.

There are two FABs in Google Maps. One takes users to their current location, and the other opens the map’s directions feature. Below the FABs is a bottom sheet that opens an interface showing users location sites and attractions.

Google Maps’ bottom navigation provides users with five primary menu items:

• Explore
• Go
• Saved
• Contribute
• Updates

Google Maps is a good example of using multiple navigational menus for complex features and actions on one screen.

UXPin’s responsive web navigation 

If you navigate to UXPin’s homepage on a mobile device, you’ll see this screen featuring a prominent CTA with UXPin’s logo and a hamburger menu icon in the header navigation.

Opening the hamburger displays UXPin’s primary menu items in a neat navigational drawer. The down arrows next to some items indicate that there are additional submenus to explore.

Creative Snakebar navigation from Dribbble

Jarek Maćków from Poland-based HeroDOT Digital House posted this open-source bottom navigation on the company’s Dribbble account. 

The Flutter prototype features an onboarding sequence with swipe navigation followed by a “Snakebar navigation” example. The active indicator crawls across the nav bar like a snake when the user clicks a menu item.

This navigation pattern from HeroDOT provides a fun, intuitive, and immersive user experience to engage users during onboarding.

eCommerce cart bottom sheet

This eCommerce bottom sheet cart design from Rishabh Varshney on Dribbble illustrates how designers can use mobile navigation patterns to balance user needs with business goals. The user enjoys a fast, intuitive checkout process while the website increases conversions with creative navigation, prompting the user to complete their purchase.

Tips & Best Practices for Effective Mobile Navigation

Here are ten best practices to improve your mobile navigation design:

1. Keep it simple: Minimize the number of navigation options and ensure the menu labels are concise and easy to understand.
2. Prioritize important features: Place the most frequently used or essential features at the forefront of the navigation.
3. Make navigation accessible: Ensure the navigation elements are easily reachable, especially for one-handed use. Test your navigation with assistive technologies to provide everyone with an intuitive user experience.
4. Utilize standard navigation patterns: Stick to familiar navigation patterns familiar to users, like tab menus and hamburger menus. Use obvious names to prevent confusion.
5. Optimize for touch: Design navigation elements with sufficient touch targets and spacing to avoid accidental taps.
6. Use clear visual cues: Highlight the currently active navigation item and provide visual/haptic feedback when users tap a menu item.
7. Adapt to screen size and orientation: Design navigation that adapts to various screen sizes, orientations, and devices.
8. Offer gesture-based navigation: Integrate gestures like swipes and pinches to make navigation more intuitive and efficient.
9. Provide context-sensitive navigation: Provide menu options based on the user’s current task or context.
10. Test and iterate: Continuously test the navigation with users and gather feedback to optimize the design.

Mobile Navigation Prototyping With UXPin

UXPin is the only design tool that offers complete interactive prototyping with code-like fidelity and functionality. This high-level interactivity means designers can build complex components that look and feel like the final product, providing accurate results and meaningful feedback during the design process.

Here’s how UXPin can revolutionize your design workflows to produce sophisticated final-product like prototypes:

• States: allow designers to create multiple states for a single UI element and design complex interactive components like dropdown menus, tab menus, navigational drawers, and more.
• Variables: capture data from user inputs and create personalized, dynamic user experiences–like their name and profile image in the app bar.
• Expressions: Javascript-like functions to create complex components and advanced functionality–no code required!
• Conditional Interactions: create if-then and if-else conditions based on user interactions to create dynamic prototypes with multiple outcomes to accurately replicate the final product experience.

Create advanced prototypes that accurately replicate the final product experience to improve testing and solve more usability issues. Sign up for a free trial to design your first interactive prototype with UXPin. 

The post 6 Mobile Navigation Examples and 8 Types You Should be Aware of appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

App design mockups play a crucial role in the design process by visualizing a mobile app’s user interface and allowing designers to refine aesthetics and collaborate with stakeholders. By enabling design refinement, facilitating feedback, and enhancing usability evaluation, mockups contribute significantly to the app’s overall success and help create a seamless user experience.

This comprehensive article covers various aspects of app design mockups, from their essential elements and best practices to leveraging open-source design systems for faster mockup creation.

Create high-quality mockups and prototypes leveraging the power of code-to-design in the UX design process with UXPin Merge. Visit our Merge page for more details and how to request access.

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What is an App Mockup?

An app mockup is a visual representation of a mobile UI that showcases its layout, UI elements, and overall aesthetics. Unlike wireframes, which focus on structure and functionality, mockups incorporate more UI detail, including colors, typography, and images. Designers use these mockups to refine the app’s aesthetics before moving to high-fidelity prototyping and usability testing.

Purpose and benefits of creating mobile app mockups

• Visual communication: Mockups help designers and stakeholders visually understand the app’s design, ensuring everyone is on the same page regarding its appearance and functionality.
• Design refinement: Creating mockups enables designers to experiment with different design elements, iterating and improving the app’s aesthetics before prototyping and, later, the design handoff.
• Feedback and collaboration: Mockups facilitate discussions and feedback among team members and stakeholders, allowing for better collaboration and design decisions.
• Usability evaluation: Although not typically interactive, mockups can provide insights into the app’s usability, identifying potential issues early in the design process.
• Efficient development: By resolving design-related questions during the mockup and prototyping stage, designers can save engineering time and resources, reducing the need for costly revisions later.

How do mockups fit into the overall design process?

Mockups are integral to the mobile app design process, bridging the gap between wireframes and interactive designs (prototypes). They typically follow the wireframing stage, where the design team maps the app’s structure and functionality.

Once the wireframes are approved, designers create mockups to add visual detail, exploring the app’s aesthetics and UI design elements. After finalizing the mockup, the design team moves into the prototyping phase, adding interactivity and testing the app’s usability.

This structured approach ensures a smooth transition between each stage of the design process, allowing for iterative improvements and effective collaboration throughout the design process.

Essential Elements of App Design Mockups

• Interface layout and structure: Establish a clear, intuitive design that effectively organizes content and UI elements. Prioritize usability and maintain a consistent structure throughout the app to ensure a seamless user experience.
• Typography and font choices: Select legible and accessible fonts that align with your brand identity. Consider readability across various mobile devices and screen sizes, and maintain consistency in font usage to create a cohesive visual experience.
• Color scheme and branding: Choose a color palette that complements your brand identity and enhances the app’s aesthetics. Use colors to create contrast, draw attention to key elements, and improve usability by adhering to accessibility guidelines.
• Imagery and icons: Incorporate high-quality images and icons to support your app’s content and enhance its visual appeal. Opt for a consistent visual style and optimize graphic elements for various screen resolutions.
• Interactive elements and navigation: Design clear and intuitive navigation elements, such as buttons, menus, and tabs, to guide users through flows and tasks. Ensure that interactive components are easily identifiable, responsive, and consistent throughout the app to promote a smooth user experience.

Best Practices for Creating App Design Mockups

Start with low-fidelity wireframes

It’s standard practice to create low-fidelity wireframes before mockups. These wireframes let you focus on the app’s layout fast. This approach enables you to identify and address issues with the app’s structure and information flow early in the design process, ensuring a solid foundation for the mockup and prototyping stages.

Maintain consistency with design guidelines and principles

To create visually appealing and functional mockups, follow established design guidelines and principles that involve consistency, hierarchy, and alignment. These best practices will result in a cohesive and professional app design that meets user expectations and promotes a positive product experience.

Prioritize user experience and usability

User experience and usability guides the mockup design process. Consider load times, accessibility, and device compatibility to ensure your app caters to diverse users.

Collaborate and gather feedback

Actively seek feedback and input from team members and stakeholders during the mockup process. Collaboration encourages diverse perspectives, leading to innovative solutions and more refined designs. Use mockups as a communication tool to facilitate discussions and address concerns before moving on to the prototyping stage.

UXPin’s Comments feature makes collaboration and feedback effortless–even for collaborators who don’t have a UXPin account. Team members can tag each other, assign comments and mark them as resolved upon completion.

Iterate and refine your mockups

Continuously iterate and improve your mockups based on feedback and testing. Refining your designs throughout the process ensures you address issues and deliver a polished, high-quality app. Embrace the iterative nature of design to create a final product that meets user needs and stands out in the competitive app marketplace.

Leveraging Open-Source Design Systems for Faster Mockups

What are open-source design systems?

Open-source design systems (component libraries) are comprehensive collections of reusable UI components, patterns, templates, and guidelines that help designers create consistent and cohesive app mockups more efficiently. By leveraging these design systems, designers can streamline their workflow, maintain a consistent visual language, and focus on refining app-specific features and user experiences.

Benefits of using open-source UI libraries for app mockup design

• Time savings: Using pre-built components from a design system can significantly reduce the time spent creating mockups from scratch. For example, drag and drop a navigation drawer onto the canvas instead of designing one from scratch.
• Consistency: Design systems promote visual and functional consistency across the app. For example, applying the same color scheme and typography throughout the app ensures a cohesive user experience.
• Scalability: Components in design systems are built for scalability, making it easier to adapt your app for future changes. For example, designers can combine existing elements to create new patterns and components, thus maintaining consistency while scaling quickly.
• Collaboration: Design systems facilitate better cooperation among designers and developers by creating a single source of truth. For example, shared design assets and guidelines can streamline team communication and handoff.

Popular open-source design systems to consider

• MUI: Modeled off Google’s Material Design, MUI offers a versatile design system with comprehensive guidelines for creating visually appealing and functional cross-platform apps.
• Fluent Design System: An open-source, cross-platform design system developed by Microsoft with components and patterns for Web, Windows, Android, and iOS.
• Ant Design: Ant Design focuses on enterprise-level app design, providing a comprehensive set of high-quality components and patterns for desktop and mobile applications.

Turning Your App Design Mockups into Interactive Prototypes

What is an interactive prototype?

An interactive prototype is a dynamic version of an app mockup that simulates the app’s user interface (UI) and functionality, allowing users to interact with and navigate through the app as if it were a fully developed product.

Unlike static mockups, interactive prototypes include animations, transitions, and clickable elements that accurately represent the app’s user experience. Designers use these prototypes to conduct usability testing, gather user feedback, and refine the app’s design and functionality before moving into the development phase.

The benefits of interactive prototyping

• Usability testing: Interactive prototypes enable designers to test the app’s usability and functionality, revealing potential issues before development begins.
• Realistic user experience: Interactive prototypes accurately represent the final app, allowing stakeholders and users to experience realistic flows and interactions.
• Improved collaboration: Interactive prototypes facilitate better communication and collaboration between designers, developers, and stakeholders, ensuring everyone understands the app’s intended functionality.
• Faster iteration: Designers can quickly iterate on interactive prototypes, making adjustments based on user feedback and usability testing to refine the app’s design and functionality.

Tips for transitioning from mockups to interactive prototypes

• Identify key interactions: Before creating a prototype, determine the essential user interactions and app flows you want to test and validate.
• Use code-to-design prototyping tools: Leverage specialized interactive prototyping tools to transform your mockups into interactive prototypes efficiently.
• Animate transitions: Incorporate animations and transitions to enhance the app’s user experience and provide a more realistic representation of the final product.
• Conduct user testing: Engage with real users to test your prototype, gather feedback, and identify areas for improvement.
• Iterate and refine: Continuously iterate on your prototype, incorporating user feedback and usability test results to refine the app’s design and functionality before development begins.

Designing App Mockups and Interactive Prototypes With UXPin Merge

UXPin Merge is a code-based technology that allows designers to use fully interactive code components in the product design process without technical skills or writing a single line of code!

With Merge, designers can go from sketching to wireframing, mockups, and interactive prototyping effortlessly–and in a fraction of the time than traditional UI kits and image-based design tools.

Another significant Merge benefit is that it creates a single source of truth between design and development. Designers use visual elements for the design process, while engineers use the code behind them, both pulled from the same repository.

Designers can preview Merge prototypes in the browser or the UXPin Mirror app for native applications–perfect for cross-platform testing. UXPin provides designers with canvases for popular mobile devices, including iPhones, iPad, wearables, and Android.

Merge allows you to import any open-source component library or your product’s design system into UXPin:

• Git Integration: direct syncing to React-only design systems hosted in a repository.
• Storybook Integration: Connect any Storybook to UXPin, including React, Vue, Angular, and Ember libraries.

Enhance your mockup and interactive prototyping process with the world’s most advanced design tool. Visit our Merge page for more details and how to request access.

The post App Design Mockup — How to Create it Fast? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Deciding between launching a mobile app vs. web app isn’t always an easy decision. There are many factors to keep in mind before making the call – from user experience and technical constraints to cost-effectiveness and scalability.

We’ll explore web design vs mobile app design. All so that you can make an informed decision about which approach is best for your project. Follow along our tips and sign up for a free trial at UXPin. It’s an end-to-end prototyping tool that allows you to build advanced prototypes that look and behave like a mobile or web app you’re about to develop. Try UXPin for free.

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What Is a Mobile App?

Mobile applications are tools designed specifically for portable, mobile devices. They come in various forms. From small, single-function applications to more complex, multi-functional mobile platforms, each should provide users with a quality experience.

Apps vary significantly in their purpose and scope, allowing people to engage in activities ranging from gaming and leisure to business and professional pursuits. 

When it comes to developing an app, product development teams often need to consider the screen size and operating system of the device they are creating the app for. As mobile technology advances rapidly, many apps are now built with cross-platform compatibility in mind so users across various devices and platforms can enjoy them.

The types of mobile apps available today include:

• Native – native mobile apps are usually developed for one platform or operating system (iOs or Android apps),
• Hybrid – hybrid apps leverage reusable code to provide a native-like user experience for less effort and money,
• PWAs – it’s short for Progressive Web Apps, PWAs are mobile web apps built with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other frameworks. they should function on desktop and mobile, standards-compliant browsers.

Pros of mobile apps

• They work efficiently (they’re created natively for mobile devices)
• They can work offline, without the Internet connection
• They offer better analytics, i.e., more accurate data collection and conversion tracking.

Cons of mobile apps

• They’re expensive to design, more so to maintain
• You need to build a separate app for iOS and Android 
• You’re in charge of maintaining privacy and security.

What Is a Web App?

A web app is an application that users can access through the web on any device with an internet connection. It runs in a browser, reducing users’ need to install and keep track of a separate application on their PC, which increases its accessibility.  

What’s great about using web apps is that you can create more interactive user experiences in comparison to traditional websites. All thanks to powerful front-end frameworks such as AngularJS or ReactJS. They allow app developers to quickly build dynamic single-page applications, which provide smooth transitions between different views and respond quickly when user input is received.

Web apps are a popular solution since they offer incredible performance and scalability without compromising security. 

Pros of web apps

• They work on any platform – a web application is hosted on a server and delivered over the internet through a browser interface.
• Since it’s stored on a remote server and supplied online via a browser interface, users don’t need to install updates.
• Easy to maintain by web development team

Cons

• They require internet access to be used
• They might be slow to load – if a server is overloaded, the contents of your app won’t appear quickly, which can severely affect the user experience. Or, worse yet, cause the user to leave the app before it loads.
• Not as easily discovered by target audience – web apps are not promoted in app stores because they are not listed there. Product Hunt, Capterra, and app review sites can be a decent way to promote your web apps, but their discoverability is nowhere near as robust as in Apple and Android app stores.

Discussing the Differences Between a Mobile App and a Web App

Let’s now take a quick look at how mobile apps and web apps differ.

• While web apps can be accessed via virtually any browser, mobile apps must be downloaded from the app store.
• Differences in screen size requirements. Mobile apps can’t be accessed on desktop, and are created solely for smaller screens. This, in turn, implies lesser pixels. Meanwhile, web apps can be accessed on both mobile and desktop.
• Mobile apps can be used without internet access, while web apps can’t. 
• Since web apps need access to internet connection and rely on web browsers, they tend to be slower than mobile apps. 
• Most people use computers while sitting. App users may be commuting to work or even jogging while using their phones. As a designer, you must account for these different scenarios to ensure high usability and accessibility standards.
• Mobile apps have more advanced security than web apps. Therefore, mobile app development should cater to this by creating two-factor authentication or other means that improve safety. 

Effective Ways to Help You Choose Between a Mobile App and a Web App

Here are the top considerations while deciding between a mobile app vs. web app.

Determine user context and purpose

The web offers an abundance of resources and information to users, who typically access it from a comfortable seated position. Mobile devices offer a unique opportunity for users to search for and quickly obtain information on the go.

When designing for mobile UX, navigation should be simple and easy to follow, with well-structured code written concisely, and visually prioritized. The goal is to ensure maximum accessibility of the desired information in the least amount of time.

User experience designers must pay close attention to design elements such as:

• natural gestures, which are most intuitive for users on small screens

• simplicity in menu selection options
• clear visual pathways
• consistent user interface elements like fonts and colors
• easily clickable and accessible buttons and links
• and other interactive elements that make user navigation easier.

This must also be paired with relevant accessibility standards, to ensure that all users can use the app to its full advantage and functionality. 

Verdict: Web apps are great for longer user sessions and don’t compete with mobile apps. A mobile app may be suitable if your product can be used regularly in shorter periods, such as habit or meal tracking app, mobile eCommerce app or social media app.

Assess your product or service’s required screen size

Many B2B tools are now web-based, allowing users to access them from their phones, tablets, or other mobile devices. This is advantageous for several reasons:

• It enables the user to access information quickly and conveniently regardless of their device.
• It allows them to view content more clearly and in more detail on a larger screen.
• If any PDF downloads or exports need to be done regularly, it’s much easier and more efficient for the user to do this on a desktop computer than on a mobile device. This is because PDFs can take up considerable amounts of data space on mobile devices, and saving them frequently could result in the device becoming bogged down. Not to mention, it’s not exactly the most convenient screen size to peruse these files.
• Users may prefer their files to stay on one machine rather than having them spread across multiple devices. For businesses to get the most out of their B2B platform, providing web-based access is essential since it gives customers both convenience and flexibility when interacting with the company.
• By allowing users to access the app on a larger screen rather than solely on mobile – where content may not always be visible clearly – companies can ensure that their clients always have a good user experience.

Verdict: Web apps are suitable for complex (often work-related) apps, where there are plenty of charts and analytical data. These types of apps usually require a lot of jumping back and forth between screens.

List device-specific features

If you sell beauty products, for example, it is much more beneficial to develop a tailored beauty app for mobile devices since that’s where people tend to spend most of their day.

This platform provides you with a larger audience and allows you to take advantage of multiple features not available on computers, particularly the higher-resolution phone cameras. When it comes to these kinds of products, image quality is essential for market success. 

