The Agile Mindset: What do you need to focus on?

We’re living in the era of agile.

Having the right agile mindset is also of importance. Although this methodology was initially introduced to improve the execution of tech projects, it now goes beyond the industry. In an agile workspace, teams will be provided with agility and flexibility to function productively, optimize their tasks and deliver values effectively. Accordingly, they are adaptable to changes and thrive positively in their fields. 

To do so, understanding the agile methodology is not adequate. In this article, Designveloper will equip you with essential information to build and practice a proper mindset for your agile teams. 

You should know this before knowing about the agile mindset: What is Agile Software development?

​​What is The Agile Mindset?

According to the 2020 Boston Consulting Group research, 70% of digital transformation projects fail to meet their ultimate goals. 

Reasons can vary. And one of them is the lack of not really becoming agile. 

Robert McNamara, a strategy practice director at Guidehouse, indicated that many companies now say they’re embracing agile approaches. But in fact, they just adopt it in concept, but not in implementation. In other words, those organizations haven’t exploited all agile principles, especially in willingly using feedback from real customers to boost development. 

​​What is The Agile Mindset?

Therefore, forming the right mindset within your company is a must if you want to cultivate the whole potential of this methodology.

It’s simply the way of thinking that refers to understanding, cooperating, learning, and working flexibly to obtain desired outcomes. This thought process helps your team be adjusted to changes instead of staying stuck in those new conditions. Beyond that, team members will have more leeway, autonomy, and creativity to complete their tasks best. Each productive, healthy individual will contribute to a robust core team. 

This way of thinking doesn’t only revolve around scheduling and performing your work in agile iterations. But it also encourages team members to grasp and adopt agile principles well in all aspects. 

4 Main Pillar of Agile Mindset You Need to Focus on

The agile methodology aims at empowering team members to fast respond to the changing market and user needs. However, you hardly succeed in executing this approach unless you have the right mindset. Based on four values and twelve principles of the Agile manifesto, Designveloper concludes four primary pillars you should focus on:

Recommended reading: 12 Agile Principles and How It Looks in Practice

1. Respect to team members

According to Agile Principle 5, your company must develop tech projects around motivated members. To do so, it’s essential to build mutual trust and a harmonious workspace as well as provide the support they want. 

This rule is a concrete foundation for the first pillar of the agile mindset: give respect to all team members. 

Give respect to all team members

Indeed, the lightweight methodology encourages multi-way conversations to solve the big question of “What is right?” rather than “Who is right?”. Unlike traditional methodologies which focus on hierarchical teams and sequential processes, agile navigates members toward brainstorming and innovation. 

For this reason, they are given psychological safety and respect to raise their voices and contribute their ideas constructively. Also, they are willing to show cooperative behaviors, admit mistakes and receive feedback to make better improvements in terms of products and working styles. 

Beyond that, agile targets serving customers’ evolving demands. So the right mindset helps create a safe, positive environment for team members to eagerly confront such changes. 

This will contribute to building a healthy, productive team that runs tech projects efficiently and resourcefully.

FURTHER READING:
▶ Agile Software Development Life Cycle Guide
▶ Pros and Cons of Agile Methodology: Which Team Should Apply This Model

2. Optimized and sustainable work flow

Optimized and sustainable workflow

The agile methodology helps your team optimize workflow by implementing small-sized batches of work in repetitive cycles. This enables team members to detect flaws, make continuous improvements and make essential changes in the early stages. Accordingly, they can produce reliable and perpetual releases to meet the increased demands of customers without compromising the product’s quality and business value. 

This property sets agile apart from traditional methods in which one phase will completely depend on the result of the previous stage. So when any defects are discovered, traditional teams have to redo large amounts of work. This proves money-wasting and causes superfluous delays in product deployment. Also, team members possibly struggle with later maintenance and upgrades. 

The proper agile mindset will help your company avoid those problems. It also helps minimize wastage of resources (e.g. finance or human) and maximize a product’s quality and a team’s performance. 

3. Encourage team innovation

In an agile working environment, open-minded interactions give team members the freedom to produce innovative ideas. Rather than only doing what is told, they are provided with time, space, and resources to build more effective solutions and make more constructive responses. 

Encourage team innovation

Therefore, during a project, a team leader should create favorable conditions to stimulate a whole team’s creativity and positive collaboration. He/She shouldn’t turn daily meeting standups into something exhausting and stressful. Instead, it’s necessary to develop a positive space where team members willingly speak out and make valuable contributions. 

4. Focus on relentless improvement

Apart from enhancing the process, your team should reflect on what was done, tune in each member’s feedback in regular meetings and adjust. This improves future processes and helps your team find more effective ways to boost productivity. 

