A prototype is a draft or blueprint to explore and refine ideas, while the final product is the completed, fully functional version ready for release. Prototypes and final products serve distinct roles, helping teams move from ideas to a completed, user-ready solution. ~Let’s explore similarities and differences between prototypes vs final products.

By leveraging real code components, responsive design, accessibility features, and seamless handoff capabilities, UXPin enables teams to create prototypes that are nearly indistinguishable from the final product. This reduces the need for costly iterations, minimizes miscommunication, and results in a more efficient and reliable product development process. Try UXPin for free.

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What is a Prototype vs Final Product?

A prototype is an early model or simulation of a product used to test ideas, designs, and interactions before full development. It often includes basic interactions, layouts, and sometimes simulated data to give a realistic feel, but it’s not fully functional or ready for end-users.

The final product, on the other hand, is the completed version, fully developed and ready for users. It includes all interactions, live data, final visuals, and complete functionality. It’s polished, tested, and built to handle real-world use cases.

In short, a prototype is a draft or blueprint to explore and refine ideas, while the final product is the completed, fully functional version ready for release.

What is their Place in the Design Process?

Prototype in the Design Process

• Purpose: Prototypes are essential for testing and validating ideas before full development. They allow designers, stakeholders, and users to see and interact with a product concept, providing feedback early.
• Stage: Prototyping usually comes after initial research, brainstorming, and wireframing. It’s used to explore layouts, interactions, and functionality in a realistic way without the full cost or time commitment of building a final product.
• Benefits: Prototyping helps identify issues, refine usability, and ensure that the design meets user needs. It’s a key step in preventing costly changes later.

Final Product in the Design Process

• Purpose: The final product is the outcome of all previous design stages. It’s a polished, functional version of the initial concept that has gone through testing, iterations, and feedback.
• Stage: The final product is produced at the end of the design and development process, after prototyping, usability testing, and stakeholder approval.
• Benefits: A finalized product is ready for users and meets all design, functionality, and performance criteria established during the design process. It represents the end goal, where ideas are fully realized and ready for release.

What is the Goal of a Prototype vs Final Product?

The goal of a prototype is to serve as a testing ground for ideas, design concepts, and user interactions before committing to full development. Prototyping allows teams to experiment, gather feedback, and make adjustments to ensure the design aligns with user needs and project goals.

By creating prototypes, designers can validate functionality, interaction flows, and usability in a low-risk environment. This testing phase is critical, as it helps identify potential issues early on, minimizing the chances of costly changes later in the development process. Prototypes focus on essential elements of the user experience rather than technical specifics, enabling teams to iterate quickly and refine ideas.

In contrast, the goal of the final product is to be a fully functional, polished solution, ready for users. The final product includes all technical depth and backend functionality needed for real-world use, such as data handling, performance optimization, and security.

Unlike prototypes, which simulate functionality, the final product delivers a complete experience, optimized for consistent, reliable use by end-users. Every aspect has been carefully tested, validated, and refined to meet the project’s standards and requirements, ensuring that it’s ready for release.

By focusing on interactivity and usability, prototypes don’t need the same level of technical detail as the final product, allowing for flexibility in exploring ideas. The final product, however, must meet rigorous quality standards to support real-world scenarios, bridging the gap from concept to completed, user-ready solution.

Are All Prototypes Exactly like the Final Product?

No, not all prototypes are exactly like the final product. Prototypes vary in fidelity and purpose, and they often focus on simulating certain aspects of the final product rather than replicating it entirely. while high-fidelity prototypes or UXPin prototypes can closely resemble the final product, prototypes in general are simplified versions meant to test and validate ideas before committing to full-scale development.

Here’s how prototypes differ from one another:

1. Fidelity Levels: Prototypes can range from low-fidelity sketches or wireframes that outline structure and flow to high-fidelity prototypes with detailed interactions and visuals that closely resemble the final product. Low-fidelity prototypes are used for early exploration, while high-fidelity prototypes may be created to validate more specific interactions.
2. Functionality and Interactions: Many prototypes include limited functionality. They may mimic certain user flows or interactions but lack complete backend connections or real data. This allows designers to focus on key aspects without building everything from scratch.
3. Design Completeness: Prototypes may not always have the polished look or precise details of the final product. For example, placeholder text or images might be used instead of final content, or the design may be simplified to prioritize testing functionality over aesthetics.
4. Technical Accuracy: Unlike the final product, prototypes aren’t fully developed, so they often don’t include optimized code, data handling, or security features that would be necessary for release.

9 Similarities Between UXPin Prototypes and the Final Product

Real Code Components for Authenticity

• Similarity: UXPin prototypes use code-backed components through Merge, meaning the elements designers use in prototypes are the exact components developers will implement in production.
• Benefit: This approach ensures that all interactions, styles, and functionalities in the prototype are identical to those in the final product, eliminating guesswork during development.

Dynamic, Conditional Interactions

• Similarity: UXPin allows designers to build complex, conditional interactions directly into prototypes, mimicking the final user experience. This includes features like conditional navigation, form validation, and dynamic content states.
• Benefit: By simulating the real logic behind interactions, UXPin prototypes offer a more accurate representation of the user experience, aligning closely with how the final product will behave.

Consistent Design Systems and Libraries

• Similarity: UXPin’s integration with design systems means that components, styles, and themes are consistent from the prototype stage to production. This centralized library of components ensures that updates made in the prototype automatically reflect in the production design.
• Benefit: This results in prototypes that are visually and functionally in sync with the final product, making it easy for teams to scale projects without introducing inconsistencies.

Built-in Accessibility Standards

• Similarity: UXPin incorporates accessibility standards within the prototyping process, allowing designers to check for compliance as they create. Accessibility features in prototypes are carried over to the final product.
• Benefit: Teams can ensure the final product meets accessibility guidelines from the start, saving time and costs associated with post-production fixes.

Production-Ready Code

• Similarity: UXPin’s prototypes can export clean, production-ready code, particularly when using Merge. This makes the handoff from design to development seamless, as developers receive components that are essentially ready to integrate into the final product.
• Benefit: By reducing the need for rework, teams can move from prototyping to production faster, ensuring that what was approved in the prototype phase is accurately translated into the final product.

Responsive and Adaptive Design

• Similarity: UXPin supports responsive design directly within the prototype, allowing teams to test how the product will adapt across devices and screen sizes.
• Benefit: This makes UXPin prototypes functionally close to the final product, as designers can validate responsiveness early and avoid surprises during development.

Interactive Data Integration

• Similarity: UXPin allows teams to integrate real or sample data within prototypes, helping to simulate dynamic content and user-driven changes in real time.
• Benefit: By seeing how data interacts with the UI, teams can confidently align the prototype with the data-driven features of the final product.

Usability Testing Integration

• Similarity: UXPin prototypes are functional enough to support usability testing, allowing real users to interact with the design and providing feedback that’s directly applicable to the final product.
• Benefit: This feedback loop ensures that user-centered design decisions made during prototyping are maintained in the final product, minimizing discrepancies post-launch.

Full Design-to-Development Workflow in One Platform

• Similarity: UXPin offers a single platform for the entire design-to-development workflow, from initial wireframes to high-fidelity prototypes and handoff.
• Benefit: By using one platform, UXPin keeps everything aligned, ensuring that each stage reflects the final product as closely as possible.

How UXPin Speeds up Prototyping to Final Product Transition?

Using UXPin speeds up the translation from prototype to final product by creating a seamless, integrated workflow that connects design and development. Here’s how it accelerates the process:

1. Real Code Components with Merge: UXPin allows designers to use real code components in their prototypes. With Merge, designers and developers work with the same coded elements, meaning the prototype is already built with production-ready code. This eliminates the need to recreate components from scratch, speeding up the transition from prototype to final product.
2. Dynamic Interactions and Logic: UXPin supports complex interactions and conditional logic directly in prototypes, allowing designers to test and refine real product functionality. This lets teams validate interactive elements early, so developers don’t need to interpret design intentions or manually code interactions, reducing back-and-forth between design and development.
3. Consistent Design Systems: UXPin integrates with design systems to ensure that design elements, styles, and components used in prototypes are the same ones used in the final product. By centralizing libraries and maintaining consistency, UXPin minimizes design-to-code translation errors and ensures that prototypes align with production standards.
4. Built-in Documentation and Accessibility Checks: UXPin includes documentation and accessibility features within the prototyping process, meaning design guidelines and accessibility standards are already embedded when handing off to developers. This minimizes additional work post-prototyping and ensures the final product meets accessibility requirements from the start.
5. Seamless Handoff with Production-Ready Code: Unlike traditional tools where prototypes are static, UXPin’s prototypes can export clean, usable code that developers can implement directly. This significantly cuts down on development time, as the code is ready to use rather than needing to be recreated from scratch.

By combining design and development elements in one platform, UXPin bridges the gap between prototype and final product, reducing rework, minimizing translation errors, and accelerating the overall development timeline. Try UXPin for free.

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Successful products aren’t just built—they’re designed and managed with precision and collaboration. Two of the most crucial roles in this process are the product designer and the product manager. While both professionals work toward a common goal of delivering a product that meets user needs and drives business value, their roles, skill sets, and day-to-day responsibilities differ significantly.

Understanding these differences is essential for anyone involved in product development, from designers and developers to stakeholders. For designers looking to move into management or professionals who work closely with design teams, grasping the nuances of each role can enhance collaboration and ultimately contribute to more impactful product outcomes.

To bridge this collaboration gap, many teams turn to UXPin Merge, a technology that enables designers and developers to work seamlessly by using the same code components across the design and development process. With UXPin Merge, product designers and managers can create and test consistent, interactive designs that reflect the final product, simplifying communication and reducing handoff errors. By fostering a shared visual language, UXPin Merge empowers teams to work more efficiently and deliver user-centered products faster. Request access to UXPin Merge.

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What is a Product Designer?

A product designer plays a pivotal role in creating the look, feel, and functionality of digital products. They focus on crafting user-centered designs that are both visually engaging and functional, ensuring that every element of the product serves a purpose aligned with user needs and business objectives. Unlike specialized roles like UI or UX designers, a product designer typically wears multiple hats, blending skills across research, visual design, and prototyping to deliver cohesive, end-to-end product experiences.

Key Responsibilities of a Product Designer

The responsibilities of a product designer cover a broad spectrum of tasks, often extending beyond pure design to include strategic input and collaboration with cross-functional teams. Typical responsibilities include:

• User Research: Conducting interviews, surveys, and usability testing to understand user needs and pain points.
• Ideation and Prototyping: Developing early design concepts, wireframes, and interactive prototypes to test functionality and gather feedback.
• UI Design: Creating visually engaging interfaces that follow brand guidelines while focusing on usability and accessibility.
• Interaction Design: Defining how users will interact with various elements in the interface, ensuring smooth transitions, animations, and intuitive flows.
• Collaboration: Working closely with product managers, developers, and stakeholders to align design with product goals and technical constraints.

Ultimately, a product designer’s goal is to create a product that not only looks great but is intuitive and easy to use. This requires balancing user needs, business goals, and technical feasibility to deliver a product that adds value to both the user and the organization.

Key Skills of a Product Designer

To fulfill these responsibilities, product designers need a wide range of skills that enable them to design, test, and refine their work efficiently. Some of the most critical skills include:

• UX/UI Design: Proficiency in user experience and user interface design, including principles of layout, color theory, typography, and accessibility.
• Prototyping: Ability to create interactive prototypes that demonstrate how users will navigate through the product.
• User Research: Skills in conducting and analyzing user research to inform design decisions.
• Communication: Strong communication skills to effectively present design concepts and collaborate with cross-functional teams.
• Problem-Solving: A strategic approach to solving design challenges that may arise from technical or business constraints.

Tools Commonly Used by Product Designers

Product designers rely on a variety of design and collaboration tools to bring their ideas to life. Here are a few commonly used tools:

• UXPin: Known for its end-to-end design capabilities, UXPin enables designers to create interactive prototypes, collaborate with stakeholders, and seamlessly hand off designs to developers. UXPin’s design system features are particularly valuable, as they allow designers to maintain consistency and scalability by using reusable components.
• Figma: A cloud-based design tool widely used for its real-time collaboration features, making it easy for teams to work together on the same design files.
• Sketch: A vector-based design tool known for its simplicity and ease of use, particularly for UI and UX design tasks.

What is a Product Manager?

A product manager (PM) plays a central role in guiding the product’s direction, ensuring it meets both user needs and business objectives. Often referred to as the “CEO of the product,” the product manager takes on a strategic role, overseeing everything from product vision and development to launch and continuous improvement. While product designers focus on the how of the user experience, the product manager focuses on the what and why, aligning the team around a shared vision and clear objectives.

Key Responsibilities of a Product Manager

Product managers are responsible for bridging the gap between business strategy and execution, which involves coordinating with design, development, marketing, and sales teams. Key responsibilities include:

• Product Strategy and Vision: Defining the product’s purpose, setting long-term goals, and shaping a vision that aligns with company objectives and user needs.
• Prioritization and Roadmapping: Developing and maintaining the product roadmap, prioritizing features, and determining the sequence of work to maximize impact and value.
• Stakeholder Communication: Acting as the primary point of contact for cross-functional teams, gathering input, sharing updates, and managing expectations across departments.
• User and Market Research: Conducting research to understand user needs, market trends, and competitive landscapes, ensuring the product’s value and relevance.
• Metrics and Success Tracking: Defining and tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate product success and inform future decisions.

The ultimate goal of a product manager is to create a product that aligns with the company’s goals while delivering real value to users. To do this effectively, a PM balances strategic priorities, development constraints, and user feedback.

Key Skills of a Product Manager

The diverse responsibilities of a product manager require a blend of strategic thinking, communication, and analytical skills. Essential skills for this role include:

• Product Strategy: The ability to shape a product’s direction based on company goals, user insights, and market analysis.
• Prioritization and Decision-Making: A strategic approach to making choices about what goes into the product, often requiring tough calls on feature inclusion, timelines, and budget.
• User Empathy: A deep understanding of the target audience and their pain points, helping to make user-centered product decisions.
• Communication and Stakeholder Management: Strong interpersonal skills to align cross-functional teams, manage expectations, and advocate for the product.
• Analytical Skills: Ability to interpret data, measure success, and apply insights to inform product changes or future direction.

Tools Commonly Used by Product Managers

Product managers rely on various tools to help them plan, prioritize, and communicate effectively with their teams. Some of the most popular tools include:

• Jira: A project management tool favored for its ability to track progress, manage sprints, and organize tasks, helping PMs coordinate with development teams.
• Trello: A visual task management tool useful for maintaining high-level overviews of project status and prioritization.
• Asana: A collaborative tool that enables product managers to assign tasks, track project milestones, and align team members around a shared plan.

Key Differences Between Product Designer and Product Manager

Product designers and product managers play distinct yet complementary roles in product development. While product designers focus on the usability and aesthetics of the product, product managers concentrate on the overall strategy, roadmap, and alignment with business goals. Understanding their differences in skill sets, tasks, goals, and success metrics can help create a more effective collaboration between the two roles.

• Skill Set: Product designers focus heavily on design skills, such as UX/UI design and prototyping, to ensure the product is both visually pleasing and intuitive. Product managers, on the other hand, rely on skills in product strategy, prioritization, and communication to align the product with both business goals and user needs.
• Primary Focus: Product designers concentrate on the user experience, crafting interfaces and interactions that are easy to navigate and align with brand standards. Product managers focus on the larger product vision, ensuring the product meets company objectives and is developed within time and resource constraints.
• Day-to-Day Tasks: The day-to-day activities of a product designer typically involve wireframing, prototyping, and iterating based on user feedback, while product managers spend much of their time on strategic planning, coordinating with stakeholders, and prioritizing the development roadmap.
• Project Goals: For product designers, the primary goal is to create an effective, aesthetically pleasing product that resonates with users. Product managers aim to create a product that aligns with business strategies and delivers measurable outcomes, such as increased engagement or revenue.
• Success Metrics: Product designers measure success through metrics like usability, visual consistency, and overall user satisfaction. Product managers, however, are often evaluated based on key performance indicators (KPIs), user engagement, and the business impact of the product.
• Tools Used: Product designers use design tools like UXPin, Figma, and Adobe XD, whereas product managers rely on planning and analytics tools like Jira, Productboard, and Google Analytics to manage the product lifecycle and gather insights.
• Collaboration Points: Product designers and product managers frequently collaborate to align design with strategy, exchanging insights to refine the product based on user feedback and technical feasibility. This collaboration ensures that user-centered designs are also aligned with broader business objectives.

By understanding these distinctions, companies can better leverage the unique strengths of both roles, fostering a balanced approach to product development that combines strategic insight with thoughtful design.

Key Areas of Collaboration

1. Ideation and Concept Development
   • During the early stages of product development, product designers and product managers collaborate closely to define the product’s vision. The product manager brings insights about user needs, market trends, and business objectives, while the product designer contributes ideas for how the product should look and feel to achieve these goals.
   • In brainstorming sessions, designers and PMs exchange ideas, mapping out potential features and user journeys. This collaboration ensures that both strategic and design perspectives shape the product from the outset.
2. Prototyping and Validation
   • As ideas solidify, product designers begin developing prototypes to bring the concepts to life. Product managers work alongside them to validate that the prototypes align with the roadmap and priorities, providing feedback based on user requirements and business objectives.
   • Prototyping platforms like UXPin are particularly valuable here. With UXPin’s interactive prototyping capabilities, designers can create high-fidelity, interactive prototypes that PMs can easily review and test. This shared visual model reduces misunderstandings and allows both roles to spot potential issues early on.
3. User Feedback and Iteration
   • Once a prototype is ready, gathering user feedback becomes essential. Product managers and product designers work together to analyze user feedback, which informs iterations and improvements.
   • Product managers interpret feedback through the lens of overall strategy, while designers focus on usability and user satisfaction. This collaborative analysis ensures the product remains user-centered while also meeting broader product goals.
4. Design System Consistency and Development Handoff
   • Consistency is key to delivering a polished, cohesive product experience. Designers use design systems to maintain uniformity across components, layouts, and interactions, which helps reduce inconsistencies during handoff to developers.
   • UXPin Merge bridges this design-development gap by allowing designers to use code-based components directly within the design tool, meaning the components used in design are identical to those in the final product. This not only keeps the design consistent but also reduces friction in handoffs between product design and engineering, as both designers and developers work with the same source of truth.
5. Roadmap Alignment and Continuous Collaboration
   • Throughout the product lifecycle, designers and product managers engage in continuous collaboration to ensure alignment with the roadmap. Product managers keep designers informed about any changes in priorities or timelines, while designers communicate updates on progress and design decisions.
   • Tools like UXPin facilitate ongoing collaboration by centralizing design assets and feedback, enabling both roles to stay in sync even as the product evolves.

Challenges in the Product Designer and Product Manager Relationship

While collaboration between product designers and product managers is essential for building successful products, it’s not without its challenges.Here are some common pain points in the product designer and product manager relationship, along with tips to overcome them through effective communication and alignment.

1. Conflicting Priorities
   • Product designers often prioritize user experience, focusing on elements that make the product more intuitive, enjoyable, and visually appealing. Product managers, however, may prioritize features that fulfill business objectives or meet tight deadlines, even if it means making compromises on certain design elements.
   • Example: A designer might push for a more detailed onboarding experience to improve user engagement, while a product manager may want to launch with a simpler flow to meet time constraints.
2. Balancing User Needs with Business Goals
   • Designers advocate for the user, striving to address their pain points and create seamless interactions. Meanwhile, product managers must ensure that the product supports business goals, such as revenue targets or cost efficiency. This can lead to tension when a design solution benefits users but doesn’t directly align with immediate business objectives.
   • Example: A product manager may want to add a feature that drives sales, while a designer might feel this addition clutters the user interface, making the product less user-friendly.
3. Communication Gaps
   • Product designers and managers sometimes lack clarity on each other’s constraints and workflows. Designers may not fully understand business pressures, while product managers may be unaware of the time and effort needed to execute certain design elements.
   • Example: A product manager requests a new feature without realizing that the design team needs extra time to ensure it’s consistent with the product’s visual language, leading to frustration on both sides.
4. Scope Creep and Misalignment on Feature Prioritization
   • Scope creep happens when product managers or stakeholders continuously add features or adjustments, often late in the design process. This disrupts designers’ workflow and can compromise the quality of the final product. Misalignment on feature prioritization also arises when designers and PMs have different views on which features should take precedence.
   • Example: A product manager might push for last-minute feature changes to meet a client request, while a designer struggles to adapt the design without compromising usability.

Tips for Effective Communication and Alignment

1. Establish Clear Goals and Priorities Early On
   • During the planning phase, product designers and product managers should work together to define the project’s goals, priorities, and non-negotiables. Setting these guidelines from the start helps both roles stay focused on a shared vision, even when adjustments are needed later.
   • Tip: Use collaborative project planning tools to create a shared document or roadmap, outlining key milestones, goals, and design expectations.
2. Emphasize Empathy and Understanding for Each Role’s Constraints
   • A mutual understanding of each other’s priorities and constraints can improve empathy and reduce friction. Designers should be encouraged to consider the business side of their decisions, while product managers benefit from understanding the design team’s creative process and challenges.
   • Tip: Regular cross-functional meetings and open discussions can foster this understanding. Consider holding “role reversal” sessions where designers and product managers explain the complexities of their roles to one another.
3. Implement Regular Check-ins and Feedback Loops
   • Frequent check-ins allow both designers and product managers to stay aligned as the project progresses. These can be weekly or biweekly sessions where teams discuss updates, adjust priorities, and resolve any emerging conflicts. A structured feedback loop also ensures that both roles have input before significant changes are made.
   • Tip: Use collaborative tools like UXPin, which allows product designers and managers to review interactive prototypes, making feedback more visual and immediate. UXPin Merge can also reduce back-and-forth by ensuring that design components reflect the latest codebase, minimizing misalignment.
4. Create a Decision-Making Framework for Prioritization
   • A decision-making framework helps teams assess feature requests and prioritize effectively based on criteria like user impact, business value, and design feasibility. This framework empowers designers and PMs to evaluate requests objectively, minimizing conflicts around prioritization.
   • Tip: Agree on a priority scoring system or criteria checklist that both roles can use to evaluate features, making it easier to reach a consensus on what goes into each release.
5. Document and Communicate Changes Promptly
   • Scope changes and new requirements are inevitable, but they can lead to frustration if not communicated promptly and transparently. Having a process for documenting and communicating changes ensures that designers and product managers are aligned on expectations.
   • Tip: Use a shared tool or document to track changes, providing updates to the entire team so everyone is aware of the latest priorities and requirements.

The Role of UXPin in Facilitating Collaboration

UXPin supports this collaborative relationship through design tools like UXPin Merge, which allow designers to work with actual code components. This helps maintain visual and functional consistency across designs, ensuring that what’s designed is what’s developed. Additionally, UXPin’s interactive prototypes offer a realistic preview of the product, helping product managers visualize the user experience early and align it with the strategic direction.

In short, the collaboration between product designers and product managers is vital to building products that resonate with users and fulfill business objectives. By blending strategy with user-centered design, and leveraging tools like UXPin to streamline workflows, designers and PMs can achieve a balance that brings their shared vision to life. Request access to UXPin Merge.

