Prototyping tool is a product that helps designers create a replica of the final product, used for user testing, presenting to stakeholders, and handing off to developers. Most design tools offer a prototyping as an additional feature, but you will get to an advanced prototyping with dedicated tools.

UXPin is one of the companies leading the code-based design revolution. Sign up for a 14-day free trial to explore UXPin’s advanced prototyping features for your next digital product or web design project.

Build advanced prototypes

Design better products with States, Variables, Auto Layout and more.

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UXPin

UXPin is a code-based prototyping tool which means that your design can be fully interactive. Unlike many leading design solutions, UXPin doesn’t need plugins – everything you need for prototyping and testing is built-in!

UXPin gives you the option to download the software on your desktop (Mac & Windows) or use it in the browser. The benefit of downloading UXPin is that you can continue working even when you’re offline.

You can test prototypes in the browser or use UXPin’s Mirror app to run prototypes on mobile devices (including iOS and Android). UXPin’s documentation is excellent, covering every aspect of the tool with step-by-step instructions and video tutorials.

UXPin also has another advantage over the rest of prototyping tools – UXPin Merge for building fully-functioning prototypes with React components.

With Merge, you have the option to sync React components via Git repo, npm or use the Storybook integration for Vue, Angular, Web Components, Ember, and more. It helps design a layout and launch a product 10x faster.

Figma

Figma is one of the most widely used design tools. They have a big, engaged community with lots of YouTube content and detailed documentation.

Figma has built-in prototyping functionality with a mobile app to test prototypes on multiple devices. You can work in the browser or download Figma to work offline on your desktop.

While Figma is excellent for early stage concepts, advanced prototyping is still not perfect, and it’s unlikely that designer can create a prototype that’s ready for user testing.

In 2023 Figma added a lot of features that simplify interactive prototyping, yet Figma’s inputs are still limited, and UX researchers can’t test any actions that require users to enter information. The tool makes it difficult to create dynamic user flows that adapt to user interaction.

Add interactions to your prototypes made in Figma. Use a plugin for importing Figma designs to UXPin for interactive prototyping. Check out the tutorial: Quick Tutorial: Make Figma prototypes interactive in UXPin.

Adobe XD

Adobe XD is another popular user experience design tool. However, it got discontinued in 2023.

One interesting Adobe UX prototyping feature was Auto-Animate which saved time for specific interactions. With Auto-Animate, you could create the first and last frame of an animation sequence and Adobe XD filled in the rest. The feature didn’t work for all animations, but it saved a significant amount of time when creating something like a parallax effect.

Invision

Invision was a strong prototyping component for many years, yet it decided to focus on its tool for collaboration, which is similar to Figjam. It still has a prototyping tool, yet compared to other tools on the market, it’s not strong enough for creating interactive products in 2024.

Invision has a great Design System Management feature, which is handy for managing your design system and providing developers with CSS and starter code at handoffs. DSM integrates with Storybook so that designers and developers can sync their design systems. Unfortunately, designers can’t use the code components to build prototypes like you can with UXPin Merge.

Framer

Framer is one of the top prototyping tools in 2024 for creating web layouts. It has an AI feature for rapid prototyping. Users type in what kind of a website they want and Framer gives them a design to customize. It embraced AI very quickly.

Other notable features include Layout and Insert Menu, which allow you to design and iterate concepts fast. Although impressive, UXPin offers similar features with Auto-Layout and built-in design libraries.

Framer’s Smart Components feature offers similar functionality to UXPin’s States, but not as comprehensive. Using Variants and Variables, you can give elements a hover or pressed state, like toggling a switch or activating a checkbox.

While Smart Components is a step up from other vector-based design tools, it still doesn’t give you as much fidelity as you get from UXPin’s States, Interactions, Expressions, and Variables features.

More Design Tool Comparisons

Check out more popular prototyping tools and how they stack up against UXPin:

• Marvel App
• Justinmind
• Proto.io
• Axure
• Zeplin
• Balsamiq

Would you like to try UXPin?

If you’re looking for a design tool, there are plenty (including the five listed above) that designers can use to create beautiful low-fidelity wireframes and mockups.

But designing a user experience requires testing, which means you need high-fidelity prototypes, not mockups! UX designers design products for coded products but conduct user testing on image-based prototypes. It’s impossible to get accurate and meaningful results. Invariably there will be usability issues that make their way into the final product.

With code-based tools like UXPin, designers can build functioning high-fidelity prototypes. Usability participants don’t have to “imagine” that a button or input works; they can use it as they would with a final coded product.

Join the user experience design revolution. Sign up for a 14-day free trial and discover better prototyping and testing with UXPin.

The post Top 5 Prototyping Tools for 2024 appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

One of the questions organizations ask themselves at the start of a new project is, “do we adopt a component library or start from scratch?” There are pros and cons to weigh, and it depends on the project’s scope and priorities. 

One of the most popular component libraries is MUI – a comprehensive React UI library modelled at first on Google’s Material Design UI. 

We’re going to take a look at MUI, why you’d want to use it, what makes it different from other component libraries, and how you can get started designing your next project.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to design in code? UXPin Merge is a revolutionary technology that allows teams to create fully functioning layouts without design skills. Find out more about Merge.

Create beautiful layouts without designers

Take UI components directly from Git repo, Storybook, or through NPM and design production-ready prototypes.

Bring code to design

What is MUI?

MUI is a massive library of UI components designers and developers can use to build React applications. The open-source project follows Google’s guidelines for creating components, giving you a customizable library of foundational and advanced UI elements.

MUI also sells a collection of React templates and tools, giving you ready-made user interfaces to tweak for your project. 

Why Would You Use a Component Library Like MUI?

Designers often use UI kits to build new products or feature add-ons for existing projects. These libraries allow designers to drag and drop the components they need to design interfaces quickly. 

Let’s explore 7 reasons why you would want to use the MUI component library.

1. Faster Time-to-Market

In today’s highly competitive tech landscape, time-to-market is a metric that organizations always seek to optimize. A component library gives designers and developers a massive headstart with thoroughly tested UI elements ready to go.

Designers can drag and drop elements to build user interfaces and customize components to meet product and branding requirements. Design teams can spend more time designing great customer experiences rather than getting bogged down building and testing UI components from scratch–a process that increases time-to-market significantly!

Usability testing is much faster because designers can prototype, test, and iterate quickly. If a user interface isn’t working during testing, they can make changes on the fly, drawing from a massive library, to get instant feedback from participants and stakeholders.

When it comes to the design handoff, engineers can install the component library and copy/paste changes from prototypes and style guides to develop the product without starting from scratch.

2. A Single Source of Truth

One of the biggest design system governance challenges is maintaining a single source of truth. It’s not uncommon for product teams, UX designers, and developers to have out-of-sync design systems–resulting in errors, rework, and massive headaches and challenges for DesignOps.

Using MUI’s component library can significantly reduce these challenges while creating a single source of truth between design and development. Designers and engineers will still have separate design systems (image-based for designers and code for engineers), but MUI gives them the same starting blocks.

When using Merge with UXPin’s code-based editor, designers and engineers use the same design system components synced via a single repository. Any updates to the repo sync back to UXPin, notifying designers of the changes. You can connect Merge using Git for React component libraries or Storybook for other popular technologies.

3. Design Consistency

Consistency is vital for user experience, building trust, and brand loyalty. Using the same UI components allows designers to increase consistency while minimizing errors and rework.

4. Scalability

Scalability is another vital product design factor. If you’re building a design system from scratch, designers must design, prototype, and test new components before scaling the product.

With MUI’s comprehensive UI library, designers can search for the components they need to prototype and scale right away. Engineers can copy/paste the identical React components from MUI and customize them to the designer’s specifications.

MUI X includes a library of advanced React components teams can use to scale complex products even faster, including data grids, date pickers, charts, pagination, filtering, and more.

5. Easy Maintenance

A component library like MUI comes with detailed documentation for installing, using, updating, and customizing components. Designers and engineers can use this framework to maintain the organization’s design system, making it easier to establish governance systems and protocols.

MUI also provides how-to guides for migrating from one version to the next. So, organizations can take advantage of the latest UI styles, technologies, and trends whenever MUI releases an update.

6. Accessibility

Those experienced with setting up a design system will know the time and money it takes to ensure every component passes accessibility standards. MUI’s designers have taken great care in designing components to meet WCAD 2.0 accessibility guidelines – reducing the work for researchers and designers.

It’s important to note that even when you design interfaces using accessible components, you must still test navigation and user flows to ensure the product as a whole meets accessibility standards.

7. Skills Empowerment

MUI’s open-source component UI library empowers startups and young entrepreneurs to build new products–especially in developing nations where they don’t have the same access to education, mentoring, and skills transfer.

The library is also incredibly beneficial for charities, non-profits, NGOs, and similar organizations who want to develop products and tools but don’t have the budget to invest in a design system. 

Anyone can leverage the skills of MUI’s talented designers and developers using the same component library used by Fortune 500 companies to develop sophisticated digital products and compete in a global market.

What Makes MUI Stand Apart From Other Component Libraries?

Google’s Material Design UI is arguably one of the best and most comprehensive design libraries in the world. By building on top of Material Design, MUI delivers a React component library to match.

The ability to easily customize MUI using its Theming feature and the libraries’ excellent documentation make it accessible to build products for multinational corporations or a single developer with a product idea.

Because MUI is so widely used, there is a massive global community of designers, researchers, and developers to reach out to for guidance and support. Added to the fact that React is one of the most popular front-end frameworks, makes MUI an attractive component library.

MUI – Interesting Facts and Figures

Here are some interesting MUI facts and figures:

Note: MUI’s stats continue to climb. These facts were accurate as of Jan 2022.

• MUI started in 2014 as Material UI but decided to change its name to differentiate itself from Google. Many people assumed Material UI was a Google product.
• MUI has over 2,200 open-source contributors.
• There are over 2,3 million NPM downloads of MUI per week.
• Over 73,700 stars on GitHub.
• Of the 1,488 respondents to MUI’s 2020 survey, 35% of developers worked in an organization with less than five people.
• In the survey, 27% of developers use MUI for enterprise applications, while 20% use the library for admin dashboards.

UXPin’s MUI 5 Kit

Using UXPin Merge’s MUI integration, you can leverage the power of prototyping with UI React components.

MUI helps you create designs with fully functioning code components. With a single source of truth, designers, developers, product teams, and others can collaborate more effectively with fewer errors and friction.

Higher fidelity means better usability testing with meaningful feedback from participants and stakeholders. The result? A better overall user experience and increased business value.

Find out more about UXPin’s MUI kit and how you can sign up to request access to this revolutionary code-based design technology: MUI library in UXPin: Design Faster.

Syncing a Component Library With UXPin Merge

With UXPin Merge, you can build fully functioning high-fidelity prototypes with an open-source component library. With complex UI components like menus, forms, tabs, data tables, date pickers, accordions, and more, you can build beautiful and functional layouts in minutes. Check out Merge.

The post What Is MUI and What Do You Need to Know About It? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Are you creating a React app or website? If you are, you can use real React components in prototyping. How to that? You will find an answer in this article.

Key tools:

• UXPin Merge
• Framer
• Storybook
• React-Proto

Build React prototypes with your dev’s components coming from Git, Storybook, or npm. Try UXPin Merge and assemble stunning, production-ready layouts 10x faster. Discover UXPin Merge.

Create beautiful layouts without designers

Take UI components directly from Git repo, Storybook, or through NPM and design production-ready prototypes.

Bring code to design

UXPin Merge

UXPin’s Merge technology allows you to import code components from a repository into the design process. You can import your product’s design system or an open-source library to build high-fidelity, fully functioning React prototypes.

With Merge, you can prototype cross-platform applications from wearables to native apps, web applications, and even TVs. You can test prototypes in the browser or via UXPin Mirror for iOS and Android applications.

There are three ways to import code components into UXPin using Merge:

• The Git Integration enables you to import React components directly from a Git repository giving you full access to Merge’s features.
• Merge’s Storybook Integration allows you to connect any Storybook, providing access to more front-end technologies, including React, Vue, Angular, and more.
• The npm Integration uses the Merge Component Manager to import individual UI elements from open-source design systems on the npm registry.

Key features

• Version Control (Git Integration only): any changes to the design system’s repository automatically sync to UXPin and notify designers of the latest release.
• Patterns (Git Integration only): grow your library by creating new patterns using design system components or incorporating elements from other design systems.
• Drag-and-drop workflow: drag components from UXPin’s Design Libraries onto the canvas to create user interfaces. Adjust pre-defined properties via the Properties Panel to change styling, interactions, etc.
• Collaborative: product teams can collaborate with stakeholders via UXPin’s Comments–even if they don’t have a paid UXPin account.
• Spec Mode & Documentation: design handoffs are smoother with Merge because developers already have access to the same repository. They can use Spec Mode to inspect properties, measure distances, copy production-ready component CSS and JSX (Git Integration only), and view the product’s Style Guide and Documentation.

Pricing

Starts from $119 per month when paid annually.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Single source of truth: With UXPin Merge, you can import and use the same React components in the design process as devs use for the final product, effectively bridging the gap between designers and developers.
• Real data: designers can incorporate actual product data using JSON, Google Sheets, or CSV. They can also capture user inputs using Variables and use that data to populate a profile account or provide a dynamic, personalized user experience.
• Interactive prototyping: using React components for prototypes means designers can create interactive replicas indistinguishable from the final product.

Cons:

• Limited to Javascript: UXPin Merge only works with Javascript libraries and frameworks. 
• Technical setup: product teams will need technical assistance to make their component library’s repository compatible with Merge; however, UXPin has a boilerplate and offers technical support to make this easier. Designers can use the built-in libraries, including MUI, Material UI, Ant Design, and Fluent UI, which don’t need any configuration.

Storybook

StorybookJS is a UI development environment allowing devs to build components in isolation. Developers, designers, and other stakeholders can visualize different states of every UI element, creating a component-driven development environment. It supports various frameworks, including React.

While Storybook is excellent for internal prototyping and component-driven development, it lacks tools and features for user testing. A great workaround is using Merge’s Storybook Integration to import your organization’s Storybook projects for prototyping in UXPin.

Storybook and UXPin Merge combined effectively bridge the gap between designers and developers while creating a single source of truth across the organization.

Key features

• Component Stories: Write Stories to display different states of your components.
• Addon ecosystem: Extend Storybook’s capabilities with a robust ecosystem of plugins.
• Component-driven development: Develop one UI element at a time, viewing all its properties, interactions, and variants.
• Documentation: Auto-generate documentation based on your stories and components.
• Automated testing: Run multiple tests before release to ensure components meet code syntax, design principles, accessibility, and other custom requirements.

Pricing

StorybookJS is open-source and free to use. However, some addons or integrations might have associated costs.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Framework agnostic: While prominent in the React community, it supports various Javascript frameworks.
• Rich ecosystem: A wide variety of addons and integrations allow you to tailor Storybook to your needs.
• Collaborative: Designers, developers, and stakeholders can collaborate, ensuring consistent UI/UX.

Cons:

• Technical expertise: Storybook is a developer tool, meaning you must have programming and Javascript skills to use it.
• Configuration: Depending on your project’s complexity, it may take time to set everything up correctly.
• Learning curve: Requires understanding of component structure and the framework you’re working with.

Framer

Framer is a no-code design tool for React websites and web apps. The platform’s latest AI feature lets you create responsive starter templates with a few keywords.

Key features

• Code-backed design: Design with React components, streamlining the transition from prototype to development.
• Figma plugin: convert Figma designs to HTML for use in Framer–you must still convert this HTML to React.
• Code-like animations: add Javascript-like animations and effects without writing any code.
• Production-ready code: developers can export code from Framer to build React websites and web applications.

Pricing

Starts from $5 per month per site (project) when paid annually.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Interactive design: Design with code components for realistic interactions.
• No-code development: Create production-ready websites without writing any code.
• Starter templates: Framer offers a vast library of website and landing page templates to get you started–some of these are third-party paid templates averaging $29-$99.

Cons: 

• Cost: Framer is cost-effective for small projects, but its per-site pricing model gets expensive when running multiple sites. If you purchase starter templates, your costs increase.
• Web-only: Framer is a no-code website design tool, limiting prototyping scope–i.e., unable to design cross-platform applications.
• Can’t import components: Unlike UXPin Merge, you can’t import design systems or UI libraries.

React-Proto

React-proto is a prototyping tool designed specifically for React developers. It provides a visual interface for creating React components and their relationships. Developers can drag and drop UI elements to establish parent-child relationships between components, designating state location and prop relationships without writing any code.

Key features

• Component tree visualization: Visualize your entire application’s structure and components’ relationships.
• Interactivity: Interact with your prototype and see changes reflected in the visual tree.
• State management: Designate locations for your state and understand the flow of data.
• Code Export: Translate your visual design into functional React code to begin front-end development.

Pricing

React-proto is open-source and free to use.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Faster prototyping: React-proto’s drag-and-drop interface lets developers edit components and prototypes faster than writing code.
• Cost-Effective: Being open-source, it’s a cost-friendly option for all developers and designers.
• Code Generation: Translating design to code is straightforward, reducing the barrier between design and development.

Cons:

• Requires technical skills: React-proto is not a designer-friendly tool. It requires technical skills, including in-depth React experience, to operate effectively.
• Limited features: React-proto offers few features as an open-source tool and is unsuitable for user testing.
• No support: React-proto does not offer support or onboarding outside of its Github community.

Prototype React Websites and Applications in UXPin Merge

While there are several great React prototyping tools, UXPin is the only platform offering a designer-friendly, familiar work environment. UXPin looks and feels like any other design tool but increases prototyping scope by enabling designers to prototype using code components, including React, Vue, Angular, and more.

Build production-ready layout with React components from Git repo, Storybook, or imported npm package. Assemble UI and increase your productivity. Discover UXPin Merge.

The post Best Prototyping Tools that Use React appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

A functional prototype is a working model of a product that demonstrates its core functionalities. Through UXPin’s Merge technology, designers can seamlessly convey their designs to developers. 

Key Takeaways:

• A functional prototype is a practical representation of a product, showcasing its main functions.
• UXPin’s Merge technology integrates interactive React components into design editors, allowing designers to communicate seamlessly with developers, test prototypes, and transition designs to development.
• Functional prototypes offer insights into user behavior, validate designs, and drive improvements.
• Crafting a functional prototype involves designing with interactions, conducting tests, and embracing a learning process.
• By leveraging Merge technology, designers bridge the gap between prototype creation and development through shared, interactive React components.

Merge technology integrates React components into a design editor, allowing designers to create prototypes. These interactive React components are utilized by developers in the final product. After designers construct and test prototypes with users, the design is prepared for development. Discover how UXPin Merge works.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

Discover UXPin Merge

What is a functional prototype?

A functional prototype is a dynamic representation of how a product design works. It lets you interact with the product to understand its features and flaws, helping you refine your design for a better user experience.

While traditional prototypes might simulate the appearance or layout of a product, they often fall short in depicting its actual behavior. Functional prototypes, on the other hand, introduce the invaluable element of interactivity. Every click, swipe, or scroll is more than a predefined animation—it’s a glimpse into the user’s journey, offering insights into the product’s usability and efficiency.

Functional vs non-functional prototype?

Functional and non-functional prototypes primarily differ in the depth of interactivity they offer. Functional prototypes go beyond appearances, letting you experience a product’s behavior, while non-functional prototypes offer a visual preview without being able to interact with the prototype.

Functional Prototype:

A functional prototype thrives on its ability to mimic the actual functionality of a product design. It’s not just about appearances—it’s about actions, interactions, and user experiences. When you interact with a functional prototype, you’re navigating through a scenario that closely mirrors what a user will do in the product. The features work, the buttons click, and the user flow replicates the real product.

