When we talk about reducing costs and speeding up time to launch, standard components can unlock tremendous benefits when building and maintaining features. As a designer, especially if you are someone just getting started in mobile app design, it can be difficult to understand what “mobile standards” even are. Getting a handle on these UI options can help us be more efficient and effective as a product team. Choosing to invest in custom UI only when standards start to break down can help you maintain a high bar for experience quality without inflating costs to build and maintain components that already had a standard solution.
Cross-discipline collaboration can be challenging. Especially if your team is remote or taking a hybrid approach to time in the office, it can be easy to fall into a rhythm of validation. Collaboration, in its truest form, happens when the whole team — including designers, developers, and product managers — all come to the table to understand the problems we are trying to solve and find potential solutions. Building more collaborative teams is a journey, but one way to start is by understanding what collaboration means and where your team is starting from.
More than ever it is important to be able to communicate with team members, regardless of their location. These skills aren’t just for remote or distributed teams; all day meetings, working from home, and other temporary interruptions can demand a change to your communication strategy. Increasing your confidence and comfort communicating digitally can feel like a burden to some. Luckily, there are tools and techniques you can use to keep up productivity and collaboration, no matter where you are.
What is the difference between a good digital product and a great digital product? It is no longer enough to simply have a mobile app or a website. If your products do not serve people’s needs, they will not be used. Innovation is rooted in understanding real problems and opportunities, not just delivering on a technology offering. If you want to create an innovative digital product in 2019, you must start by understanding, not only the market and your competitors, but the ecosystem that surrounds your end users.
By design, notifications are disruptive. They make noise, flash on screen, and badge your app icons. Although push notifications can add value to an app, they can also be distracting and demanding of people’s attention. If people don’t see value in your app interrupting them, they are not likely to opt in. It is up to designers and developers to ensure we are designing meaningful and helpful notifications.
Both iOS and Android offer system tools that allow users to scale the text on their device up or down for readability. Supporting scaling text is an easy way to make your app usable for more people. Although developers handle much of the work, decisions we make in design can greatly impact the readability of your app.
There is a problem with design. In many cases, design still assumes collaboration with developers means showing them wireframes to get feedback. In some cases, a developer may be part of a sketching session or sit in on a usability test. How big of a role should developers play in our design work? Is there a benefit in sharing the practice of design with developers?
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) hit the scene promising fast and reliable experiences to users without having to use a web browser or visit the app store. They were the theoretical answer to the discoverability problem of native apps and the reliability issues of responsive websites. However, depending on the version of iOS or Android you are using when you access a PWA, you may have a relatively full featured experience or a severely handicapped one. So what are the advantages and limitations of PWAs and when should you use them?
From dark mode, to voice controlled everything, to the new Swift UI framework, we have a lot to look forward to this year! Here is the rundown on the biggest changes and most design relevant topics.
This latest Google IO event promised cheaper hardware, a focus on accessibility, and continued dedication to augmented reality and machine learning. Here is what you need to know.