Although designing a web-based application that is accessible via mobile view can enable the use of the device camera, some other features are only accessible through mobile hardware and functionalities. Think of things like your phone’s built-in gyroscope or GPS, which would have been essential if you were to create a runner’s app, for one.

Also, when designing the UX/UI design for a mobile app, make sure to always include device-specific elements like larger interactive buttons and simple navigation. Furthermore, make sure to work hand in hand with your software development team to ensure all third-party apps integrations work flawlessly. The types of integrations depend on your product – these can be those with social media, online payment methods, and push notifications.

Verdict: Mobile apps come with the added value of device-specific hardware and features like GPS and high-resolution cameras.

Check your competitors’ choices

Businesses should analyze the competitive landscape prior to launching a new product or app to make an informed decision as to what to develop.

If it turns out that many of the top players in the market are web-based solutions, it’s probably the best way to go. They’ve created a solution for a platform users find convenient to use, and the UX they’ve created allows them to complete their goals (after all, otherwise these apps would not have had this level of market success).

Let’s not forget that users appreciate familiarity in products from the same category – it will make it that much easier for them to start using your app, if they were to switch to you from a competitor. Thoroughly researching competitors can help identify opportunities and potential risks before investing in a project. 

Verdict: If your app’s goal isn’t to revolutionize your category, it’s worth going with the platform others are finding success with. That’s where your target audience can be reached.

Mobile or Desktop App? Design it in UXPin

It’s our hope that after reading this piece, you can now pick a winner in your mobile app vs web app dilemma. Use the considerations above to understand how user context, screen size, and your competitor landscape can contribute to your app’s success.

With UXPin, you can create advanced prototypes and quickly share them with stakeholders or developers – regardless whether you’ve decided to go with a web app or mobile app. Ready to take it for a spin? Try our tool on a free trial.

And with our free trial, nothing is stopping you from trying it out for yourself today. So what are you waiting for? Try UXPin and streamline product design and development process. Start your trial.

The post Mobile App vs. Web App – What to Design? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Mobile app competition is fierce, with millions of digital products vying for people’s limited attention. Increasing app engagement is a high priority for many product development teams, constantly looking for innovative ways to retain and entertain.

UX designers play an essential role in keeping app users engaged using various design and psychology techniques. Prototyping and testing are vital for helping designers fix usability issues or business opportunities that could lead to higher engagement.

Test your design ideas with the world’s most advanced design tool. Create immersive prototypes that look and function like the final product. Sign up for a free trial to explore UXPin’s features today.

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Why is App Engagement Important?

App engagement is a crucial business value metric because it influences many other factors, including revenue, brand loyalty, retention, and, most importantly, a company’s valuation.

Here are four reasons why app engagement is essential:

• Revenue: whether your app uses an ad or paid model, higher engagement typically results in higher earnings.
• Retention: higher engagement is a good indication that users rely on your product in their daily lives, leading to increased retention and customer lifetime value (CLV).
• Brand affinity: higher engagement leads to increased brand affinity, which impacts key business metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). Improving these scores indicates that customers will share product experiences leading to free exposure.
• Data and research: increasing engagement enriches data analytics, allowing product teams to understand user behavior better and optimize for growth.

What is a Good Engagement Rate For an App?

Determining a good app engagement rate will depend on many factors, including the product, industry, niche, market, and users. Researchers use UX benchmarking to calculate the correct app engagement industry standard and measure this against the product’s performance.

The formula for calculating app engagement rate is simple:

• monthly active users / total users X 100

You can use the same equation for daily engagement by replacing monthly active users (MAU) with daily active users (DAU).

What is the UX Team’s Role in Increasing App Engagement?

UX designers play a critical role in app engagement and user retention. Intuitive UIs and well-designed features that enable users to complete tasks and solve problems efficiently create an enjoyable experience and increase engagement.

During prototyping and testing, designers can identify roadblocks and streamline user flows to make products more intuitive and easier to use.

App Engagement Metrics for UX Designers

Here are some key performance indicators (KPIs) UX designers can use to measure performance:

• Retention rate: the percentage of users who continue to use an application
• Churn rate: the number of users who have stopped using an application
• Average session length: the average time users spend using an app during a single session 
• Daily active users (DAU): the number of users who open an app on a single calendar day
• Monthly active users (MAU): the number of users who open an app over 30 days
• Stickiness: a radio or percentage indicating how often users return to an app
• User engagement rate: how many active users complete a specific action in an app
• Push notification open rate: the percentage of app users who open notifications–expressed overall and per notification type
• App reviews: the percentage of users who leave a review in app stores or on platforms like Trustpilot

Design teams must measure these app engagement metrics before and after design projects to demonstrate how design decisions create business value and deliver a return on investment.

How Can UX Designers Help Increase App Engagement?

Progressive disclosure

Progressive disclosure is a design technique that only shows users the most critical features or options to complete a single task or action. For example, many eCommerce stores often hide a product description and other information behind accordions to minimize cognitive overload, allowing users to choose when and if they need to see it.

Progressive disclosure increases app engagement by:

• Making products easier to learn and navigate
• Places less important features on secondary screens so users complete tasks quicker
• Reducing errors, creating a more enjoyable user experience

Streamline the app onboarding process

It’s no good looking at app engagement if users struggle with the onboarding process. Designers must aim to eliminate roadblocks so new users can start using the product and experiencing its benefits as soon as possible.

Here are some ways designers can streamline app onboarding:

• Allow users to sign up using popular social media accounts like Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, etc.
• Use simple product walkthroughs explaining features when users log in for the first time to reduce checking the documentation.
  
• Ensure form fields have practical helper text and error messages that enable users to solve issues quickly.

Incorporate gamification

Gamification is a tried and tested method for increasing customer engagement. Many products use badges and points, but there are subtle ways to reward users for engagement.

Grammarly sends users a “Weekly Writing Update” newsletter showing their productivity, mastery, and vocabulary in relation to other users.

The great thing about Grammarly’s Weekly Writing Update is that it’s uncomplicated and uses product analytics–making it cheap and easy to implement. The update only exists in email for premium users, so it doesn’t add unnecessary data to Grammarly’s UI.

Create personalized user experiences

App personalization makes users feel like designers created the product specifically for them. Personalization goes beyond adding someone’s name to a user interface. If you’ve ever visited YouTube using a browser’s incognito mode, you’ll get a wide range of recommendations–most of which you have zero interest in ever watching.

YouTube and other social media platforms use personalization to recommend content based on your browsing history–which is why no two homepages will ever look the same. Presenting users content and features that interest them increases engagement because everything they need is right in front of them.

Here are three tips for creating personalized app experiences:

• Show users recently visited features or content on the home screen to continue incomplete tasks or return a project they were working on.
• Use browsing history to anticipate what someone might want to do–i.e., a budgeting app might encourage users to add expenses for the day when they open the app in the evening.
• Allow users to customize user interface layouts and widgets to prioritize and organize content–for example, a user might want to regularly reorganize their project management dashboard to align with new projects and tasks.

Using microinteractions to create immersive user experiences

Designers use microinteractions and animations to engage and entertain users. For example, double-tapping an Instagram post and seeing a red heart appear–so addictive!

Some examples where microinteractions increase app engagement include:

• Progress bars display progress, encouraging users to complete tasks.
• Helpful push notifications that remind users of incomplete tasks, in-app messages, or items requiring their attention.
• Infinite scroll or swipe animations that keep users engaged while exploring content.
• Short celebration animations reward users for completing tasks, encouraging them to continue using the app or move on to the next task.

Using scarcity and FOMO to engage users

When the social audio app Clubhouse launched in 2019, it was an invite-only application. Each user had a limited number of invites they could send, creating scarcity and FOMO for those who wished to join.

This scarcity also kept users engaged because they wanted to be “there” for the most popular conversations so they could talk about the experience firsthand to friends or followers on other social platforms.

Many dating apps limit the number of likes a user can complete on their free plan. This scarcity works twofold:

1. One, it keeps users who wish to stay on the free plan more engaged because they’re more careful about conserving their swipes, increasing their session length and opportunities to present ads.
2. Two, limiting like actions means users are more likely to sign up for a paid plan–ever seen your dream match on the very next profile after your free likes run out? This isn’t a coincidence.

Improving app performance

There’s nothing more frustrating than waiting for an application to load. Users quickly lose interest, stop using the product and find a competitor with better app performance.

While engineers typically have the most control over optimizing app performance, there are four ways UX designers can help:

• Optimize asset files by reducing file sizes and dimensions
• Minimize content per screen to reduce load times
• Create loading interactions to momentarily distract users for big system tasks
• Keep animations short and only use them to help users

Increasing App Engagement With UXPin

UXPin is an end-to-end design tool enabling designers to build prototypes with final product like fidelity and functionality. 

These fully interactive prototypes give design teams meaningful, actionable insights to improve and iterate on ideas, solve more problems, and identify valuable business opportunities–like app engagement. Designers can test prototypes in the browser or optimize mobile app engagement via the UXPin Mirror app (iOS & Android). 

Build prototypes to test and improve app engagement with these four UXPin features:

• States: create multiple states for a single component and build complex UI patterns like dropdown menus, steppers, carousels, accordions, and more.
• Interactions: use Triggers, Actions, and Animations to design immersive prototype experiences. Designers can also use Conditional Interactions to create dynamic interactivity that responds to user actions.
• Variables: collect data from user inputs and use it elsewhere in the application. Designers can use these variables to personalize user interfaces and give real-world app experiences.
• Expressions: design form validation, computational components, dynamic error messages, and more. When combined with States, Interactions, and Variables, Expressions enable designers to create functionality comparable to code.

Improve app retention and engage more users by solving more issues and identifying more opportunities during the design process with UXPin. Sign up for a free trial to explore UXPin’s advanced prototyping features.

The post App Engagement – 7 Ways UX Design Can Increase it appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

With an ever-growing list of devices, operating systems, and technologies, cross-platform experience design is an essential component of the product development process. 

Many organizations have dedicated teams for iOS, Android, Windows, etc., to ensure products meet platform-specific requirements and user expectations.

Create seamless cross-platform customer experiences with the world’s most advanced UX design tool. Sign up for a free trial to discover interactive prototyping with UXPin.

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What is a Cross-Platform Experience?

A cross-platform experience (also called platform-agnostic design) describes the user experience comparison across multiple devices, including Web, mobile, tablet, and wearables, in addition to operating systems like iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, etc.

The aim for product developers is to create a comparable, seamless user experience across different platforms and operating systems to ensure their products serve all users.

Designers also want to ensure end users can access the same features and complete tasks regardless of device or operating system. For example, the ability to make a payment from your bank account whether you use the bank’s web portal or mobile app.

Responsive design vs. cross-platform design

Responsiveness is one facet product teams must consider when designing cross-platform experiences. Responsive design is specific to web browsers and how user interfaces look across desktop, tablet, and mobile viewports.

Cross-platform design is a broader concept where designers must consider web browsers, devices, and operating systems, in addition to a product’s user experience on a web, tablet, and mobile apps on iOS, Android, Windows, and other operating systems. For example, a simple alert component will look completely different on iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Safari, Chrome, and Edge.

Why Designing Cross-Platform Experiences is Important

Business value

From a business perspective, cross-platform design is crucial. In the United States, iPhone enjoys a 65% market share, but there are 2 billion global Android users or a 71.35% market share. Android makes up more than 90% of the market in some countries where iPhones are unaffordable. Not serving either of these markets means you’re leaving a lot of money on the table!

Companies must also consider responsive design and how their website and web applications render across desktop, tablet, and mobile. Many people only use their smartphones to browse the internet; if they can’t purchase products and services efficiently using these mobile devices, these companies lose valuable revenue.

Competitiveness

People expect products to work comparably across multiple devices. If users can’t complete the same tasks on your Web and mobile applications, they’ll find a competitor that does!

Nowhere is this more apparent than in FinTech. Mobile-first/only banking and investing applications have exploded in the last decade as startups aim to fill the gap left by traditional financial institutions. Many of these legacy institutions have been slow to deliver mobile solutions, allowing FinTech startups like Robinhood, Monzo, Chime, Revolut, and others to capture significant market share.

Inclusivity

If you want your products to be inclusive for everyone, then cross-platform design is essential. Apple products like iPhones and Macs are at the high end of consumer electronics–many people cannot afford these luxuries. 

If your products only serve Apple devices or don’t provide a comparable experience on Android, Windows, and the Web, then you’re excluding a massive part of the global population, including marginalized communities who cannot afford Apple’s products.

6 Key Principles of Designing Cross-Platform Experiences

Consistency

The first rule for cross-platform design is maintaining a consistent user experience across Web and mobile applications and operating systems. This consistency includes user interface design, functionality, features, interaction design, and branding, to name a few key factors.

It’s impossible to get precise UI consistency across multiple platforms and devices, but designers can control messaging, interactions, performance, and timing, which must always be consistent.

Seamless experience

A seamless cross-platform user experience means people can complete the same tasks across multiple devices. Additionally, they can start a task on one platform and complete it on another.

For example, you can create an email on the Gmail mobile app, save it to drafts and finish it on your desktop computer at another time. This seamless user experience gives users the flexibility to work and complete tasks according to their specific schedules rather than structuring their lives around technology–i.e., waiting until they get to a desktop to send an email.

Cross-platform usability (Interusability)

Cross-platform usability or interusability describes the user experience and coherency across multiple devices in an Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem.

Netflix is a familiar example where users can watch on mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and Smart TVs. Within each category are multiple devices, operating systems, and screen sizes. 

Charles Denis and Laurent Karsenty coined interusability in a 2003 publication, Inter-Usability of Multi-Device Systems – A Conceptual Framework, which describes three key components for designing coherent cross-platform experiences:

• Continuity: facilitating a seamless flow of content and interactions across products, tools, and devices
• Composition: organizing functionality across products and devices
• Appropriate consistency: designers must balance UI design consistency with native layouts and patterns

Prioritization and visual hierarchy

Prioritizing content and layouts is crucial for designing cross-platform user experiences. On desktops and Smart TVs, users can see more content and features. On mobile apps and other small screens, designers must prioritize content, often using personalization.

For example, no two Netflix or YouTube accounts look the same. Product developers use personalized algorithms to prioritize content and features to meet each user’s needs and preferences.

Prioritization also includes visual hierarchy. On large screens, there’s space for more content and features. On mobile devices, designers must determine what content is always visible and where they must hide content using accordions, navigational drawers, dropdowns, and other space-saving UI patterns.

Accessibility

Cross-platform accessibility is essential for compliance and ensuring products are fully inclusive. Designers must ensure users can use built-in assistive technologies like voice commands, screen readers, font adjustments, etc.

Designers must also provide dark and light modes to accommodate users with visual impairments. Colors render differently across devices, which impacts contrast and readability.

Adaptability

It’s not always possible to create a product for every device. For example, an enterprise warehouse management system won’t work on smartwatches–the UI and architecture is too complex. But you can create a smartwatch app that receives critical notifications so the user can get to a mobile app or desktop as soon as possible.

While adaptable experiences aren’t always in line with the product’s goals and features, they can provide value and even attract new customers.

3 Tips to Design Cross-Platform Experiences

Design for familiarity

Many apps use native styling and components to create platform familiarity. For example, using the iOS and Android icons instead of your custom set. While these features don’t conform to your brand, they can make the product feel like it was built specifically for the user’s device, thus elevating your cross-platform user experience.

Create design system

Design systems create constraints and solutions for maximizing cohesion and consistency. They also provide product teams with patterns and components to meet platform-specific rules and guidelines.

Material Design’s documentation tells designers how components will look on Android and iOS. For example, this Top App Bar from Material Design provides examples of how each operating system will render the component. The icons, alignment, spacing, and app bar height differ between iOS and Android.

Creating these cross-platform components ensures designers conduct accurate testing during the design process for the operating systems your product supports.

Use a design library

UXPin includes canvases for the Web, iOS (including iPhones, Apple Watches, and Apple TV), and Android so that you can create layouts for each device. You can also use a custom canvas size to meet your platform’s screen width.

UXPin’s built-in design libraries include iOS and Material Design components, so you can build cross-platform experiences without installing plugins or extensions. Drag and drop platform-specific UI elements to prototype products across both operating systems.

Use the UXPin Mirror app (available on iOS and Android) to test your cross-platform apps on multiple devices. You can also preview prototypes in the browser for testing on smartphones, tablets, desktops, Smart TVs, etc.

Building Cross-Platform Prototypes With UXPin

UXPin includes canvases for the Web, iOS (including iPhones, Apple Watches, and Apple TV), and Android so that you can create layouts for each device. You can also use a custom canvas size to meet your platform’s screen width.

With UXPin’s Design Systems, you can create a cross-platform component library and share it across your organization to keep teams aligned and UIs consistent. Use descriptions to include documentation for each platform and set permissions to prevent unauthorized changes to your design system.

Design better cross-platform user experiences with the world’s most state-of-the-art UX design tool. Sign up for a free trial to explore all of UXPin’s advanced features.

The post Cross-Platform Experience – An In-Depth Guide for Product Designers appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Internationalization is crucial for startups and companies with global aspirations. If organizations want to succeed in an international market and compete locally, they must create relatable, locally relevant product experiences.

Internationalization and localization go beyond translated text and currency changes. Designing experiences related to users, their cultures, and their environments create the trust necessary to increase adoption and grow in global markets.

Prototyping and testing are vital for delivering positive user experiences for a global market. Sign up for a free trial to explore UXPin’s advanced design, prototyping, and testing features.

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What is Internationalization? 

Internationalization (or what Google calls globalization) is designing and developing digital products to allow language, regional, and cultural adaptations. This flexibility enables companies to adapt products and enter new markets while maintaining the product’s integrity and user experience.

Simple examples of internationalization are language and currency selectors–not specific languages or currency, but the UI design and programming that make it possible. 

The Cuber Shopify Theme uses dropdowns for the store’s internationalization design. Shopify store owners can use these internationalization features to localize their eCommerce store for different countries–i.e., A US-based store providing Mexican Peso and Spanish for a Mexico-based target audience.

This eCommerce example leads us to localization.

What is Localization?

Localization is the process of adapting a product to meet specific market needs, including translation, currency, and cultural changes.

Localization aims to deliver a user experience that’s relevant and relatable–beyond simply changing the language and currency.

For example, it doesn’t snow in New Zealand over Christmas because it’s summer. Referring to snow and keeping warm during December wouldn’t make sense to New Zealanders as it would to Canadians.

Designers must also adapt user interfaces to meet native language markup and structure, like left-to-right (LTR) (i.e., English) vs. right-to-left languages (RTL) (i.e., Arabic, Hebrew).