Functional Prototype Example:

Imagine you’re designing a mobile app for a fitness tracker. A functional prototype would allow users to navigate through the interface, tap on buttons to simulate exercise tracking, and even experience the app’s real-time feedback as if they were logging an actual workout. This prototype showcases not only the design but also the real-world usability of the app.

Non-Functional Prototype:

A non-functional prototype predominantly emphasizes the visual aspect of a product. It may look like the final product, sporting its design system components and layout, but it’s devoid of the dynamic interplay that defines user interactions. A non-functional prototype is like a static snapshot—a mere preview of how the product might appear, rather than how it truly functions.

Non-Functional Prototype Example:

Continuing with the fitness tracker app, a non-functional prototype would capture the visual essence of the app—the layout of screens, the arrangement of buttons, and the overall aesthetic. However, it would lack the ability to simulate interactions. Users wouldn’t be able to tap on buttons or simulate workout tracking; they would merely be able view the app’s static visual representation.

What are the benefits of functional prototyping?

Performing functional prototyping offers several advantages:

• Understand how users will interact with your product, avoiding UX design mistakes.
• Validate user experience design concepts through user testing and feedback.
• Refine UX designs iteratively, improving user experience and functionality.
• Enhance collaboration by presenting interactive prototypes to stakeholders.
• Efficiently iterate and innovate, saving time and resources in the design process.

How do you create a functional prototype?

For this process, we will create a functional prototype of a signup form to check if the email and password inputs are filled out and validate the email format as well as the password length for a truly real user experience. This is how your hypothetical functional prototype of a signup form will look like:

1. Set up your canvas

After selecting the blank document from the dashboard, the artboard will open up, and there you can create your signup form.

Identify the screen size of the platform on which your sign-up form will work on:

• Scroll to Canvas size
• Select your canvas size

2. Begin by designing your layout with UXPin Libraries

Once the blank document is open, you’ll see the canvas:

1. Go to Design System Libraries
2. Select UXPin Libraries

1. Select a library to add components to your canvas. You can create your own library of components to easily drag and drop elements into your canvas, in this scenario, let’s use the iOS library.

Design the layout of your sign-up form by adding elements like email and password inputs, along with labels and buttons.

3. Make the email and password input an interactive element

1. Select the email input field
2. Go to Interactions

1. Go to Trigger
2. Set the trigger to Focus

1. Scroll to Action and select Set State
2. Go to Element and select Email input

Next, we will set the state and add the interaction:

1. Go to Set State and select Base
2. Click on ‘Add’ 

Repeat this prototyping process for the password input field.

3. Add a validation logic

Set up logic to check if the email and password fields are filled out. Display error messages if not. Add a new interaction:

1. Select the email input
2. Go to Interactions
3. Go to New Interaction

Next, set up the condition to detect if the email input field is empty:

1. Change the trigger to Focus Lost
2. Go to Conditions and select Content of element in the first field
3. Select Email input (it should be auto selected)
4. Select the condition is empty
5. Click on Add condition to finish

Next, we will confirm the new interaction:

1. Under Action, select Set state
2. Change the Element to ‘Email input’
3. Set state to ‘Empty’
4. Go to Add 

Repeat this prototyping process for the password input field.

4. Set up an Email Format Validation

Next, we will add a condition to ensure the email input follows a valid email format. Follow the steps above to create a new interaction on the email input field.

1. Set the trigger to Focus Lost
2. Select Content of element as ‘email input’
3. Set the condition to matches regex
4. Select Email
5. Click on Add condition

Next, we will confirm the new interaction:

1. Under Action, select Set state
2. Change the Element to ‘Email input’
3. Set state to ‘Incorrect’
4. Go to Add 

5. Set up a Password Length Validation

Add logic to verify the length of the password input meets the required criteria.

Follow the steps above to create a new interaction on the password input field.

1. Set the Trigger to Focus Lost
2. Select Content of element as ‘password input’
3. Set the condition to doesn’t match regex
4. Select Custom and enter criteria for the password input
5. Click on Add condition

Next, we will confirm the new interaction:

1. Under Action, select Set state
2. Change the Element to ‘Password input’
3. Set state to ‘Incorrect’
4. Go to Add 

7. Test the Prototype

Interact with the prototype to experience the flow and test the validations. Ensure it provides an accurate representation of the final product’s behavior.

By following these steps, you’ll create a functional prototype of a sign-up form that showcases the validation of email and password inputs using UXPin.

Design Functional Prototypes with UXPin Merge

Functional prototypes are a vital link between design and development, as demonstrated by our exploration of UXPin’s Merge technology. Merge seamlessly combines design and development by integrating dynamic React components. 

This real-time collaboration lets designers test interactive models and streamlines the design-to-production process. Discover UXPin Merge.

The post Functional Prototype – A Short Guide for Digital Product Designers appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Figma, AdobeXD, and UXPin are three leading user experience design tools for designing digital products. We compared these three platforms and how they stack up regarding UI design, mockups, prototyping, and collaboration. Read on to discover which design tool is best for your project demands and team needs.

Key takeaways:

• By integrating seamlessly with the Creative Cloud suite, AdobeXD facilitates a smooth design workflow with tools like Photoshop and Illustrator.
• Figma is a platform best for real-time collaboration, enabling simultaneous design by multiple users.
• UXPin stands out as a code-based design tool, allowing for complex prototypes and bridging the gap between design and coding with its Merge technology.
• Choosing the right design tool hinges on project complexity, collaboration needs, integration preferences, and prototyping capabilities.

Solve hidden usability issues and identify more business opportunities during the design process with the world’s most advanced user experience design tool. Create a single source of truth across design and development. Discover UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

Discover UXPin Merge

What is AdobeXD?

• Price: $82.49 for Creative Cloud (includes 20+ creative desktop and mobile apps including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, and Acrobat)
• Best for: Adobe users, UI design
• Feature overview:
  • Seamless integration with Creative Cloud, including Photoshop and Illustrator.
  • Auto-Animate enables smooth micro-interactions and transitions, enriching prototype realism.
  • Voice prototype integration helps designers test voice user interfaces.
  • Repeat Grid facilitates rapid duplication of design elements, optimizing repetitive tasks and ensuring design consistency.

AdobeXD is a user experience and user interface design tool from Adobe’s extensive Creative Cloud suite. AdobeXD is a platform for designing, prototyping and sharing interactive designs. Its integration within the Adobe ecosystem allows designers to effortlessly transition between tools like Photoshop or Illustrator, streamlining their design process.

What is Figma?

• Price: $12 – $75
• Best for: UI design, collaboration
• Feature overview:
  • Real-time collaboration enables multiple users to design simultaneously, fostering teamwork and instant feedback.
  • Integration capabilities offer many plugins and third-party apps, enhancing the platform’s functionality.
  • Browser and desktop applications.
  • Dev mode makes it easy for engineers to analyze designs and convert them to code with starter CSS.
  • With Variables, designers can change component properties based on user interactions.

Figma is a vector-based design platform built for real-time collaboration. As a browser-based tool, it eliminates barriers to access, ensuring teams can work synchronously regardless of location or device. Figma’s intuitive interface and powerful prototyping capabilities make it a favored choice for UX professionals. 

The tool’s emphasis on collaboration, with features allowing multiple designers to edit a project simultaneously, has redefined teamwork in the design space, cementing Figma’s position among top-tier design tools.

Does Adobe own Figma?

Adobe announced its planned acquisition of Figma in September 2022. However, the deal still hasn’t gone through and must pass regulatory scrutiny, including an August 2023 European Commission investigation. The regulator’s primary concern is Adobe’s acquisition, which “may reduce competition in the global markets for the supply of interactive product design software and for digital asset creation tools.”

If this deal goes through, it’s rumored that Adobe will discontinue AdobeXD and bundle Figma into Creative Cloud as its user experience design tool.

What is UXPin?

• Price: $39-$149
• Best for: UI design, interaction design, design systems
• Feature overview:
  • Browser and desktop applications.
  • Advanced interactive prototyping allows designers to solve more usability issues and identify better business opportunities during the design process.
  • Real-time collaboration and communication using UXPin’s Comments.
  • States allow designers to create multiple states for a single UI element and design complex interactive components like dropdown menus, tab menus, navigational drawers, and more.
  • Variables capture data from user inputs and create personalized, dynamic user experiences–like their name and profile image in the app bar.
  • Expressions Javascript-like functions to create complex components and advanced functionality–no code required!
  • Conditional Interactions create if-then and if-else conditions based on user interactions to create dynamic prototypes with multiple outcomes to accurately replicate the final product experience.
  • Design with code components (React, Vue, Angular, etc.) using UXPin’s Merge technology.
  • Connect APIs and other digital products using UXPin’s IFTTT integration.
  • Create and share a component library with UXPin’s Design Systems, including assets, documentation, UI elements, colors, and typography.
  • Cross-platform prototype testing with UXPin Mirror for native applications (iOS and Android).

UXPin is a code-based design tool enabling designers to create realistic prototypes effortlessly. The tools Forms and built-in design libraries allow designers to build mockups and prototypes, test, and iterate faster than traditional image-based design tools like Figma and AdobeXD. 

UXPin’s USP is its ability to render code rather than vector graphics. This code-based approach increases prototyping scope and enhances testing for better feedback from stakeholders and users.

Take digital product design to the next level with UXPin’s Merge technology. Designers can import UI components from a repository and build fully functioning prototypes that look and feel like the final product.

What is the Difference Between UXPin and Figma?

At first glance, UXPin and Figma appear similar. Designers will find component libraries and layers to the left and properties and interactions to the right with the design canvas center for both tools. This familiarity makes switching tools easy, especially for UX designers who like to design in Figma and prototype in UXPin.

Here are some of the key differences between UXPin and Figma:

• UXPin is code-based, while Figma is image-based. UXPin’s code-based approach means designers can create code-like functionality and interactions that are impossible to replicate in Figma or AdobeXD.
• UXPin has functioning form fields, including text inputs. Conversely, Figma’s input fields are unusable, non-interactive graphical representations.
• Code-to-design vs. design-to-code. Figma is a design-to-code tool, meaning developers must convert static designs into code. While UXPin offers a design-to-code workflow, it also provides a code-to-design solution, allowing designers to import code components into the design process using Merge.
• Figma uses artboards and frames, while UXPin separates screens into Pages.

Which Design Tool is Best for Prototyping?

Image-based design tools like Figma and AdobeXD are great for wireframing, mockups, and basic low-fidelity prototyping but cannot compete with UXPin’s interactive prototyping capabilities.

For example, you can create aesthetically pleasing forms and user flows in Figma and AdobeXD, but the inputs aren’t interactive, so designers can’t get meaningful insights during testing. They must use external tools or work with engineers to build working prototypes. 

Conversely, with UXPin’s interactive features, including States, Interactions, Variables, and Expressions, designers can design interactions, user flows, and functionality that mirrors a code-based prototype. These advanced features significantly increase prototyping scope, eliminating the need to include developers–even for complex prototype functionality and API integrations.

How to Choose a Design Tool?

Below are pivotal decision-making criteria to help steer you toward Figma, AdobeXD, or UXPin:

1. Project scope and complexity: Any three tools offer comparable experiences and outcomes for straightforward designs. However, if you want to build interactive prototypes or sync design and development, then UXPin is the best option.
2. Collaboration needs: Figma’s simultaneous multi-user functionality becomes indispensable if real-time collaboration sits high on your list. UXPin offers a similar solution via its Comments feature, which integrates with Slack.
3. Platform accessibility: Figma and UXPin’s browser-based applications are essential for prioritizing access anywhere. Conversely, if you’re an Adobe Suite loyalist, AdobeXD better fits your ecosystem.
4. Integration and extensions: Figma’s rich integration ecosystem stands out if your workflow thrives on third-party plugins. However, seamless sync with tools like Photoshop would point you to AdobeXD. UXPin and Merge technology is best if you prioritize syncing design and development.
5. Feedback loop: A streamlined feedback process can be pivotal for modern asynchronous product development. UXPin’s Comments on Preview allows stakeholders and other teams–even if they don’t have a UXPin account–to annotate feedback on prototypes, including assigning comments to specific team members.
6. Advanced prototyping: UXPin offers the most sophisticated prototyping capabilities, but AdobeXD’s voice prototyping is a unique and helpful feature for VUI designers.
7. Single source of truth: UXPin is the only one of these three tools to offer a code-to-design solution via Merge technology. Merge bridges the gap between designers and engineers with a single UI library for design and development, creating a seamless product development workflow and frictionless handoffs.
8. Learning curve: While AdobeXD, Figma, and UXPin offer comparable learning curves, UXPin’s advanced features will take slightly more time to master. The payoff? Rapid design iterations and a faster time to market.

“I liked Figma a lot. It’s a huge improvement over my previous go-to design tool, Balsamiq. But now that I’ve learned how to leverage the powerful scripting capabilities of UXPin and design interactive UIs with the same live HTML UI controls that my engineering colleagues will use in the finished product, there’s no way I could go back.” Anthony Hand, Senior UX Designer.

Why UXPin’s Code-to-Design Outshines Figma and AdobeXD

While Figma and AdobeXD deliver on visual design, UXPin’s code-to-design approach sets it apart by bridging the gap between design and development. By rendering actual code instead of vector graphics, UXPin ensures a prototype’s authenticity, sidestepping the common pitfalls of misinterpreted vector-based prototypes and interactivity.

UXPin’s Merge technology integrates UI components from repositories, enabling fully-functional high-fidelity prototypes that accurately reflect the end product. Figma and AdobeXD rely more on visual representations, often requiring additional tools or developers to bring designs to life. This streamlined efficiency positions UXPin at the forefront of a seamless, accurate, and rapid design-to-development process.

Join the code-to-design revolution to create better designs, improve designer/developer collaboration, and deliver better user experiences for your customers with UXPin and Merge technology. Visit our Merge page for more details and how to request access.

The post What’s the Difference Between Figma vs AdobeXD vs UXPin? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Date pickers are some of the most familiar UI patterns in digital product design. UX designers use date pickers on websites, applications, games, enterprise software, operating systems, and more.

Designers must understand how these date pickers will work across screen sizes, operating systems, devices, etc., to test the impact on the product’s aesthetics, functionality, and overall user experience.

UX designers can’t build date pickers using traditional image-based design tools…but they can with UXPin Merge! This technology allows you to import a fully functional date picker from Git repository or npm package, as well as bring one from Storybook.

The date picker that you will sync to UXPin will behave like a date picker in the end product. No need to link static artboards to create interactions! Request access to Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

Discover UXPin Merge

What is a Date Picker?

Date pickers are UI patterns that allow users to choose a specific date, time, or combination of both–for example, selecting a date of birth. The purpose of these date pickers is to streamline date capture while ensuring format consistency.

Why are Date Pickers Necessary?

People worldwide use different date formats. For example, the United States places the month before the day (mm/dd/yyyy), whereas the UK uses the day, month, year format. 

Although these differences seem subtle, a database cannot distinguish whether the user uses the US or UK format. It can only decipher a date correctly in one or the other format. Let’s look at October 1, 2022, numerically:

• US: 10/01/2022 (10 January 2022 in the UK)
• UK: 01/10/2022 (January 10, 2022, in the US)

In this example, the database would interpret each entry as January rather than October.

Users can also enter this same date multiple ways and use different separators. Here are a few examples:

• Oct 1, 2022 
• Oct 1, 22
• 1 Oct 2022
• 1 Oct 22
• 10-01-22 / 01.01.2022 / 10/01/22 
• 22/10/01 / 2022/10/01

Date pickers eliminate ambiguity and ensure systems receive a consistent, accurate format by users selecting the day, month, and year individually.

Date Picker UI Design for Mobile vs. Desktop

Mobile Date Picker

It’s important for designers to recognize how mobile operating systems like iOS and Android display date pickers to users. The native iOS picker uses an infinite scroll UI, while Android applications use a calendar view displaying the entire month.

A mobile date picker aims to make it accessible to a user’s thumb reach. iOS allows users to scroll using their thumb, while Android’s UI is optimized for thumb taps.

While you can use a custom date picker from your design system, using the native options creates familiarity and reduces the product’s learning curve. If you decide to use native date pickers for mobile apps, make sure you’re not creating usability issues, as we pointed out with iOS.

Desktop Date Picker

Most desktop websites and applications use calendar date pickers. The extra space and mouse make it easy for users to choose a date with just a few clicks. Many products also provide an input field for users to enter a date manually.

Numerical date input fields work well on desktops too. UX designers must include a placeholder and helpful error messages to guide users toward the correct format.

5 Types of Date Picker UI Design

Numerical Input Field

The most basic date picker is a numerical input or text input field. These fields might include a modal popup with a date picker, or users must type out the date with separators.

Some products offer users the option to type the date or use a modal, like this example from US Web Design Systems.

Placeholders must show users how to format the date, i.e., MM/DD/YYYY. UX designers can take this further by applying an auto-format for the date where separators appear as users complete the month and day. Designers can also add helper text below, so users know how to complete the form. See the example.

Dropdown Date Selector

Designers commonly use dropdown date-selectors for websites and desktop applications. These date pickers work well with a mouse, but with little space between options, they might be challenging for mobile device users, especially those with large fingers and thumbs.

Dropdown selectors take up more space than a single input field with a calendar modal. And they’re more time-consuming to complete because users have to select the day, month, and year individually.

Dropdown selectors are best for desktop applications and websites but might create bottlenecks for onboarding forms.

Scrolling Date Pickers

Scrolling date pickers work similarly to dropdowns as users choose a day, month, and year separately. These scrollers are most useful on mobile devices where users can use their thumbs to scroll to a day, month, and year.

Many users complain that scrolling date pickers are not suitable for dates far in the future or past. Scrolling through decades takes time and can be challenging for users, especially those with hand or finger disabilities.

The iOS default date picker is the most common example of a scrolling date picker; however, Apple often uses a calendar picker for dates far in the past or future.

Calendar Date Picker

Calendar UIs are the most commonly used date pickers. These calendar date pickers work well across operating systems, devices, and screen sizes.

As people are used to seeing calendars in physical and digital formats, these date pickers create familiarity for users, reducing cognitive load and the product’s learning curve.

Calendar UIs are especially helpful for date range pickers, allowing users to visualize their choice and make quick adjustments.

Timeline Pickers

Timeline pickers work well for selecting a short date range (up to a week) or timeframe (a few hours). Timeline UIs are especially useful on mobile devices because users can drag indicators to choose a start and end date. 

While you can use timeline pickers for dates, they’re best suited for selecting a time window.

Date Picker UI and UX Best Practices

Date Picker Accessibility

Poorly designed date pickers can be frustrating for users with disabilities and screen readers. Keeping things simple is crucial to ensure date selection is accessible to all users.

Here are some recommendations for making date pickers accessible:

• Use explicit labels for your date fields. For example, if someone is booking an appointment, label the field Appointment Date or Choose an Appointment Date so screen readers and users with cognitive disabilities know what date you need.
• Include format hints in the placeholder and above or below the input field. This validation makes date pickets more accessible while benefiting all users with clear instructions.
• Users must be able to use a date picker using touch, a mouse, screen readers, and a keyboard. UX designers must test date pickers to ensure all users and devices can interact with the UI and choose a date effortlessly.
• Separating day, month, and year fields make it easy for screen readers and keyboard users to enter dates. UX designers can also include a button or calendar icon for users to complete their selection using a calendar, a win-win for all users. (See this date picker example from USWDS).

Date picker accessibility resources:

• Collecting dates in an accessible way by Hassell Inclusion
• Date picker by US Web Design System
• General accessibility guidance for forms by US Web Design System

Show Current Date

It is important to show users the current date and their selection on calendar pickers. Highlighting the current date gives users a reference for their choice, which is especially important for booking travel and appointments.