Beyond that, your team needs to establish metrics to measure whether outcomes and performance reach your expectations. This guarantees a whole team still goes on the right path to achieve the common goals and stay on the same page of the mindset. 

Focus on relentless improvement

Relentless improvements are not limited to working processes or deliverables. But they also extend to the agile mindset. 

There’s no standard mindset to follow. And it’s not an overnight process. So your team should continuously nurture this way of thinking and hold frequent meetings to ensure all members still work with agility. 

Both business people and development members should engage in those meetings to convey information, check progress, and conduct retrospectives. 

How to practice the agile mindset in your process?

How to practice the agile mindset in your process?

Scientists say that you need more than two months to turn a new behavior into something habitual. If forming the mindset is nothing short of building a habit, you need that time to build the agile thought process within your team. Apart from your determination and tools, you also need to exercise your brain every day to cultivate the mindset. Below are the top 6 practices you should do to think agility: 

Define and organize clear goals

Define and organize clear goals

The key principle behind agile is to satisfy the changing demands of end-users. But it doesn’t mean your team should go with the flow without clear goals. 

A well-defined objective empowers team members to visualize what they expect and how to achieve those expectations. Further, it helps you determine which tools should be used and which tasks need implementing to work toward the same goal. 

In an agile workspace, this job doesn’t only need the involvement of team leaders or product owners. But it also requires positive contributions from other individuals. All members will work regularly to brainstorm the most effective solutions and build a good customer journey map. Flowcharts, diagrams, and other tools are essential to help envision what you obtain at the end.

Recommended reading: 6 Agile Project Management Tools That You Should Know in 2022

Focus on the customer

Focus on the customer

Working with agile for the long term, Designveloper infers that the team’s highest priority is to satisfy end-users through early and continuous releases. 

Indeed, customers are among the integral factors of a company’s success. If they find the working software valuable and advantageous, they will make buying decisions which lead to your increased revenues. 

So having the agile mindset means going deeper into user trends, undertaking market research and using collected data to build customer-driven products. 

Beyond that, it also helps you receive prompt feedback from customers for early and continuously upgraded versions. You then can gain insight into whether your products or services live up to their expectations or bring them any desired values. This will facilitate further improvements and support you to build a long-term relationship with customers. 

Practice critical thinking

How to practice critical thinking?

Honing critical thinking is a must if your team truly wants to become agile. This reasoning skill relates to the ability to solve problems and proactively find respective solutions. 

Indeed, agile team members often encounter changes in market trends and customer needs. So it’s essential to define problems and see their impacts on those involved (i.e. end-users and product owners). 

Team members also need to analyze these issues objectively, brainstorm and evaluate ideas to see which one is viable. Apart from feasibility, possible solutions should be systematic and well-structured.

Truly agile teams encourage members to share their points of view without fear of being judged. This opens avenues for them to practice critical thinking skills and build high-caliber results satisfied by everyone. 

Learn to communicate and collaborate

Good communication and cooperation are two key factors behind productive teamwork. Tech projects, regardless of scope and complexity, are successful not just because of the efforts of a single member, but rather a team. Lack of seamless interactions and collaborative behaviors can lead to misunderstandings, inconsistent tasks, poor performance, and worse, failing results. 

Learn to communicate and collaborate with your peers

There are many ways for team members to succeed in communicating and working well with each other. Particularly,

• They should be given opportunities through group activities and training to understand their colleagues. 
• Members should acknowledge each other’s expertise and skills to work harmoniously.
• They should be appreciated and treated fairly, which partially promotes their mental well-being. 
• The office shouldn’t be intimidating, but rather gives a pleasant space for a team’s innovation and collaboration. 
• Team members can use technological tools to schedule activities, track work progress, do video conferencing and exchange information. 

Having the agile mindset, your team concentrates more on the word “WE” than “I”. This provokes solidarity and camaraderie among team members, which hence improves their working productivity. 

Be transparent

Be transparent

Transparency is another important metric to form your “agility” mindset. It relates to all levels of management and all positions involved in a project. 

Specifically, all market research findings, budget figures, and other data should be approachable to authorized individuals. Declarations or decisions by senior managers should be clarified. And responsibilities should be clearly assigned to the right persons to avoid confusion. Transparency should also extend to making feedback on performance and progress. 

When team members can transparently access every aspect of a project, they will respond quickly to problems and find it easier to give solutions. This factor helps them to develop mutual trust, facilitate informed discussions and cooperate with their high morale. 

Stay humble and reflect

Retrospective sessions in agile methodology

Building the software with the agile methodology is an ongoing process. There are no perfect IT specs to build the software. So irrespective of success or failure, agile teams always spend time looking back at what they have done in retrospective sessions. 

Staying humble and planning future tasks to improve software are parts of the agile mindset when you build digital solutions successfully. 

