Designing for mobile apps is an unique challenge given the amount of space and real estate available in today’s mobile operating systems like Android and iOS. According to IDC, the average smartphone user uses 4-7 apps on a daily basis, hence it is quite important to have a good first impression on the user. Afterall, the first impression is the lasting impression. At AppDevelopers.ie, we are firm believers in a good design philosophy and strive to create beautiful and feature rich design for your app.
Prototype. Validate. Repeat
We start with discussing your idea and get to the core of why you want to build the app. Once our motivations are clearly established, we get to work and develop prototypes on paper, validate it with UI/UX testing and focus groups.
We take the learnings and get back to the drawing board and come back with fresh designs. We repeat this process until you are sure that we have got it right.
Platform specific Design
Familiarity breeds engagement. An Android user knows where exactly to click for the settings, and many time this might be different from the way an iOS user approaches the same work.
At AppDevelopers.ie, we build designs specific for iOS, Android as we understand well the challenges with each platform, and design elements unique for each platform.
Design Best Practices
Our team of designers are trained only to use Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and Android’s Material Design guide. These are considered the go to book for best design practices and we ensure that your app design follows each and every guideline set by the platforms.
Following these practices, gets your app in front of many users and sets you up for featured review on the Apple App Store and Play Store.
Content over Chrome
While design does attract the user and makes things easier for them, it is the content ultimately which makes the user come back again and again! A good design is that, which lies hidden in plain view and we cannot agree more with that.
We focus highly on keeping the limelight on your app’s content rather than on the design. This allows us to engage users with the content, thereby hooking them onto your app.
Regular Updates
With a new design update for mobile phone OS like Android and iOS, your app’s design can become pretty obsolete. In fact, a survey by Apple shows that users were much more likely to use apps that incorporated new design elements over apps that didn’t have them.
At AppDevelopers.ie, we understand design well and always are on the look out for new and upcoming design changes. When a new OS launches, we work closely with you to revamp the design and add any new design updates, so your users get delighted and engage more with your app.
App UI: User Interface Design
The term UX and UI are most often confused together with the same process, but ask any expert about the differences and they should be able to point out to you how different they actually are. A UX expert sets up the stage for user research and comes up with the end mockups for the product, whereas the UI expert actually designs them.
We have some of the top UI experts in the industry working with us. Combined, our UI experts have 30+ years of experience between them designing fluid app designs for some renowned startups and organizations. Once the app prototypes are handed over by the UX team, our UI Design experts work together to create compelling designs for you.
Platform Specific Design
We start with designing the app, keeping in mind the target platform for the app. Is the app going to be built for iOS or Android? Or will the app be a cross platform app? Keeping this in mind, we come up with the graphical designs for your app.
At this stage, you will start getting a fair idea of what your app will look like. We take extra care to ensure that we are using platform specific components while designing the app. Contact us today to see how we can spin up designs for your app ideas.
Colour Palette and Assets
It is so important to choose brand colours at this point, as your users will come to identify with it once you launch. Our UX and UI experts work together at this point to choose and suggest you colours that match your brand or your story.
After your approval, we set to work and design the app screens as well as other assets like logos, landing page images or marketing material. We are a one stop shop for all your mobile design needs.Before handing over the designs to the app developers, our team also creates the entire flow for the app. This is where we detail out what would happen if user presses a specific button. We also get in detail about how different types of errors would be handled by the app, how empty states would be handled and many more.
This is the final stage of the UI design process, so we ensure all workflows are handled adequately before our expert developer team gets to building your app.
App UX: User Experience
In today’s crowded mobile space, first impression is the lasting impression. Hence it is important that your app captures the attention of the user and hooks them on to your product. To do this, it is important that your app goes through the process of designing UX, also known as User experience.
At AppDevelopers.ie, our team of UX experts have set up a streamlined process that ensures your app strikes the right chord with your users and brings the desired results. Here is a look at how we go about doing UX for mobile apps:
Initial Process + Idea Analysis
Once you get in touch with us, our project manager understands your requirements and communicates it with our UX experts. Our team of UX experts are the first set of people who work on your product. We understand the core idea behind your app, and try to understand the “why” behind the idea. Understanding the reason helps us set up structure and direction for the project.
User Personas
Once we understand the idea, we try to understand who the target users would be. By using tools such as user personas, we create a profile of the sample users you are looking to target. In this process, we write down what your user base likes or hates, their preferences, the apps that they use on a regular basis to get a better understanding. And none of this is guesswork. We carry out dedicated research interviews to arrive at the conclusion.
Having understood the idea and the target users, we take a look at any of your competitors in this space. Doing this helps us understand what they have done right, or wrong, thereby helping us create a strategy for your product.
Wire framing and Prototyping
After getting to know about the product and the direction, we now get down to work. Using Wireframing tools and top of the shelf prototyping tools like Balsamiq, Pencil – we mockup your application initially as rough sketches. This process goes through user validation, by making sample users go through the product mockups.
Once we have desired results, we hand over the prototypes to UI experts who design graphically your screens. This process is when you will see your app’s idea come alive with colours and get an idea of how your app will finally look. We work relentlessly to ensure there are no dead ends in the application.
The project is then handed to our developers who then code the functionality and design for your app.A good UX process does not stop once it has been handed over to the other team. We monitor the outcome once the app has been launched by looking at metrics that matter to you. Some questions that we ask ourselves are, “Are our user sessions increasing?”, or say “Are our users carrying out activities, that we intended them to?”.
Based on the answers to above questions, we come to the conclusion that we have attained your goals and delivered a successful app.