Differentiating between the current date and the user’s selection is crucial to avoid confusion. Material UI clarifies this distinction with an outline for the current date and a shaded background for the selected date.

Block Unavailable Dates

Choosing a date only to find it’s unavailable is one of the most frustrating user experiences. Users have to start their selection over and try until they find availability. Blocking out unavailable dates allows users to choose without returning to the calendar.

Provide Additional Critical Decision-Making Data

Many travel booking apps, including Booking.com and Airbnb, show the price per night below each date so users can find the best rates. This information creates a positive user experience because the product helps users save money.

Reduce Unnecessary Data

Calendar user interfaces can be busy and overwhelming. Designers must reduce as many UI elements, lines, and other content to make the calendar easier to read and complete tasks. For example, users don’t need to see the days of the week when choosing their date of birth.

UX designers must also use solid backgrounds for modal overlays to block out content behind the calendar, which may confuse users.

How to design a date picker in UXPin

UXPin is an advanced prototyping tool used to create interactive, dynamic, high-fidelity prototypes. Where most prototyping tools require designers to create multiple artboards to prototype just one interaction, UXPin enables designers to use States, Variables, and Conditions to create fully-functioning pages.

To insert a date picker in UXPin, start by clicking on the “Search All Assets” search icon (command + F / Ctrl + F) in the vertical toolbar.

Next, search for “date” or “calendar” using the input field.

Several options will be available under the “Components” heading, some of which are best for touch users and others for keyboard users. “Input calendar”, however, provides a calendar for touch users and an input field for keyboard users, offering the best of both worlds and is perhaps the simplest solution overall.

Styling the date picker Component

UXPin Components are already designed to offer great user experiences, but you’ll probably want to style them to match your brand’s visual identity and app/website’s aesthetic. To do this, use the Properties panel on the right.

If you’re using UXPin Design System Libraries (especially Text Styles and Color Styles), you can utilize the Styles that you’ve already established to help maintain some degree of visual consistency between the date picker Component and the rest of your design.

To customize your component, select the Layer that you’d like to style, navigate to your UXPin Design System Library after clicking on the “Design System Libraries” icon (⌥ + 2 / alt + 2), and then select the Style that you’d like to apply to the Layer.

Using real Components instead

Rather than reinventing the wheel by inserting and styling the same Component over and over again, designers can use production-ready Components that’ve already been built by developers. You can pull them from Git, Storybook, or NPM (no coding required) and they’ll look and work just like the real thing (because they are). Learn about UXPin’s technology that makes this happen. Request access today.

The post How to Design a Date Picker that Makes Your UI Shine appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Figma prototypes are great for visualization of what the end-product can look like, explaining design decisions, and planning user flow. They fall short when it comes to testing your prototype. This is where UXPin prototypes shine. UXPin helps designers create interactive prototypes that bring quality test results. Let’s analyze both tools.

Key takeaways:

• Figma offers real-time collaboration in a vector-based design environment, while UXPin provides advanced interactive prototyping through a code-based approach.
• Due to advanced features like Merge, complex interfaces can be built significantly faster in UXPin than Figma.
• A comparison test revealed that prototyping in UXPin was 8X quicker and more interactive than in Figma.
• While Figma excels at creating static UI mockups, low-fidelity prototypes, and collaborative design, it lacks interactive prototyping capabilities.

UXPin’s Merge technology allows design teams to build code-based prototypes streamlining the design-to-development transition, offering cost and time savings.

Bridge the gap between design and development and build advanced interactive prototypes using UXPin’s Merge technology. Visit our Merge page to learn more and how to request access.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

Discover UXPin Merge

What is Figma?

Figma is a vector-based design tool that enables real-time collaboration. Designers can use Figma to create various design assets, from wireframes to mockups to prototypes and information architecture.

Figma was founded in 2016 as a browser-based vector graphics editing tool, making it an interesting alternative to Adobe products which dominated the market at that time. Many UX/UI design teams fell in love with the simplicity of Figma and started to use the tool in their job – designing user interfaces.

Figma prototypes are great for explaining to other teams what design should look like. The tool is amazing at making creative prototypes, design explorations, and powerful drawings. Figma prototypes lack advanced interactivity that stays within dev’s environment constraints. It’s what UXPin is great at.

What is UXPin?

UXPin is a code-based full-stack design tool for cross-functional collaboration. UXPin’s biggest benefit is its interactive prototyping capabilities. Designers can build fully functional prototypes that look and feel like the final product. The platform also makes creating wireframes, mockups, map user flows, and information architecture effortless with built-in libraries and forms.

UXPin prototypes can behave like a real product, because designers can put real interactions in their prototypes, store user input while testing, and use real data.

The design tool incorporates all the benefits of an easy-to-use interface with powerful code-backed features allowing designers to:

• Build robust interactive prototypes.
• Get high-quality, meaningful feedback from users and stakeholders.
• Streamline design handoffs.

What is the Difference Between Prototyping in Figma vs UXPin?

While Figma offers a reliable solution for prototyping with its collaborative capabilities and component-based approach, UXPin goes further with advanced interactions and a seamless transition from design to development with its Merge technology.

“With UXPin Merge, you can build complex interfaces in half an hour to one hour. In Figma, those interactions would take a week.” Larry Page, UX Lead Designer at Optum.

Figma falls into the “legacy design tool” category. While it’s easy to use, and designers can achieve beautiful Figma designs, the platform hasn’t evolved to meet modern UX design standards.

Here is a quick comparison of UXPin and Figma’s prototyping capabilities.

Figma:

• Basic interactions and transitions: Figma allows designers to add basic clickable transitions, making the mockups more engaging.
• Component creation and design systems: Designers can create shareable, reusable components to maintain UI consistency. 
• Collaborative design capabilities: Multiple designers can simultaneously work on the same design, streamlining the design process and promoting collective creativity.

UXPin:

• Advanced interactive prototyping: UXPin goes a step further with its sophisticated prototyping abilities. Features such as States, Interactions, Variables, and Expressions facilitate a more realistic prototype closer to the final product.
• Code-to-design with Merge: Designers can import React components into the design process, allowing them to build prototypes indistinguishable from the final product. Merge helps bridge the gap between design and development, aligning both processes for seamless product delivery.
• Real-time collaboration and user feedback: UXPin’s Comments facilitate cross-functional collaboration with team members and stakeholders. Yet, its edge lies in capturing user feedback directly on the prototype, enabling iterative design refinements based on tangible user insights and stakeholder feedback.

How Figma and UXPin Compare–a Real-World Case Study

Senior UX Designer, Anthony Hand, wrote a Medium article comparing UXPin and Figma’s prototyping capabilities. The team created a custom Microsoft Fluent web library, including relevant brand colors and third-party icons.

Anthony used a Fluent UI kit in Figma and imported a React UI library GitHub repository into UXPin using Merge technology. The React components included styling and interactive properties defined in the repo and necessary controls and APIs.

Conversely, the Figma UI kit was a static version of the Fluent Design System, requiring designers to set up relevant variants and interactions–albeit with significantly less fidelity and functionality than the React components in UXPin.

The experiment

Anthony created the same single-page reporting prototype on both platforms to compare UXPin and Figma’s prototyping efficiency. It took him an hour to design the page in Figma and just eight minutes in UXPin.

“The UXPin prototype had live dropdowns, calendar buttons, a sortable data table, and even an interactive Highcharts pie chart!” Anthony Hand, Senior UX Designer.

The prototype Anthony created with UXPin was better quality, had fewer errors, and featured interactive elements thanks to its use of live Microsoft Fluent controls. Conversely, the Figma prototype lacked these interactive qualities, relying on rasterized images that reduce real-time interaction–even though it took more than 8X as long to create.

Anthony’s conclusion

While Figma serves as a web-based evolution of familiar graphic design platforms and is an advancement over older tools, it still has limitations. UXPin stands out with its focus on “interactive prototypes” through a code-based design approach, allowing designers to create designs that feature live code elements, enhancing the interactivity and realism of the prototypes. Additionally, UXPin offers capabilities for complex interactions on a single page with minimal learning requirements.

“I liked Figma a lot. It’s a huge improvement over my previous go-to design tool, Balsamiq. But now that I’ve learned how to leverage the powerful scripting capabilities of UXPin and design interactive UIs with the same live HTML UI controls that my engineering colleagues will use in the finished product, there’s no way I could go back.” Anthony Hand, Senior UX Designer.

Is Figma Good for Prototyping?

Figma is undoubtedly a fantastic UI design tool but lacks the features necessary to create realistic interactive prototypes. Designers can still do some prototyping in Figma. Here are some examples of where the platform is most useful during the design process:

• Static UI mockups: Figma’s intuitive user interface and features make designing mockups effortless.
• Low-fidelity prototypes: Figma is great for low-fidelity wireframe prototypes since these only require basic transitions between screens.
• Information architecture: Designers can organize screens on a single artboard to map and visualize a product’s architecture and user flows.
• Collaborative design: Figma makes real-time collaboration easy, allowing teams to leave comments, run design critiques, access version history, and more.

What are Figma prototyping limitations?

Here’s where you might want to consider UXPin instead:

• Interactive prototyping: Figma offers simple click/tap interactions. Capturing user data and creating complex components like dropdown menus, carousels, accordions, and date pickers aren’t possible in Figma–limiting what designers can test.
• Live data and APIs: Unlike UXPin, you can’t import live data with Figma. These complex integrations require engineering input, increasing time and resources, making them unfeasible for most projects.
• Code-to-design: Figma works on a design-to-code approach, meaning developers must convert designs into code–a time-consuming and complex task. With the help of Merge, UXPin’s code-to-design workflow means designers can build code-based prototypes with the same building blocks developers use, significantly reducing development time while creating a seamless product development workflow.

Why is it Better to Prototype in UXPin?

The common theme throughout this article is interactivity. Modern digital products require designers to test ideas using interactive prototypes. Why?

• Development is time-consuming and expensive. Solving issues during the design process can save organizations countless time and resources, reducing wasteful expenditure.
• User experience is crucial for product adoption, engagement, and retention. Interactive prototyping allows designers to solve usability issues during the design process and enhance the product’s user experience.

When designers use image-based tools for prototyping and user testing, they miss usability issues and business opportunities during the design process. They must add these changes to the product’s UX and technical backlog, increasing debt and avoidable costs.

How interactive prototyping reduces UX debt

Merge reduces wasteful and avoidable UX and technical debt with better testing and smoother design handoffs. The design team can import interactive components from a design system repository for prototyping. This fully interactive component library increases prototyping scope, allowing designers to build exact replicas of the final product–impossible to do with image-based tools like Figma.

Users and stakeholders can interact with Merge prototypes like they would the final product, giving design teams accurate, meaningful insights to iterate and improve. 

Design handoffs require less documentation and explanation because designers and engineers use exactly the same components. Devs can import the same UI library from the same repository, apply JSX changes from UXPin, and deliver the end product.

“UXPin Merge reduced our engineering time by around 50%. Imagine how much money that saves across an enterprise-level organization with dozens of designers and hundreds of engineers.” Larry Page, UX Lead Designer.

Faster prototyping and iterations

Merge effectively creates a no-code, drag-and-drop prototyping environment for designers. As we learned from Anthony’s case study, switching to Merge allowed him to build a prototype 8X faster in UXPin than Figma using the same UI library.

Making changes to components and prototypes is quick and efficient using UXPin’s Properties Panel. Still, designers can increase efficiency by creating multiple variations and states for a single UI element and saving these in UXPin’s Patterns. Instead of making adjustments in the Properties Panel, designers simply swap components to get instant feedback during testing.

“It’s been so helpful for us to have these high-fidelity prototypes built with UXPin. We build high-fidelity prototypes much quicker and get immediate feedback after the session. If there’s something we can fix immediately, we make that change before the next participant and get feedback much faster than before.” Erica Rider, Product, UX, and DesignOps thought leader.

Take your prototyping to the next level with interactive components using UXPin’s Merge technology. Visit our Merge page for more details and how to request access.

The post Prototyping in Figma vs UXPin – Possibilities & Limitations appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Review card is a design element that appears on websites and applications to highlight feedback about a product, service or experience.

Solve more usability issues during the design process and deliver incredible user experiences for your customers with UXPin’s interactive prototypes. Sign up for a free trial to explore UXPin’s advanced features.

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Design better products with States, Variables, Auto Layout and more.

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What is a Review Card?

A review card displays user feedback in a compact, visual format on digital platforms. It’s a familiar UI pattern that presents a user’s evaluation—often accompanied by a rating, comments, and sometimes user-related information. 

Review cards display social proof and insights from previous customers, enhancing brand trust, transparency, and credibility to facilitate a conversion–signup, purchase, download, etc.

Core Components of a Review Card

Profile information

Allowing reviewers to customize their identity enhances the authenticity of feedback, including:

• Making the reviewer to post their name offers a personalized touch to the review.
• Allowing reviewers to upload their profile picture makes them more relatable.
• Adding the option to share a reviewer’s location upon consent can also help users understand someone’s view–for example, someone from the UK might find a dish “too spicy,” while someone from India thinks it has “excellent flavor!”

User-generated content

A review card displays the reviewer’s feedback, including:

• The review text provides context and meaning behind the rating, emphasizing a specific experience or narrative.

• The review date helps users understand the relevance and timeliness of the feedback. For example, a product received unfavorable reviews two years ago, but more recent feedback is positive about the same experience–showing the brand’s willingness to improve.

• The reviewer’s images and videos help create more credibility and transparency. For example, Google My Business allows users to upload photo and video content which helps prove the reviewer was at the location and that real people are leaving feedback.

Interactivity features

Making review patterns interactive helps with community-driven moderation while increasing shares and engagement. Some interactivity designers might consider includes:

• Including rating system (stars, points, etc.) to quickly determine the reviewer’s experience.
• Adding helpful/unhelpful voting buttons lets others validate the review’s accuracy.
• Allowing brands to reply to customer reviews enables them to address concerns and thank reviewers.
• Adding social share buttons, as people like to share online reviews with friends or across different platforms, amplifying the brand’s reach.

Examples of Review Card UI Patterns

Adidas reviews

Adidas is a great review card UI example for eCommerce. It encourages reviewers to rate its shoes on overall star rating, size, width, comfort, and quality. This five-point rating system gives shoppers a snapshot of the product’s performance while providing Adidas with valuable data to pinpoint issues and improvements.

Amazon reviews

Like Adidas, Amazon is another good example of an eCommerce review card design. It customizes reviews to meet the product’s features and user needs. For example, this Kindle review interface lets customers rate its built-in light, touch screen, and “easy-to-hold” characteristics.

Yelp reviews

Yelp is a review site and it makes a great job of focusing on text feedback. The review pattern prioritizes the star rating, text, and media content. 

The review form also prioritizes long-form text with prompts like food, service, and ambiance to prompt reviewers on what to mention.

Trustpilot reviews

Like Yelp, Trustpilot’s review card prioritizes text content and its signature green-star review component. The footer allows users to like, share, or report the review and also displays the brand’s reply.

Apple App Store

The app stores for Apple and Android prioritize a mobile-friendly experience, meaning their review cards must be minimal, only displaying the most crucial information.

This example from the Apple App Store displays the review’s headline, star rating, date, and reviewer’s username. Above, users can see the product’s rating out of five, rating distribution across the five stars, and total ratings. There are also CTAs above and below the review card for users to submit feedback.

Shopify App Store

Many platforms have app stores for third-party applications and integrations. Shopify’s review card appears below each app description so store owners can read peer feedback. 

The minimalist design uses a 2-column layout for desktop so users can see the app’s review breakdown and text reviews. They can also filter reviews by star rating.

Review Card Design Tips & Best Practices

Simplicity and clarity

Avoid clutter. Make it scannable.

The examples above from top platforms and brands demonstrate that a review card should allow users to grasp the main points at a glance by eliminating unnecessary elements and focusing on the essentials like ratings, reviewer names, and the review text.

Consistency in design

Ensure all review cards follow a uniform pattern.

UI and brand consistency are essential for building trust. Review cards must be consistent with the product’s design principles and integrate seamlessly with the surrounding user interface and patterns. This uniformity lets users predict where to find specific information, making their browsing experience smoother and more intuitive.

Use whitespace and hierarchy

Make content easier to read.

Whitespace creates separation between components and patterns to enhance readability and scalability while reducing visual fatigue. Designers must apply whitespace and visual hierarchy techniques to review cards so users can read and absorb content with minimal mental effort.

Design interactive elements

Clearly distinguishable buttons or links.

Designers must make buttons and text links obvious using different colors, underlining, icons, etc. These immediately identifiable interactive elements enable users to complete relevant actions, like sorting, filtering, liking, etc., creating immersive, enjoyable review card experiences.

Minimize friction

Minimizing friction through an intuitive and fast review process ensures more users provide feedback. People are more motivated to leave negative reviews, so if you want to encourage more positive ones, you must make every step effortless.

For example, Amazon sends customers a follow-up email or app notification post-purchase to prompt immediate, spontaneous feedback. Amazon’s review UI is simple and intuitive, and they can share images and videos about their product experience effortlessly.

Add filtering and sorting options

Filtering and sorting enable users to choose how to consume reviews to find the people or content that resonate with their experience or expectations. 

For example, Yelp allows users to filter reviews based on rating, time, or relevance and even look for specific keywords for efficient, tailored brand research.

Adapt review cards for different platforms

Designing consistent cross-platform experiences.

The cross-platform experience is crucial for modern digital products and review card design. For example, users can access Netflix on TVs, mobile devices, PCs, and tablets. Designers must design review cards for each platform while maintaining the highest standard of consistency.

• Responsive design: Designers must maintain the same user experience when they stack or scale review card elements for different screen sizes. Read more about responsive design.
• Native components vs. web components: Designers can leverage platform-specific UI elements familiar to users, ensuring a cohesive native experience (iOS, Windows, Android, etc.). Conversely, web components offer broader compatibility, ensuring review cards look and function consistently across browsers and devices.

High-Quality Interactive Prototyping With UXPin

Testing interactive elements is challenging with traditional image-based design tools. For example, creating a dynamic, fully interactive user flow for writing a review isn’t possible using Figma or Sketch.

UXPin is powered by code, giving designers the same fidelity and functionality capabilities as devs for building interactive prototypes. Design teams can create a review user flow prototype, including:

• Interactions and States for interactive elements like links and buttons.
• Capture a participant’s text review, name, date, and star rating using Variables from a form and display it on a review card.
• Use UXPin’s IFTTT integration to send users a thank you email for sharing their feedback.

Better feedback

With UXPin, designers can increase prototyping scope to solve more problems and identify business opportunities during the design process. Designers get better feedback from stakeholders and usability participants to iterate and improve designs using accurate, meaningful data.

Smoother handoffs

UXPin’s prototypes also facilitate a smoother design handoff process with less friction between designers and engineers. Designers don’t need supporting documentation or videos recreating interactivity because they have the tools to build these experiences, interactions, and animations with UXPin.

Streamline your design process, increase prototyping scope, and get better feedback from stakeholders and users with UXPin. Sign up for a free trial to create your first interactive prototype with UXPin.

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Prototyping is one of the most critical steps in the design process, yet prototypes still confuse some designers and project teams.

A common misconception is that some designers refer to mockups as prototypes—which can confuse those who know otherwise! Prototypes are also not a series of sketches or a functional replica of the end-product.

Key takeaways:

• A prototype is a representation of the end-product that is used in order to see if the product teams are building the right solution for their desired users.
• There are several types of prototypes: a paper prototype that’s basically a sketch of a product, digital wireframe, functional prototype, and more.
• Prototypes differ in terms of their fidelity to the final product. Low fidelity means prototype doesn’t include many details while high-fidelity prototype can be fully functional and behave like a real product.
• There are a couple of ways of creating a prototype depending on the level of fidelity you want to achieve. You can start with a paper or build a prototype in code. Let’s discuss what that means.