Legal requirements and compliance

Product teams must also consider compliance for different locales and legislative impacts on content and user data. GDPR, CCPA, and other data privacy acts dictate how products and websites collect, store, and share user information.

Designers must notify customers in these regions about their cookie policy and allow them to opt out of tracking–like this example from Stack Overflow.

Internationalization and Accessibility

Internationalization is vital for accessibility, inclusive design, and making products localizable. W3C provides an overview of i18n (industry standard abbreviation for ‘internationalization’) and how to make products more inclusive for a global audience.

A universal source code base

Product developers must use Unicode for internationalization and architecture. Unicode gives digital products the foundation to translate and serve content in any language.

Engineers must also consider appropriate metadata to support different language structures and markups.

Text direction

Right-to-left languages are complicated for digital product design because they often mix directions within a single line of text. This example from W3C demonstrates bidirectional text in Arabic content.

Designers must collaborate with engineers to ensure these directional nuances are correctly addressed.

Names & addresses

Forms often create confusion for users from different parts of the world. For example, some European countries write the street before the number, whereas in the United States, its number, street.

Some countries don’t have postal codes, so making this a required form field creates a frustrating roadblock for those users.

Designers must also consider name lengths and structure. Some cultures place their family name (surname/last name) first and “first name” second. A person’s name may also have several words–how do they enter this data?

Time zones, currencies, dates

Date formats can cause a lot of confusion and frustration. For example, users can interpret 10/02/2022 as:

• October 02, 2022, in the United States
• 10 February 2022, in Europe

A good way around this confusion is to abbreviate the month so everyone can read the date–i.e., Oct 02, 2022. Designers can also separate these fields on forms, so users enter the correct date and databases read and save them correctly.

If your product uses time, it’s crucial to factor in timezones and daylight savings to save and present users with the correct time format.

Currencies present another design challenge. Some currency formats place the symbol before and others after. Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam, and Sweden are four examples where people position the currency symbol after the number.

Cultural norms & expectations

UX teams must do their homework and perhaps hire local UX designers when entering a new market.

For example, thumbs up in the West means good, but it’s insulting in Japan, Bangladesh, and the Middle East! Using thumbs up or thumbs down to rate a service or feature might get mixed results from users in these regions.

Colors, symbols, words, phrases, and metaphors carry different meanings across various languages and cultures. Extensive user and cultural research must be a priority for UX teams, especially when they don’t speak the language.

Further reading and research: W3C provides a list of groups for regional internationalization, including the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Far East, and South East Asia.

Internationalization and Localization Best Practices

1. Avoid metaphors and cultural references

Every country and culture has metaphors and references, but these often don’t translate to a global audience; in some instances, they might be offensive–like a thumbs up in Bangladesh.

Designers must also use descriptive names rather than “clever” cultural references. Australians are renowned for their hilarious slang, but using these in a product would be confusing rather than entertaining.

2. Design internationally-friendly forms

Form field labels, particularly addresses, can create confusion. Designers must design forms that accommodate an international audience.

For example, most countries use “postal code” instead of “zip code.” They also write the entire state/province/county rather than abbreviating it into two letters like the United States (i.e., Florida = FL). An international approach to form labels and field sizes will make forms more globally inclusive.

Further reading: 

• Web Form Design Best Practices
• Form Internationalization Techniques
• International Address Fields in Web Forms

3. Design UIs to accommodate translations

Designers must avoid designing UIs to accommodate a single language. As designer John Saito points out in a Medium article about internationalization, “Think of the label ‘New!’ for example. In English, it’s 4 characters with the exclamation point. But in French, it’s 9 characters: ‘Nouveau!'”

John recommends creating a Google Sheet and using a Google Translate function to visualize multiple languages and calculate character count.

We compared a standard CTA, “Sign up,” against ten languages. Sign up has seven (including the space), but most languages have ten or more characters, which could create issues if designers don’t leave enough room.

4. Prototype with real copy

The example above demonstrates the importance of prototyping with real copy. If you’re adapting your product for a new language, translate content on every UI as it would appear in the final product.

As we saw with translations, some words might be longer than the English version requiring the extra UI width.

If your UI element doesn’t have enough space, it will break the text into a new line. This looks unprofessional and might push other components creating usability issues.

5. Don’t embed text in images

Another recommendation from John Saito is not to embed text in images. Even if you translate these, it creates multiple assets which adversely impact performance.

Embedding text in images also excludes users with visual impairments and screen readers.

Text overlays are a good alternative, but they create additional CSS and Javascript, so designers must use this method sparingly.

6. Use relatable content

If you’re going to use content, particularly images and video, make sure it’s culturally relatable. Users must feel like someone from their country or region designed the product specifically for them.

For example, the Google News and Apple News apps use location tracking to present relevant, localized stories. In some instances, this localization might be as changing a picture of NYC for Americans to Nairobi for Kenyan users.

7. Internationalizing Typography

Yona Gidalevitz’s interesting UsabilityGeek article looks at language’s impact on typography. Asian languages like Mandarin, Korean, and Japanese have complex characters which don’t translate well into bold typefaces.

These languages also represent multi-character English words as a single character, requiring a large font for legibility which ultimately alters the UI element or the entire screen.

8. Number formats and separators

Number formats and separators differ in languages and regions. Microsoft’s number formatting for globalization demonstrates that countries will display the number negative five hundred and twenty-seven in four different ways:

• -527
• 527-
• (527)
• [527]

People also use date and number separators differently. Returning to our example of Oct 02, 2022, we can write this date in at least three ways:

• 10-02-2022
• 10.02.2022
• 10/02/2022

In the United States, people use a comma (,) to separate the thousands, while Germany uses a period (.).

While these might seem like minor issues, they could severely impact usability. Understanding these nuances will help product teams avoid potential problems.

Internationalized Product Design With UXPin

Designing digital products is challenging. Developing multilingual products for a global audience adds an extra layer of complexity for design teams.

With UXPin’s Design Systems, product teams can create multiple design systems for each language to streamline prototyping and testing. Create a new design system from an existing library and edit the components to meet language/market requirements.

Each design system can have locale-specific components, assets, typography, and documentation, giving designers the tools to build localized prototypes for testing.

Avoid the time-consuming process of prototyping and testing for multiple markets with the world’s most advanced user experience design tool. Iterate faster to build inclusive products capable of competing internationally with UXPin. Sign up for a free trial today.

The post Internationalization and Localization – Key Differences in App Design appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android are the two leading operating systems for mobile apps. While app developers have complete autonomy over their product’s aesthetics, native guidelines and design differences exist for each platform.

This article looks at iOS and Android app design differences, which can impact a product’s functionality and aesthetics. Applying these principles to your designs creates a holistic platform experience. Products that seamlessly integrate with the native operating system look professional while creating familiarity and minimizing learning curves.

Use UXPin’s built-in design libraries for iOS and Material Design to prototype and test for both platforms. Create fully interactive prototypes that accurately replicate iOS and Android user experiences. Sign up for a free trial to discover UXPin’s advanced prototyping features.

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Platform-Specific UI Design Guidelines

iOS and Android each follow different interface design and app development rules and guidelines:

• Android = Material Design (Maintained by Google)
• iOS = Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) (Maintained by Apple)

Why do Android and iOS Have Guidelines?

Rather than dictating your product’s aesthetics, these guidelines instruct app developers on using components and adapting UIs to meet platform requirements and constraints.

Platform guidelines aim to create a seamless user experience between the device and third-party applications. Without these controls, every app will be wildly different, forcing users to learn a new interface for each product. 

As we know from basic user experience design principles and design psychology, making users think increases cognitive load, causing frustration and ultimately leading them to abandon a product–and maybe switch from Android to iOS or vice-versa.

Android – Material Design

Android devices follow Google’s Material Design guidelines and principles. What’s unique about Material Design over HIG is that it’s an open-source, themeable library that companies use to build a wide range of digital products, including iOS apps–not only for Android devices.

Google released Material Design 3 in 2022, which included a fresh aesthetic and new features, including design tokens to “streamline the work of building, maintaining, and scaling products with a design system.”

iOS – Human Interface Guidelines (HIG)

Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) contain guidance and instructions for designing and developing products for Apple’s products.

Apple’s iOS design resources provide designers with design files and templates for Apple products, including iPads, iPhones, Apple Watches, MacOS, etc.

What is the Difference Between Android and iOS UI Design? 

1. Screen sizes

One of the benefits of designing for iOS is that Apple controls every device and screen size. Designers can apply designs to various Apple templates and predict how their products look and feel.

On the other hand, Android is the Wild West regarding devices and screen sizes. There are so many viewports it’s impossible to test products on everyone within allowable timeframes and budgets.

2. Unit of measurement and target size

iOS and Android use different units of measurement and target sizing:

• iOS = pt (points) – 1 pixel = 0.75pt
• Android = dp (density-independent pixels/dips) – 1 pixel = 1dp

Tap target sizes also differ between platforms:

• iOS = 44 x 44pt or 59 x 59px
• Android = 48 x 48dp or 48 x 48px

3. Navigation

Navigation is one of the most significant differences between the iOS and Android user experience. For one, the always-visible bottom navigation on Android devices doesn’t exist on iOS.

Android’s bottom navigation allows users to:

• View all open apps
• Return to the home screen
• And go back to the previous screen

On iOS, there is no return to home or back button, but users can view all open apps by swiping up from the bottom left.

The top navigation bar (top app bar on Android) is similar for both platforms, with a back button to the left, a title center, and other action buttons to the right.

iOS will often use text buttons for the top navigation bar’s right actions when there is only one, like “Edit,” whereas Android always uses icons.

4. Floating Action Button (FAB)

The Floating Action Button (FAB) is unique to Android devices and rarely featured in iOS applications. The FAB is a screen’s primary call to action. For example, Twitter uses the FAB to create a new Tweet, while Gmail uses it for composing a new email.

iOS’s primary CTA always lives on the far right but moves between the top navigation bar and bottom tab bar, depending on the screen’s layout.

5. System Fonts

iOS and Android use different san serif system fonts; however, the style and weight are very similar:

• iOS: San Francisco
• Android: Roboto

iOS also provides the New York typeface as a serif option.

Developers don’t have to use these system fonts, but many do to imitate the platform’s user experience and optimize performance (fewer files and requests).

Aside from system fonts, HIG and Material Design each have detailed guidelines on typography styles, sizing, weights, and usage/best practices.

6. iOS flat design vs. Material Design elevation

Another key difference between HIG and Material Design is elevation. HIG guidelines recommend a flat design, while Material Design uses shadows.

A great example of this difference is Airbnb’s FAB to open the map. At first glance, these UIs look identical, but you’ll notice the Android version uses a shadow for the FAB, whereas the iOS doesn’t.

7. Date pickers

Android uses a standard calendar interface for date pickers, while iOS uses three scrolling wheels for day, month, and year. There are exceptions to these rules. For example, iOS often reverts to a calendar for date ranges, and Android uses scrolling wheels for some time selectors.

8. Dialogs and Alerts

Alerts and Dialogs are modals that interrupt tasks with critical information, usually with two CTAs to confirm or cancel an action. For example, confirming that the user is sure, they want to delete an item.

HIG calls these modals Alerts, while Material Design refers to them as Dialogs. Each platform has specific guidelines and anatomy that designers must follow.

Material Design uses snackbars to provide low-priority messages that don’t require action, usually informing users of system feedback, like confirming something has been saved to a user’s favorites. 

9. Tabs

Tabs allow users to switch views on a screen. Traditionally, Material Design used Tabs, but Google has changed to a Segmented Button in Material Design 3, which now looks more like HIG’s Tab Views component.

Segmented Buttons support three functions:

• Selecting options
• Switching views
• Sorting elements

HIG’s Tab View is for switching views only. The platform uses Segmented Controls for option selection.

Advanced Mobile Application Design With UXPin

UXPin’s code-based design tool enables designers to take interactive prototyping beyond what’s possible with traditional image-based tools.

With built-in libraries for iOS and Android UI design, UX designers can build fully functioning prototypes to test the user experience for both platforms–in the browser with Adaptive Versions or via UXPin Mirror on mobile devices.

UXPin’s built-in iOS and Material Design libraries include font styles, icons, assets, and components so designers can drag and drop to build native UIs fast!

Designers can customize these native components and save them to a Design System to share with other team members–for example, a custom iOS Alert and Material Design Dialog for testing an app UI on both platforms.

UXPin makes cross-platform prototyping easy with pre-made screens for iOS, Android, and the Web. Three grid styles enable design teams to structure canvases to meet platform-specific layouts and guidelines.

Fully interactive mobile prototypes

Designers can build fully interactive, immersive prototypes using four key UXPin features:

• States
• Interactions
• Variables
• Expressions

UXPin States allows designers to create multiple states for a single component to mimic code-like interactivity. Each state can have different properties and interactions that respond to user engagement and system changes. 

For example, a button can have a default, hover, active and disabled state that changes according to mouse or tap interactions. Designers can also use States to build complex components like accordions, dropdown menus, carousels, and more.

With UXPin’s Interactions, designers can add motion to create fully animated prototypes that respond to user engagement. UXPin offers a wide range of mobile-specific triggers, including tap, swipe, press & hold, focus, and more, to enable accurate native testing.

Variables enable designers to capture user inputs and use that data elsewhere in the application to create dynamic, personalized prototype experiences–like personalizing a greeting or instructing the user to confirm the details they’ve entered before checkout.

UXPin’s Expressions take prototyping to the next level with Javascript-like functions that increase prototyping scope and complexity. Designers can validate forms, structure dates, format text from user inputs, check password criteria (symbols, letters, numbers), and more!

Enhance your iOS and Android app design with the world’s most advanced design tool. Build prototypes that accurately replicate the final product experience for improved testing and meaningful, actionable results. Sign up for a free trial to build your first interactive prototype with UXPin today.

The post 9 Differences Between iOS and Android UI Design appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

In 2021, Google and Apple saw around 140 billion downloads in their app stores – a 20% growth in just two years. That’s a lot of demand to cater to! Still, with the multiple options on the market, today’s app users want more than ‘just’ an app that works properly. They want a UX that aligns with their specific, individual needs. 

With the “one size fits all” model failing some app designers, how do we ensure that users get the level of personalization and app customization they crave?

UXPin makes it easy to design a prototype that looks and feels like an end-product. With its stellar features, you can build prototypes that your users and stakeholders can actually interact with. It makes user testing a lot smoother. Try UXPin for free and design your first app today!

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What is App Personalization?

At its most basic level, app personalization can be defined as the process of building an application that meets the unique needs of a specific audience. 

But there’s a little more to it than that. How do we know which personalization elements different audience members want? How do we ensure they’re satisfied with the existing UX? And which app customization elements matter more than others? 

Thanks to the ever-growing number of tools and analytics available today, developing an app that features top-shelf customization options and personalization features is getting easier.

Whether enriching the feedback a user receives after signing up or using predictive algorithms to learn about what motivates and interests them, app personalization has evolved into a data-driven art that requires creativity and an innovative mindset.

Why is App Personalization Important?

When it comes to mobile apps, the overwhelming majority of consumers are on the hunt for one thing. An app that offers them the products and services they need based on unique user histories, individual interests, and special preferences. Getting personalization wrong can be an app killer.

The customer experience is driven by how we’re able to personalize the journey for them. Generic, cookie-cutter processes are outdated and known to push users away, while apps tailored for convenience, ease, and efficiency are taking center stage. 

Studies and research cases all point to some intriguing data driving demand for more app personalization. Nearly 58% of people feel more positive toward companies that remember who they are. Two-thirds expect brands to understand their needs without communicating them, while nearly three-quarters (72%) of customers will only engage with brands that offer personalized messaging.

Businesses are taking notice, too. Marketers are leading the charge, with 60% stating that their content is extensively personalized. As of 2022, 84% of companies agree that personalization is critical to enriching the user experience.

Users want to feel like they matter, that they’re more than just a number on the network. User engagement is key, and being able to do more than simply thanking someone by name for signing up or making a purchase is the secret to getting your mobile app personalization strategy right.

Mobile Personalization, Segmentation or Customization

Before diving into what makes for effective mobile app personalization, we must understand our different user app segments and their role in formulating a strategy that works. 

While personalization and customization are used interchangeably, they’re different. Both concepts refer to how we can design the user experience to boost engagement, but at the fundamental level, they are responsible for distinct outcomes:

• Personalization – involves using data analysis to leverage digital technology and tools to personalize product offers and direct messaging to existing or prospective clients. Personalization happens before something reaches the customer and is the responsibility of the brand or company. 
• Customization – is the process of allowing the customer to input their preferences or requirements in altering a product or service to suit their needs. While app customization happens in real-time, brands must create an environment for the consumer to do so.

Here’s an example of personalization versus customization in action:

“ABC Brands sells coffee at outlets around the country, allowing users to order on their app for collection. When you have the option to add cream, sugar, soy milk, or sprinkles to your order, that’s customization. But when you open the app, and it already knows which three coffees you prefer, your favorite outlet, and the time you usually get your caffeine fix – that’s personalization.”

But to ensure that we have access to the data we need to personalize our app offerings and in turn, the level of customization available, we first need to understand whom we’re targeting. We need to know about our user app segments. 

The depth of both effective personalization and comprehensive customization is predicated on providing a UX that encourages engagement. But while these require an understanding of the target audience, segmentation gives us a way to do just that. 

• User segmentation – refers to the process of dividing (or segmenting) the target market into smaller, more manageable groups of customers based on their shared interests, needs, and preferences. 

Segmentation involves many considerations, criteria, and elements and can be challenging to execute effectively. Always keep your app’s needs and objectives in mind when segmenting your market according to any one of these most prevalent factors. 

1. Demographics – relate to the age, gender, income level, employment status, and even race of your customers. They allow brands to understand what different groups of people are looking for based on easy-to-identify mainstream factors. 
2. Geolocation – refers to the physical location of someone. Apps access this information to give us insight into where people live, where they work, and the places they spend most of their time. 
3. Lifetime revenue – gives us an understanding of how long a person has been a customer. It also tells us which groups spend more than others, allowing developers to design a UX that affects each group differently. 
4. Psychographics – are those parts of your customers’ lives that define who they are. Things like cultural identity, their world view, their political leanings, and even religious factors. Psychographics play a significant role in what people can expect from the brand associated with the app. 
5. Behavioral segmentation – provides valuable insight into how people in a market behave. In the case of apps, we’re looking at things like screen time, bounce rates, app retention, and on-screen hotspots. This data is crucial to understanding user behavior and getting app personalization right.

