Successful products are not made through luck. The development team makes them succeed by joining the development team with design experts. But good graphics and interfaces only provide real-time user experience. Hence, we should not overlook UX in software development.
Yes, you read that right!
Good UX design leads to more satisfaction on the part of the customer. It can indeed make them resort to your software present among other competing apps in a software development market. What’s more? Keep reading this blog and learn the advantages, top instruments, and tactics that will completely change your products.
What is UX in software development?
UX in software development defines the user experience phase of a product. It refers to approaches, methods, and techniques that make an application convenient for different mediums and devices. UX specialists, in fact, are the ones who provide the best possible user experience for the users.
In reality, we see user experience and user interface work collaboratively for software products. UI is created with UX goals, while UX is built using UI elements. In simple terms, UI determines the beauty criteria and style based on current trends. Meanwhile, UX depends on principles of intuitive convenience for the majority of users.
By applying UX in software development, you can reap the benefits mentioned below.
- Enhanced product revenue.
- Better resource optimization and development.
- Obtains customer loyalty.
- Efficient visuals and ease of use.
- Improves software performance.
In the next section, learn about the important stages of preparing a UX design.
What are the fundamental stages of UX design?
Do you know investing in UX generates $100 and more for every $1 spent? The core of UX design is well-conducted research for products. However, real-time user experience software development includes UX designers focusing on different stages before releasing the final product. They are:
- Wireframing
Creating wireframes transforms abstract ideas and notes into visual representations of future products. Hence, wireframing consists of basic layouts, usually hand-drawn. As a result, the layouts focus on the general structure of the app along with the composition of screens.
- Prototyping
In this phase of user experience designing, static and crude images of wireframes become interactive and behave, resembling the final look of the product. Prototype modeling allows for the design of the interaction between the user and the app. It also checks accessibility, convenience, and such factors.
- Testing
Testing is the last step performed from building prototypes to before product release. It is executed on multiple test devices, including smartphone models, web browsers, and OS versions. But there is one thing that you need to be sure of while testing the software product, and that is the UI of the software. Yes, it must be able to support different resolutions for different screens.
So, moving forward with these critical stages of UX in software development, let us discuss how to craft an efficient UX strategy.
How do you develop an effective UX design strategy?
If you are searching for the process to develop user experience strategies, follow this step-by-step guide and develop one for your digital products:
- Define your objectives and goals
Relative to the user, UX strategy is beneficial since it allows businesses to meet their goals. Hence, the start should be done by defining and discussing goals. These should include aspects like financial targets, project funding, anticipated UI designs, and so on.
- Conduct thorough research
Get a grip on your software people so they deliver the user experience. Draft designs as brainstorming continuing on new methods to include in the preliminary stage. Further, incorporate appropriate wireframing and prototyping tools in designing.
- Brainstorm ideas and outline
Attain a clear idea about your user experience in software development. Start drafting designs while brainstorming for new methods to include in the preliminary stage. Also, plan the right wireframing and prototyping tools while outlining the design.
- Plan testing methods
It’s time to plan what user and usability testing techniques to adapt. Secondly, decide on test data and resources like collaborating with outsourcing companies. Be sure to get a strong idea about how to test and result metrics aligning with product goals.
- Evaluate and rehearse
Evaluate results manually or opt for automated tools. Results and user feedback help to understand the required changes and improvements to make. Besides, most final products constantly undergo re-testing and revision even after release.
As a result, companies or individuals can follow these steps throughout their UX product development lifecycle. In the next section, let us explore the list of popular UX tools.
What are the popular UX designer tools?
UX design tools are used to create layouts, prototypes, and structure information. They determine how a user experiences them through different mediums. People expecting career change, namely from software developer to UX designer, can directly learn through tutorials available on these tools. Some of such tools are:
- Figma
Figma is an online tool used for UX design, UI graphic design, and wireframing. It’s free for small teams and individuals. Furthermore, it offers some free-tier collaboration tools. Obviously, there are free tutorials on design basics for beginners. This is a cloud-based program, and every modification is transparent to the team, making it quite easy to access.
- UXPin
UXPin is a wireframing, design, and prototyping tool. You can create applications, web interfaces, and much more. It’s easy to learn, full-featured, and web-based. UXPin users share designs quickly before other tools. Major brands like HBO, PayPal, Microsoft, and Netflix use their commercial services.
- Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is the most versatile yet famous tool for graphic design. It’s one of the best image manipulation tools in the photography industry. Beginners can learn with tutorials from Adobe’s website. Their commercial software package offers many editing features for UI and UX designers.
- Justinmind
Justinmind is a free-tier prototyping tool available for macOS and Windows. It helps UX designers to create wireframes, low-fidelity prototypes, and high-fidelity prototypes easily. It lets designers create applications while providing a real-time view of a desktop, tablet, or smartphone. In addition, it offers collaboration tools and easy sharing with clients.
- Proto.io
Proto.io is a drag-and-drop web app that runs on any web browser. It is used to create application prototypes with high fidelity and design. Designers create interactive mockups with standard UI elements and transitions. It saves designs in the cloud for easy access and collaboration only for the paid version.
Therefore, these are some of the tools for UX in software development. In the following section, some challenges faced by UX designers or the whole UX team are discussed.
What are the challenges of UX in software development?
Consequently, UX designers must design and test software variants before the launch of the app to prevent issues. These are generally used to be known on many devices, and hence, potential users might face them. But ensuring consistency and smooth performance is somewhat risky due to challenges like:
- Need for consumer psychology
The client’s needs and requirements change very often. Definitely, keeping up with the consumer’s perspective and needs is not an easy task. As such, this makes user experience software development about consumer psychology and design.
- Budget restrictions and deadlines
The most crucial are budget and time during project development. Performance shall be heavily dependent on either less time or a low budget. It adversely lowers the quality even when providing in-efficient applications. Consequently, the adequacy of rightful resources and time produces good output.
- Inaccessible design
Inclusivity-design in UX development, especially for software development. As a matter of fact, users absolutely do not like tough applications, which is why UX designers need to rely on standard design principles and adaptable interfaces for different devices as well as screen sizes.
- Consistency
In software development, UX helps in the creation of such systems that have a unified experience among diverse platforms like Android and macOS. Hence, standards for the interface should be available on all screen sizes. After this, the application can be efficient and user-oriented.
Conclusion
A good UX design contributes to satisfied clients, positive app reviews and ratings, increased application sales, improved user engagement, and other success indicators. This consequently makes attracting a huge digital community relatively easy. Hence, everyone should start being wise on this point. So, readers notice that it is nothing but beneficial for businesses to integrate UX in software development.