Design - Mobile App Interface Design

It is essential for designers and developers to have a deep understanding of building an app and launching its prototype. This understanding alone can assist in differentiating your startup from the rest. It can give startups a competitive advantage while pitching their app to potential investors. The venture capitalist Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm behind Box and Foursquare argues in his Pmarca Blog Archives ebook that due to poor pitch quality, investors have to use referrals to source startups. VCs only meet startups through their networks. The reason behind this is, too many startups that they could meet are non-professional and uninformed. That's why those other startups are not fundable. The entrepreneurs who go into the VCs meetings prepared, have an advantage. The most important question founders ask a mobile app design company is what they must bring to the pitch. A deck may look great, but it's better to have an actual working prototype.Andreessen agrees by saying that the best thing to walk in with is a working product. Otherwise, a beta or prototype would be better if we can't get to a working product without raising venture funding. It might be a website that works but hasn't launched already, or a software mockup with partial functionality.Now, the question remains: how to leave a lasting impression with a prototype? In this blog post, we will understand the 6 steps we can take to create a mobile app prototype and leave a lasting impression on Investors. So, let's begin. 6 Steps to Creating a Mobile App Prototype: 1. Research On The Problem The first step to creating a quality app prototype is to ensure that we have a problem worth solving. The problem can extend from simple boredom issues from the app (such as games) to a corporate requirement (for the B2B market). This first step may sound straightforward, and indeed it is. But it's a surprising fact that most people come up to mobile app design services just because their ideas seemed “cool”. Just because an idea seems “cool” is not a good reason for building an app. The reasons to build an app can be to make the communication easier, or to solve an existing problem. While working with the clients, take them through a process that enables uncovering the purpose of the app. If possible, work on understanding the industry as a whole. Then understand the competitors, business goals, audience goals. Dig dip into understanding the features of the app that truly matters to their audience. After having a clear idea of their audience and the pain points the app solves, begin to design the user's journey. All of the above steps may take considerable time. They are the most overlooked steps in the process. That's why many of the apps in the app store are in the bin. Also, Read | Choosing A Suitable Mobile App Design For Your Business 2. Identify Key Functionality Requirements After identifying the problem, begin to brainstorm the product requirements. It's a simple and fun exercise to list down the hundreds of different features your app should have. And that's exactly what we have to do! Before building your iOS app or Android app, create a list of the features that make up your ideal app. Then begin to prioritize those items. Prioritize them by analyzing which features are the most important to your target audience versus what would be nice to have. Take the top three to four features on your priority list and design your app with that in mind. Add other features after getting an idea that it resonates with your plan, and your app is something people actually want. 3. Create Sketches Of The Primary Screens After figuring out the highest priority features, begin thinking through the user experience. One of the best ways of crafting the user experience is to draw a few rough sketches. Sketches of how the primary screens should look and feel. After we have the sketches, we are able to build out the screens we envisioned in more detail. Related Sketching With Free Hand And Digital Tools 4. Turn Your Sketches Into Wireframes After having sketched your primary screens, begin to wireframe your sketches. A wireframe is a low-fidelity, simplified outline of your product that consists of lines, boxes, words, and sometimes descriptions. It serves as a framework of where your app will go rather than the final look and feel of the app. 5. Turn Wireframes Into A Prototype Share your wireframes with a handful of people to test your product and gather feedback. We can turn low-fidelity wireframes to a basic prototype. Then we can share it with the target audience, friends, peers, manager, and boss for feedback on the app. Prototyping makes the product more real for investors. It also gives your testers the ability to get a real feel for what it would be like to use the app. It also prepares your developers with a better sense of the intended UX before finalizing the design. 6. Translate Wireframes Into Final Designs Finally, it's time to transition from simple and grey wireframes to pixel-perfect designs. Hire a mobile app design agency for a faster and seamless transition.In each scenario, some designers use Sketch to create their app designs while others use Illustrator. After having the final files, update your prototype to make it look and feel like it's live. Sharing Your Prototype With Investors After all that hard work, it's time to be ready for the big presentation. The first step is to land a meeting with an investor. The best way of doing this is through a referral. In case of no referrals, reach out to an investor through a cold email, which is one of your better options. Conclusion It's not easy to transition from an app idea to functional requirements to sketches to mockups to prototypes. The process takes time, and for a beginner, it could take months to get to the final stage. That's why contact our UI UX design services to get things done at a fast pace without losing the quality. Image source: Google images