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We’ve looked at various trends and technology to make predictions for the future of product design. Rather than put on a tinfoil hat and talk about flying cars, we’ve focused on how current tech will evolve and identified some real opportunities for product designers and developers to innovate.

This article explores six key topics: AI, voice user interfaces, code-to-design innovation, humanity-centered design, and smart cities. The opportunities for product designers are immense, with fully interconnected cross-device and platform systems required for the next decade and beyond.

Code to design is the future of product development–and it’s already here. Bridge the gap between design and development with a single source of truth from UXPin Merge. Visit our Merge page for more details.

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AI-Driven Design Systems

AI will become integral to design systems, allowing teams to automate processes, optimize user flows, and create smarter interfaces. By 2025, design systems will incorporate AI to facilitate dynamic component generation. UXPin’s AI Component Creator, for example, already allows designers to generate custom UI components based on high-level design briefs or even user data, speeding up prototyping while maintaining accuracy and consistency with the system’s code.

AI will assist with generating and managing components, ensuring they adhere to brand guidelines and usability principles. Designers can focus on high-level strategy while AI fills in the details, making processes more efficient.

Multimodal and Voice Interfaces

By 2025, designers will need to focus on multimodal interfaces that seamlessly integrate voice, gestures, and touch. Voice User Interfaces such as those in Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa will become even more advanced, allowing for more complex interactions that go beyond simple commands.

Designers will have to blend traditional visual UIs with voice and gesture-based systems, ensuring smooth user experiences across multiple interaction modes.

VUIs will be particularly important in industries like healthcare and automotive, where hands-free interactions are becoming standard. AI-powered voice interfaces will also offer more personalized user experiences, adapting based on user habits and preferences.

AI-Assisted Prototyping and Testing

Prototyping and usability testing will benefit from AI-powered automation. Tools like UXPin Merge and Maze already leverage AI to streamline the design-to-development process, helping with theming, customization, and code-backed component generation.

In addition to automating prototyping, AI will also assist in usability testing. Tools like Maze, which use AI to analyze user interactions, will provide immediate insights and suggest design improvements. Designers will have access to real-time feedback, enabling faster iterations and more user-centered solutions.

Advanced Personalization with AI

Personalization will go beyond tailored content to offer more profound user-specific experiences. Designers will use AI to create custom UI components based on real-time data and user behavior. This will allow product teams to deliver personalized experiences at scale, where interfaces can adjust to individual preferences in real time.

This level of AI-driven personalization will ensure that products feel intuitive and engaging for diverse audiences. Design tools will harness AI to dynamically change layouts, navigation, and other key elements based on how users interact with the product, ensuring a seamless and adaptive experience.

Ethical and Sustainable Design Practices

By 2025, ethical design and sustainability will be non-negotiable components of product design. Tools like Adobe’s Sustainability Toolkit and platforms promoting ethical AI will guide designers in making responsible choices, from minimizing carbon footprints to ensuring inclusivity. AI tools can assist in flagging design decisions that may lead to ethical concerns, such as bias in algorithms or lack of accessibility in interfaces.

AI will also help teams make sustainability-driven decisions by optimizing design resources and reducing data-heavy interactions. Designers will have the tools to balance innovation with responsibility, ensuring their products contribute positively to both users and the environment.

Immersive Experiences with AR and VR

Augmented reality and virtual reality will continue to grow in importance by 2025. Tools like Unity and Blender will be essential for designers looking to create immersive 3D experiences for industries ranging from retail to healthcare. Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, and designers will need to adapt by learning new skill sets for creating interactive, multi-dimensional experiences.

AR/VR interfaces will become more intuitive as AI enhances interaction design, making these experiences feel more seamless and natural. These technologies will be integrated into everyday products, from virtual shopping apps to immersive training platforms, creating new avenues for user engagement.

Future Product Design With UXPin

Traditional UX design methods and workflows are slow and cumbersome. The design-to-code process is inefficient and doesn’t facilitate the speed and accuracy required to meet modern technologies and demands.

UXPin Merge and code-to-design are the future of product development. The streamlined design methodology enables anyone from inexperienced solopreneurs to multinational enterprises to prototype and test ideas with code-like fidelity and functionality.

Reasons why code to design enhances product development:

• A single source of truth between designers and engineers from a centralized repo reduces the inefficiencies and challenges of design-to-code workflows.
• Realistic prototypes improve testing so product teams can identify better opportunities and solve more problems during the design process.
• Realistic, interactive prototypes mean stakeholders can accurately visualize the final product resulting in meaningful feedback and increased confidence in the design process.
• Code to design results in faster time-to-market with better quality and fewer usability issues, allowing startups to compete with enterprise organizations.

Take your product design process into the future with the world’s most advanced end-to-end design tool. Visit our Merge page.

The post The Future of Product Design – Top 2025 Predictions appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

The concepts of desirability, feasibility, and viability are foundational to the design process, especially in the context of human-centered design and innovation. They help ensure that designs are not only user-centered but also practical and sustainable.

Does your design tool provide you with features to take a product from concept to design handoff? UXPin is an advanced end-to-end design tool that makes it easy to create prototypes with live React, Storybook or npm components. Check why this approach to prototyping can help you. Discover UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

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What are Desirability, Viability, and Feasibility in Design?

Desirability, viability, and feasibility is a design thinking methodology to test ideas, concepts, and hypotheses to determine if you have a unique value proposition (aka unique selling point) and whether it’s worth pursuing.

Without checking all three boxes, you increase the risks, costs, and potential for failure. You could say desirability, viability, and feasibility are a risk analysis methodology for ideas – a toolkit to find that innovation sweet spot.

By applying this methodology, you can pinpoint the weak points in your design concepts, do further research or scrap the idea and move on.

Where Does this Methodology Originate?

IDEO, a global design company, conceptualized the desirability, viability, and feasibility design thinking methodology in the early 2000s as a way to test ideas.

IDEO recognized that the best ideas succeed when they fulfill this trifecta. Conversely, “great ideas” often fail when they miss one or more of these three criteria.

Let’s look through these three lenses to understand how this trifecta fits together.

Desirability

The first box designers must check is desirability. If your product idea has no market value and people don’t want or need it, it won’t sell. 

Researching desirability will also tell you whether your product is a want or a need. For example:

• You need to get to work which you can do by walking, taking public transport, driving, carpooling, etc.
• You want a car to get to work because it offers convenience, and maybe more luxury than public transport.

A need is something your customers cannot live without, while a want is often a more desirable option to fulfilling that need. Both check the box for desirability, but a product that fulfills someone’s need is far more valuable than something someone wants or is “nice to have.”

To find a desirable product, you must research your customers and identify pain points (wants and needs) that you can fulfill. 

• Does your product solve someone’s problem?
• Do your competitors offer a solution? 
• Do you have a better idea? 
• What makes your idea unique, and why would someone choose yours over the competition?
• How will your product make end-users feel?
• Is your product so desirable that people will tell their friends?
• Will your product be something that once people try it, they won’t want to live without it?

When researching desirability, the intention is to stress-test your idea to find the gaps that need fixing. The more gaps you fill, the stronger your product and the better it will stand up against rigorous stakeholder questioning and customer satisfaction.

Example of desirability

Here’s an example of desirability in design:

Imagine you’re designing a fitness app aimed at helping people track their workouts and achieve fitness goals. To focus on desirability, you’d start by understanding users’ motivations, needs, and emotional triggers. Through user research and interviews, you might discover that your target users (let’s say busy professionals) want more than just tracking workouts—they want an app that encourages them to stay motivated and makes fitness feel rewarding.

Desirability in Action:

To address this, you design a feature that gamifies the fitness experience, such as:

• Earning badges for milestones (e.g., completing a 30-day workout streak).
• A personalized progress tracker that visually shows how close they are to their fitness goals.
• Social sharing options where users can share achievements with friends or workout communities for added motivation.
• Push notifications that are encouraging, like “You’re halfway to your weekly goal, keep it up!” rather than guilt-inducing or annoying.

These features make the app desirable because they align with users’ deeper needs—such as staying motivated, feeling accomplished, and sharing success with others. They’re not just functional, but also emotionally engaging, making users more likely to use the app regularly and enjoy the experience.

By focusing on desirability, you’re ensuring that the app does more than just meet basic needs; it makes the experience delightful and motivating, ultimately increasing user retention and satisfaction.

Viability

Viability tells you whether or not your product makes business sense. Even if you have the most desirable product in the world, if it’s too expensive or isn’t profitable, then it’s not a good business model.

A truly viable product idea makes business sense in the short-term and into the future. The quicker and longer it can deliver a positive return on investment, the higher the viability of your design idea.

A fantastic example of viability is how Coca-Cola designed a beverage formula in 1886 that’s still one of the most consumed drinks in the world today! That initial investment created massive wealth for its inventors and still delivers incredible returns for shareholders more than 135 years later.

Viability is also about societal and environmental impact—the ethical aspect of your design. Will your digital product provide a positive gain for society? In 2021, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen released documents showing that the social media giant’s internal research showed that Instagram creates anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts among teenage girls.

Instagram might deliver high financial returns in the short term, but is this harm to teenagers sustainable long-term? And what will governments do to regulate Facebook and Instagram?

Facebook is a massive company with the resources to overcome societal controversy, fines, and lawsuits. But, a smaller company or startup will mostly like fold when confronted with similar pressures. 

So, when we look at viability, it must provide value for the business, customers, and society. Some questions you might want to consider include:

• What has to be true for this design to work?
• What will it cost to turn your design into a functioning product?
• Do you have the capital investment to build the new product or feature?
• What is the pricing model? And, can the business make a profit?
• How long will it take to see a positive return on investment?
• Is the product sustainable?
• How does the product impact society?

Like desirability, viability requires you to research, analyze, and stress-test ideas to ensure they’re viable and sustainable.

Example of viability

Let’s take the same fitness app example and focus on viability—how the design supports the business and remains financially sustainable.

Viability in Action

You’ve already created a desirable app with features that engage users, but now you need to ensure that the app generates revenue and aligns with long-term business goals. To address viability, you decide to implement a freemium model with monetization strategies that balance user satisfaction with business needs.

Here’s how you might approach it:

1. Free Basic Tier: The app provides essential workout tracking features for free, attracting a wide user base. This tier gives users just enough to get value from the app and start using it regularly.
2. Premium Subscription: To drive revenue, you introduce a premium subscription that unlocks additional features. These might include:
   • Advanced fitness analytics and personalized workout plans.
   • Exclusive content like video tutorials from expert trainers.
   • Early access to new features or challenges.
   • An ad-free experience.
3. In-App Purchases: Another viable revenue stream could be selling customized workout plans or nutrition guides as one-time purchases. This allows users to buy specific content without committing to a subscription, catering to different user preferences.
4. Brand Partnerships and Sponsored Content: To further support business viability, you establish partnerships with fitness brands. These brands could sponsor certain challenges within the app, or provide users with exclusive discounts on fitness gear or supplements. This brings in additional revenue without compromising the user experience.
5. Cost-Efficient Scaling: On the backend, you work with your team to ensure that the app’s infrastructure is scalable, meaning it can grow with the user base without incurring massive costs. You may use cloud services with cost-efficient pricing models or optimize the app to use fewer resources.

Why This Supports Viability:

• The premium tier generates recurring revenue, which is crucial for long-term sustainability.
• In-app purchases provide a flexible option for users, tapping into a secondary revenue stream.
• Sponsored content and partnerships offer additional income, while also aligning with the fitness interests of users (so it feels less intrusive).
• The freemium model ensures a large user base, which helps with growth and retention, making the app attractive to potential investors or partners.

By considering these factors, you’re ensuring that the app can not only survive but thrive in the market, making it viable from a business perspective while still delivering value to users.

Feasibility

Feasibility looks at your current resources to determine if you’re capable of developing the product in the foreseeable future. Designers must consider how the product will impact the business.

Some feasibility factors include:

• Technical constraints
• Financial constraints
• Product’s impact on branding, marketing, customer support, and other areas of the business
• Estimated time-to-market
• Operational capabilities

Ideally, you want to design a new product or feature within the company’s current capabilities using available resources. When you have to build infrastructure to support a new product, you increase the risks and costs.

Here are some feasibility questions you might want to consider when designing a new product or feature:

• Does the current design system have the components to develop the new product?
• How long will it take to design and develop the product?
• Do you have enough product designers, UX designers, and engineers to build and scale the new product?
• Can our technical constraints support the new design?
• Will the organization need to hire new talent?
• If you have to extend the organization’s capabilities, how can this benefit future products?
• What impact will the product have on the brand?
• Will the product’s release impact other areas of the organization, like marketing, sales, and customer support? And do these departments have the capacity for more work?

Example of feasibility

Continuing with the fitness app example, let’s explore feasibility—ensuring that the app can actually be built and maintained with the available resources, technology, and team capacity.

Feasibility in Action

You’ve designed a desirable and potentially viable app with a freemium model, premium features, and possible in-app purchases. However, before moving forward, you need to ensure it’s technically feasible to implement these features with the resources you have.

1. Assess the Development Team’s Skills: You review your team’s capabilities. Your developers are skilled in building mobile apps, but the gamification features (like badges and achievements) you’ve designed require more sophisticated backend systems for tracking user progress in real-time. To make it feasible, you might decide to:
   • Start with basic badges that are awarded based on simple rules (e.g., completing 10 workouts) and phase in more advanced features over time.
   • Use an existing third-party service that provides gamification tools, rather than building it from scratch, saving time and resources.
2. Use Readily Available Technology: Instead of developing a custom AI-based workout recommendation engine (which would be desirable but complex), you decide to use a machine learning API from a trusted provider (like AWS or Google Cloud). This allows you to implement basic personalized recommendations with much less development effort, making the feature feasible within your current tech stack.
3. Optimize for Platform Limitations: Your team needs to ensure the app works smoothly on both iOS and Android. Since developing two separate apps would be resource-intensive, you opt for a cross-platform framework like React Native. This makes it feasible to launch on both platforms using a single codebase, saving time and reducing maintenance costs.
4. Infrastructure and Scaling: The premium subscription model will involve tracking individual user accounts, payments, and access to premium content. To ensure this is feasible at launch, you might integrate with a trusted subscription management service (like Stripe or Paddle) instead of building a custom payment system from scratch. Additionally, you consider using cloud services (e.g., AWS or Google Cloud) for scalable storage and server needs, allowing you to handle user growth without needing to manage your own servers.
5. MVP (Minimum Viable Product) Approach: You realize that building all the features—badges, custom workout plans, social sharing, etc.—at once is not feasible within your current timeline and budget. So, you plan to release an MVP version of the app that includes the core workout tracking and a few simple badges. Other features, like advanced analytics or social sharing, will be introduced in later versions once the app gains traction and resources allow for further development.

Why This Supports Feasibility

• By leveraging third-party tools and APIs, you reduce the development time and complexity, making the project more manageable.
• Using React Native allows you to build for both iOS and Android with a single development team, saving significant time and cost.
• Subscription management services like Stripe make payments and user account management straightforward without the need to build complex systems in-house.
• Focusing on an MVP approach ensures you can release the app in stages, allowing the team to validate the core idea and refine the product without being overwhelmed by too many features at once.

By considering the team’s skills, available technology, and development time, this approach ensures that the fitness app can be built within the given constraints, making it feasible.

Using Desirability, Viability, and Feasibility in a Design Review

Organizations conduct a design review during the early stages of a product design to evaluate the design against specific criteria. The goal is to identify any problems with the design or prototype before developing it–which carries the costs of infrastructure, marketing, sales, customer support, and more.

Essentially, the organization wants to know the product design’s desirability, viability, and feasibility.

A UX Design Review Template

Applying the desirability, viability, and feasibility design thinking methodology will give you the insights and data to present a comprehensive and objective design review to stakeholders. 

Below is a structure or template you can use to present your design review so that it’s easy for stakeholders to read and digest.

The problem: State the problem succinctly. The design and business teams will build a shared understanding from this foundation.

The system (current state): Show how the current system works (if it’s an existing product) to help put the problem in context. Later, you can show how the system could work with your proposed experience.

The Jobs To Be Done (JBTD): A shared understanding of what motivates your customers is crucial for a design review. As Tony Ulwick defines JBTD: “a lens through which you can observe markets, customers, user needs, competitors, and customer segments differently, and by doing so, make innovation far more predictable and profitable.” This lens helps stakeholders understand how customers decide whether to “hire” or “fire” your solution.

The business objective: State the business value and ROI for solving this customer problem.

The metrics that matter: You can’t improve what you don’t measure. These metrics should enable you to quantify the business and customer value you’ll create through your new product design.

The proposed experience: Summarize the proposal in a sentence. Make it clear and understandable. The people in the room need to understand how this proposal relates to the problem you’ve previously articulated.

The implications of your proposal: How will your proposal impact other parts of the business? Maybe you don’t know. Understanding this early in the product design process is critical to achieving balance in desirability, viability, and feasibility.

Basic experience design: Present your wireframes, mockups, prototypes, or minimum viable product (MVP) so that stakeholders can visualize how a customer might find the product desirable.

Insights informing the design: What led you to choose this design? What were the insights, hypotheses, etc.? Show your depth of thought in a few bullet points.

Hypotheses about the new design: 

• What are your hypotheses about the new design? 
• How did you arrive at this hypothesis? 
• How can you align these hypotheses to the metrics you believe matter?

These should be clear and testable. By conducting tests with clear pass/fail metrics, these hypotheses should also give you a strong foundation for measuring the incremental progress you’re making.

The team’s collaborative focus: Why are you all in the room? What input do you need from stakeholders? This section of the design review template helps set a clear context and focus for the stakeholders responsible for the product’s success.

With UXPin Merge, you can use built-in component libraries to quickly assemble high-fidelity prototypes and MVPs and present these to stakeholders during the design review. This will definitely speed up your time to market, and make you release quality products faster. Discover UXPin Merge.

The post What is Desirability, Viability, and Feasibility? [+ Design Review Template] appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

A well-structured design system checklist guides your team through each essential step of creating a design system, ensuring that nothing gets overlooked—from auditing current design patterns to standardizing elements like typography, color palettes, and spacing. It serves as a roadmap that helps you prioritize what’s most important, streamline collaboration between designers and developers, and ensure that the design system evolves as your product grows.

By following a checklist, you can avoid common pitfalls, maintain consistency across your UI, and create a system that is scalable and adaptable to new challenges. A design system checklist is not just a to-do list—it’s a strategic tool that helps you build a robust, sustainable design system that empowers your team to work more efficiently and deliver high-quality user experiences every time.

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Checklist for Building an Effective Design System

Here’s a structured 14-step checklist that ensures you build an efficient, consistent, and scalable design system.

1. Create the Patterns Inventory

A patterns inventory in a design system is essentially a collection of all the design patterns or UI elements used across a product or set of products. It’s like a catalog or checklist that helps teams identify, organize, and evaluate the consistency of the various components within the interface. These patterns can include things like buttons, form fields, navigation elements, typography, colors, icons, and more.

The goal of this process is to create a foundation for building or refining the design system, ensuring that every component is accounted for, standardized, and reusable. It also serves as a reference point for designers and developers to maintain consistency across the product as it evolves.

Here’s a design system checklist for running patterns inventory:

• Collect Design Patterns: Take screenshots of design patterns or collect them directly from design project files.
• Organize Patterns: Categorize patterns based on your frontend architecture, if available. Common categories include elements, modules, and components.
• Consult Developers: Check if the frontend architecture is modular, and use it to organize patterns into categories.
• Categorize Without Modular Architecture: If there’s no modular architecture, manually categorize patterns (e.g., buttons, form fields, etc.) to identify inconsistencies.

2. Create the Colors Inventory

A color inventory in a design system is a comprehensive audit of all the colors used across a product or set of products. It involves identifying and cataloging every color used in the user interface, including variations in shades, tints, tones, and any color variables defined in the code (like in CSS or design tokens).

Here’s a design system checklist for color inventory:

• List All Colors: Traverse code files and list all the color variables or colors used in CSS.
• Organize by Common Denominators: Group colors by hue, shades, tones, or similarity (e.g., grays, reds, greens).
• Identify Anomalies: Take note of anomalies, like too many shades of gray, and streamline the palette.

3. Create the Typography Inventory

A typography inventory is an essential step in ensuring that your design system maintains a consistent, scalable approach to text styles across your product or projects.

Here’s a design system checklist for typography inventory:

• Review Text Styles: Walk through the UI, checking all text styles through the browser console.
• Form a Typographic Scale: Organize text styles by their importance (e.g., from H1 to small text). Create multiple scales if necessary.
• Match Code with Styles: If CSS preprocessors (e.g., Sass) are used, note mixins and variables used to generate text styles.

4. Create the Icons Inventory

An icons inventory in a design system is a comprehensive audit and cataloging of all the icons used across a product. It is designed to assess the consistency, quality, and relevance of the icons in the UI and to ensure that the icons adhere to the brand’s visual guidelines.

Here’s a design system checklist for icons inventory:

• Inventory Icons: Identify all icon libraries used across the product.
• Mark Inconsistencies: Look for mismatches (e.g., different icons for the same action or mismatched icon families).
• Review Implementation Methods: Understand how icons are implemented (e.g., inline SVG, icon fonts) and note inconsistencies.

5. Create the Space Inventory

A space inventory helps standardize and streamline how space is used in the UI, making designs more consistent, scalable, and easier to maintain. It creates a solid foundation for your design system’s layout, ensuring that spacing remains predictable and intentional throughout the product.

Here’s a design system checklist for space inventory:

• Document Grid Systems: List and document grid systems used across the product portfolio.
• Check Padding and Spacing: Analyze container padding to spot inconsistencies.

6. Get the Support of the Organization

• Team Presentation: Explain the inventory process, highlight key inconsistencies, and present the design system as the solution.
• Stakeholder Presentation: Focus on how inconsistencies affect costs and development speed. Highlight measurable data (e.g., 62 shades of gray) to demonstrate the need for a design system.

7. Build a Multidisciplinary Systems Team

• List Skills Needed: Identify the necessary skills for fixing inconsistencies and managing the design system long-term.
• Allocate Time Realistically: Ensure that team members can allocate time to work on the design system, even if part-time.
• Clarify Roles and Sprints: Define roles, decision-making processes, and the length of sprints (e.g., one or two weeks).

8. Make Key Decisions and Establish Rules

• Decide on System Foundation: Choose whether to build the system from scratch or use an existing product as the foundation.
• Technology Stack: Decide whether to use the existing tech stack or introduce new technology.
• Define KPIs: Set measurable goals for the design system, such as improving consistency or speed of implementation.
• Formulate Design Principles: Define shared values for the design system, such as consistency, craftsmanship, or accessibility.

9. Build the Color Palette

• Unify Colors: Use the color inventory to create a consistent color palette, ensuring no redundant or unused colors.
• Naming Conventions: Choose between abstract, actual, or functional names for colors (e.g., pigeon-gray, silver-base).
• Test the Palette: Ensure the palette works well across the UI and follows accessibility standards (WCAG).
• Implement and Present: Implement the palette in CSS, test the changes, and present it to designers for feedback.