Even when your deliverables fail to catch user attention, you should consider failure as a previous lesson. More importantly, your team members will figure out which mistake they made and why it occurred. They then discovered possible approaches and strategies to perform tasks better. 

Conclusion

Agile is no longer a new approach for project management. 

With years of working on this methodology, we Designveloper realize that only embracing its principles doesn’t suffice to make your team truly agile. 

More importantly, you should practice the right agile mindset for the entire team. Not only is this way of thinking applied in project tasks, but it also proves useful in other aspects of your work. 

Practicing your brain frequently in the right way will help you form this mindset. But it’s not an overnight process, as we already said. So it needs your patience, determination, and understanding of agile principles. 

The post The Agile Mindset: What do you need to focus on? appeared first on Designveloper.

February 27, 2022 at 10:26AM

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Pros and Cons of Agile Methodology: Which Team Should Apply This Model?

Agile isn’t an unfamiliar term for multiple companies, especially IT businesses. 

Digital.ai, an intelligent value stream management platform. This platform reported a surprisingly considerable increase in Agile usage from 37% (2020) to 86% (2021).

If you’re a new entrepreneur in the tech industry, learning about a suitable management method is a must to boost productivity and execute tasks efficiently and timely.

In this article, we’ll detail:

• Definition and importance of agile;
• Pros and cons of agile methodology;
• Key differences between agile and other management solutions.

Such information, to some extent, contributes to your final decision of whether or not agile is the right approach for your development team. 

What is Agile and Why Does It Matter?

Agile is a common methodology for managing projects. It allows the whole project development process to be conducted in continuous phases called “iterations”. 

In other words, rather than customizing a whole product in one go, agile development teams often break it into different pieces that can be tested and advanced separately before they move to the next cycle. This ensures each part of the software will be conceptualized, developed, and receive real-time feedback from customers.

You should get to know the pros and cons of agile methodology if you want to learn about management solution

Not only is the agile methodology widely applied by digital businesses of all kinds, but its application is also extended across other segments where feasible increments can be built. This approach proves greatly important because it helps software projects work seamlessly and builds required values for end-users resourcefully. 

Having said that, development teams may encounter some potential difficulty when working on this approach. So, you should get to know the pros and cons of agile methodology if you want to learn about this management solution.

You should know this before knowing about the

pros and cons of agile methodology: What is Agile Software development?

The Pros of Agile Development

The agile method comes with several possible benefits as follows:

1. Quick Delivery

Agile helps a development team deliver a product faster and more efficiently. 

Developing a product, especially software, is an ongoing process. Any deliverable aims at meeting the increased demands of targeted customers. So building a digital solution based on agile means team members will carry out each small increment of the Product Backlog faster in a series of repetitive cycles. They accordingly get a quick response from end-users and a product owner for improvements. A whole project will be repeatedly executed during iterations until the desired outcome is reached. 

2. Cooperation

The agile methodology requires the involvement of different people in each iteration. 

Not only does the presence of a software development team matter, but a product owner also needs to join a process from the beginning. Through brainstorming procedures and project management tools, all parties can come up with viable ideas and track how work is progressing.

Agile promotes collaborative efforts and creativity between those involved to avoid misunderstandings and guarantee products are built efficiently from scratch.

3. Adaptability

As the ultimate goal of any deliverable is to satisfy end-user expectations, constantly altering features is a necessity to perfect a product. During the agile development process, you can make flexible changes in each iteration without interfering with what you’ve developed before. This property sets agile apart from a traditional approach like Waterfall whose phase is completely dependent on the previous one.

4. Rapid Detection of Defects

Apart from easy modifications, working on small increments allows your team to precisely identify problems without hassle. Beyond that, you can easily correct flaws and resolve issues, for example, a mobile app’s layout or essential functionality.

5. Constant Improvement

The agile methodology enables you to assess and enhance a product’s UX/UI design and functions in real-time. This helps save much time and cost in modifying a product’s features or correcting defects. Based on a client’s feedback or interactions, you can perpetually perfect the product without rebuilding a completely new version.

6. Transparency

Because many people with different roles engage in the agile development process, everything from conceptualization to testing and launch is transparently conducted. Also, all work will be continuously shown to those involved to ensure it goes on the right track and no activity is hidden.

FURTHER READING:
▶ Agile Software Development Life Cycle Guide
▶ 5 Agile Project Management Tools That You Should Know in 2022

The Cons of Agile Development

However, agile teams may be confronted with unexpected drawbacks, including:

1. Short-term Planning

If you have no definite goals and directions about a potential product from the beginning, agile comes into play to help create your expected deliverable. For this reason, this approach often accompanies ephemeral plans that help you promptly respond and adapt to new or unexpected events.