Build a living example of your product with components that come from your design library stored in Git, Storybook or as an npm package. Simplify design handoff and make sure that teams are sharing a single source of truth between design and code. Discover UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

Discover UXPin Merge

What is a Prototype?

A prototype is a simulation of a final product which product teams use for testing before committing resources to building the actual thing.

The goal of a prototype is to test and validate ideas before sharing them with stakeholders and eventually passing the final designs to engineering teams for the development process.

Prototypes are essential for identifying and solving user pain points with participants during usability testing. Testing prototypes with end-users enables UX teams to visualize and optimize the user experience during the design process.

Engineering is expensive, and making changes to a final product is often not as straightforward as teams anticipate. So, finding and fixing errors during the design process is critical.

Prototypes have four main qualities:

• Representation — The prototype itself, i.e., paper and mobile, or HTML and desktop.
• Precision — The fidelity of the prototype, meaning its level of detail—low-fidelity or high-fidelity.
• Interactivity — The functionality available to the user during the testing phase, e.g., fully functional, partially functional, or view-only.
• Evolution — The lifecycle of the prototype. Some are built quickly, tested, thrown away, and then replaced with an improved version (known as “rapid prototyping”). Others may be created and improved upon, ultimately evolving into the final product.

Another common misconception about prototyping is that it only needs to be done once or twice at the end of the design process—not true. 

One of our mottos that we believe at UXPin is “test early and test often.”

According to Elementor’s Director of UX, the website building platform’s designers’ – average four to five prototyping sessions, depending on the complexity of a given design.

You should prototype every possible iteration of your design—even your early basic ideas for solving a user need. Prototyping shouldn’t be reserved only for beta tests of the final version; you should test any and every version of your product!

If testing a prototype produces new insights about how end-users will interact with your product, then it’s worth taking the time to gather user feedback and iterate—whether that’s paper, low-fidelity or high-fidelity.

Types of Prototypes

We’re going to explore prototypes in three types of prototypes: paper, digital, and HTML.

Paper Prototypes

A paper prototype is a prototype that is drawn on a paper or a digital whitebaord. Such a prototype is used during the early design stages, like a design thinking workshop while designers still brainstorm ideas.

Paper prototyping works best during early design stages where design teams collaborate to explore many concepts fast. Team members sketch ideas by hand using simple lines, shapes, and text. The emphasis is on lots of ideas and speed, not aesthetics.

UX Teams lay paper screens on the floor, table, or pinned to a board to simulate user flows. A common practice for testing these prototypes is to have one person play “the product,” switching the sketches according to how the real user behaves.

A low visual/low functional paper prototype.

Advantages of Paper Prototypes

• Fast — You can sketch a prototype in minutes, which is why paper works so well for testing lots of ideas. You can draw a prototype quickly (even during a brainstorming meeting), so you haven’t wasted more than a few minutes if an idea falls flat. 
• Inexpensive — You only need a maker pen and paper to create prototypes, making the process cheap and accessible.
• Team-building — Paper prototyping is a collaborative effort, and often teams have fun coming up with fresh ideas. It’s a fantastic team-building exercise, and these free-thinking sessions often inspire creativity.
• Documentation — Team members can keep physical copies of paper prototypes, notes, and todos for quick reference during future iterations. 

Disadvantages

• Unrealistic — No matter how skilled the art or craftsmanship, paper prototypes will never be more than hand-drawn representations of a digital product. So, while they’re quick to draw, paper prototypes produce little or no results when doing user testing.
• False positives — Sometimes, paper prototypes don’t validate ideas properly. What seems like a good idea on paper might not work effectively in a digital wireframe.
• No gut reactions — Paper prototypes rely on the user’s imagination, adding a break between seeing the stimulus and responding to it. That “gut” reaction is crucial for a successful UX.

Considering these advantages and disadvantages, we recommend paper prototyping only during early-stage design. Once you move from paper to digital, there shouldn’t be any reason to revisit hand-sketched prototypes for the same designs or user flows.

For more information on paper prototyping, check out these helpful resources:

• Paper Prototyping as a Usability Testing Technique by Justin Mifsud
• Better Use of Paper in UX Design by Marcin Treder
• iPhone User Interface Design, Paper Prototype Design (video)
• Printable Paper Prototyping Templates courtesy of Tripwire Magazine

Digital Prototyping

Digital prototyping is an exciting part of the design process. Prototypes start to resemble the final product allowing teams to test and validate ideas.

There are two types of digital prototypes:

• Low-fidelity prototypes: a user flow using wireframes
• High-fidelity prototypes: a user flow using mockups

Low-fidelity prototypes allow research teams to outline basic user flows and information architecture. High-fidelity prototypes go into more detail, testing user interfaces, interactions, and how usability participants interact with a product.

Designers build prototypes using design tools like Figma, Adobe XD, and others. Sometimes non-designers, from product teams use Powerpoint or Google Slides to simulate user flows.

UXPin is unique because it allows designers to create prototypes that look and function exactly like the final product—something you cannot achieve with other popular design tools!

Advantages of Digital Prototyping

• Realistic interactions — Testing with high-fidelity digital prototypes lets UX teams see how users interact with the final product, thus effectively iron out any usability issues.
• Flexibility — Test early and test often! You can start with lo-fi prototypes that become progressively more advanced as the product design process moves forward.
• Speed — While paper prototypes might be the fastest way to test ideas, digital prototypes are the quickest way to test usability issues. Once a product gets to the engineering stage, changes cost significantly more time and money.

Disadvantages

• Learning curve — Before you can build a prototype, you’ll need to learn and understand the software—which is why product teams often use Powerpoint instead of a specialized design tool. The good news is that most design software incorporates the same tools, so it’s relatively easy to switch between them.
• Cost — As you move from low-fidelity to high-fidelity prototyping, time and labor costs increase.

A prototype’s success depends on teams outlining clear objectives and KPIs for each usability study. Without a proper plan, designers can get side-tracked, adding unnecessary features and interactions!

Here are some helpful resources for creating digital prototypes:

• A 10-Minute Rapid Prototyping Lesson by Marek Bowers

HTML & JavaScript Prototyping

On rare occasions, teams might build HTML & JavaScript prototypes to get more accurate results. The downside to this approach is that coding comes with considerable time and technical costs.

But with UXPin Merge, that isn’t the case!

Product designers (and non-designers) can create code-based high-fidelity prototypes that look and function like the final product.

For example, with UXPin’s Merge technology, teams can use React components pulled from a Git repository or Storybook components to create fully functional high-fidelity prototypes. With UXPin Merge, participants never have to “imagine” what a button or dropdown will do because the prototype functions like the final product!

Low Visual/High Functional Prototype built-in HTML. (Image credit: Mike Hill)

Advantages

• Final product functionality — HTML prototypes provide participants with an accurate model of the final product.
• The technical foundation for the final product — Building an HTML prototype provides researchers with a valuable research tool and provides developers with the foundations for building the final product.
• Platform agnostic — You can test your prototype on virtually any operating system or device, and the user won’t need to run outside software.

Disadvantages

• Dependent on designer skill level — Your HTML prototype is only as good as your ability to code. Poorly coded prototypes could introduce usability issues that don’t have anything to do with UX design!
• Inhibits creativity — Coding takes time and focus to build a usable prototype. Designers might not achieve the same level of innovation or creativity as using a familiar design tool.

Here are some helpful resources on HTML prototyping:

• Designing with Code by Andy Fitzgerald
• The Advantage of Rapid Prototyping by ZURB
• UXPin Merge for interactive prototyping by Robert Kirkman

The Prototyping Process

There’s no single best process for prototyping; it all depends on the product and application. Below are the three most effective prototyping processes, each intended for different scenarios.

(Note: We advise that you ALWAYS test the prototype when going from lo-fi to hi-fi.)

Paper => Lo-fi Digital => Hi-fi Digital => Code

Most designers follow the paper => lo-fi digital => hi-fi digital => code process for prototyping—it’s how we designed UXPin :).

Teams collaborate to develop lots of ideas, sketching wireframes on paper and creating user flows before committing to digital. Here, UX teams will use common brainstorming methods like crazy eights or asking “how might we” questions to get into an end-user mindset.

A lo-fi digital prototype (wireframe) tests crucial elements like navigation and information architecture early in the design process. Teams can use feedback to make quick adjustments to wireframes before committing to mockups.

Once teams complete navigation and information architecture, designers build mockups resembling the final product—adding color, content, interactions, and animations.

When researchers have exhausted testing, UX teams hand over designs to engineers to develop the final product.

Paper => Lo-fi Digital => Code

Going from Lo-fi prototyping to code is an old approach that few teams ever use these days. While lo-fi prototyping is cheap, it doesn’t catch many of the usability issues high-fidelity prototypes expose.

Product developers without design skills might use the paper => lo-fi digital => code method because it’s quicker for them to code than learn how to use a design tool.

The process is exactly like the example above, except that teams will skip the hi-fi digital step.

Low fidelity prototype created during a Yelp redesign exercise. 

High fidelity prototype created during a Yelp redesign exercise.

HTML Prototyping => Code

Solo developers might skip any early prototyping methods and go straight to code. With no one to bounce ideas with, it can make sense for a developer to jump straight in.

Essentially, the prototype creates a foundation and evolves into the final product. This prototyping method is only effective for skilled product developers with efficient workflows.

Even designers with excellent design skills might want to avoid this method of prototyping. Low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototyping are significantly faster than building and editing code.

Paper =>UXPin Merge – Hi-fi Prototyping => Code

With UXPin Merge, you can accelerate the UX process through rapid prototyping. Create fully-functioning high-fidelity prototypes using UI code components to provide participants with a life-like model of the final product.

UX teams follow the standard paper prototyping processes as outlined above. Next, designers build high-fidelity prototypes using UXPin Merge just by dragging and dropping ready interactive UI blocks on the canvas.

The outcome: no more “imagining!” Your prototype will work just as the final product. Prototyping in a code-based design tool like UXPin Merge means engineers can build the final product significantly quicker than working with vector-based designs. Discover UXPin Merge.

The post What is a Prototype? A Guide to Functional UX appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Rapid prototyping accelerates the prototype phase, so design teams can push final designs to engineering teams faster. As Facebook Mark Zuckerberg once said, “Move fast and break things!”

Striving for perfection can cost precious time, putting product teams a step behind the competition. Rapid prototyping ensures that design teams only focus on a design’s key features and flows to get the project to market quickly.

Key takeaways:

• Rapid prototyping is a methodology of creating a workable prototype of a product fast, considering key features and screens that are absolutely necessary for the next stages of product development
• The process of rapid prototyping involves creating a prototype, testing it with users, and iterating it as fast as possible, so the design is ready for development as fast as possible.
• A rapid prototype allows stakeholders to quickly see how the product will look like and what its user experience will be like before committing resources to building it.
• Rapid prototyping is efficient, fast, accessible and focused on making a product that users will enjoy.

UXPin’s advanced prototyping features enable design teams to build products faster. Use React components in prototyping and build production-ready prototypes 10x faster. Discover UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

Discover UXPin Merge

What is Rapid Prototyping?

Rapid prototyping is the process of creating high-fidelity prototypes to test user flows and validate ideas fast. The goal of rapid prototyping is speed. Designers focus solely on optimizing the user experience to prevent getting sidetracked by “nice-to-have” features and aesthetics.

The quicker teams get a product to market, the faster it can generate revenue to fund growth and product improvements.

Rapid Prototyping vs Traditional Prototyping

In comparison to rapid prototyping, the traditional prototyping process follows five well-defined stages:

1. Sketching – Brainstorm by drawing quick and rough sketches on paper.
2. Wireframing – Start laying out the skeletal framework with boxes and rough shapes.
3. Mockups – Inject detail into wireframes with colors, typographies, photos, and other visual design elements.
4. Prototyping – Add interactivity to mockups by stitching screens together for basic prototypes or adding animations/interactions for advanced prototypes.
5. Development handoff – The engineering team receive a prototype in order to turn it into the final product.

But with the popularization of new ideas such as Lean UX and rapid prototyping, plus the school of thought that wants to get into coding as quickly as possible, this traditional sequential method is becoming outdated.

Benefits of Rapid Prototyping

To recap, let’s look at the four primary benefits of rapid prototyping:

1. Saves money – getting products to market faster through rapid prototyping reduces labor costs while enabling products to generate revenue quicker.
2. Saves time – rapid prototyping catches user pain points during testing eliminating the chance of errors reaching development where changes cost significantly more time and money.
3. User-focused – with limited time, teams must focus on optimizing the user experience and not get distracted by nice-to-have features.
4. Accessible – rapid prototyping creates an environment where non-designers can build and test prototypes. This process saves time by eliminating the necessity for product teams to explain ideas to UX designers, who then present designs back to product teams—often over several iterations.

The Rapid Prototyping Process

Rapid prototyping is less of a separate process and more a filter for efficiency. In rapid prototyping, you revise quickly based on feedback and shift swiftly to high-fidelity prototyping to get as quality feedback as you can.

The key to rapid prototyping is setting clear objectives and KPIs, so teams only focus on the tasks required to meet those goals.

The following steps apply to rapid prototyping and testing phases—assuming that you have already completed the early stages of the design process.

Step 0 – Interactive Wireframes

Where rapid prototyping focuses on the final stages of the design process, interactive wireframes bring speed and efficiency to early-stage design.

With interactive wireframes, UX teams have a massive head start as they move into designing mockups and high-fidelity prototypes.

Download our free e-book on interactive wireframes and learn how this early-stage design strategy can help optimize the rapid prototyping process.

Step 1 – Create a Design System

A design system helps designers maintain speed and consistency—essential elements for effective rapid prototyping. Design systems also streamline onboarding new designers or even allow non-designers to build products (like PayPal does with our Merge technology). 

UXPin lets you create a design system from scratch or use popular systems like Google’s Material Design, Bootstrap, or iOS. Additionally, you can use ready-to-use interactive UI patterns to build reusable components fast!

Step 2 – Create Your Mockups

Once your design system is complete, creating mockups is as easy as drag-and-drop.

If you prefer to design in Sketch, UXPin’s Sketch import makes it easy for designers to upload mockups to begin prototyping and testing.

Step 3 – Creating Interactions – The UXPin Way

With your mockups complete, it’s time to connect user flows and add interactions. 

Keep your interactions simple to start. You can even create guidelines for interactions in your design system, so team members just copy and paste. Not only will simple interactions save time, but they also maintain uniformity, keeping the final product clean and consistent. Designers can always come back to refining interactions at a later stage.

Remember, the goal is to only focus on the interactions that matter for users to complete a flow! UX designers must build prototypes that look and feel like the final product to get accurate feedback from testing.

With UXPin, you can create components, variables, add states, and use real data to make your high-fidelity prototypes look and behave exactly like the final product.

• Components save you time by allowing you to create reusable elements—for example, a button, icon, or card. The Master Component defines the component’s properties, while the Instance Component mirrors the content from its master. Any changes to the Master copies to all Instance Components, allowing designers to make changes to an entire flow by editing a single element.
• Variables allow you to store user inputs and take actions based on the provided data inside the prototype. UX teams can provide a personalized experience during usability testing and demonstrations to stakeholders—a powerful UXPin feature to enhance rapid prototyping.
• Another powerful UXPin feature is the ability to create element and component states—for example, default, hover, active, and disabled. Additionally, you can set up triggers to activate or switch between states, like a drop-down or navigation menu.
• UXPin Merge lets designers take high-fidelity prototypes to a level no other design tool can! As you design with components that were coded, UXPin Merge enables prototypes to look and function exactly like the final product—more on UXPin Merge later in this article!

Step 3 – Test, Tweak, Repeat

Once high-fidelity prototypes are complete, it’s time for testing. With UXPin, you can test prototypes in the browser or download UXPin Mirror (iOS & Android) for testing on mobile devices—you can even lock prototypes in UXPin with password protection to prevent unauthorized access.

UX teams can collect feedback from stakeholders and usability studies to tweak designs before returning to the testing phase to validate the changes.

UX designers might make minor changes during testing to get instant feedback and accelerate the rapid prototyping process.

How UXPin Merge Accelerates Rapid Prototyping

Traditional design tools render vector or raster graphics. While these graphics might look like the final product, they have limited functionality which doesn’t provide meaningful feedback from testing and stakeholders.

Prototypes created this way require the user to “imagine” that they have entered data or activated an element’s state—like adding a product to their cart or playing a video.

UXPin is a code-based design tool. When a designer draws something on the canvas, UXPin renders HTML/CSS/JS code. As UXPin is code-based, we went one step further and introduced Merge technology that integrates with Git or Storybook, and brings all the components your devs coded for the design system into UXPin library so that you can reuse them!  The result? You can prototype with ready and fully interactive UI elements without designing from scratch. 

Test participants and stakeholders no longer have to “imagine” what will happen when they interact with a UXPin prototype because it looks and functions like the final product! Using actual data from JSON, Google Sheets, or CSV, designers can also simulate an authentic product experience and make quick changes to test multiple scenarios.

Not only does UXPin Merge accelerate rapid prototyping with an authentic user experience and meaningful feedback, but it also makes the transition from designing to engineering and on to the final product significantly quicker.

PayPal’s DesignOps 2.0 – A UXPin Merge Success Story

UXPin Merge forms the core of PayPal’s DesignOps 2.0—where product team members (not designers) use rapid prototyping to build interfaces for PayPal’s internal tools.

Essentially, UXPin Merge provides PayPal’s product team with a no-code drag-and-drop tool to build user interfaces and test high-fidelity prototypes with React components. Additionally, PayPal’s product managers import real information from JSON, Google Sheets, or CSV—giving prototypes final product functionality.

Instead of taking part in the prototyping and testing process, PayPal’s UX designers (of which there are only three to 3,000 developers!) act as mentors to product teams, providing guidance and support when necessary.

With code components, PayPal’s engineers can develop the product team’s prototypes significantly faster than using a vector or raster-based design tool.

If PayPal can achieve efficient rapid prototyping with just three UX designers, imagine what UXPin Merge could do for your design process. Discover UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

Discover UXPin Merge

The post Rapid Prototyping Process and Fidelity – A 5-Minute Guide appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

When diving into the world of product design and development, there are a lot of terms being thrown around. Today we will focus on the three of them:

• Prototype is a representation of an end-product for testing design ideas, getting feedback from users, and showing stakeholders and developers what the final product will be like.
• MVP is a product that stakeholders use to find first users that would be willing to use the product. MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product, because it has all that’s needed to find first users.
• Proof of Concept is anything that helps you measure the feasibility, viability, and desirability of a product to secure funding, gather resources, and make sure you want to invest in the right thing.

Key takeaways:

• Prototype’s purpose is to test product’s UI and UX design with its intended users, get feedback, and achieve the best solution possible. MVP’s purpose is to find early adopters and Proof of Concept is there so you can check if it’s worth to build the product in the first place.
• Prototype needs to be as functional as it’s needed to test the product before comitting the resources to making it. MVP needs to be fully functional and Proof of Concept (PoC) doesn’t need to be functional at all.
• Prototype, MVP, and Proof of Concepts need to be developed with the focus on the user, they go through a series of iterations that are based on feedback and design validation.

Build fully interactive prototypes to test your concepts using UXPin’s powerful Merge technology. Get accurate feedback during the product design process to validate ideas and iterate faster at higher fidelity than traditional image-based design tools. Discover UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

Discover UXPin Merge

What is a Prototype?

A prototype represents or simulates a product idea, allowing designers, stakeholders, and users to visualize and interact with its key features and functionalities. Prototypes help validate design concepts, gather feedback, and test usability during the early stages before investing significant time and resources into development.