10. Build the Typographic Scale

• Create a Consistent Typescale: Build a typographic scale that includes font size, weight, line-height, etc.
• Test and Implement: Test the new scale across the UI, then implement it in CSS. Involve designers in the feedback process.
• Finalize and Document: Finalize the scale, document it, and make it available in design tools (e.g., UXPin, Sketch).

11. Implement the Icons Library

• Finalize the Icons: Decide which icons to include and how they’ll be implemented.
• Test and Review: Thoroughly test icons on a test server and ensure consistency across the product.
• Document and Deliver: Add icons to design system documentation and make them accessible in design tools.

12. Standardize Other Style Properties

• Standardize Grid, Space, and Styles: Apply the same standardization process used for color, typography, and icons to grid systems, spacing, and other style properties.
• Test and Implement: Ensure everything is tested and reviewed before finalizing and communicating to the company.

13. Build the First Design System Pattern

• Decide on Pattern Architecture: Choose an architecture for your patterns (e.g., Atomic Design, modular components).
• Build and Test: Implement one pattern (e.g., buttons), test it with developers and designers, and iterate based on feedback.
• Finalize and Document: Add the pattern to the design system documentation and make it available in design tools.

14. Run a Sprint Retrospective

In the context of a design system, the retrospective focuses on assessing how the team handled the specific tasks related to the system’s development, such as creating new components, documenting guidelines, testing implementations, or aligning design with code.

• Review the Sprint: Summarize the outcomes and KPIs from the sprint and reflect on improvements for future sprints.

What if You Need a Design System Fast?

If you need to create a design system fast and can’t afford to create a design system team, here’s what you can do.

Take advantage of the pre-built component libraries in UXPin, like the MUI kit, Ant Design kit, or Tailwind kit. These libraries are integrated directly into UXPin and offer a great way to get started. They’re fully coded, so you can share them with your devs. They are well-documented, so you don’t need a design system documentation right away. And they’re fully customizable, so you can match them with your style guide.

Your team will be able to share the same components and they will be able to use components right away, and you can focus on making sure everything fits your brand’s style, like colors and typography. UXPin also allows you to apply themes to these components (with the use of AI), which means your designs can start looking like they belong to your product without a lot of heavy lifting.

If time’s a factor, you don’t have to redo everything at once. You can instruct developers to use existing components with specific properties, and since UXPin keeps everything dynamic, any changes you make later will automatically update across the system. This saves a ton of time down the line.

I’d also recommend focusing your energy on the style guide—getting your colors, typography, and visual feel in order. These are the foundations that will tie your system together. Plus, understanding how these libraries work will help you ensure everything fits nicely with how your product is built.

In the end, design systems can be tricky, but using UXPin’s pre-built libraries makes the whole process a lot more manageable. It’ll give you more room to focus on the fun part—actually designing great products.

Empower Your Team with a Robust Design System

Creating a design system might seem like a daunting task, but with the right approach, it becomes a strategic investment that will enhance collaboration, ensure consistency, and improve scalability across your product. By following the checklist outlined above—from building a patterns inventory to standardizing spacing, typography, and iconography—you can ensure that your design system is well-organized, effective, and aligned with both design and development needs.

One of the key elements to making this process smoother is using a powerful tool like UXPin Merge. With UXPin’s built-in code libraries (MUI, Ant Design, React-Bootstrap or Tailwind kits), seamless integration with design and development workflows, and dynamic components, your team can create a design system that’s not only cohesive but also adaptable to future growth.

By taking incremental steps, focusing on key priorities like style guides and component libraries, and leveraging UXPin to align your design and development teams, you can build a system that ensures long-term success. So, don’t wait—start building your design system with UXPin today, and empower your team to create scalable, efficient, and beautifully cohesive products! Request access to UXPin Merge.

The post Design System Checklist for 2024 appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Ever wondered why some digital products feel intuitive, while others leave you lost and frustrated? The key is effective digital product design.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll demystify the process of designing digital products, emphasizing the importance of user experience, prototyping, and iterative development. We’ll also highlight common pitfalls to avoid in product design.

Key takeaways:

• Product design is a process of creating an interactive interface of a digital product that aligns with user needs, business requirements, and technical constraints.
• Product designers are people in charge of creating the design of a product. To do this job, they can get a degree, attend courses and/or read books about product design.
• Product design has 5 distinctive steps, but it’s not a linear process; product designers may go back to certain steps if they uncover new insights.
• One of the step is prototyping – creating an interactive mockup of a product that shows behaviors and user journey prior to building the product in code.
• Successful product design puts emphasis on UX writing, manages errors, keep users in the center, and takes iterations seriously. An example of successful product design is Apple.

Our goal is to provide a definitive resource for anyone passionate about creating digital products that truly enhance people’s lives.

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What is Product Design?

Designing digital products is all about creating a solution that addresses a particular need or problem that people have. To do this, designers should follow this product design process:

• Learn about target users – who are they? How do they behave? What do they like and dislike?
• Identify challenges that users face.
• Brainstorm potential solutions to these challenges.
• Figure out how your product might fit into the audiences’ lives.
• Test your design, gathering feedback from people who might end up using it. 

To gain a deeper understanding of product design and discover the steps involved, read our dedicated article: What is Product Design? 

Product Designer vs UX Designer

Product designers and UX designers both have important roles in the development of a digital product, but while they share some common interests they’re quite separate functions. 

A UX designer is mainly focused on how the product feels to the user. In the early stages of a design project, they study users’ behavior and try to understand their needs and motivations. 

A UX designer’s goal is to create a seamless and intuitive user journey, so they think carefully about how each step flows into the next. They want to ensure the user can accomplish their goals in the easiest way possible. They even incorporate principles of cognitive psychology into their designs to make digital products more usable. 

On the other hand, a product designer has a broader role that includes not only the user experience but also the business goals and technical constraints.

They are involved in all aspects of product development, from the initial idea to the final implementation. They look at the bigger picture, thinking about how all the pieces fit together to create a coherent whole. This includes how the product looks (user interface), how it works (interaction design), and how it fits into the larger market.

In short, while UX designers focus on the user’s journey and experience, product designers consider the entire product from a holistic perspective, including the business and technical aspects. They both aim to create products that users love, but their approach and focus areas are slightly different.

To learn more, read our comparative piece on the specificity of a UX designer’s and product designer’s work. if you are interested in a role of product designer, check out how to become a product designer.

How Do You Create a Product Design?

Here are five steps you can take to create your product design.

Step 1: Empathize with your users

This is arguably the most important step in product design. Understanding your users goes beyond knowing their demographics; it’s about empathizing with them. This means finding out about their needs, habits, frustrations, and desires as these all relate to your product. 

To do this, conduct interviews, surveys, or observe users in their natural environment. The more you know about your users, the better equipped you are to design a product that fits seamlessly into their lives.

Step 2: Identify the problem

Once you understand your users, the next step is to identify the problems they face, which your product could help solve. 

This is where you convert the insights you gained from empathizing with your users into a clear problem statement that captures the main issues your users are experiencing. 

While the statement needs to be clear and specific enough to provide guidance, it shouldn’t be overly prescriptive – it’s essential to allow room for flexibility and creative thought. 

Step 3: Ideation

This product design step is all about brainstorming as many ideas as possible. No idea is too wild or too mundane. Let your creativity flow, and try to think of every possible way to solve the problem you identified. 

Tools like mind maps, sketches, or storyboards can help visualize these ideas. And don’t worry about practicality or feasibility – the goal is quantity, not quality. The more ideas you have, the more raw material you have for the next step.

Step 4: Prototyping

Now it’s time to turn some of those ideas into tangible, testable, mini-versions of your product – also known as prototypes. 

Start with paper prototypes such as rough sketches. These let you quickly see how your product might work without investing too much time or resources. 

Once you’re satisfied with the basic function, you can progress to high-fidelity prototypes. These are more detailed and interactive, and they give a better representation of the final product.

Step 5: Testing

The final step is where you’ll see if your product actually solves the problem it was designed for. 

Give your prototypes to actual users, watch them interact with your product, and listen to their feedback. 

Remember, this step is about learning and improving, not about proving that you’re right. Don’t be discouraged if there are issues; instead, see them as opportunities to refine your product.

Check out our “How to Design a Product in 5 Steps” article to learn more about this topic.

Best Tips on Product UX Design

These pointers should help to enhance the user experience of your product.

Don’t ignore UX writing

UX writing creates clear, useful text for digital products. It helps to reduce confusion and enhance navigation. Here are five essential UX writing tips:

1. Keep copy short and simple: the aim is to convey the necessary information in as few words as possible.
2. Prioritize accessibility: make sure your text is easy to understand for all users – avoid jargon or colloquialisms. 
3. Use visuals and formatting for clarity: If images can explain your ideas better than words, use them instead. Also, break up large chunks of copy into shorter and more scannable lists. 
4. Use an active voice: it makes your writing easier to understand. 
5. Play it straight: try not to be too clever or humorous.

Test your designs – always

It’s essential to always test your designs. This ensures your product not only looks good but performs well and meets user expectations. 

You can use a variety of testing methods. Gather feedback from users representing your target audience, use online platforms to gain access to lots of remote users, or conduct in-person panels for detailed insights. 

Early testing catches issues when they’re still easy and cost-effective to fix. Just as importantly, it helps you stay laser-focused on delivering an excellent user experience, ultimately leading to a product that users will appreciate and love.

Regularly observe user behavior

As a designer, it can be tempting to assume users will intuitively understand your product. To avoid making this mistake, observe their behavior consistently. Monitoring users’ interactions can uncover unexpected behaviors or misunderstandings, which act as a reality check.

Tests don’t have to be extensive. You can run sessions with as few as 5 users to spot 75% of issues. But ultimately, testing will improve your product’s intuitiveness and user-friendliness.

Deal with user errors

Product design involves two key steps in addressing user errors:

• Helping users when they make a mistake.
• Analyzing these errors to fine-tune the user experience – For instance, if a user misses a required field when completing a form, a clear error message should guide them. But if many users can’t recover from a given mistake, the design needs revisiting.

Remember, users have varying tech skills and devices, so a minor hiccup for one might be a major obstacle for another. The designer’s role is to minimize these barriers, ensuring a seamless experience for everyone.

Introduce changes gradually

When you have several changes or improvements to make to a product, it’s best not to introduce them all at the same time. 

This is because if you make too many alterations at once, it can be hard to determine which changes are successful and which ones may need further tweaking.

To put it another way, if you adjust just one or two things, you can observe whether these changes fix the issues they were intended to resolve and if users understand and find them beneficial. This approach gives you a clear picture of each change’s effectiveness.

We’re discussing more tips on product UX design in our dedicated article. Give it a read: Best Tips on Product UX Design.

Best Tips on Prototyping for Product Design

A prototype is a simple model of your product that shows its basic functions and can help turn your product ideas into reality. Here are some tips to make the most of this important design stage.

Decide what to show with your prototype 

Before you start designing your prototype, follow these important steps:

1. Agree on what features your prototype needs to have.

2. Get a clear understanding of what the key stakeholders expect to see from your prototype. 

3. Discuss the product features with developers and identify any potential technical issues.

4. Think about whether the prototype can realistically be made into a full product and if it could be a real business opportunity.

Gathering this information upfront can give clarity to your prototype designs, saving time and resources. 

Turn to rapid collaborative prototyping if you’re under time pressure 

If you’re working to tight deadlines, rapid prototyping can help you get to the testing stage much quicker. 

The idea is to create a workable model of the product in as little as a day. While the resulting prototypes are usually simpler and less polished, the emphasis is very much on iterative design – the cycle of building, testing, refining, and repeating. 

It helps if team members work together using a digital whiteboard and a collaborative product design tool like UXPin with its Merge technology, which lets you prototype with reusable components. This makes it easier to bounce ideas off each other and come up with a workable design much quicker. Discover UXPin Merge.

Select your fidelity

When deciding how detailed and close to the final version your prototype should be – a characteristic known as ‘fidelity‘ – you need to consider who you’re showing the prototype to and what stage of the design process you’re at.

Low-fidelity prototypes, like simple sketches or basic wireframes, are sufficient for an internal design team review. They’re usually enough to help your colleagues visualize ideas and spark discussion.

High-fidelity prototypes are more polished – how they look and behave is closer to the final product. These are more suitable for gathering feedback from your target users.

Mid-level fidelity prototypes can be shown to stakeholders or team members who are neither part of your design team, nor target users. The level of detail these prototypes contain is somewhere between low and high fidelity. 

Test your prototypes with actual users

Testing functional designs with your colleagues can be helpful, but there’s a real chance they might miss issues that actual users would face.

That’s why it’s essential to test your prototypes with the people who’ll end up using the finished product. 

As we mentioned in the previous section, before testing, you need to decide whether you’re using a basic, low-fidelity prototype or one that’s more detailed and closer to the final product. This decision influences what kind of feedback you’re looking for and what you want to learn from the test.

It’s also helpful to identify your end users’ personas and the scenarios in which they might use your product. This helps you understand the context of use and plan your tests accordingly.

You can test in person, which allows for more detailed feedback as you can observe users’ reactions and ask questions. Or you can use online platforms that allow you to reach a larger number of potential users.

To learn 5 more prototype product design tips, check out this article: Prototype Product Design – 9 Tips.

Best Examples of Digital Product Design 

Apple

Apple stands out as a shining example of a company that designs with diverse user needs at heart, constantly refining its products for increased accessibility and usability.

• For people who have vision problems, Apple provides features like voiceover, zoom, and Braille support. These help users understand what’s on the screen or in the environment around them.
• Subtitles are made available for those with hearing impairments, covering everything from videos to conversations. Apple also produces bespoke devices aimed at helping these users hear better.
• Apple has features like voice navigation and devices that can be controlled with eye movements to help individuals with limited mobility. This means users can navigate their devices without touching them.
• Cognitive challenges are met with thoughtful designs that help filter out distracting background noise and visuals.

Discord

The communication platform Discord was initially designed to make it easy for gamers to interact. It’s since expanded and now allows users to discuss a range of topics, helped by a design that’s simple enough to use without distraction, while also offering enough depth to cater to specific user needs. Features include:

• The ability to join or create ‘servers’ or chat rooms. These can be large, public groups, or smaller, private ones.
• The creation of ‘channels’ within servers. This helps keep discussions on different topics separate and organized.
• Direct messaging and ‘pinging’ (notifying) individual users for quick, private communication.
• Users can choose to communicate via voice or text.
• The customizable user interface allows you to personalize text, emojis, usernames, and icons to reflect your preferences.

TikTok

The hugely popular social media app has revolutionized the user experience with its unique design. 

This includes a full-screen feed for immersive viewing, clear interactive features, an endless stream of short, personalized content, and features that support diverse user needs. 

These design elements, combined with added accessibility options like auto-captions and photosensitivity warnings, have made TikTok a globally popular and user-friendly app. And its success underlines the importance of thoughtful product design.

We’ve only discussed 3 out of 5 best product design examples, you can find the remaining ones here. 

Reasons for Bad Product Design with Examples

Aggressive popups

Popups that appear immediately on a website can be a big turn-off for users. Before they’ve even had a chance to explore what’s on offer, they’re being asked to sign up for a newsletter or download something, which can be disruptive and off-putting.

It’s important to remember that people visit your site seeking answers, often with limited time and attention. Being bombarded with popups can quickly ruin their experience and lead them to seek alternatives. 

Of course, that’s not to say all pop-ups are bad – just that timing is crucial. It’s better to let users engage with your content first before trying to persuade them to sign up for additional services or promotions.

An overly complex navigation

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a popular platform that provides a wide range of cloud computing services, but it’s really difficult to navigate.

When you click on their products tab, you’re hit with a ton of choices which can feel overwhelming, especially on a mobile where you have to keep scrolling. This can frustrate users, making it hard to find what they need. 

Even though AWS’s design is aesthetically pleasing, the tricky navigation could be improved to enhance the user experience. This would stop visitors from leaving the site in a huff because they can’t find what they’re looking for.

Stigmatizing certain user groups

Product design can unintentionally stigmatize certain user groups, particularly older people. 

Take walking canes for example. Once upon a time, these were carefully crafted to look like fashionable accessories – as well as being sturdy and functional. But today, devices for seniors often look unattractive, signifying frailty. This can discourage people from using them.  

Large-button phones for visually impaired people feel similarly outdated. Rather than designing ‘special’ products like these that make particular groups feel ostracized, we should make all products more inclusive, allowing for customizations like adjustable font sizes. That way, everyone will feel comfortable using them. 

We share more bad product design examples in a dedicated article: Bad Product Design. 

Product Design Degrees that Help you Land a Job

There are three main avenues that lead to a career in design, including product and UX design roles:

Bachelor’s Degree at a University

Studying for a design degree at a university can give you an advantage over others in this competitive field. 

Universities offer comprehensive courses on all sorts of specialisms, including color, typography, layout, and idea communication. They also foster skills in giving and receiving feedback, which are highly valued in the professional world. 

You could also consider degrees in programming as they allow you to understand the technical constraints that could influence product design.

One of the main benefits of a design degree is that it can potentially lead to higher pay.

But it’s worth saying that to get on a course you’ll need to have built a solid portfolio of work. Other potential obstacles include the fact that design degrees are expensive and take a long time to complete – often between two to four years.

Do-it-yourself

Self-learning can be a viable and flexible route – as long as you have plenty of discipline! 

Books like Don Norman’s ‘The Design of Everyday Things’ provide essential insights into human-centered design. But product design is complex, and involves more than just reading; learning from industry experts through mentorship, internships, or online courses can be invaluable. 

Networking is also key. Be sure to maintain connections with classmates and industry contacts, as they might prove helpful in the future.

Some helpful resources include:

• Nielsen Norman Group
• CenterCentre
• Codecademy
• The Shape Of Design
• The UX Design Process Book Bundle

Bootcamp Courses

Design bootcamps offer a fast-tracked learning experience in your chosen field. 

These programs can be undertaken in-person, online, or through blended learning, and some even offer scholarships or deferred payment options. 

Whether you’re a recent graduate or a professional seeking a career shift, bootcamp courses can effectively introduce you to the field and bridge knowledge gaps.

Here are some courses you can look into:

• Become a UX Designer from Scratch
• Design Thinking: The Beginner’s Guide
• User Research – Methods and Best Practices
• Accessibility: How to Design for All
• Mobile User Experience (UX) Design
• Conducting Usability Testing
• UI Design Patterns for Successful Software
• UX Management: Strategy and Tactics 

For more detailed guidance on product design careers, read our article on product design programs.

Top Books about Product Design

These four titles are essential reading for anyone interested in the field of product design.

‘Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products’ by Nir Eyal

Eyal’s book offers valuable insights into creating products that attract and retain users, focusing on his four-step Hook Model used in many successful products.

‘Lean Startup’ by Eric Ries

Ries’ guide to creating value-driven products is a must-read for designers, teaching them to rapidly prototype, test, and iterate designs for optimal alignment with business strategy and user needs.

‘Laws of UX: Using Psychology to Design Better Products & Services’ by Jon Yablonski

Yablonski’s book stresses the role of human psychology in UX design, offering a practical guide on applying psychological principles to build intuitive products, illustrated with examples from popular apps.

‘Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products That Create Customer Value and Business’ by Teresa Torres

Torres’s book highlights the importance of ongoing innovation in design to ensure that products and services remain relevant and valuable to users.

Read detailed review of those books and others here: Product Design Books that Will Push Your Skills Forward.

Master the Art of Designing Digital Products

Designing digital products balances functionality, aesthetics, and user needs, making it a diverse and complex field. 

In today’s digital era, the importance of designing intuitive, engaging products can’t be overstated. As a designer, every detail of your work could impact someone’s life. 

Hopefully, this guide has given you plenty of insight into digital product design, empowering you to create digital products that aren’t just useful and nice to look at, but lead to truly enriching experiences. 

Use UXPin with its Merge technology to build a realistic and clickable prototype of your product. UXPin Merge allows you to use a single source of truth for designers and devs, so it makes product design collaborative from the start. Release products faster with Merge. Discover UXPin Merge.

The post Product Design Guide – How to Create a Product Design? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

The quality of design is about more than offering a visually-appealing interface; it has a direct impact on the product’s commercial success. According to McKinsey & Company, using design thinking methods leads to a 35% increase in revenue. It also prompts a 56% increase in return compared to businesses that put product design in the back seat. But what does it take to get product design “right”? This is what we’re going to cover in this part.

Release products 10x faster with powerful design technology – UXPin Merge which makes it easy for designers to prototype with ready-made UI components that are fully interactive. Discover UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

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

Discover UXPin Merge

How to Design a Product? – 5 Steps of Product Design

Irrespective of your design process, you must ensure it circles around usability. Below are the five steps of product design that you should follow as you roll out solutions. 

Bear in mind that – while it’s divided into stages – design isn’t an iterative process, so you engage in all of these actions on an ongoing basis as you refine your product.

Step 1: Empathize

Showing empathy is the first and, arguably, most crucial step of product design. It requires a deep understanding of your users, their experiences, and their needs. Essentially, you and the design team set aside your own assumptions and personal biases.

There are plenty of methods you can use to learn about your target users. For instance, you can collect qualitative data directly by asking them questions in surveys or interviews. Alternatively, you can decide to ‘sit back’ and observe how users interact with the product or service uninterrupted, in their natural environment. This can be done through unmoderated usability tests.

What to do if you’re designing for a group of users who seem inaccessible? Talk to experts in the field who can help you better understand the most common needs and problems in the niche. It’s not uncommon for designers to pair up with psychologists, sociologists, or even anthropologists. By doing so, you learn about the social and cultural background of the users, making your solution even more user-friendly.

Useful Tools and Resources:

• Learn about desirability, feasibility, and viability.
• Learn about UX research.
• Learn the business value of design.

Step 2: Define

The second step in learning how to design a product is creating a clear problem statement. At this stage, you use the insights gathered during the ‘Empathize’ phase and define the challenges you seek to solve with your product.

The statement needs to be:

• Human-centered. Focus on the user’s perspective, emphasizing their needs and goals. The statement should resonate with the target user.
• Balances between specificity and flexibility. While it should be specific enough to provide guidance, it must also guarantee enough flexibility to encourage creativity and innovative solutions. This helps designers have a clear direction without constraining their ability to generate ideas.

Problem statements can be short or take on a descriptive form. Some teams use the Point of View Madlib, which is a sentence that follows the template:

[User X] needs to/does [explanation of the action] because [the insight]. 

Others use 2-4 sentences to define the challenge and any unique circumstances. 

Here are some examples of well-defined problem statements:

• We’re seeing an unexpected increase in people abandoning the signup process. Customers say that they’re frustrated with the number of forms they need to fill in to create an account. We need to streamline the sign-up process.
• New customers say that they can’t understand our pricing scheme without asking customer support for help. The “pricing” page has a significant bounce rate because they don’t know how to easily compare features between tiers.
• Streaming platform users say that they are missing a filtering option or – if it exists – they can’t find it. They can’t eliminate movies that have an IMDb score lower than 7/10 and have to check each rating movie by movie, on their phones. 

So, the Define step of product design zeroes in on a specific, user-centric issue statement. When designers grasp the issue they’re trying to solve, they’re more likely to create a solution that helps people.