Psychographics and behavioral segmentation are vital to designers looking to nail their app personalization UX since they’re geared specifically to providing you with app-related consumer information. Developers can identify the key user needs and goals from these metrics and can thus customize and personalize the mobile app experience more effectively. 

How to Personalize any Mobile App

Once you have an idea of which user groups you should be focussing on, you’ll have a much clearer picture of how to go about your mobile app design and personalization strategy.

1. Leverage user segments

Once you’ve put in the effort of getting a deeper understanding of your app segments, you’ll need to ensure each one gets the attention it deserves. And this is the beauty of app customization and personalization – you get to provide a personalized experience for each. 

Your app’s ROI – and longevity – will depend heavily on giving every user the most comprehensive and rewarding UX possible. But resources can only go so far, and you’ll still want to ensure that your most lucrative and valuable customers take priority. So, invest in a personalization strategy that balances out each group’s needs and prospective returns.

2. Refine the onboarding experience

First impressions matter, especially with apps, so pay attention to user onboarding. This easily overlooked mobile app personalization component is critical for stable user retention and keeping app engagement rates high.

Ask for the user’s name (but beware of asking too many unnecessary personal questions) from the outset and use it where necessary. Offer free trials of upgrade features, and discounts for early in-app purchases, and remember to gently remind them to keep using it.

3. Craft content that reflects good personalization

This is where your mobile app personalization efforts really come to the fore. Tailor your app and well-researched digital content to meet your users’ every need. It should reflect previous interactions, their unique interests, and anticipate their desires. 

Innovate with different approaches and try to find a way to balance basic personalization with characteristics that’ll impress and please your users. Relevance is all-important, so put your research and segment data to good use. 

4. Enable push notifications

Push notifications are your app’s way of getting noticed on devices. But be very careful of how ‘pushy’ you want your app to be, and promoting relevant content.

Mobile users will appreciate relevant notifications that help them, like special offers, product recommendations, highlights from the newsfeed or location-based information, vital information related to the app itself, and current updates linked to their interests. A great tip is adjusting notifications to user preferences.

5. Personalize beyond the app

You can create a personalized app experience beyond the app. This boosts brand loyalty and demonstrates your commitment to effective personalization. 

Email marketing that shows the customer that you’re aware of where they are in their app journey is a valuable re-engagement opportunity. Notifications that help an app user pick up where they left off or remind them of a new app feature or product offer are also excellent personalization motivators. 

Duolingo, for example, rewards its users for progress and encourages them to keep going through highly personalized emails and reminders. 

The best way to approach mobile personalization

Before you can start personalizing your app, you’ll need a starting point. Prototyping is considered one of the most effective and efficient ways to test, refine and perfect your app before you jump into development – especially on the personalization front. 

UXPin is an all-in-one design tool for creating an interactive prototype that will grant you detailed user feedback from users interactions with your prototype. UXPin also have a ton of features that will help you design with live data and user input that will be shared from one screen to another. 

Prototyping with UXPin allows you to identify the factors that matter most to your customers, weed out the elements they don’t want and perfect your personalization strategy without wasting valuable time and money on failed versions. Give UXPin a shot by signing up for a free trial. 

The post App Personalization – How to Get it Right? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Design simplicity is a term companies use without truly understanding its meaning. As discussed in this article, simpler isn’t always better, and how designers apply simplicity can have positive and negative effects.

This article defines what UX design simplicity is (and isn’t), some common misconceptions, and strategies for implementing its principles.

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What is Design Simplicity?

Design simplicity refers to the UX principle of helping users achieve goals efficiently using intuitive UIs and minimal roadblocks. To achieve this, designers must understand user needs, their end goals, and the tools and features they need to complete tasks.

Simplicity isn’t always the best option. The users, product, context, and environment all play a critical role in balancing design simplicity with usability.

Simplicity in Design Does NOT Mean…

Simplicity in design is probably better defined by what it is not. The word simplicity is somewhat subjective, and therefore, open to misinterpretation. Here are three common misconceptions about design simplicity.

1. Simplicity is not minimalist

When people hear design simplicity, they often think it refers to minimalism–this is an incorrect assumption. Minimal design creates beautiful aesthetics, but that doesn’t mean it’s practical or helpful.

There is always a time and place for minimalism, but designers must present the appropriate tools and UI elements for users to complete tasks efficiently.

For example, this Shopify Theme creates minimalism by hiding the primary navigation behind a hamburger for desktop users. This design looks great, but shoppers must click twice to navigate.

Creating additional steps in the name of minimalism does not conform to the principles of design simplicity. Designers must be mindful of how minimalism impacts the user experience and find an appropriate balance.

2. Design simplicity is not about aesthetics

Design simplicity is not about aesthetics. While it’s crucial to create beautiful UIs, it must not be at the expense of user experience. Aesthetics include static images, video, UI components, styling, and microinteractions.

Designers must always consider the value of design decisions and whether making something look aesthetically pleasing impairs usability. For example, using elaborate, drawn-out animations might seem like an excellent way to impress users, but it slows progression resulting in a poor user experience.

3. Simplicity is not simplification

This heading might seem contradictory, but it’s another common misconception about design simplicity. Oversimplifying a product or feature can create negative consequences or dull the user experience.

For example, eliminating user verification to simplify onboarding results in bots, spammers, and other criminal elements accessing the product that harm the company and its users. Simplifying this onboard process means:

1. Making sure the system sends users a verification email immediately
2. The email has minimal text and a clear CTA to complete the verification process
3. The user can log in and begin using the product

Check how to create a secure user experience in our article Designing for Security.

Designers must also consider when to simplify. For example, simplifying a game, so users always win doesn’t present enough of a challenge, and players will lose interest. The simplification in this scenario lies in the game’s controls–giving players the appropriate tools and features to complete difficult tasks.

How to Apply Good Design Simplicity

With a clear understanding of design simplicity’s misconceptions, it’s time to look at some guiding principles and strategies and how to apply them.

1. Designing only what’s essential

One of the essential ingredients to design simplicity is only providing the UI elements and features users need to complete a task. Executing this simplicity effectively means designers must have clear objectives while understanding users, their circumstances, and the environment where they’ll use the product.

Delivering what’s essential might seem obvious, but too much reduction leads to minimalism–which we’ve already established we want to avoid. Designers must consider multiple scenarios rather than getting users to a single end goal.

For example, when designing an eCommerce checkout, it’s tempting only to push shoppers in one direction–complete the purchase! What about shoppers who change their minds and want to go back or save their cart for a later date?

The essential elements in this scenario are controls to complete checkout efficiently while providing offramps for shoppers who change their minds.

Complex products and UIs require more thought, UX research, and testing. Designers must reduce and prioritize content as much as possible to avoid cognitive overload, guiding users to complete tasks efficiently.

Coherency, consistency, and familiarity

Coherency, consistency, and familiarity are essential design simplicity components. Maintaining these three factors throughout a product requires attention to detail and effective cross-functional collaboration.

A design system is the most effective method to achieve coherency, consistency, and familiarity in product development. Organizations can build a design system from scratch or use an open-source component library to ensure designers and engineers deliver high-quality outputs with minimal errors.

PayPal uses Microsoft’s Fluent UI design system with UXPin Merge for the company’s sixty-plus internal products. When Erica Rider, Senior Manager for UX – Developer tools and platform experience at PayPal, joined the company, PayPal’s products lacked cohesion and consistency, resulting in countless usability issues.

By adopting a design system and using Merge to sync design and development, Erica created a single source of truth that enables PayPal’s product team to deliver projects 8X faster than before with significantly higher quality.

“Rather than separating design, prototyping, and development, UXPin Merge allows us to create an integrated flow where we engage engineering and product teams throughout the process. As a result, the product’s final quality has improved dramatically”–Erica Rider, PayPal

Offering the easiest solution

Design simplicity requires designers to think of the easiest path to completing a task. Ideally, designers want to reduce friction and obstacles to minimize cognitive load–there are exceptions to this rule, which we describe in this article about good and bad cognitive friction.

Designing an easy-to-use UI includes removing distractions and minimizing options. For example, designers often hide header and foot navigation for eCommerce checkouts and landing pages, so users only have one task to focus their attention.

Test, test, and test again

Testing is the best way to understand users and whether a design solution works. Seeing users struggle with a task and identifying the cause allows designers to fix the issue and simplify the process.

Testing is also an ideal space to see how users use a product and identify redundant features. Removing features and elements people don’t use helps minimize UIs and distractions.

Conduct routine UX audits

Routine UX audits are excellent for identifying usability issues that adversely impact simplicity. User testing and research during the design process often don’t tell the whole story. Designers must review analytics and monitoring tools to understand how users navigate the product and its features.

Designers can use UX audit insights to prioritize content, visual hierarchy, navigation, add/remove features, restructure layouts, and improve information architecture to simplify the user experience.

The progressive disclosure approach

Progressive disclosure is an interaction design technique for complex tasks and user flows. The idea is to break tasks into digestible steps to simplify a complicated process.

We commonly encounter progressive disclosure when a company has to capture lots of user data–insurance, visas, medical services, etc. Instead of presenting everything on one screen, designers split the form into multiple steps and categories. This user interface design technique makes forms less intimidating, allowing users to focus on one step at a time.

Learn more: What is Progressive Disclosure?

John Maeda’s 10 Laws of Simplicity

Graphic designer, visual artist, and computer scientist, John Maeda is arguably the godfather of simplicity. John’s 2006 book, “The Laws of Simplicity,” outlines 10 principles for design, technology, business, and life.

1. Reduce: remove what isn’t needed
2. Organize: makes complex systems easier
3. Time: saving time feels like simplicity
4. Learn: knowledge makes things simple
5. Differences: balancing simplicity and complexity
6. Context: “What lies in the periphery of simplicity is not peripheral”
7. Emotion: more emotion is better than less
8. Trust: simplicity = trust
9. Failure: some things aren’t meant to be simple
10. The one: subtract the obvious and add the meaningful

Simple UX Design With UXPin Merge

Simple design applies to the UX process as well as user experience. Bridging the gap between design and development enhances collaboration and streamlines handoffs while reducing errors and front-end debt.

UXPin Merge is an end-to-end product design solution that creates a single source of truth between designers and engineers. Merge allows organizations to sync a component library from a repository to UXPin’s design editor so everyone uses the same design system.

These ready-made, interactive components simplify workflows by giving designers the building blocks to create fully functioning prototypes that look and feel like the final product. With no designing from scratch, designers can focus on product development rather than component development.

Merge simplifies the design handoff process because engineers work with the same component library. Devs simply import the components from the design system’s repository and apply the JSX changes from UXPin to start front-end development. Less documentation. Less communictation between departments. Faster time to market!

Simplify your product development process with UXPin Merge. Visit our Merge page for more details and how to request access.

The post What is Design Simplicity and How to Achieve it? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Did you know that 80% of users delete an app if they don’t know how to use it?

They don’t reach out to the customer support team, nor do they research the instructions.

They simply remove it and move on to the next one. 

While this is a harsh statistic, it highlights just how crucial the user onboarding experience is. If you fail to properly teach your users how to make the most of your product or service, they will take their business elsewhere.

How can you counter this? In this article, you’ll learn what UX onboarding is and why it’s so important to get it right. You’ll also read about the six tips that will help you create a great user onboarding experience for your product.

Want to see if your design idea for an onboarding user journey is successful? Use UXPin to build an interactive prototype of your your UX onboarding and see how users respond to it. Iterate on your idea, pass it developers, and enjoy an improved onboarding flow. Try our prototyping tool that makes the work faster.

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What is UX onboarding?

UX onboarding is the process of introducing new users to your product in a way that educates and delights them, setting them up for success from their very first interaction. 

Technically, it’s a series of flows after the signup process, usually as screens or contextual cues within the app, that guide the user to the most important product features. This sort of a product tour highlights product’s values, and does so in the most engaging and quickest way possible.

Let’s imagine you’ve just downloaded a new app. 

A good UX-focused onboarding flow would be one where you’re guided through each of the app’s core functionalities. The walkthrough would explain how everything works and how you can use these features to improve your life or work.

On the other hand, a poor onboarding experience – especially for a complex product – would throw you in at the deep end. You’d be left to figure everything out for yourself. An app experience like this would likely frustrate you and quickly lead you to give up.

With that in mind, it’s important to understand that an effective onboarding process is about more than fancy video tutorials or pop-up instruction manuals. It’s about reducing any chance of error that could portray your product in a bad light and making the entire adoption process smooth.

Why is it important to build an onboarding flow for users?

To answer this question, it’s worth putting yourself in your users’ shoes. If they’re using your product for the first time, they might be feeling any (or all) of the following:

• Apprehensive
• Intimidated
• Overwhelmed
• Excited
• Curious

Your job is to design an onboarding experience that gently eases them into your product so they feel confident, understood, and supported every step of the way.

Make sure this happens the first time they use it. Here are some more reasons why this process is essential.

First impressions only happen once

A study by IPSOS reveals that there are three factors behind what we call a “first impression”. These are relevance, differentiation, and the price paid.

So, your onboarding flow needs to circle around proving that you’re relevant to the user’s needs, goals, and challenges. Secondly, it’s about showing what makes you unique, i.e., explaining what you’re better at than your competitors. The third aspect is subjective – given what they’ve seen, it’s up to your users to decide if the product was worth the price they’ve paid. 

To help users navigate through the app

As a product designer, it’s your role to ensure that users can freely move through your app. The more complex the information architecture and the more features, the more important it is to build an effective onboarding sequence. 

Let’s refer to the usability testing analogy here. Notice how user testing sessions feature tasks like “Go from the home page to your account settings and change your invoice details”  or “Find the option to change the ingredients from US cups to grams”. These questions are important, as designers want new users to ease into the platform. So, it’s important to create an onboarding flow that shows how users can get from point A to point B. Doing so will help prevent confusion and user frustration. 

To clearly convey your app value

While it might seem like a paradox, the more your app or platform can do, the higher the risk of certain users feeling overwhelmed. This doesn’t mean your app has to be simple and only offer one core feature. You can provide a complex app, but what matters is that your onboarding process makes it easy for them to find what they need and achieve the goal they came here for.

For example, say that you offer a suite of 10+ productivity tools, but a new user has signed up just for the time tracking feature. Upon logging in, they should be able to go right to it, but they might get distracted by all the other modules they don’t need (at least not yet).

Effective UX onboarding will help direct them to the right module quickly, all the while gently inclining that they can get much more value from your full offer.

To extend user lifecycles

A Salesforce study has found that there are two factors that can bring the user lifecycle to an abrupt end. 50% of respondents have admitted that they leave a business that:

• fails to anticipate their needs
• offers an app that isn’t easy to use.

These two risks can be minimized by your onboarding experience. Firstly, a good onboarding flow will showcase how your app can benefit the user. Secondly, it can give them a quick product tour and create a great product experience right after the account creation.

Beside those two points, app onboarding can increase retention rates and prevent churn, two metrics that product teams are concerned about.

To increase user engagement across the board

Taking all of the earlier points into account, a good onboarding experience will improve user engagement. This creates a whole range of benefits. From bringing value to your target user base and increasing conversion rates, to boosting app retention and even reducing customer support costs. Spending time on your onboarding process saves and makes you money.

Overall, it helps your product become as successful as it can be.

How do you design an onboarding experience?

With the importance of the UX onboarding experience fresh in your mind, let’s get actionable and talk about the onboarding flow itself. Whatever medium your process is in, these are six tips you have to bear in mind.

1. Understand whom you are onboarding

This is critical for any business decision, especially when we’re talking about UX onboarding. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Who is your target user? 
• What are their needs, wants, and pain points? 
• How much do they know about your product? 

The answers will inform your design decisions moving forward.

If you’re not sure where to get your answers from, do your research.

If you already have an existing product, look at your sales and existing user base. Conduct a customer satisfaction or NPS survey. Or, if you’re launching a new product and don’t have any user data yet, conduct market research. Look into similar businesses or niches. 

As you can see, there are plenty of ways to get to know your target users better!

Ultimately, you must take one step at a time. Start by understanding who your users are before building out a user onboarding flow that assumes what they want.

There is no one-size-fits-all onboarding template you can turn to. You have to tailor it to your target market. We will discuss this next.

2. Personalize and optimize your flow

Personalizing the UX onboarding experience is about more than adding their name to an email or a virtual walkthrough (although that’s a nice touch). We’re talking about using the data you’ve collected to focus their onboarding on the features that matter the most to them.

The goal is to make the user feel like this experience has been designed just for them.

And it’s not as difficult as it might sound.

If you’re a SaaS business, for example, you can show new users different features of your product based on their role. For example, let’s assume that you’ve created a CRM software for sales, product, and marketing professionals. If the new user is a marketing specialist, guide them through the features that are most relevant to their role.

3. Don’t overdo it with the number of screens 

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is overwhelming your users with lots of screens and information.

The UX onboarding experience should be short and sweet. Give users enough information to get started and nothing more.

You can always provide more info later on, in the form of tooltips or customer support. In fact, you should constantly be testing and adding new content to your onboarding flow based on user feedback.

Despite what the term might make you think, user onboarding is not always for new users only. Your existing users will also need a quick explanation of the new features and updates you’ve provided. Therefore, always design your UX onboarding flow with both of these user groups in mind.

4. Onboarding must align with the product

If your product is sleek, minimal, and professional, the onboarding must be sleek, minimal, and professional, too.

Think of your UX onboarding experience as an extension of your product. Everything from the colors you use to the tone of voice should reflect what your product is about.

The whole purpose of an onboarding process is to get your first-time users into using your product. It’s about them slipping into the value of your product, feeling your brand, and, ultimately, building loyalty.

If you’re distracting them with colors and content that don’t make sense, you’re not going to achieve this. User experience onboarding is not a time to get creative; it’s a time to be consistent.

Make sure your onboarding flow aligns with the product and its UX design. This way, your user can familiarize themselves with your app or service as early as in the onboarding flow. Next, they can transition into using the product with as little friction as possible.

UXPin is ideal when it comes to getting this process right.

Product designers can use UXPin to quickly bring their onboarding ideas to life and build out a prototype of the onboarding sequence. You can share these prototypes with the team to collect feedback at any stage of the onboarding process. 

With multiple design iterations, you can easily test and evaluate each step and screen, until you’ve designed the perfect UX onboarding experience for your users.

5. Give users the option to skip the onboarding flow

While some users will appreciate an in-app onboarding experience, others will prefer to skip it entirely and find their own way around your product. This will be particularly the case if your desktop or mobile app has a simple information architecture and/or if some of your users are tech-savvy.

Take a simple project management board like Trello, for one. High chances are that your users have used similar platforms in the past and will understand how a Kanban board works. And even if they haven’t, the drag-and-drop feature is fairly self-explanatory.

