What Does It Take to Choose A Great App Design Agency In 2023?
App Design Agency - Top Question From Google
What is an app design agency?
An app design agency focuses on delivering modern and beautiful web and mobile apps that focus on making the user experience seamless while having a sense of familiarity.
An agency tailors their approach to your brand, industry and target user in order to ensure you have an end product is ready for software development.
An app development agency also embarks on a discovery process to ensure they are designing an app that the user not only needs, but wants to actively use because they believe it makes their lives easier.
This is great, because the more users that love to use your product can recommend it to others, it can market itself by word of mouth and in a workplace setting it aids in making manual processes easier, as some staff members can be resistive to change but sometimes something useful and easy to use, is a great sell.
What is application design?
Application design (or app design) is the process followed to deliver a modern User Interface (UI) and sometimes a working a prototype that you can use to show your idea is being actualised, before spending money on software development.
This process usually entails research of the problem domain and competitor research, to gain the edge in designing something innovative.
A user interface is everything the user can see- the menus, the buttons and the app’s behaviour. Everything underneath it, that drives the data is commonly referred to as the backend.
That’s why so much care is taken to ensure that a greatly designed product is delivered by an application design team, they wish to ensure that the users fall in love with their app, as this increases the likelihood of user adoption, project success and above all, has a higher ROI.
If users fall in love with an app, especially in the workplace setting, they become advocates for the software.
Sometimes, when companies undergo digital transformation, some stakeholders or employees fear being made redundant by incoming software and the ability to involve them in the process early on and alleviating their concerns of job security should be encompassed into the application design process.
The reason for this is clear, because if your prospective users are at peace with new software coming in, they’re more likely to be helpful in enabling you and your project team in getting the right answers to deliver a great web or mobile app.
App design usually falls into two categories, User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX).
UI is about the general housing style of the app this may include fonts and colours. At this point in time, app designers begin to research trending design ideas.
UX, on the other hand focuses on ease of use, functionality and how the user ‘feels’ while interacting with the app, as well as the research in order to complete ease of use and functionality.
UX and UI work together and commonly look for ways to minimise the amount of steps in completing a task on the app, while creating something beautiful.
What is an app designer?
App designers create User Interfaces for web and mobile apps as well as creating wireframes or prototypes to show clients and other stakeholders.
An app designer works with numerous platforms including iOS, watchOS, macOS, Google Android, Windows and Web.
An app designer will also create the general ‘look and feel’ and it is important to find the right designer to achieve this.
An app designer may have several interchangeable job titles, UX designer, UI designer, mobile app designer etcetera.
Usually, app designers with these titles tend to do similar things and have a similar skillset. Though, there are some UX researchers who solely dedicate their time to user experience from a strategic standpoint and act as a consultant to help you to avoid the pitfalls. Some of these individuals may not prototype or create a UI at all. So, it’s best to check what skills your UXer has.
App designers usually not only try to design great interfaces, but they also help in the ideating process, too, a bit like a business analyst.
In this modern era, more web and mobile app projects are becoming UX driven, which is great because more IT projects begin with the user in mind, which reduces the risk of project failure and the prospect of failing in user acceptance testing.
What this means is that UX designers will interview stakeholders of the project to get a better idea of what needs be designed and fit specification.
Further to our point above, in digital transformation projects – sometimes employees fear redundancy when their firm goes through a phase of digitisation.
Seasoned UX designers should know this and should also act mindfully in their questions while putting the stakeholder at ease during any UX interviews they may carry out.
In UX interviews, it may include asking the app designer asking several questions about what other apps the users enjoy and why this app needs to be created. An app designer will also conduct research on competitors and their design patterns - on how they delivered certain features, then all of this is utilised to craft a great web or mobile business apps with a beautiful design.
Even though UI and UX are used interchangeably they work together in order to deliver great business digital products.
How much does it cost to design an app?
British Coins
Designing a typical app can cost between £2,000 - £6,000 while large scale applications with several requirements may cost over £10,000.
It’s a worthy investment for your web or mobile app project for many reasons -
Firstly, this is because it lessens the prospect of your users refusing to use your product.