Useful Tools and Resources:

• Learn about creating personas.
• Learn about problem statements.

Step 3: Ideate

Ideation, the third step in product design, inspires new ideas. The prior two stages—empathizing and defining—provide a solid basis for this phase. With this information, designers can question preconceptions and explore alternate problem-solving techniques.

Sketching facilitates this process, allowing designers to visualize ideas and iterate on concepts. 

It’s a good idea to turn to techniques like Google’s Crazy 8s and the 4-step Sketch exercise. They set time limits for each brainstorming session, which boosts your team’s focus (and, ultimately, productivity). 

After developing ideas and exploring them, you start eliminating those that aren’t viable. By the end, you’ll agree on the one idea to proceed with next. 

Next, you frame it as a user story. It’s quite similar to the previously mentioned Madlib problem statement, and follows the template below:

As a [user], I want to do [X], so that [Y].

For example:

“As a customer, I want to pay through the app, so that I don’t have to reach for my credit card every time I complete an order”.

It helps articulate the goal and defines an actionable task. Knowing the ‘what’, designers can now focus on the ‘how’.

As you can see, designing a successful product comes up to a lot of preliminary research, way before you create the first wireframe. The product design process lets you discover industry-changing breakthroughs by challenging the status quo. Tried-and-true methods like user stories help design teams create a clear roadmap for the prototyping step, discussed next.

Useful Tools and Resources:

• Try out Google’s Crazy 8s.
• Run the 4-step Sketch exercise.

Step 4: Prototype

In the product design process, the prototyping stage helps turn ideas into the first tangible, testable collateral. By developing scaled-down prototypes, design teams can check potential solutions and identify any limitations or problems the product might face. This step ensures the end product meets user expectations. 

Prototyping can be divided into two types: low-fidelity and high-fidelity.

Low-Fidelity Prototypes

Low-fidelity prototypes are simple, hand-drawn, or basic digital wireframes without color or content. They enable UX teams to visualize screen layouts, test navigation, and assess user flows. For example, a typical eCommerce checkout flow with a cart, delivery, and payment module can be represented as a low-fidelity prototype. 

According to the Nielsen Norman Group, low-fidelity prototyping helps designers iterate faster and facilitates stakeholder buy-in. Also, it encourages a focus on functionality rather than aesthetics.

High-Fidelity Prototypes

High-fidelity prototypes incorporate color, content, interactions, transitions, and animations. This assists in creating a more immersive user experience. In essence, they closely resemble the final product. And since they’re more relatable to users and stakeholders, they’re also likely to make the design feedback you collect more valuable.

What’s more, high-fidelity prototypes are great at pointing out usability issues. Remember that they might be missed or unaccounted for in low-fidelity versions. 

One powerful tool for creating high-fidelity prototypes is UXPin Merge. It enables designers to work with coded UI components, which can be imported from Storybook, NPM, or Git repositories. Using UXPin Merge, even small design teams can create life-like prototypes that adhere to design system guidelines. The imported components look and function like those in the final product, which helps streamline the prototyping process.

Useful Tools and Resources:

• Learn about high-fidelity prototyping vs. low-fidelity.
• Learn about interactive prototypes.

Step 5: Test

The fifth and last step in successful product design is the testing phase. Designers or evaluators rigorously assess the efficacy and viability of the product. This stage is a key ingredient of iterative design thinking, letting designers spot problems and brainstorm how to refine them.

The main goal of the testing phase is to determine how well the prototype solves the identified issue. It doesn’t involve implementing or synthesizing research. Instead, the focus lies on employing the most appropriate research methods. These approaches help gather detailed feedback, insights, and document findings.

While various usability testing methods exist, they can be roughly narrowed down to two categories:

• Moderated tests. These involve direct interactions between the facilitator and the participant. Users are asked to complete a task, like downloading a PDF report from the user panel. They might either be asked to comment on what they’re doing at each step, or asked questions by the facilitator.
• Unmoderated tests. These exclude the facilitator’s presence, but the participants still get a list of instructions they are to follow. 

The good news is that usability testing doesn’t require a large investment. According to Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group, you can spot as many as 85% of all issues by testing with just five users! 

Better yet, evaulating your product design doesn’t have to be limited to structured usability testing sessions. You can also do so asynchronously, for instance, by sharing a prototype and asking users and stakeholders to comment directly on the design.

They can place a pin on any elements that they want to comment or ask about. This makes it easy for users to comment either on the overall user experience and product ‘feel’, or zero-in on details like buttons or images.

This is possible with a tool like UXPin, which lets you design and collect specific user feedback directly on the prototype. This means fewer errors in the final product.

Useful Tools and Resources:

• Learn how to run insightful usability testing
• Learn how you can use fully functional prototypes in usability testing 

Getting the Product Design Process Right

There isn’t a single, one-size-fits-all answer to the question of how to design a product. Each product enters the market at a different time, and its target users have their own, unique challenges and goals. Still, regardless of any external factors, the key lies in following a well-thought-out product design process. 

Creating the right solution is about diving deep into the needs and emotions of your users. Before you create a first wireframe – even the most simple one – it’s important that you clearly define your users’ goals and know how to best serve them.

Also, remember that product design is a collaborative process. A large part of your success depends on whether your fellow team members – designers, product managers, and developers alike – can all work towards the same objective. Here’s where using prototyping tools like UXPin will do wonders, allowing you to design, collect feedback, and handle developer handoffs all with a single tool.

Powering UXPin with its Merge technology will speed up prototyping for you for about ten fold. Why? It makes it simple to bring your dev’s component library to UXPin and build prototypes that are fully interactive and easily translated to code. Discover UXPin Merge.

The post How to Design a Product in 5 Steps appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Modern websites and apps rely on front-end frameworks to develop, maintain, and scale user interfaces. React’s Javascript library is arguably the most popular front-end framework with many component libraries to build digital products.

We’re going to explore the top React UI libraries and how to choose the right one for your next project.

With UXPin Merge, you can sync any React component library and assemble production-ready layouts super fast. Check out the build-in MUI, Ant design, and React Bootstrap components that are available for free in UXPin’s editor. Drag and drop them on the canvas and simplify React UI design. Try UXPin Merge.

Design UI with code-backed components.

Use the same components in design as in development. Keep UI consistency at scale.

Try UXPin Merge

What is React Component library?

A React component library is a collection of pre-built UI components specifically designed for use with React applications. These libraries contain reusable components that cover a wide range of UI elements, such as buttons, forms, modals, navigation bars, cards, and more.

React component libraries aim to streamline the development process by providing ready-made components that adhere to best practices in terms of design, accessibility, and functionality.

What to consider when choosing a React component library

Below are six things to consider when choosing a React library for your next project. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and some of these factors may not apply to the product you’re building. 

1. Popularity

GitHub’s star rating allows you to quickly compare each React UI library’s popularity. The weekly downloads on npm also show how many people use the component library. Generally speaking, a React library’s popularity means it’s well established and serves its purpose.

2. Issues

Like star rating, a library’s GitHub issues can tell you a lot about its popularity and how well it’s maintained. Even if the library has minimal issues, do any of these affect the product you’re trying to build? 

3. Documentation & Support

Documentation is an important consideration when choosing a React UI library. You want to avoid running to Stack Overflow every time you run into trouble or want to know how to use specific components. Good documentation is updated regularly and gives you a comprehensive understanding of the library.

You also want to know if the React library has support directly from the creators or via a dedicated community forum. There are times when you need expert advice to overcome challenges. The ability to reach out for help (even if that means paying) is crucial to get issues sorted quickly and keep the project moving.

4. Customization

One of the downsides to using a component library is its constraints and lack of customization. For some projects, customization isn’t a factor, but if you’re looking to develop a unique UI, the ability to build your own design system is vital.

Explore the library’s documentation to see if they offer instructions for customizing the components and how easily you can achieve your desired results.

5. Browser or Device Compatibility

Depending on the app you’re designing, you’ll want to know the component library’s browser and mobile compatibility. The quickest way to research browser/device compatibility is by searching GitHub’s issues or Stack Overflow.

6. Accessibility

Accessibility is a time-consuming but necessary consideration for digital product design. If a React library hasn’t considered accessibility when designing components, then it’s something you’re going to have to do yourself, which takes us back to points 3 and 4–documentation and customization.

Which is the best React component library?

The best React component library for your project depends on your specific needs and preferences. It’s recommended to evaluate each library based on factors such as documentation quality, community support, active development, and alignment with your project requirements before making a decision.

Comparing the libraries involves assessing various aspects such as design philosophy, component offerings, theming capabilities, documentation, community support, and ecosystem. Take Material-UI (MUI) and Ant Design as examples.

Material-UI provides a comprehensive set of React components following the Material Design system. It includes components like buttons, cards, forms, navigation, and more, with a wide range of customization options.

Ant Design offers a rich collection of components tailored for enterprise applications, including layouts, forms, navigation, data display, and more. It provides components specific to data visualization and business logic.

5 React Component Libraries

These are our five best React UI libraries for 2024.

Note: Information regarding GitHub stars and NPM downloads are accurate as of March 2024.

MUI (Material-UI)

• GitHub Stars: 91.3k
• Weekly NPM Downloads: 3.4M
• Official website: mui.com

MUI is one of the most comprehensive and widely used React component libraries. The library is built on Google’s Material Design UI, one of the most extensive UI kits in the world.

MUI – Components

MUI has a massive component library for designers to build everything from mobile and web applications, websites, and even wearable apps. 

MUI Core features fundamental UI components you see in everyday digital products, while MUI X offers a list of advanced React components for building complex user interfaces, like data tables, data pickers, charts, and more.

For those of you who would like to try design with MUI code components, sign up for a UXPin trial and get 14-day access to UXPin. Read more about MUI 5 Kit in UXPin.

MUI – Theming & Customization

One of MUI’s biggest appeals is the ability to theme and customize components. Designers can use MUI as a foundation to scale designs fast but also adapt the library to build a custom design system for their product or organization.

Designers can also take advantage of Material Design and MUI’s comprehensive guidelines to avoid usability issues when customizing components.

MUI also has a template marketplace to purchase React theme templates for dashboards, eCommerce websites, landing pages, and more.

MUI – Documentation

MUI’s documentation is as detailed and comprehensive as its component library. Its curators have taken great care to provide designers and developers with step-by-step instructions and guidelines for installation, usage, customization, accessibility, and more.

There are also tons of videos on YouTube from MUI’s large community of users and contributors offering best practices, tutorials, tips and tricks, how-to guides, and more.

Where to get MUI components from?

You can get MUI components from the following sources:

1. UXPin’s Built-In MUI Kit: Access pre-built MUI components directly in the UXPin Editor.
2. MUI Website: Download components and get design inspiration from the official MUI library.
3. AI Component Creator: Use UXPin’s AI tool to generate custom MUI components from text prompts or images.

These options provide flexibility whether you need ready-made components or custom-coded solutions.

How to generate MUI components with AI?

You can use AI to generate MUI components that you need. The AI Component Creator by UXPin is an advanced tool that helps designers generate fully coded UI components from images, text prompts, or existing elements. It supports React-based libraries like MUI.

By leveraging AI, this tool bridges the gap between design and development, streamlining workflows and eliminating the need for manual coding. It’s perfect for creating consistent, scalable UI components in seconds.

To generate MUI components using UXPin’s AI Component Creator:

1. Get an OpenAI API Key from the OpenAI website.
2. Enable the AI Component Creator by contacting UXPin support if you have the Merge AI plan or Merge enabled.
3. Open the AI Component Creator from the Editor’s Quick Tools panel.
4. Paste your API key in the Settings tab.
5. In the Prompt tab, write a description of the component you want or upload an image.
6. Select MUI as your library, and let the AI generate your MUI component!

For more details, visit the documentation.

React-Bootstrap

• GitHub Stars: 22.2k
• Weekly NPM Downloads: 1.3M
• Official website: react-bootstrap.github.io

Founded in 2011, Bootstrap is one of the oldest and most popular open-source CSS frameworks for websites and web applications. Bootstrap was one of the first CSS frameworks to prioritize mobile-first web development, allowing designers to build and scale responsive websites quickly.

React-Bootstrap replaced Bootstrap Javascript while ditching resource-heavy dependencies like JQuery to build a comprehensive but simplistic React component library.

React-Bootstrap – Components

If you’re familiar with Bootstrap, then you’ll instantly recognize React-Bootstrap’s generic-looking component library. Like its CSS predecessor, React-Bootstrap features UI components that favor web design rather than mobile applications.

React-Bootstrap – Theming & Customization

React-Bootstrap is very generic with minimal styling, making it easy for designers to tweak and customize. Bootstrap’s defined classes and variants make it easy to select and customize components using CSS.

Due to Bootstrap’s long history and wide usage, you can find tons of free and premium React-Bootstrap themes and templates for everything from admin dashboards to multiple purpose websites, eCommerce, landing pages, and more.

React-Bootstrap – Documentation

React-Bootstrap has excellent documentation, albeit not as detailed and comprehensive as MUI. React-Bootstrap’s simplicity and naming convention make it one of the easiest React libraries to understand, use, and customize.

Bootstrap is also featured extensively on Stack Overflow, so you’ll likely find answers to most issues. There are also loads of blogs and YouTube videos offering advice, tutorials, design projects, and more.

Where to Get React-Bootstrap Components

You can get React-Bootstrap components from the following sources:

1. UXPin’s Built-In React-Bootstrap Kit: Access pre-built React-Bootstrap components directly within the UXPin Editor.
2. React-Bootstrap Website: Explore and download components from the official React-Bootstrap library.
3. AI Component Creator: Use UXPin’s AI tool to generate custom React-Bootstrap components from text prompts or images.

These options provide flexibility, whether you need ready-made components or custom AI-generated solutions.

How to Generate React-Bootstrap Components with AI

You can leverage AI to create React-Bootstrap components easily with UXPin’s AI Component Creator. This tool converts images, text prompts, or static elements into fully coded React-Bootstrap components, simplifying the design-to-development process.

To generate React-Bootstrap components:

1. Get an OpenAI API Key from the OpenAI website.
2. Enable the AI Component Creator by contacting UXPin support if you have the Merge AI plan or Merge enabled.
3. Open the AI Component Creator from the Editor’s Quick Tools panel.
4. Paste your API key in the Settings tab.
5. In the Prompt tab, write a description of the component you want or upload an image.
6. Select React-Bootstrap as your library, and let the AI generate your component!

For more details, visit UXPin’s AI Component Creator documentation.

Semantic UI React

• GitHub Stars: 13.2k
• Weekly NPM Downloads: 253k
• Official website: react.semantic-ui.com

Semantic UI React is a popular alternative to React-Bootstrap. Like React-Bootstrap, Semantic UI started as an open-source CSS framework that its contributors used to build React components.

Semantic UI React – Components

Semantic UI React offers an extensive range of UI components for websites and web applications. The components provide cleaner, more modern styling than Bootstrap while remaining minimalist and simplistic.

Semantic UI React uses the FontAwesome icon set, including over 1,600 free icons and 7,864 Pro (paid).

Semantic UI React – Theming & Customization

Semantic UI uses an intuitive, straightforward naming convention that makes it easy to customize components. The documentation also provides a step-by-step guide for theming with Semantic UI React. Unlike MUI and React-Bootstrap, Semantic has very few template options. 

Semantic UI React – Documentation

Semantic UI React’s interactive documentation provides you with CodeSandbox examples to inspect the code and play around with components. 

The docs also allow you to switch between an example, code, and props to visualize the component from multiple angles.

Ant Design (AntD)

• GitHub Stars: 89.9k
• Weekly NPM Downloads: 1.2M
• Official website: ant.design/docs/react/introduce

Ant Design (AntD) is another popular, widely used React component library developed by Ant Group–parent company to Alibaba, China’s biggest online marketplace. Like MUI, AntD offers a vast component library for both web and mobile applications.

AntD is the only React library featured in this article that uses TypeScript – a form of Javascript.

Ant Design – Components

AntD has a massive component library for desktop and mobile, including UI patterns like infinite scroll and pull-to-refresh for mobile devices. Ant Design ProComponents offers a range of advanced React UI elements ( similar to MUI X) for building complex interfaces.

You can also find a vast library of pre-made templates and scaffolds to kick start your project and build UIs much faster.

Ant Design – Theming & Customization

AntD uses design tokens or variables for devs to customize and theme components. The UI library uses Less and provides a complete list of all AntD variables in GitHub.

Ant Design – Documentation

AntD’s comprehensive documentation provides step-by-step instructions for using and customizing. You can also inspect each component in CodeSandBox, CodePen, or StackBlitz.

Where to Get Ant Design Components

You can get Ant Design components from the following sources:

1. UXPin’s Built-In Ant Design Kit: Access pre-built Ant Design components directly within the UXPin Editor.
2. Ant Design Website: Download components and explore design inspiration from the official Ant Design library.
3. AI Component Creator: Use UXPin’s AI tool to generate custom Ant Design components from text prompts or images.

These options allow you to choose between ready-made components or custom AI-generated solutions to meet your project needs.

How to Generate Ant Design Components with AI

You can easily generate Ant Design components using UXPin’s AI Component Creator. This tool leverages AI to convert images, text prompts, or static elements into code-backed Ant Design components—eliminating manual coding and streamlining design-to-development workflows.

To generate Ant Design components:

1. Get an OpenAI API Key from the OpenAI website.
2. Enable the AI Component Creator by contacting UXPin support if you have the Merge AI plan or Merge enabled.
3. Open the AI Component Creator from the Editor’s Quick Tools panel.
4. Paste your API key in the Settings tab.
5. In the Prompt tab, write a description of the component you want or upload an image.
6. Select Ant Design as your library, and let the AI generate your component!

For more details, visit UXPin’s AI Component Creator documentation.

Chakra UI

• GitHub Stars: 36.4k
• Weekly NPM Downloads: 523K
• Official website: chakra-ui.com

Chakra UI is a Nigerian-based React component library founded by Segun Adebayo. You can choose between Chakra’s free component library or Chakra UI Pro, which offers pre-made complex UI components to build interfaces faster.

Chakra UI – Components

Chakra UI’s component library caters to web-based applications and websites. The library offers the choice between TypeScript or Javascript React components, depending on your preference. Chakra’s designers follow WAI-ARIA standards, so every element is accessible.

The stylish UI components look similar to Semantic UI, with dark and light options available.

Chakra UI – Theming & Customization

Chakra’s designers created the UI library to be fully customized using variables to meet product and brand requirements. Charka also integrates with Create React App, Framer Motion, React Hook Form, and React Table to extend the library’s usage and customization.

Chakra UI – Documentation

Chakra UI has excellent documentation with guides, video tutorials, examples, FAQs, links to connect with core team members, and an active Discord community. 

Chakra’s users are extremely passionate and enthusiastic about the React library, and there’s always someone to connect with to ask questions.

Design Using React Components With UXPin Merge

One of the challenges of using a React library is that only few tools allow you to design UIs with real components. UXPin Merge allows you to assemble layouts with React components from Git repo, Storybook, or npm. See how it works. Discover UXPin Merge.

The post 5 Best React Component Libraries of 2024 appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Are you ready to elevate your design workflow to the next level? In this comprehensive tutorial, we’ll delve into the world of UXPin Merge, empowering you to seamlessly integrate your React app components into the UXPin editor for high-fidelity prototypes.

Gone are the days of static designs. With UXPin Merge, you can dynamically link your React components, ensuring that your prototypes are always in sync with the latest developments in your codebase.

Get ready to unlock the full potential of UXPin Merge – let’s dive in! If you want to get a personalized walkthrough of the tool, request access to UXPin Merge.

Design UI with code-backed components.

Use the same components in design as in development. Keep UI consistency at scale.

Try UXPin Merge

What is UXPin Merge?

UXPin Merge is a technology for designing with coded UI components that are backed with production-ready code. It’s part of UXPin – a code-based design tool for highly realistic and accurate prototyping. With this tech, you can grab all the specs, JSX code, and any other asset and hand them over for developer to make the entire product development workflow faster.

UXPin Merge tutorial – How to use this technology?

UXPin Merge technology works like a drag-and-drop UI builder. You take a component out of the design library in UXPin and put it on the canvas. Then, after you’ve done arranging the layout and setting up components props, you can copy a ready React code (or CSS code for Tailwind library) to your development environment or open it in StackBlitz.

You can build anything you like. From simple dashboards that automate your team operations to more complex, e-commerce stores which front-end is decoupled from the back-end. UXPin has a few templates and patterns to get you started.

We highly recommend you watch a video tutorial of how to use UXPin Merge presented by a real-life web developer, Rachel. She did a wonderful job of walking you through all the panels, functionalities, and features of Merge technology, and she also shows you how to do a design handoff with UXPin Merge.

Watch it on Youtube. Here’s the full playlist of UXPin Merge tutorial.

How to Use UXPin Merge on Trial: A Step-by-Step Guide

UXPin Merge allows you to design using code-backed components, bridging the gap between design and development by using components from your codebase in the design environment. With Merge, you can ensure consistency between design and production, making design-to-development handoffs seamless.

If you’re on a trial version of UXPin and want to explore Merge, follow these steps to get started:

Step 1: Sign Up for a UXPin Trial

1. Go to the UXPin website.
2. Click on Start Free Trial and create an account using your email address.
3. Once registered, you will be directed to your UXPin dashboard.

Note: Merge technology is available in the Advanced and Enterprise plans. During the trial, you should have access to Merge’s basic functionality.

Step 2: Set Up a New Project with Merge

1. From your dashboard, click on New Project.
2. Select Design with Merge Components.
3. Choose between:
   • Use Existing Libraries: This option allows you to access UXPin’s built-in component libraries (e.g., MUI or Ant Design).
   • Connect Your Repository: If you want to use your own code components, you can connect a Git repository.

For the trial, select Use Existing Libraries to explore the built-in options.

Step 3: Explore the Pre-Built Libraries

1. Once you’ve selected Use Existing Libraries, UXPin will provide access to pre-built component libraries like Material UI, Bootstrap, or Ant Design.
2. Browse through the component options available.
3. Drag and drop components onto your canvas to start designing your UI.

This is a great way to see how code-based components function in a design environment.

Step 4: Create a Prototype Using Merge Components

1. Drag a component, such as a button or input field, from the library onto the canvas.
2. Click on the component to open the Properties Panel on the right side.
3. Modify the component properties (e.g., colors, size, content) using the same props and configurations that developers would use in the codebase.

Because you’re working with real code components, any adjustments you make in UXPin reflect exactly how the component will behave in production.

Step 5: Test Interactivity and States

1. Select a component on the canvas, such as a button.
2. Click on the States button in the Properties Panel.
3. Add different states like hover, active, or disabled, and link them to interactions or triggers (e.g., onClick).
4. Preview your prototype by clicking the Preview button at the top-right corner to see how your interactions and states behave in real-time.

Step 6: Use Get Code Mode for Developer Handoff

1. Click on Get Code Mode in the top toolbar.
2. In Spec Mode, you can view all the details that developers need, including CSS properties, spacing, color values, and component details.
3. If you’re using your own component library, developers can copy JSX or React code directly from the prototype.

This ensures that what you designed in UXPin is exactly what will be built in production.