There are various types of prototypes, ranging from low-fidelity sketches or wireframes to high-fidelity interactive replicas that closely resemble the final product. Designers can quickly iterate, refine, and improve their designs based on user insights, ensuring that the final product meets user needs and business goals.

How to build a prototype

UX designers or product designers are typically responsible for the prototyping process. They collaborate with other team members, such as UX researchers, developers, and stakeholders, to gather requirements, define the scope, and translate ideas into tangible prototypes.

Designers use various tools and methodologies to create interactive visual representations of their ideas and simulate user interactions.

What is an MVP?

An MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is a simplified version of a product that includes only its core features and functionalities aimed at addressing the primary needs of early users. An MVP aims to test and validate the product idea in the market with minimal resources and investment.

An MVP is a functional product, allowing the product team to gather feedback, measure user engagement, and collect valuable data to inform future iterations and enhancements.

An MVP aims to balance delivering value to users and validating the product’s viability while minimizing development costs and time-to-market.

How to build an MVP

Developers typically use a combination of tools and technologies to build an MVP, including programming languages, frameworks, and development platforms specific to the chosen tech stack. They may use foundational programming languages like HTML, CSS, and Javascript or frameworks like React, Angular, or Vue.

Engineering teams collaborate with designers, stakeholders, and other team members to define the MVP’s features, functionalities, and priorities. The development process involves:

• Implementing core features
• Integrating with necessary APIs or databases
• Deploying the product to a testable environment

What is a Proof of Concept?

A proof of concept (PoC) is a small-scale demonstration or experiment that aims to verify the feasibility and potential of an idea. Companies typically use PoCs to test a product’s or technology’s technical or functional aspects before investing significant resources in software development.

A proof of concept focuses on validating key hypotheses or showcasing specific features or capabilities of an idea to stakeholders or investors. It serves as evidence that the concept is possible and has the potential to solve a problem or meet a need.

Unlike a fully functional product, a proof of concept may not be production-ready or designed to be deployed to target users. Instead, its purpose is to demonstrate the viability and value of the idea, paving the way for further development and investment.

How to build a proof of concept

The responsibility for building a PoC lies with a cross-functional team consisting of developers, engineers, designers, and subject matter experts. They collaborate to design and implement a simplified solution, focusing on the core features and functionalities that will validate the concept’s viability.

The tools and techniques organizations use to build a PoC vary due to the diverse nature of digital innovation. For example, an organization may use Python, Java, or C++ combined with various development frameworks. The organization may also incorporate data analysis tools, visualization software, or simulation platforms to run and analyze the PoC.

Comparing a PoC vs. Prototype vs. MVP

Key differences

Purpose and scope:

• Prototype: Used to visualize and test design concepts, interactions, and user experience.
• MVP: Developed to find product-market fit and refine the idea in a real-world context.
• PoC: Created to demonstrate the feasibility and potential value of a product.

Level of functionality:

• Prototype: Limited functionality that allows to test usability of a product.
• MVP: Full functionality of features with avoiding scope creep.
• PoC: No functionality necessary; the goal is to showcase the core concept.

Audience and timing:

• Prototype: Targets internal teams, stakeholders, and potential users in the early design and development stages.
• MVP: Intended for early adopters, potential customers, and investors to validate the product-market fit.
• PoC: Aimed at stakeholders, investors, and potential partners to showcase the viability and potential of a concept.

Similarities and overlaps

Iterative approach:

• Prototypes, MVPs, and PoCs embrace an iterative product development process.
• All involve a cycle of testing, gathering feedback, and refining the product.
• Insights and feedback from users or stakeholders drive iterations.

User-centered design:

• Teams use user-centered design principles to design prototypes, MVPs, and PoCs.
• User feedback and insights play a crucial role in shaping the product design process.
• Teams make iterations to improve the user experience and meet user needs and market demand.

Learning and validation:

• Companies use prototypes, MVPs and PoCs to learn and validate a business idea or product concept.
• They provide opportunities to gather feedback, test assumptions, and make informed decisions.
• Organizations build prototypes to gain insights through user testing and validation to refine the product and make necessary improvements.

Example Case Study for Using a Prototype vs. MVP vs. PoC

Scenario: FinTech startup FinPin is working on a digital product for managing personal finances. The app aims to provide users with a seamless and intuitive experience for budgeting, expense tracking, and financial goal setting.

Prototype

FinPin creates a prototype to validate the user interface and gather feedback from potential users and stakeholders during the concept and design phase. The team builds several variations during this process, including low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes.

The low-fidelity prototypes allow design teams to test and iterate quickly–first, with paper before moving onto digital wireframes using a design tool. FinPin’s design team uses these low-fidelity prototypes to create the structure, navigation, and information architecture.

Next, the team converts its low-fidelity wireframes to high-fidelity interactive prototypes. FinPin’s designers use Material UI to build interactive prototypes to save time by leveraging the design system’s vast component library and well-defined design language.

They use UXPin’s Merge technology to prototype and test using React components. This interactive prototyping approach allows the team to gather accurate data and insights to validate ideas and solve usability issues.

These prototypes include color, typography, UI components, and real content, allowing the team to test the designs with end-users and iterate on feedback. Designers optimize the user experience during this iterative process while enhancing the user interface’s business value.

Minimum viable product

After receiving positive feedback on the prototype, FinPin develops a minimum viable product for the mobile app. Instead of creating a mobile app, which is a costly process and time-consuming process, FinPin develops a mobile-friendly web app with the product’s core features.

The MVP includes essential features, including account linking, expense tracking, and basic budgeting capabilities. The goal is to create a functional web application to find first users and see what they appreciate about the app.

The web app also allows them to use tools like Google Analytics and Hotjar to track and analyze user behavior for future improvements. This data enables the team to gather valuable user insights, validate assumptions, and determine the product-market fit before investing further resources in additional features.

Proof of concept

FinPin aims to introduce innovative financial forecasting technology into the app. They build a proof of concept to demonstrate the technology’s feasibility and pitch their idea to investors to secure funding.

The PoC focuses on developing a small-scale, functional version of the forecasting algorithm and integrating it into the MVP. This integration with the MVP allows FinPin to test the accuracy and performance of the technology, evaluate any technical challenges or limitations, and showcase its potential value to potential investors or partners.

The outcomes of the PoC inform decisions on the scalability and viability of integrating the forecasting technology into the final product.

The example above demonstrates the three distinct scenarios where companies and startups use prototypes, MVPs, and PoCs. We can summarize this example as follows:

• Prototype: design testing
• MVP: beta testing
• PoC: concept testing

Advanced Prototyping With UXPin Merge

Whether you’re building a minimum viable product or proof of concept, prototyping is essential to test and validate ideas before committing to the development process.

UXPin’s Merge technology allows designers to bring code components into the design process to enhance prototyping scope and gather meaningful feedback from user testing and stakeholders. These interactive prototypes allow users and stakeholders to interact with user interfaces like they would the final product, providing accurate insights to iterate and improve before the development process.

Create prototypes that drive data-driven decisions for better product outcomes and user experiences. Visit our Merge page for more details and how to request access.

The post Prototype vs MVP vs Proof of Concept— Differences and Similarities appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

As an industry, product design has become more interactive than ever before. Whether you’re creating apps, websites, or software, there’s an endless stream of new tools and workflows to help make your design decisions as comprehensive as possible. However, when there are design team members, project managers, and stakeholders who all want to be involved in the project at the same time, things can get messy pretty quickly.

Managing effective feedback process at all stages of the design workflow has become a bit of pain, to say the least.

Fortunately, there are a ton of design feedback tools that can help you gather, organize, and utilize constructive feedback and help keep everyone on the same page. That’s why we’ve compiled a collection of the best design feedback tools to help you find the right one for your specific needs.

Build interactive prototypes that can be easily shared with your team in UXPin. Keep your teammates in the loop and test your designs with users. Sign up for a free trial.

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How to Pick the Best Design Feedback Tool? 

First off, how do you even know whether a design feedback tool is right for you?

Of course, you need an application that makes collaboration easy and doesn’t do more harm than good. The software and feedback features need to actually benefit your creative efforts, so bear these considerations in mind. This also means that – when choosing the right design collaboration tool – you should check whether it lets you comment on the design when making iterations, or leave feedback on actual, published apps and websites.

Here are a few criteria to search for:

1. interactivity
2. satisfying feature set
3. real-time user
4. collaborative

Your tool is interactive

Professional design feedback tools must be as interactive as possible. 

In the past, feedback would have been as simple as drawing lines and writing comments on a screenshot, or supplying a designer with a list of things to change, but this just isn’t good enough today.

It wastes so much time having to shift through messy lists of feedback, find what feature a client is referring to, or identify what the bug in question is. 

An interactive tool removes these issues and instead displays actionable feedback in the right places in an organized manner. Everything is clean, easy to follow, and intuitive.

There’s no point in getting a feedback tool that ends up causing more problems than improving productivity.

Offers increased functionality

Despite being a feedback tool, your chosen solution should always be far more capable than this baseline feature. 

The best tools grant access to other functions, such as being able to generate specs and documentation or even manage the entire design process.

For example, connecting with the prototyping process is essential yet often overlooked. 

If colleagues, project leaders, or UX testers provide great design feedback on a certain aspect of the project, you can incorporate it into your prototype, test again, gather more feedback, and then repeat the cycle.

This is a far more effective way to work and will speed up your design process as a whole. Productive design review should be an iterative process that helps to improve the quality of your designs, rather than something that just bogs you down.

Functions in real time

Nowadays, especially with the rise of remote and hybrid ways of working, your collaboration tools need to operate in real-time. This includes displaying design previews, adding comments and annotations, and even video and audio notes for highly-detailed responses.

Allows effortless communication

Communication is everything at all stages of the design process, including when it comes to organizing feedback.

Your design review tool should enable users to add all kinds of comments in any format (text, video, image, GIFs, etc) as well as @mention-specific team members. In order to avoid any confusion, it’s also important that everyone’s on the same page in terms of which tool you’re using and that everyone understands how to use it.

6 tools for collecting design feedback

Let’s now take a look at the design feedback tools that will make the design review more effective and interactive. 

1. Proofhub

Proofhub markets itself as a project management application orientated to the needs of designers. Clients or project managers can check in and provide feedback throughout the entire design workflow, annotating the project within the app using a clean overlay approach.

This means designers can eliminate previous issues, like having to search and find feedback in a massive email or Slack threads, access the feedback at any time, and work on a project in real-time.

While fast, effective, and easy to get set up and running, the interface can feel a little clunky and lacks customizability. However, if you can overlook this, it does get the job done.

Features

• Review all files in any kind of design project with a click
• Collaborate with all team members, clients, and managers in real-time
• All past file versions remain accessible simultaneously

2. Atarim

Atarim is used by over 5,000+ agencies worldwide, including companies like GoDaddy, Elementor, and WPEngine. If you’re looking for a design feedback tool specifically for website building, then it’s worth considering it.

It’s essentially a WordPress plugin that digital development and design teams can use to track changes across the websites they’re building. Atarim lets you add internal comments, collect feedback from clients, and then use the findings to improve the UX and UI. 

This design review app supports screenshots and comments, and can turn any text into a task that can be assigned to a relevant team member.

Atarim can be integrated into other collaboration tools like Trello and Asana, as well as other Kanban boards. While clearly feature-rich, this software can be a little confusing to newcomers, and the learning curve may take some time to climb.

Features

• Supports internal messages that keep conversations away from clients
• Give feedback on non-WordPress sites with a few clicks
• Turn comments on screenshots into assignable tasks

3. UXPin

UXPin allows you to catch positive and negative feedback before it becomes costly, that is during the prototyping phase. Non-designers as well as fellow designers can give approvals or leave their not-so-positive feedback before the prototype gets passed on to engineers.

It’s costly for any business to create entire apps, websites, and features, only to have them redesigned from the ground up once clients, stakeholders or product managers want changes made.

Instead, you can use UXPin to generate robust prototypes of individual design elements, acquire feedback, and then implement the changes until your design is given the green light. Next, prototypes can be shared with developers who will polish it off into the final app, making it effortless to bring the best of collaboration and teamwork to your design projects.

Features

• Create, run, and tweak prototypes in real-time
• Import Sketch or Figma designs in just a few clicks
• Create and share preview links to ensure your prototypes are accessible to everyone who needs access
• Animate between states to create one of the most advanced user testing experiences possible
• Use ground-breaking variable data storage to create the most life-like prototyping experience
• Hand over your designs to the engineering team with autogenerated specs and ready-made code.

4. BugHerd

Whatever you’re designing, you’re going to come across bugs and problems that need addressing. Keeping track of everything and being organized can be a challenge, to say the least. BugHerd addresses this pain point with its visual-heavy feedback tool.

The app is simple. Using a visual interface to display code, screenshots, websites, or whatever visuals you want, clients, stakeholders, and team members can place sticky-note-like comments to provide any kind of feedback, highlight issues, and more.

Features

• The entire service is hosted in the cloud
• All comments and feedback are easily accessible and searchable
• Mark annotations on images provide concise feedback

5. Nimbus Capture

Sometimes, you’re not going to want a high-end service but rather something simple, quick, and easy, and that’s where Nimbus Capture comes in. It’s a great tool for startups that provides a range of collaboration tools designed for improving feedback and collaboration efforts, the most notable of which is Nimbus Note.

While quick and easy, it’s important to realize that this design review tool can feel a little restrictive when compared to other tools that offer a more integrated service. The UI is a little dated (especially when using the free Chrome extension), and you don’t actually integrate your work into the app.

This means designers are going to be constantly switching back and forth between windows to make changes and review feedback, rather than just working with everything within a self-contained and accessible place.

Features

• A free Chrome browser extension
• Users can annotate screenshots using a variety of methods
• Automatically organize notes using a table of contents

6. Userback

Reviewing feedback takes time, and it’s time wasted if not handled properly. Userback aims to make things easy with its visual feedback tool. Used by companies like Couchbase, Udacity, and more, Userback works within any kind of project, be it web design, app design, and more, and it allows users, clients, and designers to annotate on the fly.

You can specifically mark areas of the screen with interactive comments, mention specific engineers, highlight bugs and potential issues in the code, and even provide client support in real-time.

The app can fully integrate into an extensive range of major services, including Slack, Trello, Asana, WordPress, ZenDesk, GitHub, and so on, and even supports video feedback.

While this is surely a feature-rich solution, Userback is designed for users to provide their feedback once the product has already been launched. It’s not the best choice if you want to do a design critique of wireframes or prototypes. This means that bugs and glitches are possibly already influencing the usability of your product, and the damage could have already been done to the overall user experience.

Features

• You can draw directly on the design
• Use video feedback to gather feedback from customers faster
• A feature request dashboard lets you look at all of the comments and track their status

Use UXPin to Collect Feedback on Prototypes

Great design feedback is an important part of the design process, no matter if it’s a positive feedback or negative, and there are a variety of tools available to help make it as smooth as possible. While some software is more comprehensive than other, each has its own unique set of features that can be tailored to fit your specific needs.

That being said, don’t forget that there’s no stage of feedback more important than prototyping. For this reason, make sure you’re using a tool that allows you to collect feedback early and often, so you can make revisions and create a better design, just like UXPin does. 

It can help make a more quality designs for apps and websites. At the end of the day, your apps will make or break depending on your UX design, and designers have the most important role in creating an experience that users will love.

UXPin is designed at its core with this goal in mind. Try it for free, and you’ll see that design work will never be the same again.

The post Best Design Feedback Tools – A List of 6 Tools appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

User reviews and feedback are essential for product evolution and growth. Organizations can use this feedback to fix product issues and improve the user experience. Teams may also identify new opportunities for growth and revenue.

This article reveals how design teams can use customer feedback to solve problems and improve products. We also provide an example of how a business went from no customers to a billion-dollar unicorn in less than a decade simply by talking to users.

Enhance your product’s user experience and get meaningful feedback with advanced prototyping from UXPin. Sign up for a free trial to start designing amazing experiences customers want to share!

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Why are User Reviews Important?

Product analytics are essential for identifying design issues and successes, but they don’t tell you why. This quantitative data is crucial in analyzing users but doesn’t tell you what they think or feel.

You might generate lots of leads or enjoy high conversion rates, but if your customers are unhappy with the user experience, it’ll be hard to retain them–jumping ship to the first competitor with a better offer!

User reviews and feedback help design teams understand customer sentiment and identify issues (or successes) that analytics can’t tell you.

Case Study – Coinbase’s User Review Success Story

In a podcast aired in July 2022, Coinbase Founder and CEO Brian Armstrong talked about how he used customer feedback to change the then startup’s business model and add functionality to buy Bitcoin through the app.

“In Y-Combinator, they often tell you, ‘talk to your customers, prove your product,’ try to find product/market fit.” On a call with one customer who signed up but never used Coinbase, Brain learned that people who didn’t have Bitcoin had no use for the product. At the time, buying Bitcoin was a challenge, so people didn’t know how to add crypto to their Coinbase Wallet.

Brain asked his customer, “If I put a buy Bitcoin button in there [the app], would you have used it?” The customer answered, “Yeah, maybe.”

After adding a buy Bitcoin button to the Wallet, Coinbase experienced tremendous growth and is now a multi-billion dollar company employing 5,000+ employees globally. The catalyst for this success?–Brain talking to his customers to understand their needs and feelings about the product.

Before chatting to his users, Brain had no paying customers, and Coinbase generated no income. He doubted his product and whether he should continue. Had he relied on analytics to tell him his product didn’t work, Coinbase would not exist!

Engaging with customers and taking action on user reviews and feedback is essential for delivering products and features people want.

Where Can You Find User Reviews?

There are many ways product teams can collect customer feedback. Here are some of the most popular methods:

1. Product or website widgets
2. Support tickets and chats
3. Asking customers questions
4. Questionnaires
5. Social media (reviews, hashtags, etc.)
6. App Stores and Review Websites
7. Forums & Communities

1. Product or Website Widgets

Several tools allow you to place widgets on your website or application to collect customer feedback. A great example is Hotjar’s Feedback widget which lets users rate their experience and comment on specific UI elements or content.

These feedback tools offer widgets to gather feedback for multiple UX metrics, including:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS): How likely are people to recommend your product on a scale of 1-10.
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Yes or no questions that indicate whether customers are happy with a product or feature.
• Customer Effort Score (CES): Asking customers how difficult it is to complete tasks–typically on a scale of 1-10.
• System Usability Scale (SUS): A 10-question questionnaire that provides UX designers with a digital product’s overall usability score.

2. Support Tickets and Chats

Tracking support tickets and chats are excellent feedback sources for identifying trends–for example, customers can’t find a specific feature or don’t know how to complete a task.

UX designers can use this feedback to test further and pinpoint the issue for fixing. UX benchmarking is crucial for these fixes because it tells the organization if the redesign solves the problem–i.e., reducing support tickets.

3. Asking Customers Questions

As we saw in the Coinbase example, asking customers questions is essential for user experience and growth. Asking customers why can help understand what needs or expectations your product doesn’t fulfill.

For example, asking customers why they’re closing their account or downgrading their plan could help improve the product. You can add these customers to a mailing list and try to win them back when you release features they were missing.

4. Questionnaires

Questionnaires are excellent resources for learning what customers like or dislike. UX designers must look beyond UX research and gather insights from other departments, like sales, marketing, customer support, etc., to understand the customer experience at every touchpoint.

5. Social Media

Social media is a fantastic place to find user reviews, understand brand sentiment, and engage with customers. Beyond user ratings, social media managers can use Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to search for branded-related keywords, hashtags, and posts and find out what customers say about the product.

Social media is also an excellent resource for researching customers’ opinions about competitors to identify opportunities and avoid failures.