So, add a clear “skip” button so that your new users can jump straight to using your product, at any step of the onboarding sequence.

6. Create an external onboarding sequence

Your UX onboarding experience doesn’t have to live inside your product only.

In fact, it’s often more effective when you balance having an in-app flow, and then accompanying that with an external tutorial. For instance, you could send out an automated email sequence that you divide into chapters and send out over a number of days. You’ve probably experienced this with products you use in your own life, especially if you operate in the B2B industry.

Again, you don’t want to bombard your users with too much information, but instead, give them a little nudge in the right direction.

The great thing about an external onboarding UX sequence is you can be a lot more flexible with the content and design. It’s also an opportunity to show your brand’s personality in a way that may not be possible inside the product.

But don’t think you’re only restricted to email. 

You could also create a series of social media posts or even blog articles that new users can engage with to learn more about your product.

Consider where your target audience can be reached best, and target them there. 

7. Don’t overuse words–swap them with graphics

Your UX onboarding experience should be as visual as possible. Words are definitely powerful tools. However, your screen has limited space, and users are experiencing depleting users’ attention spans. So, convey as much information as possible by leveraging graphics.

Make use of images, videos, and even animations to guide your users through your UX onboarding experience. For example, instead of a written description, you can record a 10-second video where you show how the user can download their invoice.

By using video and images where applicable, you simplify the onboarding process and, as a result, make it more effective.

Design an Onboarding Flow in UXPin

An effective UX onboarding experience is crucial to the success of your product, and if you click away from this guide with one thing, let it be this:

Your onboarding process must provide value. 

If your product is the beach on a summer day, your onboarding is the GPS directions to get there. Make it simple for the best results.

And this is easy thanks to UXPin.

UXPin is a state-of-the-art prototyping tool that enables you to create prototypes and easily share them with the rest of your team. If you’re serious about creating an onboarding experience that will engage and educate your users, check out UXPin today. 

The post 7 Tips to Help You with Effective User Onboarding appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

It’s predicted that by 2023, the mobile apps market will reach $935 billion in sales. Pretty impressive, right? However, to get a piece of that cake, you need to make sure that your app design is not only pleasing to the eye but also easy to use. Only then you’ll be able to generate high user engagement. 

Let us walk you through a few things that your entire team, and especially your mobile app designer should keep in mind while building the best app.

Ready to create an app prototype? Use UXPin and simplify hi-fi prototyping. Build an interface that looks and behaves like a real app, even though it’s yet to be developed by your software engineers. Get better feedback from tests, show stakeholders what the app will be like, and make it easy for developers to see what you want them to build. Try UXPin for free.

3 Steps of an effective design process

There are three app design steps you’ll need to map out and follow to launch a successful product. This is your design process. It’s how you and your team ‘keep your eye on the prize.’:

• Plan and research
• Design and development
• Launch and test

Let’s look at them below.

Step one: Plan & research

During the initial phase, you’re going to define exactly what your product is, how it helps, who it helps, and what your app does that rivals don’t. These are the foundations for building a popular app with a clear user base. 

Start by clearly outlining what you want to achieve – in broad strokes. Detail the problems users face, how you think you’ve solved those issues. This is mobile designing at its most innovative and creative. 

Focus on your users. The most successful app designs are centred around the user – from who they are to what they want. Call on focus groups, surveys, and phone & face-to-face interviews to uncover what users really want from your app design. They will challenge your assumptions. This is a good thing.

At the same time, analyze your competitors. Even the smallest playing fields have big players. What do they do well (and not so well)? How can you best them? 

With all this data, you can then assess, pare back, and refine your goal into a single, shareable vision. 

Step two: Design & development

The next step in the process sees you visualize your app design. You’ll start with wireframes – basic mockups that are just useful enough to gather reflexive feedback from users, stakeholders, and your team.

As you progress, you can start building up a consistent design system for color, typography, sizing, and other visual elements. These UI and UX designs will follow through to your high-fidelity prototypes. Such functional mobile designing mock-ups let you continue testing and optimizing the app throughout the design process. 

You can then hand over designs to the development team who will build the app. It’s important to prevent bottlenecks during this stage. Designs can so easily tumble back and forth between design and development teams, threatening to derail entire projects as one side asks for X and the other side delivers Y. 

When developing your app, you can speed up interactive prototyping and harmonize the design-development hand-off by using software like UXPin. It’s a design tool that lets designers create a prototype that looks, feels, and behaves like the final product. Try it for free.

Step three: Launch & test

Ok, one final test and it’s all systems go. Finally, all your app designing experience comes together for the product launch. That might strike the end of the design process, but the journey is only just beginning. 

As you follow the design process, you’ll be assessing the product at various stages. And it doesn’t stop there. To ensure your app remains relevant, popular, usable, and used, continue to collect user feedback that offers new directions for refining.

To find out more, read our guide on How to create an effective app design process.

How to create the best app design strategy?

1. Define the idea

As a mobile app designer, you need to keep everything aligned to the same objective. It’s all too easy for team members to lose focus, not understand their role, or give in the mission or project creep. Your communication matters. 

Offer clarity with a well-defined concept. Before you start app design work, you should be able to articulate: 

• The purpose – what is your app for?
• The audience – who is it for?
• The use-case – how will it be used?
• The benefits – why choose you over a competitor?
• Required resources – what’s needed to develop the app?
• Success metrics – how will you measure success? 

2. Calculate the budget

Calculate a realistic budget as part of your strategy. It’s crucial for keeping the project on track, as it’ll help prevent mission creep – which sees design and development teams add extra features, leading to spiraling costs and hours of wasted time. 

In other words, it actively harms the product design and development (and it’s even more costly if users turn off from these untested features).

This will also help you allocate resources most effectively. A budget should help detail what’s being designed in terms of UI design and UX design, as well as how it’s being developed. 

3. Establish the KPIs

What does success look like? As you build a detailed app design strategy, focus on the metrics that really matter to you. There’s no single yardstick against which success should be measured. It’s up to the mobile app designing team to determine a few of the most relevant metrics to your app and your objective. 

Common product and design KPIs include: 

• Number of downloads. Download figures show you whether users like your product enough to install it. If the figure’s too low, you know you’ll need to test ways to increase installs. 
• Churn rate. Churn shows how many users are uninstalling your app, or not opening it. Use this data to explore what it is that’s driving away users. 
• Session counts. Session counts and times show the number of users who open your app and how long they stay active within it. It’s a good base to start if you want to figure out why people stay (or go). 

These three stages form the basis for a successful 7-step app design strategy. Explore the other four in our dedicated article How to create an app design strategy. 

Creating great user experiences

The 5 principles for outstanding user experiences are:

1. Usability

Mobile device screens are small – and that limited space means adjusting your designs accordingly. Actions should be easy to tap, swipe, scroll, and hold with one hand. Avoid forcing users into performing fiddly actions (think of those annoying pop-ups with minuscule X buttons that are difficult to press). It should be obvious to users what to do and how to do it.

2. Familiarity

Familiarity of user interface creates a more engaging and intuitive user experience. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel (or redesign the app). Search bars go at the top, options lurk behind hamburger menus, settings are under the cog icon.

When you use familiar mobile design patterns in your mobile app UI, the onboarding process of new users won’t be difficult.

3. Consistency

You don’t really want users to even think about their actions – it should ‘just work.’ Consistent design principles are really important for making it happen. A good example is always using the same button that indicates adding an item to a shopping cart in your eCommerce app, so users act on instinct.

Another great one is sticking to one or two fonts, so that you increase readability, as well as make your design consistent. At a broader level, every screen in your app should be consistently you to better brand yourselves and immerse the user.

Use UI kit or even better, a component library with a pre-made interactive UI elements such as Material Design, to stay consistent.

4. Accessibility

App designing for accessibility means considering the broad range of mobile devices on the market – and an even broader range of users. Does your app demand a high-speed internet connection? Can users with physical limitations still use your app?

5. Appeal

At the end of the day, a mobile app designer wants users to love their product. When building your own app, factor in audience appeal. Focus on how you can design experiences that are

Interested in learning more? Explore all the secrets behind memorable app design UX.

3 great practices for great app design

1. Simple navigation

Simplicity is about making key actions easy to find on-screen. The best way to do this is to limit each screen to one or two core actions. Through an engaging design hierarchy, you can then focus a user’s attention to the right places. 

Look at the Amazon app as an example. It offers a masterclass in simple app navigation. Users aren’t overwhelmed with choices. The interface is clean, clear, consistent, leaving users in no doubt what steps to take, whether it’s searching for products or hitting the buy button. 

2. Built for mobile

Design your app for mobile devices. It might sound obvious, but all too often mobile app designers effectively ‘port’ a website. While HTML-based apps give you a bit more freedom to update across platforms, the experience is less desirable. You’ll typically find web-like Android and iOS apps laggy, underpowered, and poorly optimized for mobile devices.

Great app design means respecting the user (and how they engage with your product). Ultimately, app designing in this way, in a highly competitive, user-focused marketplace, is a major risk. 

3. True design tools

To create truly seamless experiences for all your users, you need the right tools for the job. This gives you the flexibility to build app designs in an efficient workflow, with tools dedicated to your craft. 

Design and prototyping tools like UXPin help you realize your ideas precisely as envisioned. The mobile app designing software helps designers and developers build creative, consistent products from wireframes to ready-to-launch apps. And by giving designers access to the same real-world code components used by your developers, you can ensure expectations match reality, no coding skills required. To find out the must-have features in your software, see the section Choosing the right app design tool.

Explore more top tips on creating good app design in our dedicated article: How to choose app design software.  

3 great app design examples

So much for theory – let’s now look at some examples of great app design below.

Example One: Google Maps

Google Maps is a prime example of the app design mantra ‘form follows function.’ It’s perfectly built to fulfill its objective – helping users navigate the entire world from their desktop or mobile device. 

The map app makes it simple for users to find specific locations, search by category, and get directions to just about any destination. Better still, it delivers incredible value to its users through imagery, reviews, street views, business information, and sat-nav capabilities. 

Despite being loaded with functionality (and stuffed with the whole world), the Google Maps interface is delightfully subtle, never threatening to overwhelm the user. Even if you’ve never used an app before, you’ll know how to get around Google Maps, and how to get around using it. 

Example Two: Pocket

Pocket is a clever app that lets you save articles and media to read or watch later. 

The app’s interface is fresh and modern. Navigation is smart and intuitive. The experience centers the user, from easy-to-use actions to distraction-free options for concentrated reading. It even works without an internet connection, so you’ll always have something to read on-the-go. 

In keeping with all successful apps, user testing was critical to improving today’s iteration of Pocket. Thanks to Google Ventures, developers were able to gather feedback from five users unfamiliar with the app. That feedback was used to create its classically simple interface. 

Little wonder Pocket recently won a Webby award for its UX design. But what else would you expect from developers Mozilla, the firm behind the Firefox browser? 

Example Three: Etsy

Etsy is the beating ‘art’ of the ecommerce apps, where creators and shoppers meet. The Etsy app is a notable example of simple, effective web and mobile app design – but perhaps that’s to be expected from the arts and crafts supremo. 

Crack open Etsy and, unlike so many eCommerce apps, you’re not immediately bombarded with sales messages, deals, star products, and other irritations that clutter user interface. All users need to do is search for what they want or try Etsy’s suggestions.

It’s a strongly visual experience. Images take center-stage, alongside simple product headings. No prices or product names to distract you as you browse. It makes the user experience much more gentle and serene no matter if you use Etsy on Apple or Android devices.

Discover more real-world examples like Airbnb, TripAdvisor, and Uber in our dedicated article on great app designs.

How to avoid common app design mistakes 

Don’t add too many features at once

There’s nothing wrong with a feature-rich mobile app. But one of the most common mistakes is when mobile app designers throw all those features into the app at once. Even the most highly functional apps add features over time. This allows them to see what works, what doesn’t, what users want, what they don’t. And it means the app delivers on its singular objective first.

When you begin the app designing process, start off with the core purpose of your mobile application. Make it guide your mobile app development process. You can then add additional features as your app grows in popularity. Be sure to test these features individually. Otherwise, the risk is that you’ll overwhelm users, clutter up your app, and waste precious resources on something that has no real viability.

Maintain a regular updates schedule

The development process starts when your product launches – and it doesn’t stop. Don’t let your app fester after launch. Maintain a regular schedule for updates. It’s a great way to attract and retain users, keeping your app feeling fresh and innovative. 

After each update, check out reviews (or, better yet, conduct in-depth testing) to understand where improvements can be made in future.

Test with diverse user personas

User testing offers insights into how your app performs. And the best way to get the most valuable feedback is by drawing on the broadest possible range of users. When building a test group, choose different types of users – think gender, age, and background. All of them will be attracted to your app for varied reasons, and those reasons may surprise you. 

By calling on a broad range of user personas, you’re better placed to identify specific and general behaviors that help improve the product. Without a diverse user group, you risk getting locked in a feedback loop, appealing only to a selected few. This can lead to poor app design, which can be expensive to fix post-launch. It’s better to get it right during the design-development phase, and lots of different user types will help. 

Read more about the mistakes you should avoid in new app design in our article about bad app design. 

Choosing the right app design tool

What should you be looking for when selecting the best design tool for your job? Here are a few characteristics you should keep an eye out for.

1. Simple design-dev handoffs

The moment the design team passes over their concept to development is one fraught with anticipation. It’s a stage in the process where bottlenecks are common, and projects have been known to come to a total standstill as some team members might debate over what the app needs to do versus what’s actually possible. 

For this reason, you’ll want to choose a mobile app designing tool that simplifies the passing of design to development. UXPin gives designers the opportunity to design highly realistic prototypes. When devs see the prototype, they can use UXPin to generate CSS automatically. 

This leads to easier design handoffs, since user experience and interface design as well as app development processes are connected. They all can meet in one tool. Try it for free.

2. Real-world data

One of the biggest issues with prototypes is just how artificial they feel. All that lorem ipsum and knocked-up design elements break immersion in test groups and fails to showcase the true flavor of your concept. It simply doesn’t look believable, or even look how it should at all.

The best design tools let you populate your prototypes with real-world data. Names, locations, text, and images can all be inserted into designs to better reflect what users will actually see when the product launches. Real-life data like this also gives your team and other key stakeholders a greater impression of what’s being built long before you invest resources into design and development. 

3. Collaboration and sharing features

Collaboration is an essential part of the design process – from chewing over product concepts and strategizing your next steps to communicating core functions to other teams. With so many ideas bouncing around, it’s sometimes difficult to log everything and keep everyone fully informed. And that harms the perfecting of your app.

So, choose an app design tool that makes it simple and easy to share ideas and collect & collate feedback. UXPin features support for PDF, PNG, and HTML exports so everyone on your team can check out the latest designs. 

To further enhance collaboration and sharing between teams, the UXPin Mirror app offers authorized users the ability to live-preview mock-ups on mobile devices. It’s the ideal way to understand how your app design looks, feels, and acts on other devices, be it Android or iOs. And with edits displayed in real-time, you’ll be able to compare before-and-after shots. 

Be sure to discover more characteristics of great app design software in our dedicated article on choosing the right tool to design your app in.

App design trends to watch out for in 2022 and beyond

1. Multidirectional navigation

Scrolling remains the primary way users experience apps today. Up and down and the occasional tap or input. It’s a functional means of navigation, but it’s not fulfilling – even if everything else on the screen is. 

Multidirectional navigation introduces a more engaging experience than traditional and limited scrolling. Modern apps are deploying horizontal and vertical sliders that let users swipe and scroll through the app, to evoke more instinctive, natural interactions. 

You’ll find this type of design heavily featured in multimedia and dating apps that let you swipe left and right to find everything from stunning shots and radio stations to potential life-partners. 

2. Inclusive designs

Mobile devices are for everyone – and your app should be, too. They’re in the pockets and hands of youngsters, pensioners, and everyone in between. Unless you’re targeting a very niche market, a modern app needs to feature inclusive design.

You’re not just appealing to a broad user-base. You’re designing an app that’s accessible and usable by that audience. Whether they’re on a phone or a tablet, have physical disabilities or other accessibility issues. 

Subtitles are one of the most common trends in inclusive design. Other examples include using buttons that are big and bold, reaching younger children and those with visual impairments. The same goes for sizing options and adding alt text to images for users with screen readers. 

Color blind mode is another accessible feature worth including for those who need it. To make sure you’re creating fully inclusive app designs, UXPin hosts a ton of accessibility features, including a color-blind simulator and contrast checker, making it simple to build experiences for all. 

3. Dark mode

Dark mode isn’t a new trend in app design. But it is an ongoing one. Users today want apps to be easy on the eye – even, or especially, when we roll over at 3 in the morning to check our inbox. Generally speaking, good UX is not blinding users with a bright white screen if dark mode is available. 

Dark mode fits comfortably in mobile app design, as both an accessibility feature, and a user-focused enhancement. A classic case of ‘If they don’t need it, they want it.’ By switching to darker colors, users experience less eye strain, so they’re more comfortable using your app at all hours of the day. 

For bonus UX points, let users set a dark mode schedule that turns on at specific times. 

Lead the way by looking at all the top app design trends we’ve gathered for you.

Build App Design in UXPin

The road towards creating a successful, user-friendly mobile app can be lengthy and 

time-consuming. The good news is, however, it does not have to be an arduous one! 

If you follow a well-thought-out strategy, you’ll be boosting your chances of market success. For starters, it’s important that you divide your app design process into three phases – planning & research, design & development, and launch & continuous testing. Make sure to have a clear understanding of your budget and KPIs. It’s also equally important to use the right mobile app design tools. 

If you’re just about to embark on your mobile app designing journey, we recommend taking UXPin for a spin. You’ll be using the absolute-best solution for team collaboration, leverage real data in your prototypes, and make design handoffs as easy as can be.

The post Creating Engaging Mobile App Design – All You Need to Know appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Irrespective whether you’re creating android or iOS app design there are a number of mistakes which you should avoid at all costs if you don’t want to design a bad UI. Among others, these are:

• Including too many features which clutter the design
• Ignoring updates
• Skipping MVPs
• Having a poor Information Architecture.

Did you know that there are about 2.8 million apps on the Google Play store and another 1.96 million on Apple App Store? This means that we don’t have to grind our teeth and tolerate bad app design. For anything we need, we can simply turn to one of the tens, if not hundreds of competing mobile apps. 

So, the million-dollar question is – how to avoid user dropout in your app product design? Among others, it’s essential to spot and avoid the most common mistakes in iOS and Android app designs. 