Step 7: Preview and Share Your Design

1. Click the Preview button to see your prototype in action.
2. Share the preview link with stakeholders, developers, or teammates for feedback and testing.

Tips for Using UXPin Merge Effectively

• Experiment with Pre-Built Libraries: During your trial, explore the built-in libraries to see how code-based components work. This will help you get a feel for how to integrate your own components in the future.
• Use Get Code Mode: Get Code Mode is your best friend for developer handoff. Make sure you understand how to access properties and details for each component.
• Test Interactions and States: Use interactions and states to create high-fidelity prototypes that mimic user flows and conditions. This helps you better understand the behavior of your components.

How to integrate your own components, step by step

UXPin Merge supports Storybook components and React components from open-source libraries.

We want to give more details and show you how easy it is to integrate a React-based library into Merge to design with code on a day-to-day basis. All that without learning how to code!

UXPin Merge allows users to import their existing custom React components in a seamless fashion to create interactive prototypes using real code, which is unlike anything else traditional design tools offer.

This eliminates the need for designers to manually maintain a “second” design system within their design tool and instead provides the entire team with a single source of truth. The result? The disconnect between designers and developers is gone when building digital products. 

We want to save you time so we’ve designed this tutorial to integrate Mozilla’s React Todo App example with Merge. After the integration, you’ll be able to use the app’s components to design an interactive Todo list prototype within UXPin!

Remember to start by requesting access to Merge – you can do it here. After the verification process and the setup, you’ll be ready to design with code! Also, don’t worry about integrating with GitHub – we don’t have any requirement of where the codebase should be located, so you can use whatever you want!

The components

The Todo app has three React components:

1. Form – create a todo item.

2. FilterButton – filter todos by their current state.

3. Todo – a todo list item.

These components are in the `src/components` directory and are outlined in the screenshot below:

When this tutorial is completed, a designer will be able to create a prototype with these components. Your real-world custom design system (DS) likely has many more than three components. However, the concepts we’ll illustrate in this tutorial should apply to your DS as well.

Set up UXPin Merge

To begin, fork then clones the following link https://github.com/mdn/todo-react. Then install our UXPin Merge NodeJS package, which includes our CLI.

1. Navigate into your project folder cd todo-react
2. Install UXPin Merge and It’s CLI NodeJS bundle with: yarn add @uxpin/merge-cli–dev
3. Ignore the UXPin Merge build directory with: echo ‘/.uxpin-merge’ >> .gitignore

A custom design system requires two additional config files:

1. uxpin.webpack.config.js
2. uxpin.config.js

UXPin typically doesn’t need to use your entire existing Webpack build process. We’ll use a more minimal and default build for UXPin. Create a uxpin.webpack.config.js file and paste the following code into it:

const path = require("path");
const webpack = require("webpack");
 
module.exports = {
    output: {
      path: path.resolve(__dirname, "build"),
      filename: "bundle.js",
      publicPath: "/"
    },
    resolve: {
      modules: [__dirname, "node_modules"],
      extensions: ["*", ".js", ".jsx"]
    },
    devtool: "source-map",
    module: {
      rules: [
        {
          test: /\.(s*)css$/,
          use: [
            {
              loader: 'style-loader'
            },
            {
              loader: 'css-loader',
              options: {
                importLoaders: 2
              }
            },
          ]
        },
        {
          loader: "babel-loader",
          test: /\.js?$/,
          exclude: /node_modules/,
          options: {
            presets: ['@babel/preset-env', '@babel/preset-react'],
          }
        },
      ]
    }
}

For components you want to use in UXPin Merge, you must specify their file directory in the uxpin.config.js file at the top of the directory of the repo. As you can see in the code snippet below, we’ve only added the ‘Form’ component src/components/Form.js  for now and will add the other components later in the tutorial. 

Create a uxpin.config.js and paste the following content into the file:

module.exports = {
  components: {
    categories: [
      {
        name: 'General',
        include: [
          'src/components/Form.js',
        ]
      }
    ],
    webpackConfig: 'uxpin.webpack.config.js',
  },
  name: 'Learn UXPin Merge - React Todo list tutorial'
};


Lastly, Babel-loader will be used by Webpack to create the app bundle. To install babel use the following commands: yarn add babel-loader –dev then yarn install .

CONGRATULATIONS👏 You’re all good to go and have the minimum configuration required to view the Form component.

Experimental Mode

Using the settings provided in `uxpin.webpack.config.js`, Experimental mode bundles your components and opens a browser window. You can lay out components in a similar fashion as the UXPin Editor. After Experimental Mode loads, drag and drop the Form component from the sidebar onto the project canvas:

We have the Form component but it lacks styling. For that, we’ll create a Global Wrapper Component.

Using a Global Wrapper Component to apply CSS styles

Just like your custom design system, this Todo app contains global styles. These are specified in the `src/index.css` file. All of our components need the styles specified in this file. We can load this file via a Global Wrapper Component. This component will wrap around every component we drag onto the UXPin canvas.

Create a wrapper file:

Copy and paste the following into `UXPinWrapper.js`:

import React from "react";
import '../index.css';

export default function UXPinWrapper({ children }) {
  return children;
}

The `import ‘../index.css’;` line ensures our CSS styles are loaded prior to rendering each component.

We need to tell UXPin to use this wrapper file. Add the following to uxpin.config.js:

wrapper: 'src/wrapper/UXPinWrapper.js',

Experimental mode should open a new browser window with a styled Form component:

Adding the FilterButton with a customizable name

Now we’ll work on adding the FilterButton to UXPin Merge. These buttons are displayed below the Form component:

Adding this component will be similar to the Form component. However, I’d also like to give designers the ability to specify the text that is displayed within the button. We’ll do that via the `prop-types` package.

Component propTypes are mapped to the UXPin properties panel when editing a component. The existing FilterButton component doesn’t use prop-types so let’s add this to `FilterButton.js`:

import React from "react";
+ import PropTypes from 'prop-types';

function FilterButton(props) {
  return (
@@ -15,4 +16,9 @@ function FilterButton(props) {
  );
}

+ FilterButton.propTypes = {
+   name: PropTypes.string
+ }

+FilterButton.defaultProps = {
+  name: 'Button Name'
+};

export default FilterButton;

Two of our three components are now working with UXPin Merge. We have one component remaining: the Todo component.

Adding the Todo component with a wrapper

We’re moving on to our final component: the Todo. These are displayed within the list of todo items in the UI:

When adding the FilterButton, we edited the FilterButton.js file to add propTypes. What if you want to isolate your Merge-specific changes and don’t want to modify the source code of your components? We can create a wrapper that is specific to the Todo component for this. It’s similar in concept to the Global wrapper component we used to apply CSS styles but will be specific to the Todo component.

Type the following:

mkdir -p src/components/merge/todo 

touch src/components/merge/todo/Todo.js

Copy and paste the following code into Todo.js. 

import React from 'react';
import PropTypes from 'prop-types';

// Import the original component
import TodoM from '../../Todo';

function Todo(props) {
  return <TodoM {...props}/>
}

Todo.propTypes = {
  /**
   * If `true`, the todo will be marked as completed.
   */
  completed: PropTypes.bool,

  /**
   * The name of the todo.
   */
   name: PropTypes.string,

  toggleTaskCompleted: PropTypes.func,
}

Todo.defaultProps = {
  name: 'Do Laundry'
};

export default Todo;

We’re importing the original Todo component as `TodoM` and returning this component in our newly defined `Todo` function. We specify propTypes just like we did with the FilterButton component on our newly defined `Todo` wrapper function.

Add ‘src/components/merge/todo/Todo.js’ to uxpin.config.js and restart using ./node_modules/@uxpin/merge-cli/bin/uxpin-merge –disable-tunneling. After Experimental launches a new window, click-and-drag the Todo component onto the canvas:

You’ll see the Todo component along with the default “Do Laundry” todo name. This default name is only applied when using Merge.

Pushing to UXPin

Until you push your design system to UXPin the components are only visible to you. To let your design team use these components we need to push the component bundle to UXPin. Creating and pushing a Merge design library requires two steps:

1. Create the library within the UXPin UI

1. Go to your UXPin account

2. Enter the UXPin Editor

3. Create a new library

4. Select the option import React components

5. Copy the Auth token (don’t share it with anyone and do not place it in any files checked into git repository. This token provides direct access to the library on your account.) The process looks like this:

2. Push the library via the uxpin-merge CLI

Using the token created from the previous stop, run the following from within the project repo:

./node_modules/@uxpin/merge-cli/bin/uxpin-merge push –token YOUR TOKEN 

Your design team can now access the Merge library.

Using the Merge library within UXPin

Now that the Merge design library has been pushed its time to test it out within the UXPin editor:

• Reload the UXPin Editor in your browser.
• Select the “Learn UXPin Merge” design system in the bottom left corner of the editor.
• Click and drag the components from the sidebar to the canvas.

You should have a solid looking prototype:

How does a designer hand off a prototype back to a developer?

Previewing and Exporting

Now that we’ve built a quick prototype in UXPin we’re ready to export it back to our app. We can preview the output and then use Spec mode to copy and paste the JSX code for our components.

Click the play button in the upper right corner of the editor. Once the preview loads click the “Spec” link at the top. You can now click on the components and view the JSX code to generate them in the right panel:

It’s great to push an initial version of our design system. However, you’ll likely need to push out quite a few updates over time.

Pushing an Update

The FilterButton has a “pressed” state to indicate the currently active filter. Looking at the live React app, here’s the difference between the pressed and not-pressed state:

Let’s add support for this state. Make the following change to `src/components/FilterButton.js`:

FilterButton.propTypes = {
-   name: PropTypes.string
+   name: PropTypes.string,
+   isPressed: PropTypes.bool
}

Commit the change to git and push to UXPin:

Merge components are automatically synced to the most recently pushed code. To show the latest, reload the tab showing the UXPin editor. Select a FilterButton. In the right panel of the editor you should see a new “isPressed” property.

Select it to activate this state:

Follow this same flow (git commit + uxpin-push) when you make future changes. Prototypes will automatically use the latest pushed version of components.

Speed up building your product by 8.6x

You’ve taken a React app and pushed its components to UXPin Merge. You’ve also learned how to push updates when you modify components or add new ones. Now your design team can use these components to create high-fidelity prototypes within the UXPin editor.

You can browse the source code for this project on GitHub. To learn more advanced Merge techniques see our Merge docs or reach out to us at hello@uxpin.com.

Don’t have UXPin Merge yet? First, remember to go through the process of requesting access to make the most of designing with code! Try UXPin Merge for free.

The post Design with Code – UXPin Merge Tutorial appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

npm is a package manager for JavaScript that helps developers install, share, and manage libraries or pieces of code that are commonly used in applications. These packages can range from small utility functions to full-fledged UI components like buttons, form elements, or even complex layouts.

npm is also a key enabler of the design-development collaboration that UXPin Merge facilitates. By packaging React components through npm, developers can hand off real, functioning UI components to designers, who can then integrate them into their designs effortlessly. This results in a more consistent and efficient workflow, ensuring that your design system and the final product are perfectly aligned.. Discover UXPin Merge.

Design UI with code-backed components.

Use the same components in design as in development. Keep UI consistency at scale.

Try UXPin Merge

What is NPM (Node Package Manager)?

npm or Node Package Manager is an open-source repository of tools engineers use to develop applications and websites.

npm is two things:

1. A repository for publishing open-source projects.
   Simplified version: a digital storage and retrieval facility.
2. A command-line interface (CLI) for interacting with the repository.
   Simplified version: a tool to communicate with the storage facility.

What is a Package Manager?

Before we can explain what npm package is, it’s essential to understand the idea of a package manager. Think of a package manager as a toolkit for developers.

Let’s say you’re building an application that uses Stripe for payments. A package manager installs all the code your product will need to communicate with Stripe and process payments.

Instead of writing all that code or copy/pasting it from Stripe’s docs, engineers simply enter a command, and the package manager installs the code dependencies they need from Stripe.

There are millions of these packages for everything you can think of to develop an application–like different types of search functionality, APIs, payments, authentication tools, maps, icons, hosting, and more.

You get public open-source repositories (like npm) where anyone can upload and install packages, as well as private package repositories with restricted access.

What is a Command Line Interface?

A command-line interface (CLI) is a text interface developers use to interact with computer programs. This CLI allows you to execute commands to run background operations necessary for software development.

In the case of npm, the CLI allows you to interact with the package registry. For example, engineers can use commands like npm install followed by the package name to install a specific package.

The npm Registry

The npm website is where engineers can search and learn about packages. This website is just a registry and doesn’t host the packages. Instead, engineers use platforms like GitHub, Packagecloud, AWS CodeArtifact, and others to host and distribute packages.

For example, if we look at the UXPin Merge CLI on NPM, it has displays GitHub as the repository and relevant link. Above that is the command to install the UXPin Merge CLI and its dependencies: npm i @uxpin/merge-cli. The “i” after npm is an abbreviation for “install.” So, typing npm install @uxpin/merge-cli would render the same result.

What are Dependencies?

Packages consist of other packages that engineers call dependencies–we know, confusing, right! These dependencies are packages of code that perform different tasks within the project.

For example, the UXPin Merge CLI uses Typescript and therefore requires the typescript package as a dependency. Typescript is just one of the 41 dependencies UXPin Merge CLI requires. 

What are Devdependencies?

Looking at the UXPin Merge CLI’s dependencies, you’ll notice 41 Dependencies and 41 Dev Dependencies (also referred to as devDependencies–one word).

• Dependencies: The packages required to run a piece of software
• Dev Dependencies: The packages needed during the development phase only

Dependencies and devDependencies reside in a separate folder called node_modules, so your packages.json file and project code know where to find them.

What is the package.json File?

There’s a package.json file that provides its metadata and dependencies. When installing the project on your computer, npm will reference the package.json file to install the dependencies and devDependencies.

Instead of installing each dependency individually, you simply type npm install in the command line.

Hosting providers also use the package.json file to install the dependencies (excluding devDependencies) needed to run the project on its servers.

What is package-lock.json?

The package-lock.json specifies the exact version of the package used to build the project. This file locks the dependencies so that when the project is installed, it references the versions used during development rather than the latest release.

Engineers update packages regularly, often changing the way the package works. So, locking your dependencies ensures the project operates as intended.

How to use npm

Here are some common npm commands and what they do:

• npm init: Creates a package.json file for your project. If you’re building an application from scratch, npm init will be one of the first commands you use to include key project information. NPM will automatically update your package.json file whenever you install or remove packages.
• npm install: Installs all of the project dependencies in a package.json file.
• npm install <package-name>: Installs a specific package from the NPM registry and saves it to your node_modules folder. For example, npm install @uxpin/merge-cli will install the Merge CLI.
• npm install <package-name> –save: Installs an NPM package and adds it to the dependencies in your package.json file.
• npm install <package-name> –save-dev: installs an NPM package and adds it to the devDependencies 
• npm uninstall <package-name>: Uninstalls a specific package from your project.
• npm doctor: Runs diagnostics on your npm installation to check if it has everything it needs to manage your packages.
• npm update <package-name>: Updates a specific package to the latest version.

These are just a few of the most common npm commands. You can find the complete list in the npm documentation.

Understanding npm as a Designer

npm is simply a toolkit comparable to plugins or app extensions for design tools. You don’t need to know the ins-and-outs of how packages are created, but it may be useful to know a thing or two about it.

First of all, some of code component libraries are shared as npm packages, such as MUI, Ant Design, etc.

How to find component libraries that are distributed as npm packages? Let’s say you search through Adele, UXPin’s library of publicly available Design Systems, for a component library that you can bring in to UXPin. You pick Shopify’s Polaris and notice that it is distributed via npm.

So, you go to the NPM site, look for Shopify’s Polaris, and find it.

UXPin with Merge technology allows you to import UI elements from component libraries via NPM packages. Then, you can use those elements to put together fully-functional prototypes.

UXPin Merge is usually being set up by a developer. But if you lack the development support, you can use our new tool – Merge Component Manager and manage UI components by yourself.

However, if you want to enhance your programming knowledge to collaborate with devs better, then learning about basic code principles (HTML, CSS, Javascript) and component libraries is far more valuable for designers.

What Can You Do with npm Integration?

Even though npm is typically a tool developers use, it plays a crucial role in enabling powerful design workflows—like bringing React components into UXPin for seamless drag-and-drop UI building.

Here’s why npm is important for technical designers working with tools like UXPin Merge:

1. Access to React Components: If your design system is built using React, npm allows you to package these components and make them accessible for use in other applications or tools—like UXPin Merge. React components that are available as npm packages can be directly imported into UXPin, giving designers the ability to drag and drop real code components into their designs without writing code.
2. Easily Manage Updates: npm simplifies version control. When a developer updates a package (such as a new version of a button component), npm can automatically manage this update in UXPin Merge, ensuring that designers always work with the latest components from the development team. This ensures consistency between design and development without the need for manual updates.
3. Collaborate Seamlessly with Developers: npm helps technical designers and developers work from the same source of truth. Developers use npm to publish the components they create, while designers can easily import those components into UXPin using Merge. This ensures that the components designers use for prototyping are exactly the same as the ones developers will implement in the final product.

Improve Collaboration With UXPin Merge

Merge enhances collaboration between design and development because designers and engineers work with the same component library. 

Instead of having a UI kit for designers and code for devs, Merge syncs a repository to UXPin’s editor so design teams can build fully functioning prototypes using code components.

You can sync your company’s design system or a component library like MUI so that you only have to drag and drop UI elements to build interfaces. Request access to Merge.

The post What is npm? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Some team members despise design system governance. They see it as a roadblock to rapid growth, creativity, and flexibility. However, design system governance can foster scalability and creativity if properly implemented while maintaining design and usability consistency.

Good design system governance prioritizes users before growth and profits. Company culture also plays a significant role in how a company implements a governance process that team members follow and embrace.

The tools UX and engineering teams also have an impact on design system governance. UX teams must update design tools to match changes to the final product, exposing the process to human error!

With UXPin Merge, teams don’t need to worry about updating two different design systems. UXPin Merge syncs our editor tool with code components from your Git repo or Storybook integration (allowing you to connect with React, Revue, Angular, Ember, and many more), eliminating the need for separate design systems and mitigating human error.

See how UXPin can enhance your design system governance!

What is Design System Governance?

Design system governance is the process and protocols for maintaining and updating a product’s design system.

Even minor changes, like changing an app’s close icon from an X to a — must go through a multi-step approval and implementation process.

Design system governance fulfills several purposes:

• Maintain’s design and brand consistency
• Prevents poor design decisions—leading to usability issues
• Encourages team members to think creatively and try to solve problems with the tools on hand before attempting to make changes
• Ensures updates consider accessibility
• Keeps the entire organization informed of changes
• Updates digital product and design documentation

Without effective design system governance, editing and updating new components is a free-for-all that could create usability issues, inconsistencies and ruin the product’s reputation.

The Challenges of Maintaining a Design System

There are many challenges to maintaining a design system. Every organization must have a dedicated individual or team to manage its design system. 

Here are six common challenges to maintaining a design system and why an effective governance model is essential!

Company Political Forces

Sadly, even successful design systems aren’t safe from power struggles within an organization. Team members might call on executive power to either push or block design changes, overriding the initial decision of a design system team.

Conversely, governance keeps executives and other stakeholders well informed on design changes and the reasoning, making it easier to get buy-in and approval.

Managing Input From Multiple Teams and Departments

A design system is not only for UX and engineering teams. Product teams and other stakeholders share ownership of the organization’s design system. 

Managing all of this input can be challenging without a proper system of governance.

Design Systems are Often an Afterthought or Side Project

In many organizations, especially fledgling startups, the product’s design system isn’t a priority. It’s a side project a UX designer maintains in their spare time or over the weekend—feebly trying to maintain consistency with the demand for growth!

In this environment, a design system is prone to abuse and poor design decisions. Often UX teams have to undo changes to fix usability issues due to poor governance.

Poor Communication

Without proper communication between departments, teams, and individuals, a design system falls apart. For example, two teams might unknowingly work on the same task separately, or worse, crucial usability changes go forgotten because everyone thought “someone else was working on it.”

Design system governance fosters organization-wide communication, so everyone is updated and informed!

Reluctance from Team Members

When teams are reluctant to adopt the product’s design system, they choose the parts they like and develop a “better way” to design the rest. New team members or those not involved in creating the design system believe they can do better—thus undermining the hard work of others.

This reluctance can not only affect the product’s usability and consistency but create unnecessary conflict.

A governance model with multiple checks and balances prevents team members from hijacking a design system.

Reluctance to Change

Sometimes the opposite is true. Design system managers believe the system is fine the way it is, blocking any changes. A design system is never complete. It’s a work in progress that must evolve for the organization to grow.

The Single Source of Truth Dilemma

Many companies struggle with the single source of truth dilemma—working with a single dataset between all departments, primarily UX design, product, and engineering.

The UX team works with design tools, engineers with code, and the product team (often with limited technical know-how) uses all sorts of tools, including powerpoints, PDFs, and paper, to name a few. 

With this scattered workflow, maintaining a single source of truth is challenging. Often requiring additional staff and resources to ensure everyone is up-to-date. Even with good systems of governance, the single source of truth dilemma is a constant challenge.

Global payment giant PayPal solved its single source of truth dilemma with UXPin Merge. PayPal uses UXPin Merge to build and maintain its design system for internal user interfaces with code components from a Git repository.

When developers implement new changes, UXPin’s design editor’s components update simultaneously, so designers and engineers always work with the same design system. 

Establishing Design System Governance Standards

There are four primary scenarios where a design system requires changes or updates. These scenarios require a submission process where teams must ask a series of questions and tests before prototyping or requesting amendments.

• Introducing new elements – Establishing a workflow for adding new elements ensures design system integrity while providing every team member with an equal opportunity to make additions. 
• Promoting patterns – Patterns fall into two categories: one-off or best new practice. Teams must test these new patterns against what’s currently available before promoting them.
• Reviewing and adapting patterns – Every design system must have a team (at least two members) to review patterns before release. This review process ensures new elements meet the standards and practices of the current design system.
• Releasing design system updates – Rather than releasing new updates when they’re ready, teams must establish a release schedule for updates. A strict release schedule ensures teams follow quality assurance and documentation processes correctly.

An effective way to manage this submission process is through a simple decision tree that maps every step a change must follow.

This excellent example from Inayaili de León shows how Canonical’s team adds new patterns to their design system following a simple decision tree—from concept to release.

Inayaili admits that, like their design system, the decision tree is a work-in-progress that they update and refine as the product evolves.

5 Different Design System Governance Models

Design system governance models refer to the frameworks and practices that organizations use to manage, maintain, and evolve their design systems. Effective governance is crucial to ensure consistency, scalability, and collaboration across teams, especially as design systems grow and evolve over time. Here are some common design system governance models:

1. Centralized Governance Model

In a centralized governance model, a single, dedicated team (often called the design system team or design system core team) is responsible for the development, maintenance, and updates of the design system. This team typically includes designers, developers, and product managers who collaborate closely to ensure the design system is aligned with the organization’s brand and user experience goals.