However, this nature also turns agile into a nuisance. Especially in case you have weak core visions, you may fail to create reliable enough plans to react well with real-time feedback. 

2. No Specific Deadlines and Costs

Another downside is that agile teams have difficulty clarifying how long each iteration lasts or how much a total project costs. This is primarily attributed to unexpected changes arising during the development process. 

The dearth of detailed deadlines and budget can make final products published later than expected and faced with unexpectedly incurred costs. 

3. Ease of Falling Off Track

One problem of working with the agile method is the possibility of lacking cohesion and going away from ultimate goals. 

Indeed, over the agile development process, little planning is required and new changes can be made to meet the growing needs of consumers. Without a consistent strategy, a strong vision, and an excellent leader, a whole project can easily fall off the predetermined plan. Your team consequently fails to build a product that has coherent components and meets preset requirements.  

Difference Between Agile and Other Methodologies

There is a wide selection of project management models, apart from Agile, like Waterfall, Kanban, or Lean Software Development. 

Such modern approaches as Gantt Chart or Scrum are initially developed from Agile. So they share some similar philosophies with Agile. 

Having said that, there are several obvious differences between them. 

Difference Between Agile and Other Methodologies

For example, Scrum is specifically designed for “sprints”, the shortest cycles of time. A scrum team also has fewer members, primarily involving a product owner, software developers, and a scrum master who functions as a mediator between all members. 

Meanwhile, Gantt Chart is a popular method to help team members visualize their work. This method allows your team to illustrate all activities and their timeframe through a diagram. 

Besides these modern management solutions, your team can factor in traditional approaches, typically Waterfall. The latter is more appropriate for those with definite goals and requirements. Each stage is dependently built on the deliverables of the previous phase. Thus, making modifications in traditional models is extremely tricky.

Recommended reading: 7 Software Project Management Methodologies Besides Agile

Is the Agile Methodology Right for Your Team?

Is the agile methodology right for your team?

Agile is not for everyone. This methodology best suits small, adaptable projects that are managed by teams with strong leadership skills and fluid communication styles.

The agile approach can be less successful when projects become more complicated and scale-up. This is because in this case, the project management mechanism is solidified whereas processes are more systemized and harder to change. 

Having said that, agile can still be applied in large, complex projects at times. To use this modern approach resourcefully, you need a robust core team that helps projects to be delivered on time and within budget. 

To know whether this project management solution is proper for your business, you should ponder:

• kind of company you’re operating;
• the complexity of projects you’re planning.

Beyond that, it’s essential to analyze the pros and cons of agile methodology. We hope that this analysis result from Designveloper helps identify whether your team takes advantage of agile. Besides, it can be capable of handling its accompanying drawbacks.

The post Pros and Cons of Agile Methodology: Which Team Should Apply This Model? appeared first on Designveloper.

February 18, 2022 at 09:40AM

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Mobile App Design Process: How does it change in 2022?

You plan to digitize business operations. 

So you then come up with a good idea.

The next thing is to turn the idea into a real, feasible solution. 

Whether you develop an app internally or outsource it, a mobile app design process is among the most critical considerations. 

This holds true, whether you come from already established companies or startups and whether your projects are complex or not.

This article will elaborate on important things about app design by answering the following questions:

• What is a UX/UI app design by definition?
• How is a mobile app designed? Is there any change in the 2022 design process?
• Should your company hire in-house or external staff to design a mobile app? 
• What are the pros and cons of designing a mobile app internally and externally?

App Design – UI, UX, and Getting Started

Compared to other industries (e.g. manufacturing or fashion), the app design segment shows no variation in its overall design process. 

A standard process of designing mobile apps generally aims at identifying and solving existing and potential problems of end-users. 

For example, customers often visited your brick-and-mortar store to buy kitchen utensils. But the Covid-19 pandemic stopped them from making physical purchases so often. Instead, they started buying online more and prefer their orders to be shipped directly to their doors. 

The question is: “How can the store facilitate a buyer’s selection of products, payment, and delivery?”

This is an existing problem your business is encountering. 

Beyond that, when going online, you may confront later arisen issues (e.g. increased competition and communication with customers). 

It’s when a mobile app comes to a play to help you handle those mentioned problems. 

However, to guarantee the future app meets your requirements, focusing on UX/UI elements should be always prioritized in the design plan. These factors are important because they tell you how the product works and looks respectively. 

This section will give you a detailed insight into UX and UI designs as well as their differences. 

1. What is UI Design?

UI design, or User Interface design, is the process of deciding and building a visual look of a mobile app. 

Visual Design of Guitar Proficiency Test

The app’s UI design should not be duplicated from others. Nor does it necessarily have a glamorous visual presentation. Also, every screen of a mobile app needs to be consistent and attractive to keep your customers engaged, regardless of device. 