Most product design teams build a prototype to test their app design idea and avoid mistakes. If you want to design a prototype, try UXPin, it’s a design tool that allows you to build highly interactive prototypes that are ready for tests. Try UXPin for free.

9 new app design mistakes worth avoiding

Here are a few mistakes that you should avoid while creating android app designs and iOS app designs. 

#1 Overdoing it with features 

Josh Wright Title, CEO of CellPhoneDeal Website

A big mistake that a lot of people make when designing a mobile app is incorporating too many features into the app straight off the bat. While you may want your app to cover a wide range of tasks, including too many features might end up taking away from the app’s core purpose.

In the first place, cover the core purpose, and only when the app becomes more popular and people become used to using it should you start to integrate new features slowly. This will avoid confusion, and it will allow your users to adjust to your user interface as the app evolves.

With that being said, you still need to know when to stop. If you bring in too many features, your app might end up with an information overload, that is your app becoming too cluttered and confusing, despite bringing in the features gradually.

#2 Poor Information Architecture (IA)

DaBina Donley, Digital Marketing Lead at Techna Digital

Poor information architecture results in bad app design as the layout and structure of your app’s information aren’t easy to understand or use. As a result, users will be confused about navigating your app and will likely end up abandoning it.

Common problems with poor IA in mobile apps include:

• Having too many screens or pages, which can be overwhelming for users and make it challenging to find the information they need
• Not using clear and concise labels for buttons and other interface elements.
• Having navigation that is not intuitive or easy to use
• Using complex or unfamiliar terms instead of plain language
• Placing important information in unexpected or hard-to-reach places

It is essential to consider your users’ needs and ensure that your app’s ease of use. By following some basic principles of good UX, you can help make your app more successful among your target audience. 

#3 Not paying attention to updates

​​Laura Jimenez, Owner at Ishine365

The mobile app development process does not end with its launch. It begins there. So, regular app updates are critical for attracting new users and retaining the existing ones. Although it’s not related to your design process, be sure to gather user feedback once you release the app and try to implement new functionalities.

You can do this by keeping a check on reviews. It will help you get a clear view of the shortcomings and make app improvements as and when needed.

#4 Not displaying key information in a quick and prominent manner

Sally Stevens, Marketing Manager & Co-Founder of FastPeopleSearch.io

An app’s first appearance and appeal are crucial in enticing a target audience. The first time they use the app, a user forms an opinion about its user interface and functionality. A user may not give an app a second chance if it appears to be complicated or boring, i.e., offers bad UX design and poor user interface design.

The importance of displaying useful information on the initial screen cannot be overstated. All relevant icons, such as login, logout, home page, search bar, contact information, and any other key features, should be on the initial screen.

On top of the above, the loading speed of the app should also be taken into account as a key aspect. Hence, the need for designing light-weight experiences – otherwise, users become bored and lose interest if it takes too long to start the app or load any critical feature. Finally, an app’s color palette should correspond to its function.

An app for professional usage, for example, should not have a quirky colour scheme, while leisure applications should not be dreary or monotonous. Users may become bored and have a bad first experience if the colors aren’t vibrant and solid.

#5 User testing with a low range of personas

David Stellini, Co-Founder at All Front

User testing allows you to gather insights about usability, functionality, speed performance, and user experience by letting real people test out your mobile app.

It’s important to test across different types of users – from different gender, ages, and background as they might have different reasons for using your product displaying different behavior patterns.

This way, you can get an idea of the diversity in your users and identify unique behavior or what can be generalized to improve your design. So the takeaway here is to do user research prior to UX design! That’s not all, though.

Test your design with every user set. Show them different design examples, do other types of user testing, and check if you really have the right answer to a problem AKA good design.

If you test with just one user type, you risk being misled by actions that might be accidental or in a spur of the moment. This can lead to bad app design, and – as a result – low conversion rates and usability issues further down the line. It can be significantly more expensive to fix these once your mobile app has launched rather than performing user testing on multiple personas beforehand.

#6 Not launching an MVP version of your mobile app

Daving Stellini of All Front brings up another common mistake among app creators – launching a full-blown app based on assumptions, instead of going with a minimum viable product.

The idea behind an MVP is to identify one critical problem your users have and how you are going to solve it. This way you can focus on your main value proposition and prioritize core features that your users need the most. Instead, businesses add too many non-critical functionalities to impress stakeholders.

The result is a clustered design that can overwhelm visitors and lead to poor user experience. You also create more work for your developers which can result in slow development and delayed launch. All of this can have a negative impact on your business including discouraging people from using your mobile app, low perceived value and low-profit margins.

#7 Ignoring preferences of current users 

Pavel Tahil, Senior UX Designer at EPAM Systems

I had a chance to work on iOS and android app designs for one of the popular airlines. Our company had an extensive website with more than 3000 pages and an old iOS app.

Our job was to build new iOS and android apps that would keep the website functionality, including booking, offers, travel documents, and many other pages. My team and I designed apps from scratch. All the decisions were based on our deep research, interviews with users, and business. We knew all the customers’ problems, and new apps worked perfectly for new users.

When we analyzed the stats, we found out that new users had a better conversion rate than users who already had an account. So all user testing and interviews were based on the behaviors of new users. And we didn’t focus on the current web audience.

The problem was that existing users already had preferences and behaviors that didn’t match the new app structure. That’s why we had many drop-offs and found later users closed an app to continue the flow on the web.

The problem was solved by educational screens and tips for existing users. Also, the structure and IA of the web were updated later based on the mobile experience.

#8 Not including CTAs that would encourage users to share data

Ashley Regan-Scherf, Content Marketing Executive at RGC Advertising

Two of the most important key performance indicators (KPIs) for mobile apps are user downloads and logins. One of the most common mistakes web designers experience is not including enticing enough calls to actions or content to ensure their users hand over personal details, create logins, and interact further with the app.

However, it’s one thing to encourage app users to register, but it’s quite another to make them do so without annoying them enough that they delete the app. For example, some people are cautious of apps that collect too much data, so it’s a good idea to make it optional for users to sign up or register to use your app.

To avoid this common mobile app design mistake, UX design team should offer a good user experience to entice customers to sign up for the app without expecting anything in return. This could mean exploring products before urging them to subscribe, for example, if you’re developing a mobile application.

#9 Using hamburger menus 

Ryan Vice, Co-founder and CEO of Vice Software

In iOS and android app designs, avoid hamburger menus unless you have a really compelling reason to use them. All too often, we see these menus being used when in all honesty, they shouldn’t be. Hamburger menus are the very design elements that hide features, reducing their value, and they are hard to reach with one hand when located in the top left corner.

There are many alternatives you can use instead, but we favor having core features visible to users as much as possible to improve user engagement and only reverting to a hamburger for secondary features if the app is complex.

Use UXPin for Good App Design

Want to avoid costly design mistakes? UXPin lets you design prototypes that behave like the final product. This way, you can test the real user experience and observe how your users interact with an app, not what they think they would click on, choose or go to. Start UXPin free trial.

The post Bad App Design – What Mistakes Should You Avoid in a New App Design? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

4.2 hours a day. 

If recent studies are to be believed, that’s how long users spend in apps on their mobile phone every day. It’s a massive 30% jump over the last two years – propelled by tech innovations, better understanding of app design UI UX, and, of course, the pandemic. 

And 4.2 hours is just the global average. In certain territories, the average time mobile users are on their apps is more than five hours! 

App usage is up. Screen time is up. iPhone and other smartphones sales are up. The digital space grows more competitive by the day. With so many companies vying for an audience’s undivided attention, it’s critical to create the best mobile app design possible. The one that grabs their attention, meets their needs, and, most importantly, keeps them coming back for more. And that’s what we will cover in this article. 

Want to prototype a mobile app? Try UXPin to design your app’s prototype that looks and feels like a finished product. Add life to your prototype by using variables, states, and conditions that transform your prototype into a design that can be interacted with. Try UXPin for free.

What is mobile app UX design? 

Putting the end user first. In a nutshell, that’s what the mobile app design user experience is all about. It emphasizes creating seamless, user-friendly, and intuitive experiences that chime with what the target audience wants, how they want it, whether it’s about an Apple or Android phone, tablet, or even a wearable device.

The best mobile app design takes into account the function of the app. The look. The feel. The need it fulfills in a user’s life. 

Take the Twitter app as an example. Like most big tech companies, it offers a masterclass in getting app UX design right (if we ignore the constant tinkering and updates that seem to annoy half the user-base, of course). Almost anyone, anywhere in the world – whoever they are, whatever device they’re on – can pick up the Twitter app and use it efficiently.

To help you nail app design UX that really excites your users, let’s look at the best mobile app design practices. 

5 principles of mobile app design

1. Usability

You have limited space on a mobile screen. Don’t waste it. We’ve all come across apps that fill the screen with clutter, or make X’s on pop-ups too small to press (rendering the whole app unusable – and a candidate for uninstallation). The trick is to find the balance between what your users need to see, and what you need to show to help them achieve their goal.  

2. Familiarity

Users like what they know. Whether they realize it or not, they’ll carry that over even when an app design changes with future updates. Maybe it’s muscle memory. Maybe it’s just subconscious. A really good example of this is the ‘search’ icon. Instinctively, we look for this in the top-right corner of the screen. Because that’s where it’s found on almost every app and website. Use data to see what works. Build out from there. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel if it’s clear that users are familiar with the existing design (you can just make it smarter). 

3. Consistency

Consistency is important to create seamless user experiences. Design consistency is all about making sure your app follows a single principle throughout. The colors for a particular action, for example, are always the same or feature the same words. A green tick for ‘approve’. A red ‘X’ for no. It allows users to navigate an app without even thinking about it, or worrying they’re on the wrong screen entirely. 

4. Accessibility

Modern apps need to appeal to a seriously broad range of users – so that means taking into account the physical limitations of certain users, but also the many different devices that are being used (and where they’re being used – not everyone has access to super-fast internet speeds). You should also consider how your users are accessing functions. For instance, 51% of those over 55 rely on voice functions to access services within an app. An accessible app should reach as many users as possible. 

5. Appeal

You want your users to enjoy their time with your app. So, ‘appeal’ should feature high on your mobile app design needs. The app shouldn’t just be a means to an end. You’ll want to deliver an experience that they want to use again and again – whether your aim is to get them to spend more money, or simply spend more time with you. 

How to achieve the best mobile app design

1. Create an easy learning experience

Users like an experience that does what they need it to do, in the way they need it, without them even having to really think about it. Building an easy learning experience is the way to ‘train’ users to use your site.  

Think of it as a video game. In Super Mario Bros., players are ‘trained’ to achieve their goals – press A lets them jump. Jumping on an enemy eliminates the threat. Eliminating an enemy rewards them with a coin (success!). By the time they face the final boss, players have learned all the necessary mechanics that allow them to win the game. 

The same can be true of a good UX of an app.

Steep learning curves will, inevitably, frustrate and discourage people from using an app. For this reason, you’ll want to apply minimalist app design principles that keep things really clear and streamlined. So, for instance, making key functions like a search bar or a link to the home page easy to reach and highly visible.

You don’t want to make users trawl through multiple menu options to reach these, and other popular actions. At the same time, you can add necessary but less popular functions within a collapsible menu, to reduce on-screen clutter. 

2. Use push notifications wisely

Push notifications might not be a core part of your mobile app, but they play a major part in the overall app design UX since they help increase user engagement. 

However, it’s really important to make sure you’re not just spamming app users with push notifications all the time. Deploy them only when relevant, and when users will consider them valuable. A great example of this is through Uber, which pushes through notifications to a user’s phone when they’re offering a specific deal, usually on a specific day. Or Duolingo, which sends practice reminders when a user hasn’t logged on after a specific number of days.

If you have access to the right data, you might try the same thing – sending push notifications on days when they’re more likely to place an order, or when offering sales on items in a range they’ve previously purchased from before. 

Where possible, give your app users control over when and why they receive push notifications.

3. Put familiarity at the center

Base your beautiful app design on what works and what users are comfortable using. It’s easy to want to create all-new experiences that do things in new ways. But the truth is, when it comes to the best mobile app design concepts, building on what’s come before is often best. 

That’s because users won’t even need to think about how to use your app. They’ve already done it before, on a thousand apps and websites. The trick is to make it feel new and engaging and on-brand, without disrupting the user journey.

Head to any eCommerce app and you’ll find an experience that’s very similar to the one provided by Amazon. The basket icon at the top-right of the screen. The product images, followed by a description, then the option to ‘Buy now’. And that’s because Amazon has ‘trained’ app users in how to purchase products. So, it makes sense for others to follow Amazon’s lead, to help increase conversions and build an experience that’s familiar to users across the globe. 

4. Remember that your users are on the move

Mobile app design means you’re not just building experiences for the small screen. You’re building experiences that fit the user’s environment. You can’t blame (or stop) users from using mobile devices on the go, right? But you can craft minimalist app design experiences that ‘fit’ into that portable landscape. 

Sure, they may be on your app. But then a sharp dress catches their eye in a shop window. A friend calls them over. That may break the user’s concentration. If you make it simple for them to dive straight back in where they were, it doesn’t have to break the user flow. Look at how users are using your mobile app, too. Are they looking to be entertained for endless hours or want a two-minute distraction between real-world tasks? 

On the design side, remember users who are on the move will lack precision motor control, so don’t make buttons and actions fiddly. Think touch and gyro to help them navigate. And consider what users see. Whether you’re building a website or an app, designs should always be simple to parse at a single glance. This becomes even more important for users on the go, bobbing their heads as they walk and getting distracted by the world around them. 

5. Don’t clutter your design

Prioritize simplicity in mobile UX design. That’s all users really want from a mobile application. Just look at the top downloads in any app store. 

To bring this to life in your own beautiful app design, avoid clutter at all costs. It risks confusing and frustrating users. 

Let’s say you’ve developed a smart translation app. There are loads of elements you could squeeze onto the page. Dictionaries, ‘word of the day’, options to translate voice and text, take a test… But decide what’s the core action you want on any single screen. 

A clear focus means you won’t be tempted to clutter up the screen. Build this minimalist app design around one-handed navigation. Whether it’s a text field or a call-to-action button, it needs to be easy to see, read, and reach with one thumb. 

Keep visual hierarchy top of mind. Use images, colors, different fonts, and sizes to direct users to the right place. Instead of using loads of text, display information visually wherever possible – a really great example of this is Google Calendar’s Schedule View. Graphic design is still important in UI design.

6. Use autocomplete and one-click actions where possible

As part of your ‘simple’ design look for other ways to remove friction. 

Auto-completing forms, offering auto-sign-in, and one-click actions are good examples, especially if you’re deploying an eCommerce app.

For instance, everyone knows how hard it is to correctly input an address on a mobile screen. And, even if it isn’t, they may still need to look elsewhere (the contacts app, a wallet, even a little black book) to make sure they get it right. Autocomplete forms remove this. As do quick actions like ‘order again?’. In one tap, users have completed the user journey.

7. Remember about voice UI

When you’re focusing on beautiful app design, it’s easy to build around touch. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So, we consider the visual elements of the design first. We ask ‘does it look nice?’ and ‘is it a minimalist app design?’ and wonder what buttons a user needs to press to achieve their objectives. But don’t neglect voice user interface. 

Voice UI – present in every smart speaker and almost every modern smartphone – lets your users interact verbally. VUI may become as much important as visual design in the coming years.

No need to touch or even look at the screen. It makes your app instantly more accessible, increasing your user base to include those with motor disabilities (or just those who want to use your app while driving their car).

The design process for planning Voice UI can take a long time to plan and execute when it comes to the app development process. Such user interface design requires a lot of ux research, testing and an extensive prototyping stage. Yet, it’s worth doing, especially if you want to make your user interface design accessible.

Use Those Tips in Your Next App Design UX

Nothing is more important than your users. They’re the ones downloading your app, coming back each day. In the competitive digital space, designers and developers can’t afford to create unfulfilling user experiences. The kind that overwhelms or leaves them lost, forcing them to hit ‘Uninstall’ faster than The Flash can sprint. 

Good mobile app design UX has trained us all to expect the app to serve our needs, not the other way around. User-centric designs need to be intuitive to navigate and simple to use. As natural as opening the mail or closing a door. But a million times more fun for them. 

Try UXPin for Mobile App Design

Ready to apply mobile app design tips? Sign up for UXPin’s trial and start prototyping your mobile app. UXPin is a powerful design tool that makes interactive prototyping fast and easy. Use variables, states, and conditions to breathe life into your design, share it with your stakeholders and see how they move around your app instead of just admiring its looks.

The post App Design UX – How to Ensure Great User Experience appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

If you’re just about to launch an app (or update your existing one), then it’s essential to be aware of the latest app design trends. Here is a list of the top eight evolvements that you should be aware of in the coming years.

8 Mobile and Desktop App Design Trends Worth Knowing About

1. No password login

Simplicity has always been critical to app design. Great designers build innovations that draw the eye. The details easily parsed by the user – without them even needing to think about it – create a seamless, free-flowing user experience. 

And nothing is simpler than ‘nothing’. 

That’s why no password logins are one of the latest user experience app design trends to consider. No forgetting passwords. No resetting passwords. No trial and error as users guess their way through or rely on password managers. 

Facial recognition is one option, if you want passwordless solutions in your app. Apple’s FaceID and Windows Hello for Android have familiarized users with simply looking at the camera to unlock the system, so you’re building on existing foundations. 

Fingerprint sensors are already in place on most modern phones. In the smartphones’ sphere, most banking apps already feature this because a fingerprint is a lot less guessable than a password you can write down. 

Voice recognition, popularized by Alexa and Google Home, offers another login method. Still, it’s worth considering whether, in a world where most phones are switched to silent or vibrate, your users will be comfortable using this outside the house.

So long as you offer the traditional alternative (it’s also a good backup when you’re not looking your best), ease the user journey with no password logins. 

2. Designing for inclusivity

Everyone’s using mobile devices these days. Phones and tablets aren’t just for youngsters, oldsters, and the somewhere-in-between stars. 

Kids today learn how to crack find videos on YouTube before they learn the alphabet. Elderly users have grown up during the technological revolution of the last thirty years. Folks with physical and mental disabilities rely on phones and tablets to keep them connected. 

That informs one of 2022’s biggest trends in app development: inclusivity. 

Your mobile app design needs to consider everyone who’s using your app. Accessibility is key to creating experiences that are appealing to everyone and usable by anyone. After all, it makes no sense to cut off potential audiences when you can be inclusive of all. 

There are tons of ways to create an inclusive experience and earn points for UX design trends. 