Key Characteristics:

• Unified Control: The design system team has full control over the design system’s direction, updates, and maintenance.
• Consistency: Centralized control helps maintain a high level of consistency across all components and design tokens.
• Streamlined Decision-Making: With a single team making decisions, changes and updates can be implemented quickly and efficiently.

Pros:

• Clear ownership and accountability.
• High consistency and quality control.
• Efficient decision-making and streamlined processes.

Cons:

• Can become a bottleneck if the team is small or overburdened.
• May lack input from various product teams, potentially leading to a less flexible or adaptable system.

2. Federated Governance Model

A federated governance model, also known as a decentralized or hybrid model, involves multiple teams contributing to the design system under a set of shared guidelines and standards. In this model, the design system team still exists, but other product or feature teams also have the ability to contribute components, patterns, or updates.

Key Characteristics:

• Shared Responsibility: Different teams contribute to the design system, fostering a sense of ownership and collaboration.
• Guidelines and Standards: The design system team provides overarching guidelines, but individual teams have flexibility within those guidelines.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Encourages collaboration across teams, promoting innovation and diverse perspectives.

Pros:

• Increased flexibility and adaptability.
• Encourages innovation and input from various teams.
• Reduces bottlenecks by distributing the workload.

Cons:

• Potential for inconsistencies if guidelines are not strictly followed.
• Requires strong communication and coordination among teams.

3. Community-Driven Governance Model

In a community-driven governance model, the design system is managed in a more open, collaborative manner, often with contributions coming from across the organization, including designers, developers, product managers, and other stakeholders. This model relies heavily on community involvement and collective decision-making.

Key Characteristics:

• Open Contribution: Anyone in the organization can propose changes, updates, or new components.
• Community Moderation: A committee or group of maintainers oversees contributions, ensuring they meet quality and consistency standards.
• Collaborative Decision-Making: Decisions are often made collectively through discussions, voting, or consensus.

Pros:

• Highly inclusive and democratic.
• Promotes widespread adoption and engagement.
• Encourages diverse perspectives and innovation.

Cons:

• Can be challenging to maintain consistency and quality.
• Decision-making can be slower and more complex.
• Requires a strong governance framework to manage contributions effectively.

4. Mixed Governance Model

The mixed governance model combines elements of the centralized, federated, and community-driven models, depending on the needs of the organization and the maturity of the design system. This model provides a flexible approach to governance, allowing teams to adapt based on specific circumstances, project requirements, or organizational culture.

Key Characteristics:

• Flexible Approach: Different governance styles are applied to different parts of the design system, based on complexity, importance, or other factors.
• Balanced Control: Centralized control is maintained for core components, while more flexibility is allowed for less critical elements.
• Adaptive Governance: The governance model can evolve over time as the design system and organization grow.

Pros:

• Balances consistency and flexibility.
• Can adapt to changing needs and contexts.
• Allows for experimentation and innovation.

Cons:

• Can be complex to manage and communicate.
• Requires clear guidelines to prevent confusion and maintain coherence.

5. Open Source Governance Model

The open source governance model is similar to the community-driven model but typically involves an external community beyond the organization. In this model, the design system is open to contributions from anyone, and the community helps drive its development and evolution.

Key Characteristics:

• External Contributions: Contributions come from a wide range of external developers, designers, and other community members.
• Open Development: The design system’s development process is transparent and open to public scrutiny.
• Community-Driven Decision-Making: The community plays a significant role in shaping the direction of the design system.

Pros:

• Leverages a broad pool of talent and ideas.
• Encourages rapid innovation and evolution.
• Promotes transparency and inclusivity.

Cons:

• More challenging to maintain quality and consistency.
• Requires robust community management and governance structures.
• Risk of diverging goals and priorities among contributors.

Choosing the Right Governance Model

Selecting the right governance model for your design system depends on several factors, including the size and structure of your organization, the maturity of your design system, and the level of collaboration and flexibility you want to promote. Some organizations may start with a centralized model and evolve to a federated or community-driven approach as their design system matures and adoption grows.

Ultimately, effective design system governance should align with your organization’s goals and culture, fostering collaboration, maintaining consistency, and ensuring scalability as your design system evolves.

A Step-by-Step Governance Model Example

There are many ways to approach design system governance, but here is a 10-step process inspired by design system guru Brad Frost:

1. Use what’s available – Product teams must exhaust every effort to find a solution using the current component library. This means a design system must be well documented and accessible to everyone. If the current design system does not fulfill the new requirement, teams can proceed to step two.
2. Contact design system (DS) team – Product teams contact the DS team to discuss the problem and the proposed changes. Again, the DS team and product team will work together to find an existing solution. With intimate knowledge of the design system, the DS team might uncover something the product team missed. If there is still no solution, teams proceed to step three.
3. Determine if the change is one-off or part of the design system – The product team and DS team decide whether the amendment is a one-off (snowflake) or part of the design system. One-off changes usually fall on the product team, while the DS team handles design system changes. Either way, teams must prioritize and schedule the changes.
4. Initial Prototyping – Teams prototype and test product changes.
5. Initial Review Process – The DS team and product team review the results from prototyping and testing. If both teams are satisfied, they proceed to the next step. If they determine the changes are lacking, teams return to prototyping and testing.
6. UX & Dev Testing – Once designs pass the initial review, they go to UX and development teams for further testing to ensure the changes meet user experience and technical requirements.
7. Final review – The product team and DS team meet again to review the results of UX and dev testing. If both teams are satisfied, they proceed to the next step. If not, they iterate.
8. Documentation and schedule release – Teams document the new changes, update the changelog (e.g., Github), and schedule the release.
9. Changes released – Changes are released, product version bump according to versioning guidelines, all teams notified (Slack, Asana, Trello, Github, etc.).
10. Quality assurance – Product teams review the final changes for quality assurance.

You can see how this 10-step process will mitigate all of the six common design system challenges we outlined earlier. With multiple checks and balances, a design system maintains its integrity while communicating changes to the entire organization.

While this process solves many design system challenges, checks and balances don’t eliminate human error. Teams need a tool to provide a single source of truth!

Improving Design System Governance with UXPin

UXPin Merge bridges the gap between design and code, creating a single source of truth, so designers and engineers always work with the same tools.

Popular vector-based design tools don’t solve the problem. Designers and engineers must update and sync identical systems separately—an ineffective workflow prone to error.

UXPin is a code-based design editor syncing code components via Git or Storybook to allow product teams, UX designers, and developers to work with the same components—no need to update systems separately!

Lastly, because prototypes are code-based, product updates and design system changes are significantly quicker to engineer.

Ready to switch to the only design tool that fosters good design system governance? Discover UXPin Merge to get the most of your design system and keep all the design and code components up to date.

The post Design System Governance – Scale Your Design appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Now that UXPin has a Storybook integration that breaks down design-dev inconsistencies and makes it easier than ever to manage your UI components library, you might want to take some time to look at Storybook examples.

Plenty of world-renowned websites use Storybook. Look at some of the best Storybook examples that you can use as inspiration for developing your digital products.

Take UI components directly from Storybook and import them to UXPin. Design interactive and visually stunning layouts without extensive design skills. Discover UXPin Merge.

Design UI with code-backed components.

Use the same components in design as in development. Keep UI consistency at scale.

Try UXPin Merge

What is Storybook?

Storybook is an open-source tool for developing UI components in isolation for React, Vue, Angular, and other frameworks. It allows developers to build, test, and document components in a standalone environment outside of the main application, promoting better modularity and reusability.

It enhances the efficiency of UI development by providing a focused environment for creating, testing, and documenting UI components, making it easier for developers to build consistent and robust user interfaces.

BBC iPlayer Web

BBC iPlayer Web switched to Storybook when it needed more custom components. Preview their Storybook here: BBC iPlayer Storybook.

A growing number of movie and television show producers now have streaming platforms that let people watch specific content when they like. BBC iPlayer Web makes it incredibly easy for viewers to find specific types of content by title, category, or topic.

When the streaming service started, it built its back end with Node.js. It didn’t take long, though, before the development team decided to make the migration to React. React components were an obvious improvement as the platform grew.

Around 2019, though, the team realized that its approach didn’t work as well as expected. The UX professionals and developers didn’t have a common language that helped them work toward goals. They also found it difficult to locate the components they needed to add content and update the website’s appearance.

Ultimately, the BBC iPlayer Web team realized that they were spending way too much time maintaining their component library.

Storybook became a significant tool that helped them address these problems.

BBC iPlayer Web has a public design system, so you can look at it to learn a few tricks and find inspiration when you feel stuck on a project.

The design system includes everything from iconography to navigation.

Spend some time browsing BBC iPlayer’s Storybook example. Then, visit the website. You will immediately see how the designers and developers combined components to create a tool that works exceptionally well for viewers.

Related reading: Top 9 Design System Examples

The Guardian

The Guardian publishes a tremendous number of articles daily. It’s often one of the first news outlets to report on breaking news. It also has frequent articles about sports, culture, and lifestyle topics. Considering that The Guardian covers events all over the world, it needs a fast, reliable way to turn written text into published web pages.

The Guardian Storybook components library (access the Guardian Storybook here) streamlines the design and publication process. Building the design system, however, must have taken quite a bit of time because it includes every component that the well-designed website could possibly need. It even features slightly different versions of designs. For example, the CaptionBlockComponent Story includes:

• with defaults
• PhotoEssay using html
• when padded
• with width limited
• with credit
• when overlayed

No matter what type of caption block the designers want to include, they just have to search the component library, choose the correct option, and add text for the specific story.

The design team even created multiple donut graphs to fit unique circumstances.

Of course, The Guardian also maintains designs that help readers identify what type of content they’re reading.

A Review headline doesn’t look the same as a Photo Essay headline.

Again, it took a lot of effort to build this Storybook design system. Now that The Guardian editors and publishers have it, though, they can quickly publish coherent content that keeps readers informed without misdirecting them.

Here’s a great video about The Guardian’s Storybook component library.

IBM‘s Carbon Design System in Storybook

Carbon, the design system used by IBM, primarily gets used to build digital products with specific functions, such as adding files to a project, submitting reports, and tracking an activity’s progress. IBM uses Carbon for internal and external products, so you might recognize some of the components in the Storybook UI design system.

This Storybook example contains countless components. You’ll find everything from tabs to pagination. The company just wants to make sure that it has functional tools that share an aesthetic.

The components in Carbon’s design system also tend to have extensive Stories that let coders make subtle changes when necessary.

Even the Basic Checkbox component has 184 lines of JavaScript code in its Story.

A significant advantage of using Storybook is that designers and developers can see how components respond to interactions.

Three interactions with the select button:

The designer or developer can see all of these interactions result from within the same environment. They don’t need to export it to a prototyping app or add it to a designing app. The interactions happen right there to save time and meet expectations.

Salesforce Lightning Design System for React

You can also find a Storybook with components of one of the best design systems – Salesforce Lightning. This design system is based in React, a JavaScript library, which is commonly used for building user interfaces. React is a popular front-end library developed by Facebook that allows developers to create interactive and dynamic UI components.

When we talk about React in the context of design systems, it usually means using React to implement the components and design guidelines provided by the design system.

By leveraging the Salesforce Design System, developers and designers can create applications that not only look great but also provide a consistent and intuitive user experience, ultimately leading to increased user satisfaction and productivity. Additionally, adherence to the design system ensures compatibility and seamless integration with other Salesforce products and services.

Salesforce Lightning Design System was created to be framework agnostic, yet it is still compatible with other front-end frameworks, and developers have the flexibility to choose the technology stack that best suits their needs and preferences.

This Storybook example is based on React and it has UI components such as a data table, checkbox, button, card, carousel, and more.

Audi UI React

Another React-based Storybook is a design system by Audi. Crafted with precision, the Audi Design System serves as the ultimate beacon of truth for our global teams dedicated to crafting Audi’s finest offerings.

From insightful Getting Started guides to indispensable Core Components, this Storybook example empowers every team member, ensuring a unified approach across all Audi products worldwide. The Audi Design System embodies the essence of precision, innovation, and seamless collaboration that the design team at Audi chose as its defining qualities.

It sets the standard for design systems in the automotive industry and beyond. Check out its Storybook to see for yourself. It has navigational, input, text, and many other useful components.

FAQ

1. What is Storybook used for?

Storybook is an open-source tool used for developing, testing, and documenting UI components in isolation. It provides a sandbox environment where developers can create and showcase components independently from the main application. This helps in building components that are reusable, consistent, and well-documented.

Storybook is particularly useful in the development of design systems and component libraries, as it allows developers to visualize and interact with components outside the context of the application, ensuring they function correctly and look as expected. It also supports a range of add-ons for accessibility, responsive design, and performance testing, making it a versatile tool for front-end development.

2. What are some advanced Storybook examples?

Advanced Storybook examples demonstrate the tool’s capability to handle more complex scenarios and enhance the development experience. Here are a few examples:

• Component Interactions: Using Storybook’s Controls add-on, you can create interactive components that respond to user input directly in the Storybook UI. This is useful for testing props and states dynamically.
• Composite Components: Showcase components that are composed of multiple child components, such as a form with inputs, buttons, and validation messages. This helps in understanding how components work together in a real-world context.
• Data Fetching and Mocking: Demonstrate how components behave with data fetching by using tools like MSW (Mock Service Worker) to mock API requests within Storybook. This is particularly useful for testing components that depend on external data sources.
• Theming and Styling: Create stories that demonstrate how components adapt to different themes or styles. This is especially useful for design systems that support dark and light modes or multiple branding themes.
• Accessibility Testing: Use the a11y add-on to automatically check for accessibility issues in your components and display the results directly in Storybook. This ensures your components are usable for all users, including those with disabilities.

3. What are public Storybooks?

Public Storybooks are Storybook instances that are accessible to the public over the internet. They are typically hosted on platforms like GitHub Pages, Netlify, or Vercel, allowing anyone to view and interact with the documented UI components. Public Storybooks are often used by companies and open-source projects to showcase their component libraries or design systems, providing developers and designers with a comprehensive reference for how each component should look and behave.

By sharing a public Storybook, teams can improve collaboration, provide clear documentation, and promote consistency across different projects. Public Storybooks are also valuable for onboarding new team members and for providing external contributors or users with insights into the UI components available within a project.

4. What is the difference between Storybook for React and Storybook for Angular?

Storybook is a versatile tool that supports multiple frameworks, including React and Angular, but the way it integrates and functions with each framework can differ slightly due to the inherent differences between React and Angular themselves.

Nevertheless, the core purpose of Storybook remains the same across both frameworks: to provide a powerful environment for developing, testing, and documenting UI components in isolation. Both Storybook for React and Storybook for Angular offer robust features that cater to the unique needs of their respective frameworks, ensuring that developers can maintain a consistent and efficient workflow.

5. How can I use Storybook with UXPin Merge?

Using Storybook with UXPin Merge allows you to import your React components directly from Storybook into UXPin, enabling a seamless integration between design and development. This integration ensures that designers are working with the exact same components that developers are using in production, leading to more accurate and efficient design processes. Here’s how you can use Storybook with UXPin Merge:

1. Set Up Storybook: Ensure that your React components are documented and organized in Storybook. You should have a well-structured Storybook instance with all the components you want to use in UXPin.
2. Sync Components: Integrate Storybook with UXPin and use UI components in your UXPin design projects, allowing designers to drag and drop components into their prototypes while maintaining full functionality and interactivity.
3. Design and Iterate: With the components imported from Storybook, designers can create high-fidelity prototypes in UXPin that are consistent with the development environment. This integration helps streamline the design-to-development workflow, reducing the risk of inconsistencies and ensuring that both teams are aligned.

Using Storybook with UXPin Merge is a powerful way to bridge the gap between design and development, ensuring that your UI components are consistent, reusable, and accurately represented across all stages of product development.

Try UXPin Merge and Storybook integration for fast prototyping

Use Storybook components to build interactive prototypes 8.6x faster than with vector-based tools like Figma. Import them to UXPin via our integration with Storybook and build products quickly. UXPin Merge’s Storybook integration lets you import your components within one minute. It doesn’t even require any technical knowledge, especially when you maintain a public Storybook design system. Discover UXPin Merge.

The post These Storybook Examples Will Inspire Your Component Library appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

When it comes to building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), the goal is simple: deliver value to users as quickly and efficiently as possible. As a technical designer with coding skills, I’ve seen firsthand how the right approach can turn an idea into a market-ready product. With the increasing complexity of digital products, it’s more important than ever to build MVPs that are not only functional but also user-centric. Let’s dive into the best practices for creating an MVP.

Ready to take your MVP from concept to reality? Try prototyping in UXPin! With UXPin, you can create fully interactive prototypes that look and feel like the final product, enabling you to validate ideas before any code is written. Designers, developers, and stakeholders can work together in real-time, making it easy to iterate and refine your MVP quickly. Try UXPin for free.

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What is an MVP?

An MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product. It’s the most basic version of a product that can still deliver value to users. Eric Ries, the author of The Lean Startup, describes an MVP as a version of a new product that allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. The essence of an MVP is to start small, focus on core functionalities, and then iterate based on user feedback.

Why Build an MVP?

Building an MVP allows you to test your product idea with real users before investing significant time and resources into full-scale development. The benefits include:

• Validating Market Demand: Ensure there’s a demand for your product before committing to a full launch.
• Minimizing Development Costs: Avoid wasting resources on features that users don’t want or need.
• Faster Time to Market: Launch your product quickly and gain a competitive edge.
• Attracting Early Adopters: Build a loyal user base from the beginning.
• Gathering User Feedback: Use real-world feedback to guide future development.

As Steve Jobs famously said, “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology.”

What is the Best Approach to Building an MVP?

1. Lean Startup Methodology

The Lean Startup methodology, popularized by Eric Ries, emphasizes building a simple version of your product and improving it based on feedback. This approach aligns perfectly with MVP development because it focuses on efficiency and learning from users.

2. Agile Development Practices

Agile development practices advocate for incremental and iterative progress. This method is ideal for MVPs as it allows you to adapt quickly to changes and incorporate feedback throughout the development process.

3. Customer-Centric Approach

A successful MVP should always keep the end-user in mind. In the words of David Kelley, founder of IDEO, “Fail faster to succeed sooner.” This mindset encourages experimentation and quick iteration based on user feedback, ensuring that the final product resonates with your audience.

How to Design a Software MVP

Step #1: Identify the Core Problem

Start by understanding the key pain point your software addresses. Ask yourself, “What problem is my product solving?” The answer to this question will guide the entire MVP development process.

Step #2: Focus on Core Features

Once the core problem is identified, prioritize the features that solve it. This focus ensures that your MVP remains lean and efficient, delivering only what’s necessary to address user needs.

Step #3: Create Wireframes and Prototypes

Before diving into development, visualize your MVP with prototypes. Tools like UXPin Merge allow you to create fully functional prototypes that look and feel like the final product. This approach is faster and more efficient than traditional design methods, enabling you to test and iterate quickly.

Step #4: User Experience (UX) Considerations

Even an MVP should prioritize user experience. A well-designed interface can make a significant difference in how users perceive and interact with your product. Remember, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works,” as Steve Jobs highlighted.

Step #5: Choosing the Right Technology Stack

Select a technology stack that supports rapid development and scalability. Whether you opt for web-based technologies, mobile platforms, or a combination of both, the key is to choose tools that allow for quick iterations and easy updates.

Steps to Build an MVP

1. Market Research

• Identify Target Audience: Conduct surveys, interviews, and analyze demographics to understand who will use your product.
• Analyze Competitors: Study existing solutions, their strengths, and weaknesses. Tools like SWOT analysis can be useful here.
• Assess Market Needs: Identify gaps in the market where your product can offer a unique value proposition. Use data analytics to predict trends and customer behavior.

2. Define the Problem Statement

• Clarify the Core Problem: Use insights from your research to pinpoint the exact problem your users face.
• Create a Problem Statement: This should be a clear, concise statement that guides the entire team. For example, “Our product aims to reduce the time it takes for freelancers to invoice clients by 50%.”

3. Outline Core Features

• Prioritize Features: List features that directly solve the core problem. Use techniques like MoSCoW (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won’t have) to prioritize.
• Map Features to User Needs: Ensure each feature addresses a specific user need identified during market research. Avoid feature bloat by keeping the initial MVP simple and focused.

4. Create User Stories

• Develop User Personas: Create detailed personas representing your target users.
• Write User Stories: User stories should describe how users will interact with each feature, e.g., “As a freelancer, I want to quickly generate an invoice so I can save time on administrative tasks.”
• Define Acceptance Criteria: Set clear criteria for when a user story is considered complete, ensuring it meets the needs and expectations of users.

5. Choose the Right Technology Stack

• Evaluate Technology Options: Consider the scalability, speed of development, and future needs when choosing tools and frameworks.
• Integrate UXPin Merge: Use UXPin Merge to bridge the gap between design and development. This tool allows you to create a prototype that is nearly identical to the final product, which can drastically reduce redesigns and speed up the development process.
• Ensure Compatibility: MakReady to take your MVP from concept to reality? Try prototyping in UXPin! With UXPin, you can create fully interactive prototypes that look and feel like the final product, enabling you to validate ideas before any code is written. Collaboration is seamless—designers, developers, and stakeholders can work together in real-time, ensuring that everyone is on the same page. Plus, the built-in feedback loops make it easy to iterate and refine your MVP quickly.e sure that the chosen stack is compatible with your existing infrastructure and future product goals.

6. Develop the MVP

• Set Development Milestones: Break down the development process into manageable sprints with clear goals for each.
• Build Core Features First: Focus on developing the essential features outlined earlier, ensuring they are fully functional and meet the problem statement.
• Continuous Integration: Implement continuous integration (CI) practices to streamline development and catch issues early.

7. Test the MVP

• Conduct Unit and Integration Testing: Ensure that individual components and their integrations work flawlessly.
• User Testing: Involve real users to test the MVP in scenarios that reflect actual usage. Collect feedback on usability, performance, and functionality.
• Iterate Based on Feedback: Use the feedback to make necessary adjustments before the final launch.

8. Launch and Gather Feedback

• Plan a Soft Launch: Consider launching your MVP to a limited audience to gather initial feedback without overwhelming your team.
• Collect and Analyze Feedback: Use surveys, interviews, and analytics to understand how users interact with your MVP.
• Refine and Iterate: Based on the feedback, refine your product, prioritize new features, and plan the next iterations.

How Long Should an MVP Take to Build?

Typical Timeframes

On average, an MVP can take anywhere from 4 to 12 weeks to develop, depending on the complexity of the product and the size of the team.

Factors Influencing Development Time

Factors such as the complexity of the problem, the scope of features, the technology stack, and the team’s expertise all influence the time it takes to build an MVP.

Tips for Speeding Up the Process

To accelerate development:

• Focus on essential features.
• Use no-code/low-code tools for rapid prototyping.
• Maintain a tight feedback loop with users.

As Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, wisely put it, “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

MVP Development Best Practices

1. Continuous User Involvement

Involve users throughout the development process. Their feedback is crucial for ensuring that the MVP meets their needs and provides real value.

2. Emphasizing UX/UI Design

Even an MVP should have a polished user interface. A good UX/UI design can make the difference between a product that users love and one they abandon.

3. Leveraging Agile Methodology

Agile practices allow for quick iterations and continuous improvement. This methodology is perfect for MVP development, where adaptability and responsiveness are key.

