Introduction
The design of a Mobile app may appear to be exceptionally ambiguous that could direct a lot of questions to the businesses that wish to have a software developed. “How to start? What are the products like? How many people will be involved?”. We will be covering questions all the questions like these in this blog as we describe what lies behind each of the three main stages of mobile application design.
3 Important Steps to Create a Successful App with Wizspeed
1. A Comprehensive Business analysis
The very first stage of any mobile app development project would require you to define the target platforms i.e., iOS or Android or both, the developmental method, and the functional requirements. For a beginning, all this may sound way too technical, we can not put enough emphasis on how much the next steps are dependent on the decisions you are about to make at this point. It is recommended to complete this step together with our professional business analysts at Wizspeed, who has a focus on mobile design in order to get a load off your mind and make a calculated and confident choice.
You will be needing to define your target audience and analyze their platform preferences that depend on geography and income before you choose the platform. For instance, if you want your app to go global, you won’t succeed without a version of the app for Android operating system, which is tremendously popular in the continent of Europe.On the contrary, if you are targeting an average US user, you will triumph over the audience with just an iOS version.Wizspeed is all up to analyze your business thoroughly.
What would be your development plan?
Once you have defined the platform of your choice you need to reach, you should start planning the development approach. Below are the options from Wizspeed you can choose from:
- Native development:
UX and UI design of the app is tailored to the original guidelines of the platform, it looks and feels exactly like any factory app for that platform. This development approach entails high implementation costs but guarantees high user satisfaction. - Hybrid development:
UX and UI design is identical on different platforms, thus, may feel unnatural to some users at first. Implementation costs are almost 2x lower than with native development. - Cross-platform development:
UX and UI design offers a near-native look and experience on either platform. This option usually requires about 70% of the native development budget.
Defining all the functional requirements is the fundamental objective of business analysis. These requirements help in building a detailed concept of your future app and describe all the tasks it will handle in the form of a project specification. Your UX designers will not be able to even start their work without this particular documentation.
2. UX design
The vendor of your choice can proceed to the actual design action when you have defined the functional requirements of your future app. The first stage is user experience design which is usually performed by a UX expert in cooperation with a business analyst.
The team works to create fictional profiles of your mobile app’s future users, also known as personas, and their interaction patterns with the application i.e. user scenarios. Mobile app design usually requires 5-7 personas with at least 2 different user scenarios created for each, depending on the functionality of your app.
Both personas and scenarios help a UX designer understand what goals users will want to achieve while using your app. This understanding, in its turn, allows the designer to give the detailed form of wireframes, either hand-drawn or digital, to interaction flows between a user and the mobile app.
The completed UX wireframes that have around 40 mockups on average, go through rigorous, multi-round UX testing. Testing makes it possible to eliminate UX issues while they are still cheap to fix, when given early feedback. We very well advise you and someone else from the project team on your side to take part in this testing to see the first results for yourself.
3. UI design prototyping
UX wireframes usually look like monochromatic schemes. They are the basis for the work of user interface designers. By combining the brand book, platform-specific guidelines and latest mobile design trends of your company, they transform the lo-fi wireframes into a colorful, hi-fi digital prototype. UI designers will make sure that the look of your mobile app is consistent with the web app if you already have a web application with a similar functionality pack.
The UI team contacts you and asks for your review once the prototype is finished. Make sure to share all your thoughts and doubts at this point. Even if some major fixes or additions end up being costly, in the shape of code; they will still be at least twice as cheaper at this stage than they will be later. The design is complete only after your project team approves the final version of the UI prototypes. Eventually, you can safely proceed to development.
Create a Successful App, Wizspeed is always there for you!
We have covered the most common choices and actions involved in the mobile app design process, yet, each project has its own specifics that can pose more questions and require more decisions from your side.
Feel free to reach out to our mobile design team for a consultation, if you feel like these decisions cause uncertainty that holds you back from launching your mobile app development project.