To do so, UI designers will focus on developing graphics (e.g. typography, layout, or color) and even voice-controlled elements based on a complete style guide. This system ensures consistency during and after the mobile app design process. It particularly details all components that are well-matched with your brand guidelines.

Recommended reading: What is UI?

2. What is UX Design?

UX design, or User Experience design, talks about an app’s functionality. Its ultimate goal is to give users the best experience when doing online activities on the app.

Test Level function of Guitar Proficiency Test

A UX Design Process needs to be implemented to meet some criteria as follows:

• A mobile app must be properly functional;
• The app should fulfill possible demands of end-customers and your business; 
• The app should be easy to use.

Therefore, during the UX design procedure, you will ideate a future app with or without the support of the design team. A final choice will be based on user research findings and business objectives.  

In short, UI design aims at an app’s outward look whilst UX design refers to its functions. Both processes are closely attached to the product even after its launch to the market. So, it’s crucial to decide who should be included in the design team from the beginning. 

Mobile App Design Process in 2022

App design is not simply designing a mobile. Its definition extends to other activities that support your understanding of user demands and the evaluation of app success. 

More importantly, the design process should assist your business to define and solve problems. A good app design will also help position your brand differently from other competitors. 

That’s why a decent mobile app design process should include the following steps that repeatedly take place in a series of iterations:

• Do user and competitor research;
• Define problems and ideate digital solutions;
• Establish a project’s goal and scope;
• Build UX wireframes and UI elements;
• Create prototypes; 
• Do testing;
• Receive feedback and optimize a product.

Here are detailed explanations for how a mobile app design process works in reality:

1. Brand guideline – Making a Business Plan – App Design Research – User Personas – Competitor Analysis

Producing a great, comprehensive idea is a daunting task. The idea is not temporary but rather goes with your company over a long time. 

So, here’s what you should do to finalize a great, comprehensive idea for your business:

Understand Brand Guidelines

Business guidelines are well-established principles and standards that tell the world who your company is and what it does. In other words, they cover all essential information of your company’s values and brand identity elements (e.g. color palette, fonts, text sizes, and images).

First step: you need to understand brand guidelines

Understanding these rules helps your company guarantee consistency in its online presence as well as determine a project’s complexity and scope. Thereby, a created product can leave a lasting impression on your end-users and render your company distinguished from others.

Build a Business Plan

A mobile app plays an integral part in a company’s long-term growth. So drawing out an app design plan is necessary. One of the best ways to help your company build a detailed business plan is by developing a business canvas. 

This template should entail fundamental categories to answer the following questions:

• Problem: “Which problems are my company and customers facing?”
• Solution: “Which solutions are best suited to handle these problems?”
• Value: “What values do customers receive from my company?”
• Competitive edge: “Which advantage does my company take over competitors?”
• User/Customer: “What is my customer segmentation?”
• Metrics: “Which criteria are used to measure my success?”
• Channels: “How can my company approach target customers?” 
• Costs: “How much is spent on an app?”
• Revenue: “How does my company monetize an app?” 

Conduct Market Research

Researching the market includes defining customer personas and analyzing competitors. These two factors are important to decide which features your app should have to deal with possible pain points. 

Conduct market research is an important stage

User Personas

Next, a design team and you will work on more thorough research, interviews, and workshops. The key aim here is to figure out expectations and motivations behind end-user demands or behaviors. 

Also, you should build complete user profiles while sketching a business canvas. Your company and the design team need to brainstorm answers for several questions like:

• Who is your potential app?
• Where do they live?
• In what age range are they?
• What do they like or dislike about a mobile app?
• What do they want from the app?
• What problems do they have?

Your company can use a customer journey map as well. This tool helps visually predict how buyers go through your potential app, whether they approach it via social networks or other marketing channels. It also assists you to determine the pain points, incentives, and emotions of users.

Competitor Analysis

“Are there any similar applications to yours?”

“Which features or functionality do competitors have to make app design succeed or fail?”

Your company may ask these common questions when learning about competitor products. 

Competitor analysis is also conducted to discover what pitfalls end-users met and which values your rivals gave their customers. 

Looking around Product Hunt, you may find similar applications with appealing forms and useful functionality. Further, reading user reviews about such solutions is among the best ways to explore what customers feel satisfied or disappointed with.

2. Features, User Flows, and Wireframes

The next step of a mobile app design process is to go deeper into possible features. Also, it’s important to draw wireframes and a detailed user flow for your app.

Some tools like Adobe XD, Figma, and Axure are widely used to diagram user flows, build wireframes and develop prototypes afterward.

Building app Features

Aesthetic is not the only factor to decide a product’s success. You should ponder its features during the design process.