For a great product, building its features, and functionality is not enough. Users expect the interface to enhance the overall experience, while still functioning perfectly and fulfilling their every need. Agencies that offer mobile app design services can fulfill those needs. The new and Improved buttons, forms, and animations can make an app design feel unique and state of the art. But there is an upper limit to the pace of innovation, which means we should not innovate too far beyond what is widely accepted. Although the feel of these new app designs is different, they must also be familiar enough to be intuitive. There are some commonly accepted standards and principles when it comes to designing mobile apps. In this blog, we will discuss some of the effective mobile app design strategies that span the onboarding, engagement, and retention processes of simple yet functional design. So, let's dive right in. Key Mobile App Design Strategies for a World Class UX: Prompt the Mobile Onboarding Process The final stage of building a product often focuses on the initial stage of the customer's onboarding experience. Sometimes, teams do not spend enough time crafting that “first-mile” onboarding experience for users. Never underrate the importance of designing an amazing onboarding experience. This will immediately set the stage for your product and create a memorable first scene, hypothetically speaking. Also, Read | User Onboarding Techniques To Revamp UX Include Interactive Loading Screens or Skeleton Screens The computational power of our mobile phones outperforms the most expensive computers in the world from only a few decades ago. Yet we still see loading screens. Hopefully, future innovations may eliminate loading screens entirely. But for now, we must handle them with poise. In the loading screen, designers can provide entertainment in the form of subtle animations. Simplify the Mobile User Experience Overly complicated UX design can create an environment of feature creep. Feature creep occurs when the product offers more features than customers need, which complicates and confuse users. A functional design promotes clean and simple design elements. Although the functional design is often associated with hardware, it can equally apply to software architecture. For instance, creating a mobile app that users can navigate successfully almost subconsciously. Related Strategies A Designer Can Use To Simplify A Design Appeal to Intuition It is important to create an onboarding process that educates users about how to use the app. But at the same time, there is no substitute for learning by doing. Most of the users simply opt-out of the onboarding flow, and choose impatience over practicality. Designers build the essential interfaces to account for these users who will not bother with the onboarding tour. This means designing intuitive elements that users can “self-taught” on first use. Design Mobile Forms for Apps Long forms on mobile devices can be troublesome most of the time. Some devices have autocomplete features that make completing forms a breeze. But we can't expect this while designing forms. Chunking is a technique sometimes used for memorization that compartmentalizes information into bite-sized chunks. Phone numbers, for instance, are much easier to remember when broken into combinations of three and four digits, instead of ten. Implementing this strategy to simplifying the process of filling out mobile forms is to break the forms into digestible chunks. Size Elements for Mobile Consider the finger pad size while deciding the size of buttons, text, and other elements within the design of mobile apps. Keep visual acuity in mind. Your app should be clearly viewable from an arm's length away. On average, this is about 36 inches. Mobile app design elements such as graphics, text, and color palettes should be clearly viewable from a reasonable distance. Consider Reachable Thumb Zones Don't forget to consider the positions in which users hold their devices while designing an app. For instance, it's possible users are lying down in bed or walking to work, which can put different levels of strain on finger positioning. Designers must design mobile apps with reachable zones in mind for the best possible user experience in every physical position. When the important features and frequently used elements are in the bottom three-quarters of the screen, it increases engagement and user satisfaction. Conclusion From the user experience perspective, mobile app design is as important as the technical functionality of the product. Our rational senses appreciate the business logic of mobile apps but the app design appeals to our emotions and creativity. Contact Oodles mobile app design services for more assistance.