App Design Process: How to Design a Great Mobile App?

Mobile app design directly impacts user retention rates by offering good or bad experiences. Thus, app owners like to take time while finalizing the mobile app UI design process to ensure they are releasing a perfect app. Now, the app design varies according to the nature of the app. For instance, a social media app’s basic feature is providing messaging and sharing features. Thus, while designing the app, the user interface will revolve around this fact.

Furthermore, in this blog, we are discussing a few tips to help you in finding out how to design an app. If you are stuck with the same question without a reliable answer, stick with us until the end of this blog.

Mobile app design process- The three stages

Any app design and development process can be broken down into three crucial stages- pre-design planning phase, during the design phase, and post-design phase. To understand the crucial steps to design an app well, let’s go through each phase individually.

1. Planning phase

In this, you need to identify a few factors that will decide the growth of your app in the future. You need to identify if your targeted app users are common smartphone users that know how to use complex apps or not. It is crucial to identify if the target region has provided internet access to the average user or not. Because plenty of the features that you finalize during the process of designing an app will be modified accordingly.

Here are a few questions you need to get answered before you begin-

• What is the goal of your app?
• What is your target market?
• Are your target users tech-savvy?
• What languages do your target users speak and understand?
• What is your app development budget?
• If the target market is suitable for server-based apps or offline apps?
• What is the average configuration of smartphones used in the target region? etc

Now, as you can see the planning phase requires a lot of research. Thus, it can also be beneficial to analyze competitor mobile app design companies and have a look at their strategies.

Outline designing

After finding answers to all these questions, it is time for you to prepare a rough sketch of the possible user interface that you want for your app on paper. For an effective app UX design process, you need to draw an outline that will inspire your app designing process eventually. For effective outline designing, do not forget to follow ideal app designing tips. For your reference, we will discuss them after the app designing process part.

2. During the design phase

Now, if you are clear with what features you need to integrate into your designing an app process, it is time to dive into the process. App design steps can be divided into multiple segments that we should discuss separately.

• Creating wireframe- With all features that you need to integrate into the app, you have to create a simple wireframe to fit them all. The wireframe can also be called the basic blueprint that you are preparing for the final app design process. You can take help from the popular wireframe designing tools such as Adobe XD, Sketch, and more. These wireframing tools will provide you with features that will help you in designing an effective wireframe within less time. Also, before you think of finalizing the wireframe, it is ideal to have a few thoughts on the first. You can ask colleagues or friends for their feedback.
• Find an expert designer- If you are planning to hire a designer, you need to look into your budget to decide the experience of the designer you will hire. You can go for app designing companies or mobile app development companies if you are ready to pay more. Or, you can go for freelance designers through platforms like Upwork.
• Build the mock version- While designing an app from scratch, it is ideal to prepare a mock first to have a glimpse into the possible final outcome. Mock UI can also help you in getting more accurate feedback from potential users. You can organize social media surveys or ask around for feedback on the mock version to get inputs that might or might not be helpful in improving the app quality.
• Get the app developed- After being done with the process of designing an app, get it developed by experts. Depending on the complexity of the app, prepare marketing strategies to promote the app before it is released in the market.

3. Post-designing phase

In this phase, you need to test the app before releasing it. Test the app with different models of targeted devices and operating systems to ensure there will not be unexpected glitches occurring later. Glitches can annoy users and create a bad impression on their minds. To test the app, you can go for top app testing tools such as Appium or Xamarin.UITest among others. These test tools can automate the app testing process across different operating systems and devices.

Conclusion- Tips to consider while designing an app

Well, that is all we had to discuss for designing an app process. However, before we wind up the blog, there are a few tips that you should keep in mind to ensure your app is competitive in the market.

1. Make a feature-rich app but do not add unnecessary features just to make it do everything. It will make your app more complex and end up causing glitches
2. If you have no expertise in the app development process, you can make an app development plan that is suitable with low or no-code app development tools
3. Always observe strategies that your competitors are using and how their strategies are impacting their growth
4. Updating the app according to user feedback is the best way to keep your app popular in the long run
5. Always create simple and guided navigations so that even users with less technological awareness can understand where they need to go in the app to execute any tasks
6. Keep your app design compatible with a few older versions of operating systems too, especially if you want a large number of users to use them

In the end, that is all we had to share to help you throughout the mobile app UI design process. Hopefully, you found the blog useful. You can go through many other MobileAppDaily blogs published already that will give your tech industry knowledge a boost. Until we see you with a new blog, keep visiting!