These features should not be too complicated for users. Concurrently, they should support customers to perform the right action on an app. If these conditions are not met, you then fail to improve the user experience of the software.

In the first iteration of a mobile app design process, you should select the most fundamental attributes for an MVP (minimum viable product). 

There are several methods to help you do so:

• MoSCoW

MoSCoW stands for Must Have o Should/Could Have o Won’t Have.

This technique helps you organize all features of an MVP in order of descending importance. 

MoSCoW stands for Must Have o Should/Could Have o Won’t Have.

Brainstorming ideas with designers and programmers, you can ask some questions like: 

• “What’s the end of a user?”
• “Which features does a user need on an app to reach that goal?” 
• “Does my company need user responses to perfect those features?”

Answering these questions may help you easily conclude which features must, could, or won’t be included in the MVP.

• AARRR

AARRR is an abbreviation of Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue. Each metric is equivalent to each important question used to measure features:

• Acquisition: “Does that app feature increase user involvement?”
• Activation: “Does that feature encourage users to use an app?”
• Retention: “Does that feature encourage users to continue using an app?”
• Referral: “Does an app have a feature that facilitates app sharing with a user’s friends?”
• Revenue: “Does an app have a monetization feature?”

• Impact Effort Matrix

This technique focuses on the level of impact and effort given by features. Accordingly, it also helps a design and development team to identify which features should be prioritized or not. 

A decision-making tool that helps people manage their time more effectively is an impact effort matrix.

Wireframes

During the UX design process, building app wireframes means creating layouts, structures, and interactions between app elements. These wireframes need fitting on any device and platform your company is aiming at (i.e. smartphones or tablets of all sizes).

Once again, the app’s wireframe should be a result of user research, competitor research, and strategy. 

It specifies user flows on an app. It shows, for example, how users register and log in, how many windows they access, or how many buttons they click.

UX wireframe concentrates on functional aspects instead of styles. 

That’s why it should entail:

• App layout;
• Page layout;
• Navigation features.

And it should exclude graphic elements (e.g. videos or pictures) and colors.

UX wireframes may be sketched on paper or software and require no hard work.

User Flows

Building a user flow is a popular way to visualize the customer’s journey on the app. 

But unlike a user journey map, a user flow defines what users physically do to complete a specific mission on your app. 

Take an online kitchenware store, for example. A customer wants to buy a knife set. His activities often begin from accessing a homepage and end with ordering or registering for an account. 

A user flow defines what users physically do to complete a specific mission on your app

Therefore, during this phase, designers should consider:

• The number of screens needed for a user to perform his/her intended activity;
• The number of features needed to support a user to perform his/her intended activity;
• The order of screens and features to help a user perform his/her intended activity;

Foreseeing a user’s activities from an entry point to the end helps designers to optimize the user experience through intuitive interfaces. It then improves user retention or conversion rates.

3. Creating Mockups and Prototypes

Building app mockups or prototypes is a feasible method to see how your potential software may look in reality.

Exactly speaking, mockups and prototypes stimulate a real app but come with lower quality. According to experts, building expensive mockups is both time-wasting and superfluous. Instead, low-caliber prototypes are more encouraged. 

Mockups and prototypes stimulate a real app but come with lower quality

During this stage, UI design elements are added to your prebuilt wireframes, typically:

• Content layout;
• Images/Videos;
• Colors;
• Typography;
• Icons;
• Navigation visuals.

The ultimate goal of this phase is to test or improve app functions. Therefore, designers should focus on the best UI factors and core functionality that most fit the user’s needs.  

4. Testing, Feedback, Optimization, Iteration

Once mockups are created, they will be showcased to the product owner (that is, your company in this case) and real customers for testing. This helps users test whether UX/UI elements satisfy their basic demands and reach the company’s standards. 

User testing can be implemented through in-person interviews, surveys, and online tools (e.g. UserTesting)

You can approach real users in various channels (e.g. the app store, your company’s website, B2B directories, or social media page). And you may allow them to leave comments wherein instead of limiting them only to the app. It helps you reach a niche audience and obtain responses on time.

Also, you should consider other types of technical testing, for example:

• QA/QC testing;
• Alpha/Beta testing;
• Performance testing;
• Usability testing;
• Security testing. 

Upon testing, your app will receive feedback and be optimized to fit predetermined standards. 

These four main stages will be repetitively conducted in a series of iterations or sprints over the mobile app design process. 

Designers also closely work with programmers to test, redesign and improve an app until it’s perfected. Even after the final app is developed, tested, and released to the public, app design still plays a key role in further maintenance and improvements. 

How to Hire a Modern App Design Team

How should app design tasks be implemented? Is in-house staff or an outsourcing team a better choice for your company? 

As already said, app design is a long-term process. 