6. App Stores and Online Reviews

Your product’s app store and review sites (Trustpilot, Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc.) provide feedback from real end-users. You to filter by star-rating and keywords to drill into specific problems or customer sentiment.

Team members can also provide a customer support email address in replies to engage with users and get more details about their experience.

7. Forums & Communities

Industry or product forums and communities are excellent for identifying problems and opportunities. Users often visit these platforms to ask questions or seek help.

Creating a community forum for your brand will allow you to engage with customers and prioritize feature releases through upvoting. Customers can also use the platform to report bugs or request new features.

How User Reviews Help You Become Better?

User reviews are only helpful if your team uses them to take action. These are some ways customer reviews can guide UX:

• User-centered design: Reviews help UX designers see products from a user’s perspective and help them empathize better.
• Analyze performance: Organizations can monitor reviews to gauge performance. For example, if negative reviews stop after a feature release, it’s a good sign the new design fixed the problem.
• Optimize user experience: Feedback and reviews help designers make tweaks and adjustments to optimize a product’s user experience–thus retaining customers and attracting new ones.
• UX benchmarking: Organizations can use product and competitor reviews to set UX benchmarks and product goals.
• Reduce churn: Monitoring user reviews and feedback enables design teams to identify and respond to issues before they result in lost business.
• Increase referrals: Customer referrals are excellent, low-cost leads. Improving NPS and CSAT scores increases the likelihood of customers sharing your product.

Negative vs. Positive Reviews What to Use?

Teams must pay equal attention to negative and positive reviews, here’s why:

• Negative reviews: Tell you why customers are unhappy and how to fix it
• Positive reviews: Tell you why customers love your product and brand

Analyzing these reviews can also help prioritize features and fixes. For example, if you have overwhelming negative reviews for a specific feature, it’s probably best to focus on fixing that before releasing something new!

Teams can also analyze competitors’ negative and positive reviews to improve features and avoid making similar mistakes.

Top 8 User Review Tools

Here are several popular user review and feedback tools:

1. Hotjar: Feedback and surveys
2. Lucky Orange: Live chat, form analytics, surveys
3. Crazy Egg: Website/product optimization, including surveys and error tracking
4. FullStory: UX optimization with “frustration signals” and journey mapping
5. VWO: Advanced user tracking and A/B testing templates
6. Survicate: Customer surveys with multiple integrations
7. CustomerGauge: User and account level enterprise feedback tool
8. SurveySparrow: Enterprise omnichannel experience management with surveys, NPS software, chatbots, and assessments

User Experience Optimization With UXPin

Once you identify issues or opportunities, testing ideas and hypotheses are essential for finding the right solution. With UXPin, design teams can build advanced prototypes that accurately replicate a final product experience.

They can use these prototypes to improve user testing and get meaningful feedback from stakeholders. People can use and engage with UXPin prototypes as they would with a code prototype, eliminating the need to “imagine” what a feature is supposed to do.

Designers then can create dynamic experiences with functioning user signup flows, eCommerce checkouts, password validation, and other experiences impossible to replicate with traditional image-based design tools.

Designers can build prototypes based on user feedback to test UIs and pinpoint issues. They can also create prototypes of competitor products to understand how they compare and identify opportunities for improvement.

Optimize UX workflows and enhance your product’s user experience with a code-based design solution from UXPin. Sign up for a free trial to improve prototyping and testing with UXPin–the world’s most advanced design tool.

The post Can User Reviews Help You Design Better UI? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

I decided to share my impressions on UXPin Merge Storybook integration and write about how it influenced the designer-developer collaboration in our team. 

Merge is a part of UXPin – that’s technology providing two main integrations with developers’ tools (Git and Storybook). It allows you to quickly prototype using ready UI code components that are React-based for Git integration, or any framework-based for Storybook integration. I tested the Merge integration with Storybook. 

The review was written by Roy S. Kim, the CEO, and Jacobo Moreno Quiroga – Front end engineer & Digital Content Designer from Fixel Inc., the Japanese UX/UI design consulting company specializing in Design Systems.

Design with interactive Storybook components in UXPin. Build products 10x faster and bridge the gap between designers and developers. Discover UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

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UXPin Merge and Storybook integration 

I have both an engineering and design background, and I work on a daily basis on finding solutions to processes inside an application and then writing them in code. The designer part comes in handy when I need to consider and improve the user’s perspective.

This involves more than defining visual aesthetics, it requires considering how the application interface can be subtle enough for someone to not notice it so that they can focus on what they are trying to achieve in the app. 

I usually struggle with the back and forths between iterations of coding that aim to improve user experience. 

Those kinds of improvements are not the same as fixing the product because something doesn’t work. It’s more of intuitive work when a user reports that something feels off. Even if you apply all the design and UX good practices, the user could still complain, and they would be 100% right. This is where a coded Design System or an organized UI component library can help. If you have tested and polished the components approved for your Design System, then you can treat them as ready building blocks for new applications without spending too much time thinking or adjusting them. 

UXPin with Merge technology allows you to import all your Design System components stored in Git or Storybook to the design editor so that you can prototype with them right away. Thanks to this designers can use actual coded elements to speed up the prototyping. UXPin Merge’s motto is “The single source of truth” because what you see in the prototype is combining design with actual working code that developers use as well. 

UXPin – designing to coding 

Let’s start with just UXPin. Essentially, UXPin is a UI/UX design tool similar to Sketch, AdobeXD, or Figma. It’s similar to other competitors so you can get used to it very quickly. You can start with wireframing and end with advanced prototyping in this single tool. 

In most of the similar tools, there is a big difference between what the designer creates in the design tool and what happens in the dev environment, where the real working product is coded. Features like the inspect tab in Figma enable you to see roughly what the CSS behind a certain object would look like. However, this is not always an accurate depiction between what is designed and what is coded. 

Designers and developers essentially come from two different worlds when it comes to the tools used in their daily work. Trying to find a common language between them can lead to way too many meetings and back-and-forths. This might be the very issue that UXPin Merge aims to solve, by having “The single source of truth” which the whole team can treat as the ultimate place of the right components and documentation. 

The UXPin Merge approach 

Merge is UXPin’s technology. Essentially, what Merge does is that it brings coded Design Systems stored in Git repositories or Storybooks to UXPin. Hence, a designer can use real components in their mock-ups and prototypes.

These components are already coded in the repository, and the designer can access its different versions inside UXPin as needed. This way, the integrity of each component is never compromised. It minimizes possibilities for a designer to make mistakes and use elements that aren’t in line with the company’s standards. 

Once you have a Design System and repositories ready to go, you won’t be really modifying them often as their purpose is to store and unify all the versions of the possible elements to speed up the product development process and create governance.

Using UXPin Merge and the imported components, controls the design process as elements are predefined. The changes can be made without a problem but it must be done by developers, so that the chances for casual mistakes are pretty low. 

These limitations actually simplify the work of a designer. They can use fully interactive and prepared elements to focus on the most crucial part – user experience. Sure; color, padding, fonts, and other visual elements are important parts of the experience, but choosing every single little detail can slow down the process.

If all of that is already sorted out in the Design System and repositories, building prototypes with real code components gets easier and faster. Also, it helps keep the consistency even if the components get updated in code as the imported UI is in sync with the components stored in devs’ libraries. No need to worry that elements will be outdated and designers will have to redesign the projects. 

Connecting Storybook 

One of the UXPin Merge integrations I got to see was Storybook. Storybook serves as a sort of developers’ Design Systems to store all the coded UI. It is used by many companies, and it’s very flexible framework-wise as it provides support for around 15 of them.

Now, for teams that are not supported by developers,  setting up a Storybook project and placing all the components there may be a struggle. However, once it’s ready, it neatly holds and displays all the components that are in the Design System. 

UXPin Merge aims to bring what is stored and defined in Storybook to UXPin so that components made in whichever framework can be used for prototyping. The integration part is very simple; grab the URL of a published Storybook project to import the components to the UXPin library for designing. I tested it and it seemed to work perfectly with React components – all the elements behaved in the design editor just as they should. 

Thoughts for the future 

The design process including UXPin Merge in it can be visualized like this: 

UXPin Merge plays a big part in Step B since it provides production-ready UI-coded components that you can use to iterate faster when creating prototypes. With a defined Design System or a component repository, you really shouldn’t worry about Step A because you most probably already have the organized components. Still, there is a possibility that you need to adjust something within the coded components, especially if you are in the middle of creating your own Design System. 

With Step C, which is the build-up step of the application, the developers look at the Merge prototype to see how code components are put together, as well as what code corresponds to which part of the design. However, they won’t just copy and paste the whole code to build the product instantly – they will still need to adjust it so that the prototype becomes a product.  

UXPin Merge seems to be a great solution for rapid prototyping and keeping the consistency thanks to making the most of Design Systems. However, it appears that certain steps are still to be covered. 

To some extent, the work of designers is limited as they mostly can use pre-prepared components, however, it saves time and prototyping with code components brings the world of design and development together. 

Want to try out the integration? Sign up for a 14-day trial!

The post Storybook-UXPin: Review of Merge Integration appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Designers create different types of prototypes depending on the project and its requirements. One of a commonly used type of prototypes is a working prototype or a workable prototype. We will go over the definition of a workable prototype, learn when this type is useful, and what the steps of designing a working prototype are.

Key takeaways:

• A workable prototype is an interactive model of the final product. Designers build such a prototype to test their solutions with real users. A workable prototype is a high-fidelity design which means that it closely resembles the end-product’s experience.
• Component-driven prototyping is the best methodology for creating working prototypes. It saves you time on adding interactions and keep your design consistent from the start.
• Building workable prototype allows designers to test their design choices, user flow, and see if they create a smooth user experience. To get the most insight, include real images and copy when designing a workable prototype.
• One of the best technology for working prototypes is UXPin Merge, because it helps you use your app’s building blocks – React components – in the prototyping process.

Create interactive working prototypes to get better feedback and insights with UXPin’s revolutionary Merge technology. Discover UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

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What is a Workable Prototype?

A workable prototype is an interactive representation of an end-product. It’s called “workable” because it allows people to engage with and the prototype, experiencing its features and functionalities.

Unlike a static or image-based prototype, a workable prototype enables users to navigate to different screens, interact with various elements, and perform actions that simulate user flows.

When to Build a Workable Prototype

Design teams typically build a workable prototype in the later stages of UX design process after validating the design concept and major features through earlier iterations.

This prototype serves as a functional representation of the final product that helps assess its usability, gather user feedback, and verify key interactions and user flows.

Types of Prototypes

• Low-fidelity prototypes: Basic representations with minimal details, often created using paper sketches or digital wireframes. Designers use low-fidelity prototypes in the early stages of the design process to quickly explore and validate design concepts before investing significant time and resources in more complex designs.
• High-fidelity prototypes: Advanced and visually polished prototypes resembling the finished product, including realistic visuals, clickable elements, animations, and simulated user flows. Designers use high-fidelity prototypes in later stages of the design process to gather detailed feedback on usability and interactivity.
• Paper prototypes: Prototypes created using paper materials, such as hand-drawn sketches or cutouts, are cost-effective for brainstorming and testing design concepts. Designers use paper prototypes in the early stages of the design process to iterate quickly, gather initial feedback, and make rapid design decisions before moving to more detailed digital prototypes.
• Functional prototype: Prototypes focusing on demonstrating core functionalities, enabling users to perform key tasks and actions. Product teams might use functional prototypes to test specific functionalities and workflows of the product, ensuring they meet user needs and expectations.
• Interactive prototypes: allow users to interact with the interface and experience product functionality, often created using design software or prototyping tools. Designers use interactive prototypes throughout the design process, especially during late-stage user testing and validation, to provide users with a realistic and interactive experience.

What Makes a Prototype Workable?

A prototype should effectively communicate the product’s concept and demonstrate its viability to be “workable.” It must have the features and interactivity to elicit meaningful feedback from users and stakeholders to inform further design iterations and decision-making.

A workable prototype must possess specific features and characteristics to be effective for user testing. Here are key aspects that contribute to making a prototype workable:

• Functionality: A workable prototype should demonstrate the core functionality of the final product, showcasing the main features and interactions that users will experience.
• Interactivity: It should allow users to interact with the prototype, providing a hands-on, realistic experience of the final product. 
• Navigation: The prototype should include a clear and intuitive navigation system that enables users to move between screens or sections seamlessly.
• Visual design: The working prototype must reflect the final product’s UI design, including branding and aesthetics, to provide a realistic user experience.
• User flow: The prototype should capture the essential user flows and key interactions, allowing users to complete tasks and achieve goals within the prototype.
• Real content: Designers must use real content and data, giving users a true sense of the user interface’s layout and media elements to determine whether these contribute to or hinder the user experience.

We have emphasized “providing a hands-on, realistic experience of the final product” because many image-based design tools lack the features to create real-world prototype experiences. Organizations must combine several tools and platforms to increase fidelity and functionality.

How a Component-Driven Workflow to Improve Working Prototypes

Component-driven prototyping is a design methodology inspired by component-driven development where devs reuse UI elements for front-end development. Designers mimic this engineering workflow in UXPin by importing code components using Merge technology. Instead of code, designers work with visual elements like in any other design tool.

Ultimate consistency

Merge components include properties and interactivity defined by the design system. For example, a button’s colors, sizes, variants, content, and states are available for designers to adjust using UXPin’s Properties Panel.

These baked-in properties offer many benefits for design teams:

• No designing from scratch
• Eliminates errors or changing properties which result in drift
• Organization-wide consistency
• More time spent focused on product and user goals

Realistic working prototypes

Component-driven prototyping significantly improves prototyping fidelity and functionality because design teams can build exact replicas of the final product, giving user testing participants and stakeholders realistic user experiences without writing a single line of code–and significantly faster than image-based tools.

Design a Workable Prototype in 5 Steps

Following these steps will enable you to build a working prototype that effectively communicates the product concept, aligns with user needs, and provides a solid foundation for further development and refinement.

1. Define the objectives and scope to ensure that it aligns with the desired outcomes and provides a clear direction for the design process.
2. Conduct thorough user research to understand user needs, preferences, and pain points. Gather requirements from stakeholders and users to inform the prototype’s design and functionality.
3. Build the prototype using the right tools, like UXPin with Merge technology, to create an interactive prototype resembling the final product.
4. Conduct usability testing with representative users to evaluate the prototype’s effectiveness and gather feedback on its usability, functionality, and overall user experience.
5. Iterate and refine the prototype based on feedback to address any issues or concerns and improve its overall performance and user satisfaction.

Best Practices for Workable Prototypes

Keep the prototype focused and aligned with user needs

Ensure the prototype addresses the core user needs and goals by focusing on the key features and functionalities essential for user testing and validation.

For example, when designing a mobile banking app, the prototype should prioritize crucial tasks like checking account balances, transferring funds, and making payments rather than including unnecessary features that may distract or confuse users.

Balance realism and usability

The prototype must be realistic enough to provide users with a sense of the final product’s look and feel but also functional and easy to navigate. 

For example, when designing an eCommerce website, the prototype should showcase real product images and descriptions while maintaining a streamlined and intuitive user interface that facilitates smooth browsing and purchasing.

Use real content and data

Incorporate real content and data in the prototype whenever possible to make the user experience more authentic. This realistic experience helps users better understand and evaluate the product’s value and usability. 

For example, when designing a travel booking app, use real destination names, prices, descriptions, and images to give users a realistic and immersive experience, improving their ability to make informed decisions.

Without this accurate data, users may use the prototype differently than the final product, giving you inaccurate insights to make changes during the design process and adversely affecting the project’s success.

Involve stakeholders and users in the prototyping process

Collaborate with stakeholders and involve users in prototyping to gather valuable feedback and ensure the prototype meets their expectations. This collaboration helps validate design decisions, identify potential issues, and incorporate diverse perspectives.

For example, including feedback from business stakeholders, doctors, nurses, and patients when developing a medical app ensures the prototype addresses different types of user groups’ requirements, enhances usability for everyone, and meets industry standards.

Building Working Prototypes With UXPin Merge

One of the biggest challenges for prototyping during the product design process is designers lack the tools and skills to build working prototypes. They’re limited by the tool’s vector-based constraints, which causes issues in testing prototypes with users and stakeholders.

UXPin’s Merge technology removes those constraints by bridging the gap between design and development. Designers use the exact same UI library during the design process as engineers developing the final product. Not only does this mean better collaboration, but it vastly improves prototype quality for users and stakeholders.

“The C-suite people and the directors are able to give us stronger feedback about the ultimate direction because they experience the features and goals of these prototypes rather than just commenting about how these boxes don’t look like a text field.” – Erica Rider, former UX Lead EPX at PayPal.

Smoother design handoffs

With design and engineering teams using the same component library, handoffs are seamless, almost non-existent, because developers already have the code to start the development process. UXPin renders production-ready JSX, so devs simply copy/paste to develop the final product according to the design team’s prototype and mockups.

Stop wasting time and resources using multiple design platforms and workarounds to build realistic prototypes. UXPin is a full-stack design tool that enables designers to create prototype experiences indistinguishable from the final product–all the power of code without writing a single line.

Level up your prototyping capability with the power of UXPin’s Merge technology. Visit our Merge page for more details and how to request access.

The post What is a Workable Prototype? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Designers create prototypes to perfect product’s look and feel, validate their design choices, and find areas for improvements. The final product is an implemented design that gets released into the market. Both prototypes and final products are essential elements of product design process. Let’s explore the differences between them.

Key takeaways:

• A prototype is an artifact of product design process and it is a representation of an end product; designers use it to test their solutions, learn what users and stakeholders think of the product, and show developers what they need to build.
• The final product is a product that’s fully marketable. It has a backend and a frontend design, and it is fully usable by end users; developers build final product on the basis of product design that was created and tested by product designers.
• There are six differences between a prototype and final product; they differ in terms of resource and reasons you need to create them, flexibility, lifecycle, and a level of functionality.

Design interactive prototypes that are easy to implement by devs. Release products faster and beat your competition. Discover UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

Discover UXPin Merge

What is a Prototype?

A prototype is a tangible or interactive representation of a design concept.

It simulates the final product, enabling designers and stakeholders to test functionalities, validate design decisions, and gather feedback.

Unlike the polished final product, a prototype is often incomplete, only focusing on core features or a single user flow, allowing quick iterations and changes based on insights and user interactions.

There are several types of prototypes designers utilize at different stages of the design process:

• Paper prototypes – simple wireframes that are drawn on paper or a whiteboard; they are the best for testing user flow or visualizing information architecture.
• Working prototypes – prototypes that handle data, respond to user actions, but they aren’t ready real products–they are still work in progress.
• Functional prototype – prototypes that mimic the final product’s look and feel, but they lack the backend code to be end products.
• Interactive prototype – prototypes that have microinteractions added to them, such as click, scroll, move, etc.

What is a Final Product?

The final product is an app or a website that’s launched to the market. Often referred to as an end-product or finished product, it is derived from the last iteration of a prototype.

It represents the outcome of numerous design iterations, user feedback, and rigorous testing from the product design process.

Equipped with all intended features and optimized for end-user experience, this product is ready for launch and consumption by its target audience.