So, I bet you’re thinking (in a business context), “my employees won’t really have another choice because we’ll put in a new policy for everyone to use this new app we’re building”.
Fair enough, but an unusable software product will present problems in an organisation, in other ways.
Less work will be completed because your employees dislike using a new app as it involves more steps to complete a task in comparison to ‘doing it the way they’ve always done it’, which is ultimately, what you’re trying to change.
Plus, I’m sure you don’t fancy hiring new staff because your best performers decide to leave in frustration of their job becoming overcomplicated.
Here’s where a great UXer, has The Midas Touch.
They’ll deep dive into what your user loves (and hates), to ensure that your employee’s tasks will be completed more efficiently than what was there before.
So, all that policy enforcement and hiring hassle, needn’t happen, great, right?
Another one of the many reasons why UX is important, is because it saves money on software development time.
Remember you’re developing this tool because you want to automate a task, save paperwork or you just want something to be downright easier.
So don’t skimp on UX.
Instead of having your developers engineer a new UI, which you’re unsure will be a hit with your users, start at the root, and that’s UX.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”.
UX is the sharpening of that axe and the problem you’re trying to overcome, is that tree.
Abraham Lincoln
What does it take to create a beautiful mobile app that delivers results?
It begins with a great understanding of the problem you’re trying to solve.
Think of it as the why, what and how’s, which are the glue to a great discovery process.
Having a deep understanding of the project and the problem domain enables your new app agency research in the right places, they’ll know more about what questions to ask, and who and where to find the answers from.
They’ll also be able to review your competition and similar projects to ensure you don’t fall into the same pitfalls as your competitors. This is what gives you the edge.
As the app design agency continues to extensively research, you know that your design won’t be left to guessing but a great science that has a higher likelihood of success.
We also spoke about the costs in this article and some people disagree about its necessity. So, some people may use these tasks such as design, as grounds for discount in negotiation.
It was once said by Ralf Speth “If You Think Good Design is Expensive, You Should Look At The Cost of Bad Design”.
At Cypher Digital we’ve spoken to clients before who have worked with competitor app design agencies who had great portfolios but had fallen short delivering in a great digital product.
A digital product needs a cutting edge design, innovative features and above all, is useful - but still has that great sense of familiarity, that we crave.
Plus, the better your design, the smaller the bill needed to train your staff to use it, because it’ll become second nature to them.
If you’re looking for a great app designer to deliver something beautiful, that delivers results. Look to for one who is great communicator and is an advocate for change first.
Summary
So, an app design agency, like us at Cypher Digital deliver beautiful and highly usable research-driven web and mobile business apps that make your user’s experience seamless.
We’ll deep dive into your industry, brand and target user, to ensure you have something ready to develop, without the high price tag that our competitors have.
Our discovery processes do require detail, but you need a straight talking team like us that respects your time and uses their initiative.
UI and UX are sometimes used interchangeably but see them as the skills and processes to deliver a great mobile or web application.
Remember, bad design is expensive and great design is cheap when it comes to ROI.
So, your best methods in preventing a constant cycle of redoes, is to pick the right team the first time.
Pick a UX designer from us at Cypher Digital, they’ll have a great understanding of your requirements, and they remain up to date in design trends to ensure you have something which fits that modern aesthetic.
We believe app designers should spend more time ideating and discovering rather than rather than quickly prototyping something that doesn’t entirely fit the bill.
It’s easy to find any design talent online, but to find great design talent that pays dividends and at ease, go to Cypher Digital.
Choosing the wrong designer can be costly and painful and above all, you don’t want to lose that precious project time and your money by choosing the wrong designer.
It’s this reason why we vet our UX designers at Cypher Digital and we regularly send our designers on training courses to ensure we’re ahead of the curve, while keeping our finger on the pulse.
Our pragmatic approach and process, allow us to envision what you had in mind as you trust us to deliver a great web or mobile business app that’s done right, with accuracy.
Find out more about what we do, by clicking here. Or if you wish to have a free quick chat about how we can help you, book a call below.