Designers will cooperate with a development team from scratch to discuss the feasibility of ideas and solutions. They then cooperate from ideation to launch. This probably increases the efficiency of the whole process as well as saves time and money on building apps.

Therefore, choosing those involved in the mobile app design process without consideration will leave your company repercussions afterward.

There are four common options to recruit a modern app design team for your projects, particularly:

• Hire an app design and development company;
• Hire an in-house design team;
• Hire a freelance app design team;
• Hire an offshore development team.

Each option works best in different situations. Understanding its pros and cons can help select an app design model that suits your business’s vision, budget, project complexity, and more. 

There are various ways to build a suitable app design team. If you plan to either hire a whole outsourcing team or augment staff temporarily, you may:

• get referrals from clients or colleagues;
• visit B2B review and rating websites like Clutch.co, GoodFirms.co or The Manifest.com;
• visit freelance working sites like Fiverr.com or Freelancer.com.

No matter which resources you refer to find talented designers, you should browse through their profiles and portfolios. 

Reading reviews of former clients also gives you a realistic overview of their working process. This will support your finding of proper candidates and give you a deeper insight into a person or a team you are bound to work with.

Hiring a Team to Design and Build Your App (App Design and Development Company)

Mobile app design and development are two different processes. They focus on building the front-end and back-end terminals of mobile apps respectively. 

If you have a solid development team but have no idea of design, choosing a design agency is the best option. 

However, provided technical things are not your strength as well, working with an app design and development company is more advisable. 

Here are several pros and cons of collaborating with an app design and development company:

PROS

• Communication 

The cooperation between designers and programmers from the beginning is needed to guarantee better understanding and information flow. 

You can prefer allocating design and development work to two different companies respectively. But this action costs them time and opportunity costs to get attuned to their mutual working styles. 

Meanwhile, designers and developers from the same company are familiar with each other. So you can see enhanced communication, productivity, and quality. 

App design and development companies keep the product owner and other stakeholders engaged in the whole process through communication tools. This helps you track how the work is progressed, which features should be added or removed, and more.

• Experience 

App design and development companies have diverse experience in building apps for different industries. Accordingly, they will provide more creative and viable solutions for your company’s current situation. 

• Talent pool

Those companies gather experts in app design and development. Therefore, working with them gives you a chance to access a host of talented workers. 

• Workflow efficiency 

To manage massive work, app design and development companies often adopt effective project management methods such as Agile or Scrum. A standard workflow in such companies, typically Designveloper, takes place as follows:

• Problem detection;
• Conception;
• Cost and time estimate;
• Design;
• Development;
• Testing;
• Preparation and publishing;
• Support and maintenance.

Those companies prescribe types of service, duration, and shared responsibility in an SLA (Service Level Agreement). These clauses ensure the transparency and effectiveness of creating an entire mobile app. 

CONS

• Cost

Initially, hiring a team in charge of a whole project is more costly than recruiting individual designers and developers.

But hiring a professional company means you don’t need to deal with training costs or added expenses from, for example, bad app design. 

Choosing a proper app design and development company is not too tricky. Wandering around B2B directories like Clutch.com, you may filter suitable app builders based on hourly rates, budget, and more. 

You should look at their portfolios and previous customers’ reviews. Then, you can get consultancy from more outstanding companies to see which one suits your company. 

Recommended reading: How much does it cost to make an app?

Hiring Your Own Team of Designers (In-house App Design)

There is a common belief that hiring your own team of designers to build your app completely in-house is an unwise idea. 

This doesn’t hold true if your internal team is capable of coping with all design work. This option is also suitable for those who can afford expensive recruitment and training sessions for newbies.

If you’re considering this option, you had better look at its pros and cons in the first place. 

PROS

• Communication

There’s no denying that in-house staff can communicate and understand your business’s goals better than outsourcing team members. 

This is because the former works in a group every day. Internal employees know each other well enough, thus interactions between them will take place more easily. 

• Control

Managing an in-house team allows you to take whole control of project execution. You may get involved in every phase of a mobile app design process. And you can get better informed of what is being planned, implemented or done. 

• Productivity

Communicating well between members and monitoring a project yourself help promote workflow efficiency.

CONS

• Recruitment

Hiring in-house employees may be time-wasting and expensive. You have to spend time and money reading through CVs, preparing tests, and holding interviews. 

• Training cost

Another downside of hiring new designers, albeit seasoned or inexperienced, is that you have to run training courses. It proves essential to help employees understand the way your business works and get familiar with each other.

• Flexibility in different projects

Even when you have a robust design team for a project, nothing ensures that they can handle all aspects of later design work. At that time, you can’t lay some off to recruit new ones who are more suitable for other projects. Not to mention that you can confront staff turnover. Those things make your team less flexible for different projects.