4. Data-Driven Decision Making

Use analytics and user feedback to guide your decisions. This approach ensures that your product evolves based on real user needs, not assumptions.

What are Successful MVPs?

1. Dropbox

Dropbox started as a simple MVP with a basic file-sharing feature. By focusing on solving a specific problem, Dropbox was able to attract early adopters and iterate quickly based on feedback.

2. Airbnb

Airbnb’s MVP was a simple website that allowed users to book short-term lodging in their area. The focus was on solving the problem of finding affordable accommodation, and the company rapidly iterated based on user feedback.

3. Spotify

Spotify’s MVP was a desktop application that allowed users to stream music. By focusing on delivering a seamless user experience, Spotify quickly gained traction and expanded its feature set based on user feedback.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

1. Overloading with Features

Avoid the temptation to add too many features to your MVP. Focus on solving the core problem, and leave additional features for later iterations.

2. Ignoring User Feedback

User feedback is invaluable for guiding the development process. Ignoring it can lead to a product that doesn’t meet user needs.

3. Misjudging Market Needs

Thorough market research is essential. Misjudging market needs can result in an MVP that fails to gain traction.

FAQs

1. What is the best approach to building an MVP?

The best approach is a combination of Lean Startup methodology, Agile practices, and a customer-centric focus.

2. How do you design a software MVP?

Focus on solving the core problem, prioritize essential features, create prototypes using tools like UXPin Merge, and involve users throughout the process.

3. How long should an MVP take to build?

Typically, 4-12 weeks, depending on complexity and team size.

Build your MVP today

Building an MVP is about starting small, staying focused, and iterating quickly based on user feedback. By following the steps outlined above, you can create a product that not only meets user needs but also lays the foundation for future growth.

Remember, the goal of an MVP is not to create a perfect product but to learn as much as possible with the least amount of effort. As you embark on your MVP journey, consider using tools like UXPin Merge to streamline the process and build prototypes that are closer to the final product. This approach can save you time and resources, allowing you to bring your product to market faster. Try UXPin for free.

The post MVP Software Development – How to Build an MVP appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Peter Morville’s User Experience Honeycomb has been around since 2004 and is still a highly relevant design framework for modern product development projects. The framework forces design teams to evaluate a product through seven facets of user experience to identify areas for improvement.

This article provides an overview of the UX Honeycomb and the circumstances where it’s most effective. We highly recommend checking out our design frameworks article for more UX models that solve problems and improve project delivery.

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What is the User Experience Honeycomb? 

The UX Honeycomb is a design framework developed by Peter Morville in 2004. The framework uses seven facets of UX to guide design teams in delivering a good customer experience. The UX Honeycomb is also a fantastic educational tool for educating junior designers about user-centered design and how to design products customers will love.

Who is Peter Morville, the author of UX Honeycomb?

Peter Morville is an information architect and user experience designer from Scottsville, Virginia, USA. His bestselling books include Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Intertwingled, Search Patterns, and Ambient Findability.

Peter has spoken on information architecture and user experience at conferences and workshops worldwide and consulted for many Fortune500 companies through his company Semantic Studios.

Peter Morville has won several awards, including from the University of Michigan, AIIP, Society for Technical Communication, and the National Cancer Institute, to name a few.

You can follow Peter’s blog Intertwingled where he shares his valuable knowledge and insights.

7 Facets of UX Honeycomb

Peter’s UX Honeycomb identifies seven facets of user experience designers must fulfill to deliver a product that successfully meets user needs. Let’s explore those seven facets in greater detail.

Useful

The useful component asks, “Is this product or feature valuable to users?” “Is there a want or need?” “Does your product solve a problem for users?”

If a product or feature isn’t useful, it has no purpose, and there’s no reason to build it in the first place. Whether something is useful comes from thorough user research and understanding end-users.

Usable

Usability is a significant part of user experience design. A product might be useful, but if it frustrates users, then it isn’t usable.

Designers must create intuitive user interfaces and information architecture to minimize any learning curve while making it easy to complete tasks or use features.

Prototyping and testing are crucial in identifying pain points and improving the user experience. Designers must also conduct UX audits to ensure new releases meet a project’s requirements while fulfilling user needs.

Desirable

Aesthetics and desirability make digital products enjoyable to use. Designers must consider layouts, visual design, interaction design, and other UI design elements that engage and excite users.

During usability testing and interviews, designers must carefully consider users’ feelings and emotions to determine a product’s desirability. The goal is to delight users with products and features that solve problems effortlessly.

Findable

Findable is about making content and features easy to find. Information architecture, search, and navigation are vital for making a product “findable.” Designers must prioritize navigation according to user needs and business goals. 

For example, when designing a mobile app, designers must decide which menu items live on the tab bar vs. behind a navigational drawer.

Findable also includes alerts and error messages. Designers must guide users to solve problems as quickly as possible–like helpful, actionable error messages for form fields.

Accessible

Designing accessible products is essential for modern product development. Designers and engineers must ensure everyone can navigate a site effectively and digest its content, regardless of physical or mental ability.

Accessibility extends beyond these physical and mental limitations to situational and environmental constraints. For example, a voice user interface (VUI) helps blind users use an application, but it’s also essential for someone driving a vehicle.

Designers must consider who will use their products and what situational and environmental challenges they might encounter. It’s also imperative to think about people with disabilities and how to design comparable experiences for assistive technologies.

Credible

Trust and credibility are essential for acquiring and retaining customers. Users expect a consistent product they can rely on to live up to expectations and doesn’t deceive. 

For example, how easy is it for someone to downgrade or cancel a paid service? Making these tasks easy creates trust, increasing the likelihood of someone returning as a paying customer. A difficult experience frustrates people, damaging the product and brand’s credibility.

Designers must also ensure CTAs and instructions do what they say. Using ambiguous language or tricking users into completing a task is a quick strategy for losing customers!

Valuable

Users must want or need to use your product. A valuable product solves problems and delivers a return on investment. The return doesn’t have to be monetary; it could be time-saving, help achieve something the user can’t do otherwise, a mindless distraction while waiting in a queue, or even bring joy.

For example, food delivery apps became extremely valuable to people in many countries during lockdowns. These products kept many restaurants open while providing customers with meals.

Understanding users and delivering services that satisfy their wants and needs makes a product valuable.

How to Use the UX Honeycomb

The UX Honeycomb is an excellent framework for evaluation. It’s most effective for existing products rather than designing from scratch. Here are some scenarios where design teams might use the UX Honeycomb framework:

• Erasing design debt: Some design debt is easy to fix, but other usability issues require a systematic approach to identify the core issue(s). The UX Honeycomb lets designers look at problems from multiple angles to pinpoint the root cause.
• UX checklist: The UX Honeycomb provides designers with a foundational user experience checklist during UX audits and other design evaluations.
• Educational tool: Designers can use the UX Honeycomb as a framework for educating junior designers, clients, stakeholders, and cross-functional teams about user experience and how usability issues impact users.
• Redesigns: Designers can use the UX Honeycomb to identify user experience flaws in an existing product before a redesign. 

What is an Example of Using UX Honeycomb?

Let’s see how user experience designers can use UX Honeycomb to build a banking app for mobile designers.

1. Useful

• Objective: Ensure the app meets users’ needs effectively.
• Implementation: Conduct user research to identify the most needed features such as balance checking, money transfer, bill payments, and account alerts.
• Outcome: Features prioritized based on user needs ensure the app is relevant and valuable.

2. Usable

• Objective: Make the app easy and efficient to use.
• Implementation: Design intuitive navigation, simple workflows, and clear instructions. Conduct usability testing to identify and fix issues.
• Outcome: Users can complete tasks quickly and with minimal effort, reducing frustration and improving satisfaction.

3. Desirable

• Objective: Create an aesthetically pleasing and emotionally engaging experience.
• Implementation: Use appealing visuals, engaging animations, and a consistent design language that reflects the brand’s identity.
• Outcome: The app not only functions well but also delights users, encouraging continued use and brand loyalty.

4. Findable

• Objective: Ensure users can easily find the information and features they need.
• Implementation: Implement a logical information architecture and effective search functionality. Use clear labels and a well-organized menu.
• Outcome: Users can quickly locate features like transaction history, settings, or customer support, enhancing the overall user experience.

5. Accessible

• Objective: Make the app usable by as many people as possible, including those with disabilities.
• Implementation: Follow accessibility guidelines such as WCAG. Implement features like screen reader support, high-contrast modes, and adjustable text sizes.
• Outcome: The app is inclusive, allowing users with diverse abilities to interact with it effectively.

6. Credible

• Objective: Build trust and reliability in the app’s functionality and security.
• Implementation: Display clear privacy policies, use secure authentication methods, and provide transparent customer support options.
• Outcome: Users feel confident that their personal and financial information is safe, which is crucial for a banking app.

7. Valuable

• Objective: Ensure the app delivers value to both the business and the users.
• Implementation: Align app features with business goals such as increasing user engagement and reducing operational costs. Continuously gather user feedback and analytics to improve the app.
• Outcome: The app helps users manage their finances effectively while achieving business objectives like customer retention and satisfaction.

Practical Steps

1. User Research: Conduct surveys, interviews, and focus groups to understand user needs and preferences.
2. Usability Testing: Perform tests with real users to identify usability issues and gather feedback.
3. Design and Prototyping: Create wireframes and prototypes, focusing on usability and aesthetics.
4. Accessibility Testing: Use tools and guidelines to ensure the app is accessible to all users.
5. Iterative Improvements: Continuously gather user feedback and update the app to enhance its usefulness, usability, and desirability.

By applying the UX Honeycomb framework throughout the design process, the resulting mobile banking app can provide a comprehensive, user-centered experience that addresses all aspects of user satisfaction and engagement.

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The post UX Honeycomb – 7-Factor Design Framework for Great User Experience appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

The Double Diamond design process is a widely used methodology for identifying a problem and developing a solution. This outcomes-based framework encourages creativity and innovation while focusing on the core issue and its impact on end-users.

It was introduced by the British Council so that designers could follow a standardized design process and make that process super clear, with visual representation that outlines distinct phases: Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver.

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What is the Double Diamond?

The Double Diamond model is a framework for innovation and design developed by the British Design Council in 2005. The Design Council wanted a simple design process for delivering projects, no matter the methods and tools used.

The design framework features two diamonds:

• a diamond that represents the problem.
• a diamond that stands for the solution.

Designers work within these two diamonds. They help them to truly understand the problem and thoroughly test their solutions.

Once designers identify a core issue in the first diamond, they create a design brief as a foundation for the second. The second diamond focuses on prototyping and testing a solution until its ready for release. 

Why Are There Diamonds in this Process?

The Double Diamond design model was developed as a response to the need for a standardized design process description that could be universally applied across various design disciplines. Before its introduction, there was a lack of a cohesive framework that could describe the entire design process from start to finish, which led to inconsistencies and inefficiencies in design practices.

The Double Diamond we know as a design framework came from the British Design Council, but the inspiration for this process came from Hungarian-American linguist Béla H. Bánáthy’s divergence-convergence model.

Béla’s model looks very similar to the design framework where he used the first diamond to explore an issue widely and deeply (divergent thinking) and then took an appropriate focused action (convergent thinking.)

Diamond One – Discovering and Defining the Problem

The first diamond is about UX research and exploration, often referred to as the “problem space”–similar to the empathize and define stages of the design thinking process. 

Designers start by researching the problem and user needs. This phase might include reviewing analytics and UX artifacts, interviewing end-users, conducting a service safari, and other early-phase research methods.

In phase two, designers use discovery phase research to define the problem and how it impacts users. Design teams may iterate over phases one and two a few times until they get to the core issue. Next, they synthetize all the insights together.

At the end of phase two, designers create a design brief to guide the second half of the design process towards finding an appropriate solution.

Diamond Two – Developing and Delivering the Solution

The second diamond is about ideating, prototyping, and testing to find a suitable solution. 

The develop phase is a busy stage of the Double Diamond framework where teams use various tools and methods, including:

• Workshops and brainstorming: gathering as a team to ideate, hypothesize, conduct experiments, and discuss possible solutions. 
• Low-fidelity design: sketches, wireframes, paper prototypes, and other lo-fi methods designers use to develop and test many ideas quickly.
• Cross-functional collaboration: designers meet with engineers, product owners, and other stakeholders to discuss ideas for feedback on possible challenges and constraints.

The development phase is an iterable process of ideation, prototyping, and testing several ideas until designers identify a single solution with the most potential to:

• Solve the problem
• Align with user needs
• Meet budget and technical constraints

In some circumstances, designers choose a single solution or select their best two or three ideas for high-fidelity prototyping and testing in the deliver phase. The first goal is to eliminate those that don’t work until you arrive at a single solution.

Once designers arrive at a single solution, they conduct further testing to refine the final prototype. During this round of testing, designers focus on usability and user experience to ensure the final result satisfies the design brief and stakeholders.

If designers encounter a problem, they return to the develop phase to find a solution, iterating and testing until they find a solution.

Once prototyping and testing are complete, design teams prepare for the design handoff, including documentation, annotations, assets, and other instructions engineers will use to develop the final product for release.

Lastly, design teams must conduct a UX audit and quality assurance to ensure the final release meets the project’s requirements, business goals, and user needs.

Who follows Double Diamond Design Framework?

The Double Diamond design framework is widely adopted by various organizations and professionals across different industries.

1. IDEO: As a pioneer in design thinking, IDEO incorporates the Double Diamond framework to structure its innovation processes. Tim Brown, co-chair at IDEO, has often highlighted the framework’s value in understanding problems before jumping to solutions​.
2. Design Council: The British Design Council, which developed the Double Diamond model, extensively uses and promotes this framework as a standard for best practices in design​.
3. Google: Google’s design sprints and product development processes often reflect the principles of the Double Diamond, focusing on deep problem understanding and iterative solution development.
4. Microsoft: Microsoft integrates the Double Diamond framework in its user experience and product design processes, particularly in teams focused on user-centered design and innovation.
5. University Design Programs: Many university programs, such as those at Stanford’s d.school and the Royal College of Art, teach the Double Diamond framework as part of their design thinking and innovation curricula. It provides students with a structured approach to tackling complex design challenges.
6. Charities and NGOs: Organizations like the Red Cross and UNICEF use the Double Diamond framework to design and implement programs that effectively address the needs of the communities they serve, ensuring a deep understanding of problems.

4 Phases of the Double Diamond Design Process

The Double Diamond design process comprises two diamonds and four phases (also called the four Ds):

1. Discover
2. Define
3. Develop
4. Deliver

Discover

Objective: To understand the problem space thoroughly by gathering insights and exploring the broader context of the design challenge.

• Activities: This phase involves extensive research, both qualitative and quantitative. Techniques include desk research, field studies, user interviews, focus groups, and observations. The goal is to gather as much relevant information as possible about the problem, the users, and the context in which the problem exists​.
• Outcome: A deep understanding of the problem space, including user needs, pain points, and opportunities for innovation. This phase aims to challenge assumptions and uncover insights that will inform the next phase​.

Define

Objective: To synthesize the insights gathered during the Discover phase into a clear and actionable problem statement.

• Activities: In this phase, designers analyze and organize the data collected. Techniques such as affinity diagrams, root-cause analysis, and the “5 Whys” method are used to identify the core issues and refine the problem definition. Design synthesis helps in distilling complex information into clear insights​.
• Outcome: A well-defined problem statement or design brief that provides a focused direction for developing solutions. This phase sets the stage for ideation and prototyping by clearly articulating what needs to be addressed​.

Develop

Objective: To ideate and prototype multiple potential solutions to the defined problem.

• Activities: This phase involves brainstorming, sketching, and creating prototypes. Tools like personas, wireframes, and Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) are used to visualize and test ideas. The development phase encourages divergent thinking, allowing for the exploration of various solutions and approaches​.
• Outcome: A range of prototypes or preliminary solutions that can be tested and iterated upon. The goal is to explore different ideas and refine them through feedback and testing, ensuring that the solutions are viable and effective​.

Deliver

Objective: To finalize and implement the best solution, and to evaluate its impact.

• Activities: In this phase, the most promising prototypes are refined and developed into final products or solutions. This involves extensive testing, validation, and iteration based on user feedback. Surveys, usability testing, and pilot programs are common methods used to gather final insights before launch.
• Outcome: A polished, user-validated product or solution that addresses the initial problem effectively. The Deliver phase also includes post-launch evaluation and gathering feedback to inform future improvements and iterations​.

How to use Double Diamond Design Process

Here’s a practical example of using a double diamon design process in your workflow.

Phase 1: Discover

1. User Research: Conduct interviews and surveys with target users.
2. Market Research: Study competitors and industry trends.
3. Stakeholder Interviews: Gather insights from stakeholders.
4. Empathy Mapping: Create empathy maps to understand user emotions and motivations.

Phase 2: Define

1. Synthesize Data: Use affinity diagrams to identify patterns.
2. Problem Statement: Develop a clear and concise problem statement.
3. User Journey Mapping: Map user journeys to pinpoint pain points.
4. Design Brief: Draft a brief outlining project goals and constraints.

Phase 3: Develop

1. Ideation: Brainstorm solutions through collaborative workshops.
2. Prototyping: Create wireframes and sketches.
3. User Testing: Test prototypes with real users.
4. Iteration: Refine designs based on feedback.

Phase 4: Deliver

1. High-Fidelity Prototypes: Finalize design details in high-fidelity mockups.
2. Development: Build the site with close collaboration between designers and developers.
3. Quality Assurance: Conduct extensive testing.
4. Launch and Monitor: Launch the site and continuously monitor performance for further improvements.

By following the double diamond design process, you ensure a thorough and user-centered approach to designing a new site, maximizing the chances of its success by deeply understanding user needs, exploring and refining solutions, and effectively implementing and launching the final product.

Try End-to-End UX Design With UXPin

Prototyping and testing are significant in the end-to-end design process, including the Double Diamond framework. Designers must use high-quality prototypes to thoroughly test potential solutions and achieve accurate results.

Unfortunately, high-fidelity prototyping can be slow with certain tools, which isn’t ideal when testing many ideas in the Double Diamond design process.

With fully interactive design from UXPin, designers don’t have to compromise on quality for speed. They can build high-fidelity prototypes that look and function like the final product. Better prototypes yield accurate results during testing, allowing designers to go beyond what’s possible with image-based design tools.

UXPin also comes standard with built-in design libraries, allowing design teams to drag and drop components to build high-fidelity mockups in minutes. In a few clicks, they can add Interactions to create prototypes with code-like functionality, including:

• States: create multiple states for any element, each with separate properties and interactions.
• Variables: capture user inputs and take action based on the data to create dynamic, personalized user experiences during testing.
• Conditional Interactions: create “if-then” and “if-else” rules to execute different reactions to user actions and inputs.
• Expressions: design functions to perform complex operations traditionally only available with code, including form validation, computational components, simulate password authentication, and more.

No matter the framework, UXPin can enhance your design process to create better user experiences for your customers. Sign up for a free trial and discover the possibilities of code-based design with UXPin.

The post Double Diamond Design Process – The Best Framework for a Successful Product Design appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Design-to-code is a familiar workflow. Designers create a prototype using a design tool, and developers convert it to code–a simplified version of the standard product development process.

UXPin Merge turns this process upside down with a revolutionary code-to-design workflow. This article explains code to design and how it enhances the product development process with four case studies, including FinTech giant PayPal. Learn more about UXPin Merge.

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What is Code to Design?

Code to design is a UX workflow developed by UXPin using Merge technology. With UXPin Merge, you can use coded UI components to build fully interactive interfaces, and once you’re done with your design, export production code. The components aren’t translated from design to code. They are code.

The code-to-design workflow offers several benefits for designers, stakeholders, and engineers:

1. Designers build fully interactive prototypes, increasing testing scope during the design process.
2. Designers don’t design from scratch, thus reducing time to market.
3. Stakeholders can grasp design’s vision because prototypes behave like an end-product.
4. Design handoffs are smoother because designers and engineers use the same source of truth.
5. Teams share a design system which adoption is no longer an issue.
6. The drag-and-drop workflow makes product design more accessible to non-designers, and developers, stakeholders, researchers, and more can create a prototype on their own.

Design to Code vs. Code to Design

Design to code results in misalignment

Design to code is the traditional UX workflow. Design teams create mockups and prototypes using standard image-based design tools, which developers convert to code.

The biggest challenge with a design-to-code workflow is that it creates a gap between designers and engineers. To bridge that gap, designers must use external tools, write detailed documentation, and meet with devs to explain how prototypes and interactions must function.

Even with all this extra work and explanation, the final product often doesn’t meet the designer’s specifications and expectations. Designers and engineers argue over who is to blame, but the real issue is a language barrier. Designers work with vector graphics tools, while engineers work with code.

Code to design boosts collaboration

A code-to-design workflow bridges the gap between designers and engineers. They still speak different languages, but a technology like Merge facilitates the translation between design and development.

Design teams work with visual UI elements, while engineers work with the code powering them–the same component from two perspectives.

Teams working with a design system benefit most from this code-to-design workflow.

With design-to-code workflow, teams work with two versions of the design system:

• Image-based UI kit for design tools
• UI component library for programming

Code to design eliminates this separation because design teams and engineers use the same component library from the same repository–creating a true single source of truth.

Code to Design Use Cases

You’re probably thinking, “this code-to-design thing sounds great, but how does it translate to real-world product development?” Glad you asked. Here are four use cases where companies use code-to-design for product development.

PayPal

In 2019, PayPal completely redesigned its internal product development process using UXPin Merge. PayPal’s internal UX team had a unique challenge–they had five designers to over one thousand engineers managing 60+ products. No two products looked the same, and each had usability and design inconsistency issues.

Erica Rider, UX Lead EPX at PayPal, was tasked with solving this problem. To add a layer of complexity, Erica had to create a workflow that enabled PayPal’s product team to design, test, and deliver products. They lacked design skills and had little design tool experience.

After trying several solutions using traditional image-based tools, Erica discovered Merge. PayPal’s UX team used Merge to sync a customized Fluent UI design system to UXPin.

PayPal’s stakeholders wanted to test the effectiveness of this new code-to-design investment. Erica’s experiment involved creating two versions of a one-page prototype: one using an image-based tool and the other using the UXPin Merge. The results were better than expected:

• Image-based tool: over one hour
• UXPin Merge: 8 minutes

The Merge prototype had far superior fidelity and functionality. And, with some coaching, PayPal’s product teams achieved the same results.

Read PayPal’s full case study.

Iress

Software developer Iress was on a four-stage process to design system maturity.

• Stage one: PDF style guides
• Stage two: HTML pattern library with CSS
• Stage three: UI kit and component library
• Stage four: a fully integrated single source of truth with no design or code required for releases

Iress was stuck on stage three, unsure how they would bridge the gap between design and development to reach the final goal–until the team discovered code-to-design approach.

This workflow ticked all the boxes for Iress at that moment:

• A single repository serving designers and engineers the components they need to build and release products.
• Better alignment between designers and engineers, with seamless design handoffs.
• No designing or front-end programming from scratch.
• No design drift or inconsistencies across the organization.
• Realistic, interactive prototypes give testing participants and stakeholders an accurate representation of the final product.
• The opportunity to experiment with theme switching for dark mode or multi-brand design systems.