You might want to make tappable buttons big and bold – helping those with visual impairments or younger children. Or bump up the font size, adjust typography and add alt text to imagery, for the benefit of those using screen readers. Popping subtitles on videos is one of the most common ways to increase accessibility for those that need it (and those that just like to watch videos without the sound up). Adding a colorblind mode for those that need it. Really simple solutions that open up your app to a broader user base. 

Want to make sure you’re creating accessible, inclusive designs? Use a tool like UXPin, which offers a whole range of accessibility features like a color blind simulator and a contrast checking feature, so you can be confident you’re building app experiences that work for everybody. 

3. The use of augmented reality

Everyone’s talking about the metaverse. Augmented reality is a step towards that future – where the digital and the real are indistinguishable. 

AR is one of several app design trends that takes advantage of device features to create a more interactive experience, inserting itself into a user’s life in fresh, new ways (so, users aren’t just mindlessly scrolling as they stare at the screen). 

Let’s say you’ve developed an app to increase geography knowledge among students. The easiest angle would be a series of Wiki-style pages, maybe a quiz or three. But imagine if users could scan a code and view a virtual globe right on their mobile’s screen. And as they dive in for a closer look at the world, the app displayed location-based information, supplemented by artificial intelligence. 

That’s a lot more powerful than boring walls of text and a library of videos and images. 

That’s essential to the user and your goals. 

Smaller design teams may find AR a bit tricky to implement. It’s a pretty technical undertaking, after all. But if you have the power already, you’re ready for the challenge, or you’re ok with outsourcing, augmented reality implementation will put you in a strong position in the years ahead. 

4. Incorporating gaming in app design

Gaming is big business. Globally, the industry is worth more than $138bn – putting it well above the value of even the biggest Hollywood blockbuster machine. Everyone’s got a phone in their pocket, a console under their TV. Gaming, in other words, is accessible in unimaginable ways. 

But there’s another good reason gaming is one of the major trends in app design in 2022: interactivity. 

Just like augmented reality, whether it’s the principal reason to download your app or an optional extra that keeps users coming back, gaming creates an entertaining space for users. It’s not just screen-based dialogue. 

Duolingo is a great example of adding a gaming aspect to an app. Rather than mimicking fusty old textbooks and hard-to-follow listening and translating tests, it makes learning a new language fun. It adds novel ways to challenge users. As a user progresses, they unlock new levels, new challenges to prove themselves. Just like in gaming. 

5. Multidirectional navigation

Up and down is so last year, right?

Ok, not really. It’s an integral part of the mobile experience. But multidirectional navigation is a mobile app design that means you don’t have to limit yourself to traditional scrolling. 

By introducing horizontal as well as vertical sliders, users can scroll and swipe their way around your app in a way that’s intuitive and interactive. It’s fulfilling in a way that simple, overly familiar vertical navigation in web design isn’t. 

Multidirectional navigation is a core function in multimedia apps – swipe to see the next radio station, music artist, or video. And social media dating apps are famous for it. ‘Swipe right’ and ‘swipe left’ have already entered popular parlance. No wonder it’s become one of the latest UX design trends to watch out for. 

6. Putting illustrations at the forefront

Nothing says ‘phony’ faster than a stock image. Our eyes glaze over. Our trust-o-meter starts to ping. 

So, expect to see illustrations take center-stage over the coming months. Drawings help build and humanize your brand. 

Visuals are important in mobile app design – your testing has probably already shown that users respond better to human faces than inanimate objects, for instance. Illustrations act to signal to users what you’re about, what they need to do, displaying information in a way that, and, in many cases, it’s unique to you and enticing to your target audience.

They also help make otherwise unengaging screens, data visualization, and graphs look more approachable. 

Let’s go back to the geography app we’ve mentioned above. A wall of text about the capital city of Canada isn’t going to entice anyone half as much as a series of screens broken up into bite-sized paragraphs and complemented with ‘home-grown’ illustrations. 

By putting illustrations to the forefront of your app design, you can effortlessly (and instantly) create a warm, comfortable environment for the user.

All in all, don’t underestimate the power of graphic design, as illustrations are one of the leading UI design trends.

7. Dark mode as one of the latest app design trends

Dark mode has been an unbeatable trends in the recent years. An evergreen in the world of app design trends. It’s been around for ages, and it’s just as relevant now as it’s always been. A simple toggle switch and a ‘negative effect’ that makes navigation easier on the eye, especially at night. 

Yet, despite its intense popularity among users, there are some brands that still haven’t incorporated dark themes into their desktop and mobile applications. So, for many businesses, it’s a chance to attract users’ attention. To offer something that’s intensely popular among users before anyone else does. 

Better still, it’s a chance to. After all, the user experience is critical to successful mobile app design. Dark mode eases eye strain (and can also look really cool), meaning users are comfortable using your app any time of day without getting blasted by rays of white light. 

If you want to get super-technical, you could also offer a dark mode schedule. This would let the mode kick in during certain hours of the day (or, more appropriately, night). 

8. Transparent elements

You may have already heard of transparent elements when it comes to the latest app design trends. It’s sometimes known as glassmorphism. And it’s a way to create a lightweight aesthetic by letting on-screen elements ‘float’ on the screen. 

The main design characteristics of glassmorphism are:

• Layering, placing one element over another rather than directing users to a new screen
• Transparency – particularly the ‘frosted glass’ effect that overlays an element in the foreground while blurring out the background
• Stand-out colors to help users differentiate actionable elements
• Borders around the transparent element, again to help users understand the limits of the transparent element.

To create a great glassmorphism user interface, you need to consider the background as much as the foreground. For example, a really bright, vivid background without too much detail highlights the tonally different transparent foreground, making it simple, visible, and super-clear to direct users to their next action in the app. 

Which Trend Are You Going to Follow?

User Experience and User Interface Design are all about the user. They always were. Always will be. 

Little wonder, then, that the biggest trends in app design continue to be focused around how to create simple experiences for users that ‘just work’, exactly as they should, and exactly how they want. 

Successful mobile app designs can attract and retain users. You don’t want to expend resources on capturing an audience, only to have them uninstall it because they can’t find their way around the app, or because the experience itself is flawed. 

Because, when competition in the mobile app space is so high, companies can’t afford not to follow the trends. The best app experiences are those that users don’t even need to think about. That meet their needs before they even know they need them. And create a comfortable on-screen environment that keeps them coming back for more.

It’s time to put this knowledge into practice. Design user-friendly, highly realistic prototypes in our design tool, UXPin. Learn more about it.

The post 8 App Design Trends for 2022 & Beyond appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Material Design is one of the most popular design systems. If you own an Android device, you use Material Design daily. Many companies use the Material Design System as a foundation for building mobile and web applications.

The system’s comprehensive component library and resources, including Material Icons (now Material Symbols), give organizations and startups the building blocks to scale products infinitely without designing from scratch.

This article explores Material Symbols and other Material resources you can use for your next product development project.

Material Design UI and Icons come standard with every UXPin plan. Sign up for a free trial to build beautiful apps with UXPin and Material Design today!

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What is Material Design?

Material Design is a design library developed by Google, including UI components, icons, typography, and more. Every Material component includes guidelines for implementation, usage, anatomy, behavior, and more to help designers and engineers achieve the best results while delivering high-quality user experiences.

Google launched the first version of Material Design at the 2014 Google I/O Conference. In May 2021, Google released Material Design 3, including notable features like Dynamic Color, foldable device components, and design tokens.

Material Symbols Launch

One of Material Design’s most exciting recent updates was the launch of Material Symbols–a customizable icon set with over 2,000 open-source icons in five styles. You can still find all your favorite Material Icons, but now you have more flexibility and customization to meet your product and brand’s requirements.

Material Icons are still available but don’t offer the same customization as Symbols. You can only adjust the size and density versus the four variable options with symbols.

Material Icons Set

Google has kept the old Material Icons, albeit fewer than the Symbols catalog. Icons are available in five styles, Outlined, Filled, Founded, Sharp, and Two-tone.

Material Symbols – What’s New?

Material Icons has moved under Google Fonts, offering a variable icon set in three styles, Outlined, Rounded, and Sharp. Designers also have the option to customize the icon set with four variables or axes:

• Fill: Fill or unfilled appearance
• Weight: Defines the symbol’s stroke from 100 to 700 weight
• Grade: Granular adjustments to the symbol’s thickness to convey emphasis
• Optical size: Size icons to 20, 24, 40, or 48 pixels

The variable methodology allows engineers to store multiple variations in a single font (or icon) rather than several files. By reducing the file size and number of files, engineers enjoy better performance and fewer assets to manage.

Three Styles

Google also introduced three new styles to match a brand’s identity and UI design.

• Outlined: Clean and light. Designers can adjust the icon weight to complement the product’s fonts.
• Rounded: The curved aesthetic works well with rounded logos and heavier fonts.
• Sharp: Designed to match UIs with straight edges and 90-degree corner styling.

Build Your Own Material Icons

If you can’t find the icon you need in Material Symbols’ vast catalog, Google includes guidelines for designing custom icons, including:

• Design principles: best practices to create clear iconography that’s meaningful and helpful to users.
• Icon sizes and layout: how to set up the grid size and layout for designing icons using a design tool.
• Grid and keyline shapes: techniques for creating consistent a consistent icon set.
• Icon metrics: icon design anatomy including corners, weight, stroke, and complexity.

Following these helpful guidelines, you can utilize Material’s comprehensive icon set while including a few relevant to your brand.

How to Use Google’s Material Icons & Symbols

There are several ways designers and engineers can use Material Icons and Symbols. 

Downloading SVG or PNG

You can download Icons and Symbols in SVG or PNG format. We recommend using SVG for its performance and customization benefits. PNG files are much larger and more complicated for designers and engineers to edit and resize.

Google allows you to customize your Icons and Symbols before downloading, so you have a finalized asset to use in your project.

CSS/CDN

Material Symbols provides a CSS file for website installations similar to what you use for Google Fonts. The problem with this method is that it requires your website to make additional requests, which can severely affect performance.

If you’re planning to use more than one Material Symbol, it’s better to use another method for installation.

Operating Systems & Frameworks

Material Icons and Symbols offer downloads for Android and iOS to install as project assets, with code snippets for implementation. Material Design includes instructions for Flutter (a Google-developed programming language) and Angular. React instructions are available in MUI’s documentation.

Designer Usage

Most design tools offer plugins or extensions for Material Icons. If you’re using UXPin, the complete Material Icons set comes standard with every plan.

You can also import your own SVG icons, edit them in UXPin and save them to your Design System to share with other team members.

Using Material Icons and Symbols With Typography

Google’s Material 3 documentation offers tips and best practices for pairing icons with typography.

Weights

Never use different weights for your icons and text. Google makes it easy to pair these assets with Material Symbols’ Weight customization variable. Ensure you always match the font weight with the icon weight to achieve a clean and consistent aesthetic.

Correct font weight.

Incorrect font weight.

Sizing & Alignment

Always match the icon size and alignment with the text. Users must be able to read both and recognize they’re related. Google recommends designers “shift down the baseline of symbols to approximately 11.5% of the type size.” This technique will keep icons and text uniform and aligned.

Material Icons Accessibility

Google provides brief but helpful advice to designers about icon accessibility. Designers must always use meaningful, descriptive labels with icons, especially for navigation. Icons without text labels can appear ambiguous and confusing to users. Designers must also include alt text for screen readers and other assistive technologies.

Target size is also a crucial factor for icons. People with large fingers or hand disabilities might accidentally hit the wrong icon button, causing confusion and frustration.

Google recommends designers use a minimum target size of 48 pixels. If you’re using a 20-pixel icon, provide enough padding to make the total target area 48 pixels.

Designing with Material Design’s Icons in UXPin

With several icon sets, including Material Icons, preinstalled with UXPin, designers don’t have to install plugins or upload external files. Here’s how easy it is to add icons to your project.

Step One – Click the icon element

Click the icon element in the Quick Tools panel to the left of the canvas. Alternatively, you can use the keyboard shortcut OPTION+I (on Mac) or ALT+I (on PC).

Step Two – Draw an icon on the canvas

Click and drag a square where you’d like the icon to appear on the canvas. Hold down SHIFT to maintain an equal width and height.

Step Three – Icon properties panel

Once you draw an icon, an icon properties panel will appear on the right Properties Panel. You can select Material Icons or one of the other sets, including Fonts Awesome, Retina Icons, and a UXPin set, to name a few.

Step Four – Select an icon

Scroll through the available Material Icons to find what you need. Click on any icon in the properties panel (while you have the icon selected on the canvas) to make your selection.

Step Five – Adjust icon properties

Once you have chosen an icon, you can style it using the Properties Panel above the Icon section. Below the Color Picker is a dropdown with available design systems, including Material Design, so designers don’t have to copy/paste HEX codes from elsewhere.

Step 6 – Add interactions

At the top of the Properties Panel, you’ll find Interactions. Add interactions, animations, transitions, etc., to make your icons interactive. For example, we might want this user icon to open a personalized profile page.

Check out UXPin’s Interactive UI Patterns and App Examples to see how UXPin’s features work and what’s possible with code-based design.

Improve Prototyping and Testing With UXPin

Material Icons are just one convenience of working in UXPin. Our goal is to help designers build prototypes quicker and with greater functionality and fidelity as image-based design tools.

Using one of UXPin’s built-in design libraries, designers can drag and drop elements to build interactive prototypes in minutes. We’ve included five popular design libraries to accommodate every type of project, from websites to web and mobile applications for enterprise and B2C products.

Every UXPin plan includes Material Design, iOS, Bootstrap, Foundation, and User Flows, with each library’s interactive elements, colors, text styles, and icons.

UXPin’s Design Systems feature allows designers to build a design system from scratch, automatically categorizing the library into Colors, Assets, Typography, and Components. You can also set up permissions and include documentation for designers and engineers to follow.

Build better prototypes that accurately replicate the final product experience using UXPin’s code-based design tool. Sign up for a free trial to discover the possibilities of designing with UXPin.

The post Material Design Icons – Building Blocks of Web and App Design appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

When you look at the apps that have hit thousands, if not millions of downloads (and boast thousands of happy reviews!), you might wonder: is there an ‘it’ factor they all share? Among others, whether an app has a high download and retention rate comes down to great app design. Namely, there are certain UI/UX design principles that can keep users coming back for more.

Use UXPin and design a prototype that will surely become the next great app! Sign up for a free trial and use its incredible component-driven prototyping approach to build your app’s user interface. Leverage the tool’s power to create a design using a single art board that you can add interactivity to instead of linking multiple art boards to simulate interactions.

9 App Design Examples – What Makes for a Great App Design

We’ve reached out to a group of product and design experts to learn about their favorite app design examples and what exactly makes them love their favorite mobile apps. Here’s what they told us.

1. Wolt App – putting great user experience first 

Uladzislau Luchkouski, Head of Design at Orangesoft

The Wolt app is a prominent example of great app design that’s user-friendly. Wolt is a food delivery app that prioritizes superior UX design by offering unmatched categorization, search, and content display, no matter whether you download its iOS app for Iphones or access it on Android devices.

But what makes Wolt a standout in the niche is the overall flow of order placement and wait time in their user interface. Every single step is thought out and aims to address all possible customer needs.

• Delivery Settings – an in-built translator, customization tools, and the ‘Order Together’ feature drive maximum personalization for the app user, thus improving the user experience.
• Search – an intuitive search user interface with easily discoverable food items, meal categories, and dynamic pricing leaves no place for uncertainty and displays accurate pricing for each option.
• Checkout – the app implements an innovative ‘Slide to Confirm’ form instead of the usual ‘Tap Yes’ feature. This nice touch ensures that there is no accidental touch and the customer is fully aware of placing an order.
• Wait time and delivery – the Wolt app turns the hangry wait times into a quirky tapping game. Thus, the ‘In Delivery’ interface displays a timer with a big tappable button where the user needs to tap as many times as possible. If the user beats the target number, the delivery fee is completely free.

2. Google Maps – function over form

Can Burak, Executive Creative Director at 2fresh.com

When it comes to app design, form follows function. Being able to deliver the promise you give to users is far beyond having a cool user interface design. In that regard, Google Maps delivers great value, and it’s one of the best app designs.

The app brings the world onto your screen and is an example of responsive app design done well. It’s available both as a web and native mobile application. While I opt for a web app on my laptop or desktop, I use it as a native app on my mobile device. I use the offline maps functionality particularly often. 

I like the integration of the target destination in the form of text, photos, and comments. And I find great value in its core functionalities. As demonstrated, product design is all about the value and experience.

The app’s UI design is decent to deliver this promise. Nothing fancy or nothing to show off in here. When it comes down to functionality, subtle UI design is the best, which goes for any app, be it a banking app, a fitness app, and more.

If I were to name a downside of Google Maps from a user perspective, I’d say that I’m disappointed by the fact that resolution is crippled over time and that high-resolution satellite images are reserved for Google Earth.

3. Pocket – example of app redesign powered by users

Jay Soni, Marketing Director at Yorkshire Fabric Shop.

Another app design example worth looking at is Pocket. This amazing software allows you to save articles or movies to watch later, even if you don’t have access to the Internet, which is an awesome design concept. Pocket, in fact, recently received a Webby Award for user experience design. The app was reworked in large part thanks to Google Ventures. 

They enlisted the help of five users from their target audience who had never used the app before, and they used their feedback to design the app’s simple interface. The end outcome is visible to all with improved usability and a better experience.

4. Pinterest – simplicity of use

Sharon van Donkelaar, CMO and Head of Growth at Expandi

I really love Pinterest’s mobile app, not only because of its minimalist and visually appealing display but also because of how simple it is to use it and find what you’re looking for.

The app certainly has a clear and comprehensive UI design that, without taking much space on the screen and taking the focus away from all the beautiful visuals, allows users to move from one place to the next in the smoothest fashion.

Besides, the fact that with the mobile app you can do everything you’d do on the Pinterest website is the cherry on top of one of the most neatly designed mobile app UI designs I’ve recently used on my smartphone.

5. Viber – super fun to use 

Adam Moore, Founder of SocialPlus

I love that you can video chat with high-quality resolution, and also text people anywhere in the world. It is perfect for work as you can also communicate with this app through your computer. This multi-platform application is also highly protected, and you will feel secure that only you are seeing your own content between other people.

You can also join groups of people with similar interests to you, not unlike Facebook. This all-in-one app can also nurture your creative side as you can create your own stickers to send to others.  This app is fun, simple to use, and overall is a really pleasing app to look at. 

6. Uber – simplicity and user-friendliness 

Daniel Florido, Chief Web Development & Designer, Director of Pixelstorm

As a website and app designer, I’m always looking for inspiration in the form of well-designed UIs and clever UX. One great mobile app design example is the Uber app.