5 Key Differences Between a Prototype and Final Product

Difference #1: Intended purpose

Prototype:

• Offers a tangible or even interactive representation of an idea
• Serves as a tool for testing and gathering feedback
• Facilitates communication between stakeholders, designers, and developers
• Enables designers to identify and fix design or usability issues before full-scale development
• Explores a new product’s viability before committing resources to development

Final product:

• Delivers a complete, functional solution to end-users
• Represents the realization of design decisions, feedback, and refinements from the product design process
• Aims to achieve business goals, such as increased user engagement or sales
• Provides an optimized experience tailored for the target user group

Difference #2: Flexibility to adjustments

Prototype:

• Designed for rapid changes and iterations
• Feedback loops are shorter, making it easier to pivot or modify design elements
• Mistakes or design flaws are expected and addressed in real-time
• Emphasizes exploration and testing of multiple design solutions

Final product:

• Changes are more deliberate and often require extensive testing and validation
• Iterations based on user feedback, analytics, bugs, or development updates
• Adjustments can have implications on the broader system or related features
• Flexibility exists but within the constraints of the established product framework

Difference #3: Resources needed to create

Prototype:

• Typically requires fewer resources and investment
• Focuses on utilizing readily available tools and components for quick mockups
• Design tools make changes and adjustments less costly and more efficient
• Allows for cost-effective experimentation without fully committing

Final product:

• Demands a more substantial investment in both time and money
• Utilizes high-quality components, coding, and resources for longevity and scalability
• Any modifications or fixes can result in increased expenses
• The expected long-term returns and product stability justifies initial high costs

Difference #4: Lifecycle of prototype vs final product

Prototype:

• Short-lived, serving as a temporary model for testing and validation during a specific project
• Likely to undergo frequent changes and might be discarded once the project is released
• Not built for long-term use or for withstanding real-world challenges

Final product:

• Designed for long-term utility and operation
• Built for real-world usage, including protection against security vulnerabilities and other programming challenges
• Receives periodic updates and maintenance but retains its core product functionality
• Expected to fulfill its role until a new iteration replaces it–i.e., months or years

Difference #5: Level of functionality

Prototype:

• Primarily showcases key features to stakeholders or users
• May lack full functionality; often contains placeholder or dummy content
• Mimics visual or interactive user interface, helping in feedback collection
• Focuses on testing specific elements or user flows and may exclude many UIs and features

Final product:

• Fully functional with all intended features integrated
• Undergoes rigorous quality assurance to ensure feature reliability
• Tailored for end-user experience, ensuring every feature aligns with user needs
• Polished interface, seamless navigation, and optimized performance

Why Do You Need Prototypes Before Creating Final Products?

Prototypes play a crucial role in steering a product toward success. They act as a blueprint, guiding teams to craft products that resonate with users, meet business objectives, and stand out in the market. 

Here’s how:

• Risk Mitigation: Prototypes allow teams to test product ideas before committing significant resources, helping avoid costly mistakes.
• User-Centered Design: Early user testing with prototypes uncovers users’ needs, ensuring the final product meets their expectations.
• Feedback Loop: Prototypes foster iterative feedback, allowing designers to continually refine and perfect the product.
• Stakeholder Alignment: They serve as tangible representations of the product vision, ensuring everyone, from developers to investors, shares a unified understanding.
• Efficiency in Development: Developers get a clearer picture, reducing back-and-forth and ensuring efficient code.

How to Go from Prototype to Final Product

This step-by-step workflow demonstrates how product development teams go from research to prototype and final product.

Step 1: Understanding the problem

• Identify a problem or need in the market
• Conduct early-stage market research to gauge demand and potential user interest

Step 2: User research

• Conduct surveys, interviews, and observations to gather user insights
• Understand user needs, pain points, and desires

Step 3: Ideation

• Brainstorm potential solutions and features
• Sketch or wireframe initial ideas

Step 4: Designing the prototype

• Create a low-fidelity prototype based on research and ideation
• Use a professional UX design tool like UXPin to create low-fidelity interactive wireframes to iterate and improve ideas
• Convert low-fidelity designs to high-fidelity working prototypes
• Share prototypes with key stakeholders, incorporate feedback, and improve before user testing

Step 5: User testing with prototype

• Recruit participants that represent your end users for user testing
• Have them interact with the prototype while team members observe their actions, ask questions, and gather insights
• Analyze feedback and identify areas of improvement

Step 6: Iterative design

• Use insights to make data-driven adjustments to the prototype
• Some problems will require you to return to step one and ideate on new solutions
• Shift to a high-fidelity prototype as you refine the design

Step 7: Technical Feasibility

• Consult with engineers throughout the design process 
• Ensure that the design is technically achievable and resource-efficient

Step 8: Design handoff

• Share final designs and prototypes with engineers
• Include documentation to explain user pain points and ideas behind solutions
• Essential documentation includes a style guide, a breakdown of components and patterns and their states, information architecture, assets (icons, SVGs, media, etc.), and prototypes

Step 9: Development and release

• Engineers use handoff documentation to guide the development process
• Interactive prototypes help devs understand interactions, animations, and transitions
• Devs publish the changes to various platforms–web, native app stores, etc.

Step 10: Quality assurance (QA) testing

• Test the final product for bugs, glitches, or inconsistencies
• Design teams conduct a UX audit to ensure the final product meets design specs and doesn’t introduce usability issues
• Teams ensure the final product looks and functions as intended

Building Interactive Prototypes With UXPin

UXPin allows designers to build prototypes that accurately represent the final product experience. Unlike traditional design tools that generate vector graphics, UXPin renders HTML, CSS, and Javascript behind the scenes, giving designers more fidelity and interactivity.

UXPin also has its propriety technology, UXPin Merge, for designing with fully functional React components.

Image-based vs. code-based design tools

Image-based design tools create images or visual representations of how a code component will look. While these mockups are aesthetically pleasing, the lack of fidelity means designers can’t test most basic user interactions–never mind complex interactivity.

Code-based design tools like UXPin offer more fidelity and functionality because components like form elements are interactive. When you drag a text input from UXPin’s Forms onto the canvas, it’s ready for users to enter data. Designers can use Variables to capture that information and use it elsewhere in the prototype, creating dynamic user experiences image-based tools can’t.

Conditional Interactions and Expressions

Take prototypes to another level with UXPin’s Conditional Interactions and Expressions. Conditional Interactions allow you to create if-then and if-else conditions for user and system actions, while Expressions increase prototyping complexity with form validation, computational components, and other Javascript-like functions.

Better results with UXPin Merge

Create dynamic, immersive prototypes indistinguishable from the final product. These sophisticated prototypes enhance testing scope giving you accurate data and insights to iterate and refine designs before development. Use UXPin Merge, a technology for designing prototypes with reusable components that can be shared with developers. Discover UXPin Merge.

The post Prototype vs Final Product — A 5-Point Comparison appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Design tools like Figma use components as basic elements that can be copied and pasted across design. Components speed up design, promote consistency, and simplify designer’s work. Let’s see how Figma’s components are different from components in UXPin and Merge technology.

Optimize design-to-development handoff, create prototypes that are full of interactive UI components, such as input fields, clickable menus, and sortable data tables. Simplify design with UXPin Merge. Discover UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

Discover UXPin Merge

What are Components in Figma?

Figma’s documentation states, “Components are elements you can reuse across your designs. They help to create and manage consistent designs across projects.” Designers create Figma components using shapes, icons, images, text, and even other components. These components are vector-based, visual representations of the coded UI components engineers use to develop the final product.

Understanding vector-based design elements

While Figma’s vector-based are aesthetically accurate, their static nature means they’re graphical representations rather than functional UI elements or design patterns.

Most image-based or vector-based design tools have this limitation. Designers can make things look beautiful, but they can’t accurately replicate the experience. The platform renders vector graphics that cannot handle live data.

Improved workflow, not output

Figma’s Config 2023 releases make it easier for designers to build semi-interactive prototypes and components, but little has changed on the user testing end. Figma’s components still render the same; the company has just simplified the workflow.

Instead of using multiple frames to create interactivity, designers can apply the interactions, like state changes, directly to the components. While this is a massive step forward for simplifying designer workflows, it doesn’t change the tool’s vector-based limitations.

What are Components in UXPin–and how are they different?

The principle of UXPin components is the same as Figma, but instead of working with static images, UXPin renders HTML, CSS, and Javascript behind the scenes, giving designers greater fidelity and functionality to play with. When combined, UXPin components enable design teams to create fully interactive prototypes.

For example, designers can program any form field to mimic code-like functionality. Using text components, they can capture a username and password at registration and ask the user to use those same credentials to sign in, accurately replicating a sign-up flow.

Understanding interactive prototypes

Interactive prototypes closely mimic the final product by responding to user engagement like clicks/taps, swipes, scrolls, inputs, etc. These prototypes enhance testing because designers can present stakeholders and test participants with an authentic user experience.

There are two ways to create fully interactive prototypes:

• Using code–requires engineering input
• Using a code-based design tool–no engineering input

This code-based approach allows designers to create components like dropdown menus, accordions, image carousels, and other complex UI patterns.

Merging Design and Development

UXPin’s proprietary Merge technology allows organizations to sync a design system from a repository to UXPin so that designers can use interactive components in the design process. Merge gives designers all the powers of code without writing or seeing a single line.

While the setup requires some engineering input and technical expertise, once this initial process is complete, Merge automatically syncs updates to UXPin, and notifies design teams of the new release.

You can import any kind of component, pattern, or page template using Merge, including graphs, data tables, date pickers, video/audio players, dashboards, and more.

UXPin Merge vs. Figma Dev Mode

Figma’s Dev Mode allows engineers to inspect elements from a technical perspective, including CSS and front-end code. Figma automatically generates this generic code in a design-to-code workflow. While this code is helpful, it’s not production-ready and, in most cases, redundant because it won’t align with every product’s syntax and programming practices. 

UXPin Merge works the opposite way in a code-to-design workflow: sending visual components from a repository rather than generating generic code from the design tool. The Merge components designers use in UXPin are exactly the same as those devs use for front-end development. Component properties, including interactivity, sync to UXPin, so designers never have to set these up or make adjustments.

This Merge workflow eliminates design drift and reduces technical debt because designers and engineers work with the same UI library within the same constraints, creating a single source of truth across the organization.

Comparing UXPin Merge & Figma Components

We’ll use two identical Material Design button components to illustrate the differences between Figma and Merge. We’re using Material Design 2’s UI kit in Figma and imported MUI’s React components into UXPin using Merge–MUI uses Material Design as a foundation for its React component library.

We’ve dragged a component from each UI library onto the canvas without applying any changes. 

Figma:

UXPin:

You’ll notice the UXPin component is interactive by default, with hover and click interactions defined in the repository. The Merge component is fully interactive because it’s an actual code component rather than a graphical representation.

The Figma component is not interactive by default because it’s essentially an image. Designers must set these interactions up in the design tool before prototyping. They must also share lots of supporting documentation and component variations at design handoff so engineers understand what to build.

Spec Mode vs. Dev Mode

Merge’s Spec Mode is also very different from Figma’s Dev Mode. Dev Mode allows designers to inspect elements with suggested CSS and other code–which we’ve already established is not production ready. Designers must also share each Figma component’s variants, interactions, animations, triggers, etc.

UXPin only displays the Merge component’s JSX properties (spacing, typography, size, etc.) for the prototype’s default or initial state. Developers already have the same UI library, which they import into their project from the same repository to start development. They simply copy/paste the JSX code from UXPin and apply it to the relevant component in their IDE.

Developers don’t need additional documentation detailing each component’s interactions, triggers, etc., because the design system team has already defined these properties in the repository. These baked-in constraints mean designers can’t change a component’s interactivity, whereas, in Figma, they can detach a component instance from its master component and change its properties.

Prototyping in Figma vs. Prototyping in UXPin

For the most part, the design environment, tools, and workflow is similar in Figma and UXPin. The differences are following.

Frames vs. pages

One of the biggest differences is Figma follows a frame and artboard workflow, while UXPin uses pages with a separate canvas for each screen. Designers can visualize the pages on a single screen as they would in Figma using UXPin’s Overview.

Adding interactivity

Figma’s Prototype feature allows designers to add basic interactivity with limited user actions. Config 2023 releases make it easier to change component states using Variables, but these are still far from the code-like experience necessary for accurate testing.

UXPin’s Interactions include many user triggers and actions for desktop and mobile prototyping. As Merge components are interactive by default, designers focus primarily on navigational interactions like page transitions and popups, allowing for faster designing and iterating.

Testing scope

Due to Figma’s lack of fidelity and functionality, designers are limited by what they can test using the platform. Design teams often use plugins, integrations, or other tools to increase prototyping scope, which increases costs, time, and other resources.

With UXPin Merge, designers can build fully interactive prototypes indistinguishable from the final product without plugins or integrations. They can also use APIs to connect to external services, significantly increasing testing scope. These advanced prototypes allow designers to collect meaningful insights during testing to make accurate design decisions for better product outcomes.

Ready to experience the benefits and ease of working with a code-to-design workflow? Visit our Merge page for more details and how to request access to this revolutionary technology.

The post Components in Figma vs UXPin (+ Other Design Tools) appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Fidelity refers to the level of detail and realism in a prototype or design. It represents how closely the prototype resembles the final product in terms of visual design, interactions, and functionality. High-fidelity prototypes are highly realistic and aim to simulate the final user experience as closely as possible.

High-fidelity prototypes (hi-fi prototypes) include visual and interactive elements that align with an actual product’s user interface, such as accurate colors, typography, interactions, animations, and imagery. These prototypes offer users and stakeholders a more immersive and realistic experience, enabling them to better understand the end product’s look and feel.

Designers create high-fidelity prototypes in the later stages of the design process to test and validate concepts, gather user feedback, and refine the user experience. These prototypes allow designers to assess the usability and effectiveness of the interface, identify potential issues or improvements, and make informed product design decisions.

Make better design decisions with fully interactive prototypes with UXPin’s Merge technology. Visit our Merge page for more details and how to request access.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

Discover UXPin Merge

High-Fidelity vs. Low-Fidelity Prototypes

Designers use high-fidelity and low-fidelity prototypes at separate stages of the design process for different purposes and goals.

Low-fidelity prototypes (lo-fi prototypes) are simplified design concepts typically created using rough sketches, wireframes, or basic digital mockups. Designers create these lo-fi prototypes early in the design process to iterate on many ideas collaboratively and as quickly as possible.

Low-fidelity prototypes focus on the design’s core structure, information architecture, and functionality. They are quick and easy to create, allowing designers to explore and iterate on multiple design ideas without investing excessive time and resources.

High-fidelity prototypes are more detailed and realistic representations of the final design that closely resemble the finished product’s intended look, feel, and functionality, incorporating visual design elements, interactive features, and realistic content. Design teams create high-fidelity prototypes later in the design process to finalize concepts before the design handoff.

Planning Your High-Fidelity Prototype

Designers complete most research and planning during the early stages of the design process. So this step is about synthesizing and reviewing the findings to guide high-fidelity prototyping.

Defining the purpose and objectives of your prototype

Define the specific goals you want to achieve with your high-fidelity by determining what aspects of the design you want to test, evaluate, or showcase to stakeholders.

For example, if you’re designing an eCommerce website:

• Objective: test the user flow of adding items to the cart and completing the checkout process.
• Purpose: identify any usability issues and optimize the conversion rate.

Applying user goals from UX research

Thorough UX research must precede prototyping, so designers know what to build and who they’re building it for before jumping into a prototyping tool. Understanding user goals helps tailor a high-fidelity prototype to meet the target audience’s needs and preferences.

For example, if you’re designing a mobile app for fitness enthusiasts, your target audience might be individuals interested in tracking their workouts and progress. This user group’s goals include setting fitness objectives, tracking calories burned, and analyzing workout statistics. Using this research, designers can plan features and interactions accordingly.

Outlining the key functionalities and interactions

Determine the core elements your prototype needs to achieve the desired user experience while meeting the above goals and objectives. Identifying these key functionalities helps you prioritize your design efforts and ensure your prototype captures the essential interactions and user flows.

For example, if you’re designing a flight booking mobile app, key functionalities might include:

• Searching for flights
• Filtering search results
• Viewing flight details
• Selecting seats
• Booking payment and confirmation
• Viewing “my bookings”

Designing the Visual Elements

Designers use research, sketches, and wireframes as a foundation to design the visual elements of a high-fidelity prototype. When designing the visual elements, designers consider various aspects such as typography, colors, iconography, and imagery.

The product’s typography and colors must align with the brand identity and enhance readability. A product’s iconography communicates actions and features using familiar and intuitive symbols. Imagery, including illustrations and photos, enhances the user experience and conveys the desired message.

Designers must also consider how these design elements impact accessibility, including color contrast, legibility, and assistive technologies.

Leveraging open-source component libraries

Designers can accelerate the visual design process by using open-source component libraries–i.e., MUI, Ant Design, or Fluent UI. Designers can leverage ready-made visual elements, such as buttons, forms, and navigation bars, to reduce the time and effort required to design and maintain consistent visual language throughout the high-fidelity prototype.

UXPin offers tools and features to simplify the UI design process. They can also use one of UXPin’s built-in Merge libraries to build screens and layouts simply by dragging and dropping UI elements. These components are interactive by default and contain properties defined by the design system, facilitating faster, streamlined, and consistent UI design.

Once this stage is complete, designers will have a set of high-fidelity mockups ready to build interactive prototypes.

Adding Component Interactions and Animations

Designers define different states, such as hover, active, or disabled, to reflect the user’s interactions with the elements. They also create transitions between components to simulate the dynamic behavior of the final product and provide a more realistic user experience. For example, a button remains disabled until users complete a form’s required fields.

Additionally, designers incorporate microinteractions and animations. Microinteractions are small, subtle, and purposeful animations that provide feedback and guide users through their interactions with the prototype. These microinteractions make prototypes feel more engaging and interactive but also communicate important information to the users and guide them through the interface more intuitively.

Leveraging Merge’s interactive components

UXPin’s Merge technology allows designers to bring code components from a repository into the design process. These UI elements contain properties, including interactions, defined by the design system.

This code-to-design methodology means designers never have to worry about setting up component properties, including styling and interactions. Each component’s variants appear in UXPin’s Properties Panel for designers to select. For example, choosing a component’s state.

Designers can also add microinteractions using UXPin’s Interactions feature, which includes triggers and actions for keyboard and mobile.

Simulating User Flows

Mapping user flows and navigation paths

Designers define the logical sequence of screens and the user’s journey through a digital product, including identifying entry points, exit points, and the various paths users can take to accomplish their tasks. This user journey map ensures a seamless and intuitive navigation experience for users.

Defining interactions

Designers use interactive elements such as buttons or links to establish connections between screens according to the user journey map. These connections allow users to navigate different screens and simulate the transitions and interactions they will encounter in the product.

Taking care of transitions

Designers use animations, transitions, and interactive elements to simulate how users interact with the prototype. For example, a button click might trigger a modal to appear, or scrolling might reveal additional content.

By the end of this process, designers are ready for testing your hi-fi prototype with end-users.

Testing and Iterating

Testing is an iterative process where designers continuously improve the high-fidelity prototype by incorporating user feedback and refining the design to create a more effective and user-friendly solution.

Here is a high-level overview of the high-fidelity prototyping process:

1. Conduct usability testing sessions with representative users to evaluate the high-fidelity prototype and gather valuable feedback on its usability.
2. Present the prototypes to stakeholders for business value feedback.
3. Collect and analyze user and stakeholder feedback and insights regarding their interactions, comprehension, and overall experience with the prototype.
4. Identify areas for improvement and make changes to the prototype based on the feedback received.
5. Refine the design to address usability issues and enhance the overall user experience.
6. Repeat the iterative testing and refining process to ensure the prototype meets user needs and aligns with design objectives.

Sharing and Collaborating on Prototypes in UXPin

Sharing UXPin prototypes for feedback and review

UXPin’s Preview and Share lets designers share designs and prototypes with team members and stakeholders. UXPin allows designers to choose what they want to share, including the Sitemap, Comments, Spec Mode, and Documentation.

UXPin share links are available on the open web, meaning anyone with the link can access the project. Designers can password-protect projects so only team members and stakeholders can access them.

Collaborating with team members and stakeholders

UXPin’s Comments feature makes collaborating with team members and stakeholders easy. They can comment directly on the interface, tag one another, assign comments, and resolve them after the appropriate action. With Team and Public Comments, even those without a UXPin account can participant in the feedback process.