To guarantee hired designers suit your company and projects, you should read candidates’ past work carefully and allot a suitable task. This helps you see how they think of designing your potential app. 

Hiring a Freelance App Design Team (Remote Team)

Hiring a freelance designer or team is a popular option providing you want someone just in the interim period. Also, your app projects don’t require their regular presence at the office. 

Besides, this option is preferred when you hardly find qualified candidates in your neighborhood. And there’s an urge to search for someone working remotely on projects. 

Hired, Total, or Upwork are places where companies frequently seek talented designers for their projects. You’ll get a clearer idea of their past work, hourly rates, and reviews of previous clients. 

Inevitably, working with freelancers remotely comes with benefits and drawbacks as well.

PROS

• Wide selection

Online working sites allow you to approach a huge talent pool. So you have more opportunities to find more qualified candidates for your app projects. 

CONS

• Hiring process

Compared to in-house hiring, you have to comb through a far wider range of candidates. So little wonder the recruitment process can be considered more time-consuming.

Beyond that, more choices in searching for remote designers also translate to more unexpected costs and the possible inflexibility of the team afterward. 

• Communication

As already said, freelancers often work remotely. That means you need to set up online communication tools to ensure interactions between team members and you work smoothly. 

Despite advancements in communication technology, it’s not the only determinant behind seamless interactions between members. 

Language and geographical barriers can contribute to communication disruptions if freelancers speak a different language from yours. Not to mention that some may have poor communication skills although their expertise is outstanding.

If hiring a freelance app design team is the best choice for your company, you should consider skilled freelancers in both design and communication. They are those you may trust to get tasks implemented resourcefully. 

Hiring an Offshore Design Team

Besides an app design and development company, recruiting an offshore design team is another prevalent way to outsource app design. 

The main difference between them is that a design team only specializes in the design, whilst the other focuses on both design and development. 

There’s no need to outsource your app development process if you have a competent in-house workforce or better external candidates to do the work. 

There are pros and cons of assigning work to an offshore team as follows:

PROS

• Experience

Compared to individual designers, a design company is more experienced in designing apps for a myriad of industries. 

• Talent pool

Partnering with offshore design agencies opens more avenues to approach more talented employees. They have diverse expertise and creativity to suggest the best digital solutions for your company.

• Lower costs

In comparison with a nearshore or onshore teams, their offshore counterparts often provide cheaper service packages. 

There are other hidden costs you should consider. Chances are original investments in offshore companies are much higher than hiring in-house designers or single freelancers. But this option removes expenses related to onboarding, training, and making defects.

CONS

• Security

One downside of hiring external companies is data security. Design agencies are now working under strict agreements and probably legal management of their countries. Yet nothing ensures their individual employees seriously comply with clauses prescribed in contracts. So data breach is sometimes unavoidable.

• Different mindset

Different cultures and backgrounds may result in different mindsets. This can hinder your company and an outsourcing company from good understanding and smooth communication.

Before deciding who to work with, you should go through a detailed vetting process. This helps you see how their past projects were conducted. Besides their websites, you may look for their portfolios on third-party sites like Dribble or Behance.

Conclusion

Like app development, app design requires a continued commitment of designers and those involved to make sure the work goes on the right path. 

That means a mobile app design process isn’t over when a product comes into the development process or is published. 

Therefore, building a solid team from the beginning should be prioritized before your company implements any design tasks. 

This ensures a decent app design that helps identify and tackle problems properly. It also significantly contributes to the success of building a mobile app that everyone loves.

The post Mobile App Design Process: How does it change in 2022? appeared first on Designveloper.

February 05, 2022 at 11:01PM

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A Student-Run Media Transmitting Project

A student-run news sending project is an excellent way for college students to develop their particular public speaking and storytelling skills. Like a books group, the teacher acts as a facilitator and college students operate a team to generate 3 full-length news email. Each part of the team has a particular job and it is given a tale based on their skills. The student-run news letters happen to be published weekly and get a flow of approximately half a dozen thousand.

In addition to a variety of criteria, a student-run news send out will allow students to develop many modern world skills. They are going to have an crowd and will feel as if they are learning. One recent survey produced by the Stanford Background Education Group demonstrates students are usually more media literate after playing a news-casting project. While it may seem like a struggle, students will love the process and enjoy the final item.

A student-run news transmit project is very similar to a examining group. The teacher provides for a facilitator meant for the group. Teams work together to produce several full-length news connections. Each team member has multiple jobs. They each have a special interest, plus the project ends with a great e-newsletter that reaches approximately six 1000 people. And unlike a regular newscast, the students love viewing the completed product, plus the project is a superb way to demonstrate the benefits why not try here of student media literacy.

The post A Student-Run Media Transmitting Project appeared first on Designveloper.

February 01, 2022 at 07:00AM

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