Uber is a popular ridesharing app that makes it easy to get around town quickly and conveniently. I love Uber’s design because of its simplicity and user-friendliness. The interface is intuitive, with large buttons that are easy to tap and clear information displayed uncluttered.

One of the standout features of the Uber app is its map view, which makes it easy to see exactly where your driver is in your current location. Another feature that I love is easily splitting fares with other riders, which can be a real lifesaver when traveling in a group or with friends.

So those are just a few of the things that make the Uber app’s design great. If you’re ever looking for inspiration for your web or app design projects, I highly recommend checking out Uber and seeing what makes it such a great user experience.

7. Etsy – great app design doesn’t overwhelm you 

Granger McCollough, CEO & Founder, Elite Patio Direct

As someone who works in eCommerce, I really love the design of the Etsy app purely due to its simplicity and the fact that it doesn’t overwhelm you with products from the start. A lot of eCommerce apps can really throw products in your face with sales and featured products. Etsy simply gives you a search bar and some suggestions for the type of product you may be looking for. 

The homepage of the app doesn’t give any prices or product names and is very visual, using only images and headings to narrow down your search. Because of this image-based design, it makes scrolling through the different headings feel very smooth.

8. Airbnb – setting a new standard for easy search

Trevor Larson, CEO and Founder of Nectar

I have always loved and tried to base a lot of what I do at my business off of the app design and UX of the greats. One great app design example is the Airbnb app. The overall experience is fantastic, irrespective of the device you use thanks to the responsive app design. But one particular feature that stands out to me is the search – the way that users can easily search for and find exactly what they are looking for. 

Whether it’s a room in a specific location, or an entire apartment to rent, the app makes it quick and easy to find exactly what you need. Overall, the Airbnb app has set the bar high for other apps in terms of great design and UX, and I believe that it truly exemplifies what great app design and UX should look like.

9. TripAdvisor – great app design for various user goals

Patricio Paucar, Co-founder of Navi

I’m awed by Tripadvisor’s app. Intuitive? Check. Great graphics? Definitely. Consistent branding? Yes. Tripadvisor’s overall user experience is the promise of the digital revolution bringing the world to your hand, realized. 

The app’s unique differentiator is versatility. It caters to people looking for guided experiences in trip planning as well as users looking for a restaurant recommendation nearby. That’s a rarity in travel apps but not surprising from a company that’s been in the travel business for over two decades.

What’s Your Example of Great App Design?

What makes an app great goes beyond responsive app design. Among others, it involves simplicity of use, which allows users to quickly meet their goals, minimalistic design that isn’t overwhelming and prioritizing function over form. Feel free to inspire yourself with our list while designing your own mobile app.

It’s your turn now. Use the powerful lessons you’ve just discovered and design a fully interactive prototype using UXPin’s best features. There’s no limits to what you can build if you put your mind to it. Sign up for a free UXPin’s trial.

The post 9 Experts Share Examples of Great App Design appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

We spend a lot of time on mobile devices, and it’s hard for us to imagine our lives without our favorite apps. However, the number of applications for Iphones or Android smartphones we can choose from is huge, and it’s safe to say that people won’t tolerate bad mobile design. 

In the following article we’re going to take a look at a few best practices, which you can use to make sure your app design interface is flawless! It’s not a step-by-step tutorial, but an easy walk-through of successful app design.

Good App Design TL;TR

• Before you even begin working on the design, be sure to understand the app’s purpose – whom you’re serving, why, how, and what value you’ll be adding to their lives.
• Avoid web-like experiences. These are hardly optimized for mobile devices and are now a big ‘no’ in terms of UX design and UI design.
• Prioritize app consistency and remember to constantly collect feedback from users.

Do you need to design a good app? Sign up for UXPin’s trial and see how easy it is to build an app prototype in this code-based design tool.

With UXPin you don’t need to draw multiple art boards to simulate your product. It allows you to add interactions, expressions, and variables that make your design feel like a finished product that is ready to be tested.

Sign up for a UXPin trial and start prototyping!

The Consequences of Bad App Design

Great app design is effortless. Intuitive. Everything works, just as it should, without users even thinking about how to do what they want to do. Bad app design is like placing a boulder in the middle of the road. It forces users to deviate from their path, changes the flow, or – the worst case scenario – has them backing off in search of another app that does what you don’t. 

Bad app design, i.e., the kind that confuses people, causes friction during the experience, or simply overwhelms them. Simply put, it has serious impacts on your app’s success. 

1. User drop-outs

You don’t just want to attract new users – you need to retain and keep them coming back to your application, thus increase metrics such as DAU or MAU (see other UX metrics). Poorly designed apps can’t deliver on that. As the user-base crumbles, it harms your business. 

2. Low or no engagement

Every app designer wants users to engage with their product – and the less user-friendly the app’s user interface is, the less likely it is that those that stick around actually engage with it. It affects game apps, productivity apps, ecommerce apps and other kinds of apps. With so much choice in the digital marketplace, users will go elsewhere.

3. Lack of referrals

Word-of-mouth is a powerful tool. The majority of users aren’t willing to spread a good word about an app or leave a great review of a mobile app that’s not user-friendly.

Even die-hard fans of your startup or previous products will find it difficult to endorse an app, meaning potential ‘evangelists’ won’t tell others ‘You gotta try this iOS app’.  And if they do, users don’t want to hear, ‘But if you do, remember you need to X, Y, and Z, before it works.’ Today’s users just don’t want to use an app if the learning curve is steep.

8 App User Interface Practices for Good App Design

Follow these mobile app design guidelines to build a product users will love. 

1. Prioritize mobile users

User-centric design is paramount. Because if an app isn’t built for the people that actually use it, then it’s little more than a vanity project. Users are used to everything being crafted for them. Whether it’s an easy ecommerce experience, like the kind provided by Amazon, or simple actions, like swiping right on a dating app, each component of the design needs to be designed with the user (and the device) in mind. 

Apps that don’t take a user-centric approach are destined to fall out of favor with users drifting to rival apps and sites. 

Testing can help you figure out how they use your site, letting you tweak the design until you find something that totally meets their needs. 

Read more about mobile-first responsive design.

2. Make it easy to navigate

Make it as simple as possible to get around – that’s just good mobile app design guidelines. If a user wants to reach their account information, or take a key action (like, ‘Play game’ or ‘Buy now’) then it should be obvious exactly how to do that. Remove the awkward moment when users think, ‘Is this right…?’, because it destroys usability of the app.

A simple app design interface isn’t the same as an underpowered one. It’s about removing what isn’t important and focusing attention on one or two core actions per screen. 

Take Facebook app as an example. It’s one most of us are familiar with, and it’s a masterclass in intuitive navigation. No one has to pause and think how to post an update or find the messenger icon. Familiarity and consistency are key to creating easy navigation.

So, the search button is found in the top-right corner, just as it is on countless other apps and sites. The menu button, also in the top-right, is shown as a three-line button. So, users know what it is, where it is, and how it works. Users aren’t overloaded with information and input options. Plus, their onboarding process goes way smoother this way.

3. Use the right app design tools

When following tried-and-tested mobile app design guidelines, think about how you’re going to craft your product. 

If you’re keen to get your app to market quickly without compromising on quality, choose the right app design tools. You wouldn’t build a skyscraper with wood shavings. And, even if you did, just how close to your initial idea would it be? 

You and your team won’t want to fiddle with clunky workarounds. Forcing design tools to do what they were never meant to do. It harms product development and risks shattering that original vision. 

The tools you use are absolutely critical to bringing your app to life in a way that chimes with your original vision and what your users crave. So, look for good app design tools that are specifically made for product designers in the website & app design and development space – like UXPin.

UXPin helps designers and developers stay efficient, consistent, and creative every step of the product design process – from prototyping to simplifying those sometimes tricky design hand-offs.

UXPin has multiple features that will make you design user interfaces fast and efficiently. It also helps you adhere to accessibility standards, easily test your prototype with the simulate mode, and it aims to make front-end developers build products according to your vision by giving them access to code.

Sign up for a free trial now.

4. Remember about feedback

Feedback is, of course, a really important part of product design – it helps you refine your product, turning a good app design into a great one. 

Users love feedback just as much. There’s nothing more frustrating, as a user, than tapping a button. And nothing happens.

That lingering sense of dread as they wonder, ‘Did it work? Is it doing what I want?’ 

That’s bad app design, pure and simple. Because it leaves the user adrift, even if just for a second or three. Users aren’t just used to ‘instant gratification’ here. They positively demand it (there’s a reason good website design dictates load times of no more than about three seconds). Without feedback, they can’t tap back fast enough, even if the action is still processing. The result is a lost user, and potentially a win for your competitors. 

One of the best examples of this is the Domino’s pizza tracker. It offers users feedback at every stage of the order. They’re not worrying whether their order went through – they can just open the app and see where it’s at and when it’ll be delivered. 

In your own app, use animations and transitions, audio and physical signals, like a vibration, to tell users that their action has been a success. 

5. Understand the app purpose

The why is just as important as the what and the who and the how. 

Take time to really understand why you’re building your app. It’s all about finding your purpose in the digital space. 

Let’s say you’re making a user-generated video social network. If your reasoning is, ‘I have an app idea for a social media mobile application because TikTok is popular’, that’s not a good enough why. TikTok already addresses a particular user pain point. In order to succeed, your app needs to do more than that. It needs to fill a niche, achieve new results in new ways. 

Understanding the why at an early stage of mobile app development – ideally, right at the beginning – informs the direction of the project for everyone involved. 

6. Avoid web-like experiences for mobile apps

Dare to be more than a website on mobile. Apps, especially the ones made for smartphones like Android or Apple, have some things in common with web design. Yet, there are things you should consider when designing mobile app UI.

Creating web-like experiences in an app should be avoided. – for two main reasons: 

• Technological limitations
• User-centric design

If you’re essentially ‘porting’ a website to an app, the tech limitations will impact your final product. Your app won’t work in the same way that a native app can. It’s true to say that HTML-powered apps that work across operating systems are easier to update. But it also means they’re prone to lag and are generally less capable than apps designed specifically for the iOS and Android platforms. 

The result is a bad user experience – a cardinal sin when building apps made with the user in mind. Web-style apps lack interactivity. That fundamentally changes what users can do and how they do it. 

If it doesn’t do what users want, in the manner they expect, they’re sure to find native apps (those built for specific platforms) that do. 

7. Don’t include too many notifications

Notifications are a necessary part of making an app – whether you want to highlight an important message or want users to perform a particular action. But they also disrupt the user flow, which means it’s important you strike the right balance. How quickly do you press ‘No thanks’ a website asks if they can view your location? And how frustrating is it to X an annoying pop-up? The same is true in an app and the notifications that pile up in the home screen. 

Bad app design throws real-time notifications at a user with reckless abandon. At that point, the focus is on the app’s functionality, not what the user wants (and the user, frankly, wants as few notifications as possible).

Frequency is important. But so is the content of those notifications. If you’re disrupting the user journey just to tell them how to do something they’ve done a million times before, then it only serves to frustrate them. 

Make your notifications useful or necessary (or both). A reminder to redeem their points or an item is still in their cart, for instance, is great; a reminder that pressing ‘Buy’ lets them buy an item isn’t. 

8. Prioritize design consistency

Have you ever tapped onto a new screen and thought – just for a second – that you’re in the wrong app? Gone is the familiar, replaced by a whole new style. It’s a pretty jarring experience (and one that might even see you closing the app, your mind filled with well-earned distrust). Consistency is more than using one color scheme or typography.

When creating a consistent design, make sure you align:

• Font type
• Spacing
• Images and icons
• Navigational elements

Consistency is important in great app design. Avoid changing UI elements up too much, at a screen-to-screen level, or introducing too many different concepts all at once. It risks overwhelming and confusing users. 

Best App Design is Within Your Reach

Given how most of us interact with services and products on mobile devices, no business can afford offering a bad mobile app design experience. Luckily, as we’ve shared in this piece, there are a set of best practices you can follow as you work on your application.

Sign up for UXPin trial and use those tips above to design a powerful prototype that follows good app design principles.

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UX design has a significant impact on brand consistency. A product’s visual aesthetic and usability are often the first thing people notice and, therefore, must relate to the brand and create a strong first impression.

Brand consistency in UX design goes beyond using a brand logo, correct colors, and fonts. Designers must create an experience that mirror’s the company’s image, makes sense for the product, and appeal to the target audience. This article explores the importance of brand consistency in UX design and how designers can create on-brand product experiences.

Design consistent user experiences with UXPin’s revolutionary Merge technology. Request access and discover how a single source of truth can ensure your organization delivers consistent, on-brand product experiences with every release.

What is Brand Consistency?

Brand consistency refers to how a company delivers consistent messaging and stays true to its core brand values across every touchpoint. This consistency relates to everything from visual design and copywriting to how employees engage with customers or solve problems.

Brand Consistency in UX Design

Design and UX are vital for brand consistency because these are components customers see and experience when engaging with a product or service. A company can have an excellent name, slogan, logo, brand messaging, etc., destroyed by a poor user experience.

Why Does Brand Consistency Matter?

A brand gives a company human-like characteristics, making it easier for customers to relate and engage. Here are several reasons why design leads and stakeholders must prioritize brand consistency in UX.

Reason #1: Building Trust

If you meet someone and they tell you they stand for one thing, but their actions contradict this, you might become suspicious. If you notice more of these inconsistencies, you stop believing them and lose trust.

The same is true for brands, probably more so. People want to see consistency, even down to a product’s typography, colors, and microinteractions.

In a case study from the password manager, TeamPassword, Tony Caccavo, Director of Operations, stated, “Brand is essential in this market. Customers entrust us with sensitive information in their login records. Inconsistencies or an outdated design can cause some customers to question whether we are technologically up to date enough to keep that information secure. Front-end development builds trust and confidence in the backend performance.”

Reason #2: Strengthens Brand Recognition

Brand consistency enables customers to find your business and other products in app stores, social media, and physical locations. A great example is the global mega-brand Virgin.

Virgin competes successfully in multiple industries worldwide, including services, experiences, and physical and digital products. Loyal customers immediately recognize Virgin’s signature red and white branding–associated with its high-quality service delivery, playful nature, and friendly customer service.

Reason #3: Boosts Sales and Marketing Efforts

Strong brand consistency can have a significant impact on revenue, according to a Lucidpress study. The latest State of Brand Consistency Report found consistent branding can increase revenue by 33%–a trend that appears to be growing, as indicated by a 10% increase since Lucidpress’ 2016 report.

Reason #4: Design and Development Efficiency

Branding, or any design inconsistencies, result in design drift, bugs, rework, technical debt, project delays, etc. These inconsistencies lead to poor customer experiences, but they also create workflow and delivery inefficiencies that cost organizations valuable resources.

To overcome these design and development inefficiencies, companies build design systems, including brand guidelines, to ensure teams deliver a consistent user experience across all touchpoints.

How to Increase Brand Consistency Through UX Design

Much of brand consistency is about building trust. If your company’s actions contradict messaging, people lose confidence in the brand. Here are six tips to ensure products deliver a consistent brand message.

Build a Design System with a Brand Style Guide

Design systems solve several big problems for companies implementing them, most notably cohesion and consistency–for the product and workflows.

A comprehensive design system includes brand guidelines that help reinforce the organization’s messaging and brand identity. Design systems ensure every project delivers the same design language, using the same principles and component library, creating a consistent brand experience for users.

Universal Design Patterns

Design patterns create familiarity, reducing a product’s learning curve and human cognitive load. These universally recognizable patterns give products a foundational consistency to strengthen the brand.

Furthermore, when a product is easy to use, customers are more likely to use and recommend it, thus increasing brand trust and affinity.

Showcase Your Brand’s Voice & Tone Using Design

Like a product’s messaging and copy, the color palette and visual elements must represent the brand’s voice and tone. The best way to define these UI elements is by testing designs with potential customers.

UX design agency Divami does this by developing a brand’s personality based on UX research. When Divami designed Celes Care, “a specialized healthcare platform – For Women, By Women,” they wanted to create a feminine UI without using the stereotypical “all pink.” By testing the color scheme, the agency found a “soft, mellow” palette that, most importantly, end-users associated with the brand’s personality.

Internal vs. External Brand Consistency

Internal consistency refers to the user experience within a product, while external consistency includes a suite of products. While each product might differ slightly, designers must meet a high level of consistency between products.

Apple has a wide range of hardware and software, but the brand’s physical and digital design features leave no ambiguity about who made it. Apple’s design consistency across products strengthens its brand and customer loyalty.

This consistency is easier to manage when the organization designs, develops, and manufactures every product, but what happens with third-party marketplaces?

Products like Shopify, Salesforce, Atlassian, and others, rely on third-party apps to complement their core product(s). While every app offers different features and functionality, the product’s design system ensures each matches the core product. 

For example, app developers must follow Shopify Polaris to ensure that every app in its marketplace meets Shopify’s guidelines (including branding) for content, design, components, and patterns. Even if someone uses multiple apps from different suppliers, it feels like one Shopify product.

Visual Design Consistency

Minor UI design details like spacing, sizing, layouts, colors, etc., can impact brand consistency. When these UI elements are consistent across all UIs, users can focus on completing tasks rather than thinking and searching for content and features.

Furthermore, designers must use consistent microinteractions, page transitions, and notifications that align with the brand’s voice and tone. Again, a design system can solve many of these issues, so user interfaces are always on-brand and consistent.

Be Transparent

Transparency is a significant factor in building trust and brand affinity. Designers must make features simple and transparent so users can complete any task, even those that adversely impact the business, like unsubscribing or canceling a paid plan.

A product must always inform users of a financial incentive, like affiliate referrals, sponsors, third-party data sharing, etc. Designers must also avoid clickbait or deceptive links that ultimately damage trust and brand.

Increase Brand Consistency With UXPin Merge

Merge enables you to sync a component library from a repository to UXPin’s design editor, so designers use the same UI elements as engineers. Any changes to the repository automatically sync to UXPin, creating a single source of truth across the organization.

The design system team can give designers the freedom to change components via React props (or Args for our Storybook integration). They can also hardcode and restrict specific properties teams aren’t allowed to change, like brand assets, colors, typography, microinteractions, etc.–maintaining brand consistency across the organization for every product release.

Programing brand elements and core values into the design system mean product teams can focus on developing new products rather than worrying about small (yet critical) design decisions.

Merge also streamlines the design handoff process because engineers already have copies of the components in a repository. Furthermore, UXPin renders JSX code for each component’s props. Engineers simply copy/paste components from the library and any changes from UXPin to start front-end development.

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