Smoother developer collaboration and design handoffs

Building high-fidelity prototypes with code components bridges the gap between the design and development process because designers and engineers speak the same language interpreted through UXPin’s Merge technology.

Designers and engineers see the exact same component, just through a different lens. Designers see the visual elements in UXPin, and engineers work with code in their IDE. This single source of truth reduces friction because designers and engineers work within the same constraints. These constraints also prevent design drift, technical debt, and inconsistencies, creating a more harmonious product development process.

Build better high-fidelity prototypes faster and with more interactivity to enhance user testing and streamline stakeholder collaboration. Learn more about hi-fi prototyping with UXPin Merge.

The post High-Fidelity Prototype – How to Create One in UXPin? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Developing prototypes can lead you nowhere in product development process unless you are using the right tools and following best practices. These tips are perfect for ensuring that you prototype the right solution that has user experience in mind.

Build interactive prototypes and speed up product design with UXPin Merge, powerful technology that helps designers build a stronger, more collaborative process by importing coded components to design. Discover UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

Discover UXPin Merge

Figure out Features to Test in the Prototype

Knowing your product’s primary features is critical to your prototype’s success. This is best followed up by checking off some elementary steps before diving into the design process:

• Define and agree on the minimum viable product (MVP) prototype features. 
• Establish stakeholder expectations, gather comments, and identify their priorities.
• Engage early with developers on features. Discuss any technical constraints that may make building the product difficult. 
• Consider your user’s needs, pain points, and goals are taken into account during the design process.

Define your product’s intended features from the outset. This lets you ensure that your prototype’s design has a clear direction from the get-go. 

Plan out How You’re Going to Validate the Prototype

Start with a testing target of three to five tasks per session. And focus on the overall concept and core functionality in the first rounds. You can then move on to those smaller features or specific tasks that are still important but less critical.

Focusing on the right things first allows you to answer the questions that matter most. These questions will assist in defining the goals of testing and give you a view of where your focus needs to be. 

• What? Pick the elements and goals you’re testing in a session. 
• How? Clearly define and quantify the relevant pass or fail testing benchmarks. 
• Why? Establish your hypotheses and assumptions around the prototype’s usability, feasibility, and scale. 
• Who? Assign specific testing phase roles and responsibilities.
• When? Confirm your deadlines and timeline targets to ensure you’re on track. 

Many people end up prototyping the entire product when they should have focused on the key features that provide the most value. Non-critical sections can always be taken care of later. 

Consider Rapid Prototyping if You’re Short on Time

Rapid prototyping can turn a 5-day design sprint into just one. This prototyping tactic is effective for teams under time pressure. It means that while the first prototype iteration may be a little basic, teams can:

• Produce a basic product prototype in a day instead of a week.
• Save time and move into the next phases quickly.
• Ideate together in the same space and at high speed.
• Start testing almost immediately.

Product development and design team members working together on one whiteboard are more productive. And when collaborating in a single design tool instead of hopping between tools, basic prototyping and testing can happen in record time.

Decide on the Product Prototype Fidelity

When establishing how closely a prototype will resemble the final product (high vs. low fidelity), it is important to remember at what stage of the product development you’re in. Product prototype fidelity thus depends on the type of prototype you’re designing. 

• Low-fidelity prototypes are intended for design teams to brainstorm possible solutions at low cost and effort without committing to any idea. They can be done on paper, digitally, or on a whiteboard.
• High-fidelity prototypes are what is typically shown to stakeholders, startup’s investors or users who are testing the product. Hi-fi prototypes can be in form of a static mockup which resembles a final product or a functional prototype that can be clicked through.
• Component-based prototypes boast a high level of fidelity, because they not only look polished but are fully functional and interactive. Those prototypes are assembled with interactive components that come from coded design libraries.

A good prototyping tool allows you to design prototype versions ranging from low to high fidelity. The ability to present prototypes across differing fidelity levels means more feedback and different perspectives during testing.  

Test your Prototypes with REAL Users 

Testing prototypes exposes problems early. But effective testing also depends on whom you use to assess your prototype. Design team and product development members provide critical insights through testing. But they cannot deliver the feedback and input that matters most – what the user will think. 

Using real end-product users to test your prototype will allow you to establish what it needs most.

• Decide if you’re testing low- or high-fidelity prototypes early since this will help you to target the right testing objectives.  
• Establish the personas and likely user scenarios to understand where and how you should be running your testing. 
• Face-to-face moderated tests or usability testing are ideal for validating your assumptions. In-person testing gives you a more accurate result. Alternatively, you can turn to user testing platforms to gain access to a broad market. 

The nature of the project you’re dealing with determines how much fidelity you’re aiming for. Low-fidelity testing works when starting from scratch (like product idea or developing new startups). However, if your design system is already up and running – and you’re building a prototype of a new feature for an existing product – you can quickly assemble ready-to-test prototype with UI components.

Fill in Your Prototypes with Real Content

The more realistic your prototype is, the better. Testing your feature or product idea with the actual content that’s intended for the end-product provides better feedback, fosters understanding, and good communication. 

Much of the content likely to make it onto the finished product won’t be ready just yet. Instead, consider using content that at least resembles your final product’s copy and imagery.

• Avoid using placeholder text, which can confuse people and leave your prototype feeling vague and generic. If you see the words “Lorem ipsum…” anywhere, swap it out for something else. 
• Use the right imagery and visual elements, especially if testers are unfamiliar with you. If you can’t get hold of the necessary logos, images, and icons, do what you can to include similar elements that bear a resemblance instead. 
• Deploy related copy if you cannot find someone to generate written testing content in time. Look at associated products or use template content within a similar product category. 

A design and prototyping tool that uses realistic content is necessary for comprehensive testing. Give test users a less-generic taste of the product’s user interface elements. Provide a hint of its character, and make your testing easier and more effective. 

Iterate and Test 

Prototyping means going through the motions over and over. Each time you iterate, you’ll learn something new, spotting and improving issues. The more you test, the more confident you will be that you’re going in the right direction. 

• Test your prototype for the first time with an open mind. Anticipate it will fall short of expectations, and don’t be overly critical of yourself.
• Gather information and analyze feedback in minute detail. The closer you look at the test results, the sooner you reach your goals. 
• Make changes fast and avoid getting bogged down on arbitrary revisions. 
• And test again. And again… and again if need be. Keep testing until you’re certain that the product meets the needs of your users.

Collaborate with Developers

The modern prototype product design process often sees designer and developer efforts overlapping. This can often lead to friction and problems. Cooperation is the biggest factor here. Finding common ground with product developers is vital to your prototyping success. 

• Establish timeline expectations, especially where design decisions and testing results may impact already-existing app. By giving developers an idea of when they can expect answers, teams can plan accordingly. 
• Communicate effectively from the outset by establishing your communication channels, roles, and contact points.
• Operate from a single source of truth between designers and devs, no matter what. When this changes, ensure everyone is aware and in agreement before proceeding. Check how to establish a single source of truth.

Good collaboration always makes for good product design. Cooperation and effective communication are key to good prototyping process. Thankfully, there are design tools that allow teams to use code-based UI elements in their product design and development process. These tools make for smooth collaboration and open the door to interactive prototyping.

This leads us to the last point.

Select the Right Prototyping Tool

Many designers make the mistake of employing multiple tools in their prototyping process. This can cause frustration and complicate things when transitioning from static design to interactive, coded ones.

With UXPin’s features, resources, and capabilities, designers and developers alike can enjoy the benefits of an all-in-one designing, prototyping, and testing resource. A tool that makes prototype product design easy. Here are just some of UXPin’s features:

• Life-like prototypes which closely resemble the finished product.  
• Advanced interactions, variables, or states allow you to present all microinteractions. 
• A fully interactive prototyping that not only resembles a look of the product, but also mimics its behavior that’s aligned with existing design system. 

UXPin’s superior ability to gather, curate, and present detailed feedback and analysis is game-changing. It means that testing your prototype is more effective and representative of target user needs. 

Getting Prototype Product Design Right

Like any good product design process, digital product design demands effective prototype testing. Prototypes that boast interactivity are far better at succeeding than those that simply look good. 

Understand your product features and improve your prototyping skills. Define your focus areas and establish your prototyping scope with product developers from the outset. Test using the right subjects and show optimal fidelity along with the right balance of realistic prototype content. Re-test and iterate until you’re happy with your product prototype and find the tools that work for you, your team, and developers.

Designers rely on these interactive prototypes for testing before passing them on to developers. One tool that helps you create interactive prototypes from the start is UXPin. When powered with Merge technology, it also helps you connect design and development processes in a way you didn’t expect.Learn more about it. Discover UXPin Merge. 

The post Prototype Product Design – 9 Tips To Get You Started appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

User flows are integral to the UX design process. These valuable UX artifacts help product teams visualize flows and processes from users’ perspectives to reduce errors and enhance the user experience.

This article takes a deep dive into user flows, their importance, the principles that guide them, the visual representations, and the various types of flows.

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What is User Flow in UX?

A user flow is a graphic visualization representing the sequence of steps, decisions, and actions users perform while navigating a digital product, app, or website.

Product teams typically focus on one task or goal at a time, such as an onboarding sequence or eCommerce checkout. Designers build prototypes of these user flows to test the user experience with usability participants and stakeholders, iterating on feedback until they have a product ready for development.

Importance of User Flows in UX Design

User flows help product teams visualize the paths users take through an application or website to complete a specific task or achieve a goal. This visualization enables teams to identify friction points and opportunities within user flows and design solutions to fix them. 

Additionally, designers can look at optimizing flows to create more efficient and satisfying user experiences.

Benefits of a well-designed UX flows

A well-designed user flow offers many important benefits for users and the organization:

• Improves usability: optimized user flows feel intuitive, simplifying decision-making while reducing cognitive load, resulting in a user-friendly experience where users don’t get lost or frustrated. 
• Better retention: when a digital product meets user needs, allowing them to complete tasks and achieve goals, they’re more likely to keep using it and share their positive experience.
• Higher conversions: streamlining user flows removes roadblocks and obstacles for tasks that generate revenue for the business, like signups, purchases, subscriptions, etc.
• Reduce costs: optimized user flows remove redundant screens and features, resulting in many cost-savings, including design, development, maintenance, server requests, API usage, etc.
• Improved accessibility: design teams can visualize and optimize user flows to meet accessibility requirements, making user interfaces more inclusive while increasing the product’s user base.
• Data-driven design decisions: analyzing user flows provides valuable insights into user behavior and preferences, allowing designers to make informed decisions based on actual data rather than assumptions. Data-driven design decisions deliver products and experiences that meet user needs, making them more intuitive, enjoyable, and user-friendly.

UX Principles of Effective User Flows

Successful user flows incorporate UX principles that guide design concepts and decision-making. Here are some fundamental UX principles to consider when designing user flows:

Clarity and simplicity

Your user flows must be easy to understand and navigate. Avoid complex designs or features that people must learn before using them. Navigation and interaction elements must be consistent, predictable, and straightforward. When you force people to overthink a process or interaction, they’ll abandon it for an easier option, even at a higher cost.

Consistency

Maintain a consistent design language, layout, patterns, and interaction design throughout your product and user flows. Design consistency increases familiarity resulting in a more intuitive, user-friendly experience.

Flexibility

Design flows that cater to different needs, preferences, and abilities by offering multiple ways to complete tasks–for example, providing alternate paths, shortcuts, or input methods.

Feedback and communication

UI feedback guides users and manages expectations as they navigate user flows–for example, progress indicators, visual cues, status information, messages (success, error, etc.), and alerts. This communication informs users of the system status, whether their action was successful, and what to do next.

Anticipate user needs

Designers can utilize user research to predict and address user needs to prevent obstacles and roadblocks. Adding helpful tips and error prevention features enables users to solve problems faster for more efficient and streamlined flows.

Minimize steps

Designers can streamline user flows by eliminating unnecessary steps, actions, and decision points. Minimizing these points of friction increases efficiency while reducing errors and drop-offs.

Focus on user goals

Would you rather use a product that helps you achieve your objectives efficiently or one inundating you with business value proposals and other irrelevant content? Design user flows that prioritize the user’s goals and desired outcomes with features that enhance efficiency and success.

Accessibility and inclusivity

Ensure that users with diverse abilities, preferences, and devices can use your products, navigate flows, and complete tasks. Designers must consider how factors like font size, color contrasts, keyboard navigation, language, and screen-reader compatibility impact user experiences. Read more about accessibility here: Web Design Accessibility Checklist.

Types of User Flow Visualizations

Before we explore the user flow types, it’s important to explain the visualizations design teams use to map these journeys. 

Flowcharts

User flowcharts (user flow diagrams) are a diagramming technique used across many industries to represent the information flow, decision points, and user actions. These visualizations use symbols, arrows, and other shapes to depict elements, processes, decisions, and data input/output.

Wireflows

Wireflows combine wireframes and flowcharts to provide a detailed view of a user’s journey through an interface. These visualizations describe each screen’s layout as well as how users and information flow between them. 

Wireflows help visualize user interactions with specific elements and understand the context of these interactions. Designers and engineers can use these wireflows to visualize information architecture and navigation in greater detail.

Screen-flows

Screen-flows are annotated screenshots or mockups illustrating a user’s path through a product. These high-fidelity versions of wire-flows allow designers and stakeholders to visualize user flows in greater detail with screens that accurately represent the final product.

Storyboarding

Designers use storyboarding similarly to the film industry, using a series of illustrations, images, or screens to show a user’s journey. Storyboarding is helpful as it allows design teams to zoom out from the user flow and visualize a user’s environment and circumstances.

For example, if you’re designing an app for food delivery drivers, you’ll need to visualize the user flow from multiple perspectives:

• Walking
• Cycling
• Scooter/motorbike
• Car
• Van

Storyboard combined with user flows helps design teams empathize with users better to deliver more relevant solutions.

Types of User Flows

Here are seven common user flow categories. Design teams can use the techniques and mediums above to visualize these user flows.

Task flows

Task flows represent the steps users must follow to complete a specific task. These flows focus on sequential user actions and decision points, often visualized using a flowchart. Task flows are particularly helpful for identifying pain points and optimizing user journeys.

Onboarding flows

Onboarding flows allow product teams to visualize and design the product’s initial setup and introduction. These flows incorporate account creation, tutorials, feature highlights, and personalization options to familiarize users and get them started quickly.

Conversion flows

Conversion flows are crucial for generating revenue and growth. These flows represent the steps toward a desired action or outcome–for example, newsletter signups, purchases, plan upgrades, etc. Designers typically aim to minimize friction and distractions for these flows to maximize conversion rates, upsells, and other revenue-generating activities.

Navigation flows

Navigation flows outline the structure and architecture of a digital product. These visualizations help design teams understand how users move between screens, sections, and features. They can use these insights to prioritize features and content so users can find things faster and complete tasks more efficiently.

Account management flows

Users often need to update account information like addresses, passwords, billing details, app preferences, subscriptions, etc. Account management flows allow designers to simplify these administrative experiences so users can return to more important tasks.

Error flows

Error flows allow design teams to simulate issues and design solutions to fix them. They can use these insights to improve the user flow and eliminate errors from occurring or create appropriate feedback for users to correct problems.

Offboarding flows

Offboarding flows guide users through discontinuing a product or service, like canceling a subscription or deleting their account. These flows must be as efficient as onboarding to minimize frustration, increasing the chances of winning back customers.

How to Create a User Flow in 8 Steps

Here is a step-by-step framework for creating user flows.

Define the goal and entry points

Identify the task or goal you want to analyze–this could be one of the above user flows or something specific to your product. This goal will help determine the scope and focus of your user flow and which visualization is most appropriate.

If you are designing a website user experience, another good practice before creating your flows is to determine and map out where your users are coming from. Based on Morgan Brown’s advice in Stop Designing Pages and Start Designing Flows, we’d recommend you consider the following sources for your web or mobile prototype:

• Direct traffic
• Organic search
• Paid advertising
• Social media
• Referral sites
• Email

Identify personas

Your product may have many user personas. Determine which of these is most relevant to the user flow. You may assess the user flow for multiple personas to ensure it meets everyone’s needs and expectations.

For templates and helpful tips on creating personas, check out the chapter “Analyzing Users Before Diving Into Design” in the free ebook The Guide to UX Design Process & Documentation.

List user actions and decision points

Break down the user journey into a list of individual actions and decision points. Consider each step a user must take to achieve goals and their choices. For example, a signup screen might have several options, including email signup and multiple social logins. Each option will have a different path to completing the signup process.

Map the flow

Start by sketching your flows on paper or in a digital tool to iterate on many ideas fast. This should be a collaborative effort where team members share ideas and suggestions.

Once you have a basic outline, you can create your user flow in a design tool. UXPin offers five built-in design libraries, one of which is aptly named User Flows. UXPin’s User Flows library includes everything teams need to create and share user journeys, including:

• Flow lines for every conceivable direction
• Action blocks
• Icon blocks
• Labels
• Devices (mobile, tablet, desktop)
• Gestures

Here are a couple techniques for outlining your flow.

Writing-first Approach to Outlining a Flow

You can use the writing-first approach, which Jessica Downey writes about in her article Jumpstarting Your App Conception Without Sketching UI. This outlining method helps flesh out ideas and build a “common understanding” of each page of your app or site.

Let’s create one for, say, a banking app. The scenario: someone wants to turn on auto deposit. Note in the outline below, content in [brackets] represents action buttons/links.

Step 1: Would you like to set up auto deposit?

[Set auto-deposit]

Step 2: Select Deposit Frequency

[Once per month][Twice per month]

[Every other week][Every week]

Step 3: Deposit Once per Month

[Select calendar day]

Step 4: Set Amount

Display amount field

[Set auto-deposit]

Shorthand Approach to Outlining a Flow

You can also try  a shorthand approach used by Ryan Singer at Basecamp. Ryan’s approach treats flows as ongoing conversations.

For our banking app example above, we can create a shorthand for Steps 2 and 3 that looks something like this:

To see how Singer demonstrates shorthand for Basecamp and how he can illustrates complex flows with this outlining process, check out A Shorthand for Designing UI Flows.

Add screens

If you’re designing a wireflow or screen-flow, you can add relevant wireframes, mockups, and screenshots depending on the level of fidelity you need for your user flow.

Include system feedback

Add system feedback and responses such as error messages, success notifications, or loading indicators. This detail will help designers and engineers create the appropriate UI components and content to guide users.

Review and iterate

Analyze the user flow for potential improvements, pain points, or friction. Share the visualizations with team members and stakeholders for feedback and iterate until you have a flow ready for prototyping.

Prototype and test

Create a prototype of your user flow in a design tool. UXPin’s built-in design libraries (iOS, Material Design, Bootstrap, and Foundation) provide designers with UI components and patterns for web and native applications. Drag and drop UI elements from the Design Libraries panel to create high-fidelity mockups you can test in the browser or use UXPin Mirror for mobile app testing.

Create fully interactive prototypes using advanced UXPin features to achieve results that accurately replicate the final product:

• States: allow designers to create multiple states for a single UI element and design complex interactive components like accordions, carousels, steppers, and more.
• Variables: capture data from user inputs and create personalized, dynamic user experiences–like a welcome message using data from the name field in a signup form.
• Expressions: Javascript-like functions to create complex components and advanced functionality–no code required!
• Conditional Interactions: create if-then and if-else conditions based on user interactions to create dynamic prototypes with multiple outcomes to accurately replicate the final product experience.

Enhance your user flows with high-quality prototyping and testing from UXPin. Start designing the user experiences your customers deserve with the world’s most advanced design tool. Sign up for a free trial.

The post Creating Perfect User Flows for Smooth UX appeared first on Studio by UXPin.