Read Iress’ full story.

TeamPassword

The first two use cases were enterprise products. But what can code-to-design do for startups and small teams? TeamPassword operates in the highly competitive password management market. The startup’s biggest challenge is that they don’t have any UX designers.

For a startup entrusted with people’s passwords and sensitive data, usability issues and design inconsistencies erode trust, ruining TeamPassword’s reputation and resulting in churn.

TeamPassword’s engineers did all the design and user testing using code prototypes. While these prototypes accurately represented the product’s functionality and user experience, building and iterating on ideas was time-consuming.

In 2022, TeamPassword switched to the MUI design system, which they synced to UXPin using Merge. Instead of developing prototypes, engineers used their custom MUI React library in UXPin. This code-to-design workflow significantly reduced time-to-market while eliminating usability issues and design drift.

When TeamPassword’s developers update the design system repository, the change automatically sync to UXPin, so they always have the latest version. Merge’s Version Control allows the team to track changes and switch between versions during testing.

Read TeamPassword’s full case study.

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dotSource

dotSource is a German-based digital product consulting and development agency. The company uses multiple design systems to deliver products and solutions to clients.

dotSource’s biggest problem in delivering these products was redundant processes and duplicate work with two design systems–a UI kit for design and a component library for development. The design system’s documentation created a third piece the team had to maintain.

dotSource’s “single source of truth” was actually three sources, not one–a problem many organizations encounter with design systems.

dotSource knew they had to make their single source of truth code-based but didn’t know how to achieve this workflow using traditional image-based design tools–until they discovered UXPin Merge.

dotSource uses Merge’s Storybook Integration to sync its design system to UXPin. Storybook allows dotSource to update the design system’s repository, documentation, and UXPin’s components with every release.

“Switching to a code-based design workflow is the only way around these image-based limitations. A code-based prototyping tool like UXPin with Merge technology enables this workflow by rendering code (instead of vector graphics), just like a browser. In UXPin, UI components look and behave exactly as they do for developers, effectively bridging the gap between design and development–a real single source of truth.” – dotSource

Read dotSource’s full article.

How Does Code to Design Work in UXPin?

Product teams have two options when importing code components into UXPin:

1. Import a product design system
2. Import an open-source UI library
3. Use built-in libraries available on trial

There are three ways to bring these libraries into UXPin:

• Git Integration: syncs React component libraries from a repository to UXPin.
• Storybook Integration: allows teams to sync many front-end frameworks, including React, Vue, Angular, Web Components, and Ember, to name a few (find the complete list in Storybook’s docs).
• npm Integration: designers can import UI components from open-source libraries from the npm registry using the Merge Component Manager (MCM).

We have three tutorials for using the npm Integration and Component Manager:

• React-Bootstrap
• Ant Design
• MUI

The Git and Storybook integrations are a little more complex, requiring technical skills to complete the Merge setup with UXPin’s Technical Support Team.

Ready to get started with code to design? Set up a trial and see how it speeds up your product development process and keeps your team on the same page. Try UXPin Merge for free.

The post Code to Design Complete Guide for 2024 appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

In the constantly evolving, technology-driven world we live in, it’s vital to stay on top of the most updated programs and applications out there. In order to have your site, app, game, etc. on the forefront, you have to stay updated with the best coding for your needs.

There are tons of new coding languages that are taking the benefits of old languages and leaving the disadvantages behind. Developers are improving productivity and performance while reducing bug issues. Of course, newer doesn’t always mean better and some older languages still reign.

If you’re hesitant to get involved in coding, see Why it’s Time for Designers to Switch from Image-Based to Code-Based Design and Coding is Designing.

Create code-based interfaces without touching code. Try our UI builder that allows you to drag and drop functional components to arrange the layout that can be easily copied to a dev’s environment. Speed up product design process and ship products way faster. Discover UXPin Merge.

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Coding vs UX Design

Coding and UX design are two distinct disciplines within software development that serve different purposes and require different skill sets.

Coding involves writing instructions (code) that tell computers how to perform specific tasks or functions. It focuses on implementing the logic and functionality of software applications.

UX designing, on the other hand, focuses on creating a positive and seamless experience for users when they interact with a product or system. It involves understanding user needs, behaviors, and preferences to design intuitive and user-friendly interfaces.

Coders use various programming languages (such as JavaScript, Python, Java, etc.), frameworks, libraries, and development tools to write code and build software applications.

UX designers use design tools like UXPin, Figma, or other to create wireframes, prototypes, and visual designs. They also use user research tools, usability testing platforms, and collaboration software to gather feedback and iterate on designs.

Why Coding Matters to Design

If you found it a little odd that there are articles on coding nestled in this design platform, you aren’t alone! It can often be one of the most overlooked elements of design on the surface, yet it is also massively important.

Firstly, it makes sense that there is a notable overlap between coders and designers. After all, both areas are heavily reliant on creativity, problem-solving, and logic. This means that aside from coding’s importance to design, it is also a skill that many designers are actually able to pick up rather quickly.

In terms of necessity, we can look at two significant ways that coding is critical to technology. The first is creating modular code in order to increase efficiency. This is when designers can make use of CSS, one of the most core languages to start with. 

The second is through creating a flexible code that is optimal for scalability. With so many small changes throughout the design process, it’s important to know how to create product suites that won’t need complete code rewrites every time a slight adjustment is made. 

There are of course design tools, like UXPin, which can make the handoff and docummentation painless. Test it for 14 days for free to see! 

Regardless, it’s good to at least keep your ear to the ground. So without further ado, let’s dive into the languages that can really help build upon your coding languages as you apply the skillset to your design!

1. Kotlin

Kotlin is a programming language used for JVM. It was created as an alternative to Java and, similarly to Java, can be used practically anywhere. Android app (also see UXPin’s Material Design libraries) development is the primary usage of Kotlin, but the code also has iOS capabilities. Although Kotlin is not as popular as Java, it is hugely embraced by companies like Netflix, Uber, Pinterest, and many more.

There are a few reasons why developers are using Kotlin over Java. The first reason is simply convenience. Due to the wide range of usage with the code, it’s productivity makes it the clear choice over Java to experienced coders. This efficiency shortens the time required to finish the project as well as reduces the cost of delivering a project.

For app creators specifically, Kotlin’s imbedded programs make life a lot easier. While you’re working, Kotlin searches and prevents bugs in the background. It also includes an algorithm that prevents common coding mistakes from occurring. Finished projects are also much more accessible making apps not only easier to update, but safer to use for consumers.

An additional bonus to being part of the Kotlin community is the communication available to you. There is a Slack channel dedicated to Kotlin developers so questions, support, and even partnerships can have a space to exist. In addition to that, the Kotlin team tries to put out weekly/monthly letters and videos to continuously explain their work.

2. Elm

Elm was designed for creative web-browser based graphic interactions so it’s perfect for those who are more into artistic creating. This is a great program for you to see how Coding is Designing. There is a primary focus on front-hand development with Elm. This means that back-end editing is a bit more difficult, but if you aren’t too concerned with that, then it’s perfect for you.

As a functional language, Elm supports anonymous functions, functions as arguments, and partial application by default, giving you a wide variety. It also has built in controls the predict issues in the program, or the code, and provides hints that are incredibly user friendly.

In fact, Elm is known for being one of the easier codes to work with. It doesn’t require too much background knowledge, and thanks to all the help you get while coding, it’s a breeze to use. This is best for someone who doesn’t have much coding experience! Elm is so user friendly that even kids are coding with it. Tynker is a site listed in the Top Coding Websites For Kids and it utilizes the Elm language. Some find it shocking that young kids are using this kind of technological language.

David Dodge, CEO of Codakid says,

“With technology being as predominant as it is in our world today, there’s no reason kids shouldn’t be learning how to code.”

3. Crystal

Crystal was developed as a new and improved Ruby. For those not familiar with the programming language, Ruby is used to write most web apps. Although it is a very simple code, it isn’t very easy to learn and can be very time consuming due to slow processing.

By maintaining the simple code used, Crystal was able to bring the convenience of Ruby with more productivity and quicker processing. In fact, when tested, Crystal has 20x more performance and was 30x faster than Ruby. This makes the language a clear choice when focusing on web applications.

Crystal also doesn’t require a specific language to be used. The language is type-checked, but specific variables or method arguments don’t have to be specified. There’s also a great feature called crystal play. This allows you to experiment and then quickly get feedback on your work.

4. Swift

Swift is a new language used to develop iOS and MacOS applications. It acts as an alternative to Objective-C. Swift, however, is much faster and maintains a higher performance ability.

Although the language doesn’t cover the Android domain, it is still incredibly useful if you look at the grand scheme of things. Apple’s market is already widespread, and is still growing. It’s also beneficial to focus on this type of production if you think of the variety of products available through Apple. iPhones and MacBooks are not the only items that can support apps nowadays, AppleTVs, Apple Watches, and so many more have the possibility for creation.

Apple’s large consumer base isn’t the only benefit of choosing this language, however. Swift has a clean syntax that makes it easier to both read and write. This saves coders tons of time and frustration in the development process. Perhaps the biggest benefit in choosing Swift over Objective-C is it’s independence. Objective-C can’t evolve if C doesn’t involve, but Swift doesn’t face this problem.

5. Java

The phrase, “oldie but goodie” couldn’t be more correct in this case. Java has been around for ages, but still remains at the top of the list for functional language. Everyone knows about it and almost everyone has used it.

The biggest benefit of choosing Java is that it has infinite usage. It can be used to develop mobile apps, server-side apps, video games, and so much more. Even more important than that though, is that it can run on anything. Java maintains a pretty tight hold on language domain because of its flexibility and easy usage.

Every main web browser supports Java, without having to use a plugin. This allows for much less upkeep with previously created apps. Not to mention, while working it provides multimedia support and is, for the most part, user-friendly. To top it off, Java is free to access and easy to use. It was even listed as a top coding language for kids.

Try Design with Code

Whether coding is something you’ve been doing for years or are just picking up, there are tons of languages out there and there has to be one that fits your needs perfectly. Some are more advanced than others and require some background knowledge, but there are plenty of resources available to you.

Build code-based interfaces in a familiar design environment. Use UXPin Merge and create consistent and user-friendly interfaces with reusable components from best UI libraries out there. Discover UXPin Merge.

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Product thinking is where UX design and product management intersect to deliver outcomes that create value for the organization and its users. There are several frameworks for product thinking, but the underlying concept is always the same–finding a problem-solution fit with clear goals and measurable KPIs for a successful product.

Whether you’re a startup or a multinational organization, developing a product-thinking mindset is crucial for modern product development and its highly competitive landscape. Some variation of what you plan to build already exists. It’s about identifying problems and opportunities competitors haven’t seen or aren’t fulfilling.

Experimentation is core to product thinking and finding the right solution. These experiments require MVPs or prototypes to test ideas and hypotheses. UXPin Merge is a powerful design tool empowering product teams to build high-fidelity, fully functioning prototypes with little or no design tool experience. Visit our Merge page for more details.

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What is Product Thinking?

Product thinking is a problem-solving methodology for developing valuable solutions for user problems. It looks at how users, technology, and business goals intersect to deliver products that benefit customers while generating a positive return on investment.

One of the fundamental aims of product thinking is to ship value rather than features. Instead of, “this is nice; customers will love it,” product thinking forces teams to ask, “Does this solve a problem? Will customers use it? Is it valuable for customers and the organization?”

Product thinking is crucial for extending a product’s lifecycle as product teams explore new problems, users, and markets. 

Product thinking vs. design thinking

Product thinking is a holistic method for understanding users, the market, competitors, business goals, and other influencing factors. When an organization designs a new product, the product management team uses product thinking to understand the problem and decide how to solve it using technology.

Design thinking is more user-centered and focuses on solving a specific user problem. Where product thinking defines what to build, design thinking considers the user experience and solving specific usability issues within a product.

The biggest overlap between these methodologies is that they place users and user problems front and center. The primary differentiator is that product thinking is a broad mindset encompassing multiple factors and complexities, while design thinking focuses on user experience.

The Product Thinking Process

In a webinar with Mind the Product, Merissa Silk outlines a three-part product thinking framework. The framework has many hallmarks of the design thinking process but with a broader scope and a greater emphasis on business goals, the market, and competitors.

Problem

Product managers start by identifying the problem. This first stage looks similar to the empathize and define steps of the design thinking process but looks beyond users to understand the market and competitors. Product teams identify a user problem and analyze it from multiple perspectives to determine the value of solving this issue. 

There are two key research tools product teams use to define the problem:

• User personas: understanding users, their motivations, habits, environment, and problems
• JTBD (jobs to be done): a technique for visualizing markets, customers, needs, competitors, and customer segments from multiple perspectives to identify innovative solutions

There are two templates product teams can use to define problems for stakeholders.

Basic template:

• Description of the problem or pain point
• How will the organization solve the problem?
• What are the KPIs for success?

Advanced template (5W1H):

• What is the problem?
• Who does it impact?
• Why is this problem important?
• Where does the problem occur?
• When does the problem occur?
• How could we solve this problem?

Opportunity

Next, product teams assess how they might solve the problem and what that will mean for the organization and its users, including the size of the opportunity and the return on investment. They also look at the market opportunity and how solving this problem might increase the organization’s market share or attract new customers.

While assessing the opportunity, product teams may build prototypes to test ideas and hypotheses.

Solution

Finally, product managers must analyze the results and decide which solutions solve the problem best. They must consider multiple factors, including:

• Possible ROI
• Constraints–including financial, human resources, and technical limitations
• How does solving this problem align with the current product roadmap
• Does this new product align with organizational goals?

How to Use Product Thinking for Building Products

Ex-Google PM Prashant Nair outlines a Practical Template for Product Thinking. Prashant makes the case that product thinking isn’t linear like many product frameworks. Instead, product teams use “continuous recalibration” as they move through the process and identify opportunities.

Prashant’s product thinking template has eight “boxes,” each with a set of questions to dig deep and stress test ideas.

1. Users
2. Market
3. Solution
4. Build
5. Team
6. Measure
7. Research
8. Iterate

PMs start by going through each box systematically and can jump to any box when an idea or opportunity arises.

Users

The first box is identifying your users and understanding their needs. You might ask:

• Who are the direct users?
• Who are the impacted users?
• What are the users trying to achieve?

These are examples; you might have specific questions about your product or market. This step aims to understand your users deeply, their motivations, problems, goals, needs, wants, etc. Using this data, you can create personas to guide the product thinking process.

Market

The second box looks at the market:

• How are the use cases being met today?
• Do you see any gaps/opportunities?
• Are those gaps big enough worth solving?
• Why are market players not solving this problem?

The primary aim of box two is identifying marketing opportunities and assessing whether there is value in solving them. When you identify a problem, it’s crucial to dig deeper and understand why competitors aren’t addressing this issue.

Solution

The first two boxes are designed to find problems and opportunities. The following two boxes focus on solutions and delivery, which brings us to the third box, Solution:

• Does our solution address the gaps providing value to the users?
• Can we sufficiently monetize the value so that our solution is sustainable?
• Have we uncovered any 10X innovation?

Build

The fourth box looks at building an MVP while identifying any challenges:

• How can we test our solution quickly and cheaply?
• How can we anticipate issues and unblock the team?
• How can we ensure a smooth landing?

The build box aims to test solutions. PMs need a cost-effective way to test hypotheses–i.e., prototyping. During the prototyping phase, product teams might identify a new opportunity, returning them to an earlier box to research further. From there, they might jump back to the build box to iterate on a new idea and so on.

At the same time, PMs must anticipate any issues related to the solution; some examples include:

• Regulations or legal implications
• Organizational limitations and capacity
• Cost and resource challenges
• Technical constraints

Lastly, PMs must look at how they might enter the market with this solution and what that process might look like.

Team

The fifth box looks at the organization’s current resources:

• Do we have the right skills and motivations?
• Are incentives aligned?
• Do we have funding/sponsorship to see this through?

The team box is crucial because if you don’t have the skills or resources, the solution is redundant, and you must return to the drawing board. 

PMs must also assess whether the solution aligns with the organization’s values, goals, and roadmap. You may have an excellent solution, but if it pulls the organization in a new direction, that could have adverse implications.

Measure

The sixth box looks at key performance indicators (KPIs) for success and failure:

• What metrics will tell us if we are heading in the right direction?
• Have we built the instrumentation to track continuously?
• When things fail, do we have enough granularity to know what is failing?

PMs will identify business and product metrics and measure these across multiple demographics like location, age, language, gender, etc.

The most important thing when designing these metrics is granularity–do you have the ability to pinpoint issues? 

Research

Continuous research helps keep product teams in touch with market and competitor changes. Some questions the team might ask include:

• Are we tracking external factors?
• Are we able to generate insights?
• Are the insights making it to the correct forums?

It’s crucial to keep track of external factors like market and competitors because it could render your product redundant. For example, if you’re developing a new crypto product in the United States and the government passes legislation requiring new licenses and oversight, this could increase your time and cost to market. Your company might not have the resources to meet these new requirements.

Any external changes will force PMs to return to earlier boxes to address the new problem and adapt the current solution. Without these research systems in place, PMs risk delivering a product that no longer fits the market or serves users.

Iterate

The final box is Iterate, which is something that applies to all boxes:

• Have we fostered a culture of experimentation?
• Are we making data-driven decisions?
• How fast can we adapt?

Google is one of the world’s leading tech innovations. One way they achieve this is by encouraging experimentation and framing failures as learning experiences, eliminating negative connotations. Innovation and great products come from many iterations. When team members are afraid of failure, they don’t try new things, resulting in mediocre outcomes.

Product teams must measure each iteration using KPIs defined in the Measure box. Those KPIs are crucial for telling team members when something isn’t working and why. They can use this data to make changes and iterate. Data-driven decision-making also informs teams when to abandon an idea altogether.

Product teams must go through each box systematically to create a baseline. Then, when they make a change to one box, they have to recalibrate the other seven to get a holistic view of the product idea.

What is a product mindset?

A product mindset is a way of thinking and approaching problems with a focus on creating value for users or customers. It’s a mindset commonly found in product management, design, and development disciplines, but it can be applicable to various fields and industries.

Product vs project mindset

A project mindset and a product mindset represent two distinct approaches to managing initiatives within an organization, often seen in the realms of project management and product management, respectively.

A product mindset is about adopting a holistic approach to creating and managing products, with a relentless focus on delivering value to users while adapting to changing market dynamics and customer needs.

The primary focus of a project mindset is on delivering specific outputs or deliverables within the constraints of time, budget, and scope. Success is often measured by how well the project adheres to these constraints.

While both mindsets involve planning, execution, and management of initiatives, they differ in their focus, approach, and lifecycle. A project mindset is suited for managing temporary endeavors with well-defined objectives, while a product mindset is more suitable for building and evolving products to meet the ongoing needs of users and the market.

UXPin Merge – The Ultimate Product Design Tool

UXPin Merge enables UX designers and product teams to build fully functioning prototypes using interactive components. Product teams can iterate on new ideas and test hypotheses faster than traditional design tools or code.

“With UXPin Merge, some of our product managers can build similar one-page prototypes in eight to ten minutes—the same time it takes our experienced designers in UXPin! Before, with our limited resources and designers, a one-page product would take two or three months just to design mockups. Now product teams can design and deliver a product within the same time frame.” Erica Rider, UX Lead EPX at PayPal

Revolutionize your product thinking and build better MVPs with the world’s most advanced design tool. Visit our Merge page for more details.

The post What is Product Thinking and Why it Matters? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Figma is a great tool for creating beautiful mockups and collaborating in real-time with other designers. It is one of the best for building a portfolio and showing off your skills. When working in an enterprise-level company, Figma might not be enough, as it’s difficult to translate its design into code.

This is where UXPin comes in. It helps designers and developers communicate and use a shared library of UI components which can be copied from design to development workflow. No translation needed. That’s why we decided to build a Figma plugin and help you bring Figma design to UXPin for more robust prototyping. Sign up for a free trial to build your first UXPin prototype today!

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Design in Figma. Prototype in UXPin.

We get it. You love designing in Figma! But, you also prefer the higher fidelity and functionality you get from prototyping in UXPin. If this is you, UXPin’s Figma plugin gives you the best of both worlds–design your mockups in Figma, and copy your screens to UXPin for prototyping.

While this workflow offers the best of both worlds–and we encourage teams to implement solutions that work best for your product and circumstances–designers must use two tools when they can use UXPin for everything. UXPin is effective as a design and prototyping tool and comes packed with features to scale UX beyond what’s possible in any image-based tool.

Why does it make sense to prototype in UXPin vs. Figma?

Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch, and others render static vector graphics, meaning designers can’t replicate code, and when they do, it takes a lot of effort, workarounds, and additional tools.

UXPin is a code-based design tool. This doesn’t mean designers work with code; UXPin renders HTML, CSS, and Javascript behind the scenes to give designers the same fidelity and functionality as code.

These four features powered by code allow designers to create more advanced prototypes in UXPin.

States

UXPin States allows designers to create multiple states for a single component. For example, a button can have several states, which include different properties triggered by user interactions.

States also allow designers to create complex components like functioning dropdown menus, steppers, carousels, accordions, and more.

Interactions

Designers can create complex UXPin Interactions constrained by code rather than a design tool’s limitations. UXPin also offers many Triggers, Actions, and Animations to design immersive prototype experiences.

Conditional Interactions with “if-then” and “if-else” conditions allow design teams to create dynamic prototypes that respond to user inputs and triggers. This Javascript-like interactivity lets designers see how design decisions impact the user experience and pinpoint areas for improvement.

With these realistic interactions, stakeholders and engineers need little explanation making the feedback process and design handoffs more productive.

Variables

It’s impossible to test forms in most design tools, including Figma. Why? Because the fields are images rather than inputs. In UXPin, form fields function as if they were developed by an engineer. UXPin gives designers text inputs, checkboxes, radios, selects/dropdowns, multi-selects, and buttons ready to use out of the box.

With Variables, designers can capture user inputs from prototypes and use that data elsewhere in the application. For example, capturing a user’s information during signup and using the name field to create a personalized welcome message.

Expressions

UXPin’s Expressions enable designers to take prototyping far beyond the possibilities of any other design tool. Validate passwords and other form fields, design a functioning shopping cart that updates based on user interactions, create dynamic error messages, and more.

When combined with other UXPin features like States, Interactions, and Variables, Expressions enable designers to build prototypes, and user flows indistinguishable from code.

Learn more about these and other advanced UXPin features in this YouTube tutorial from UX design influencer Jesse Showalter.

5 Reasons to Turn Your Figma Mockups into Interactive UXPin Prototypes

1. High-Fidelity Prototyping

Figma: Beautiful-looking vector mockups that unfortunately don’t replicate real-like functionality or fidelity, making prototypes challenging to interpret for devs and stakeholders.

UXPin: Code-like fidelity and functionality allow designers to create immersive, dynamic prototype experiences indistinguishable from the final product–less documentation, smoother design handoffs, and faster time-to-market.

There is a big difference between a high-fidelity mockup (what Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, etc. produce) vs. a high-fidelity prototype that looks and feels like the final product. UXPin offers genuine high-fidelity results where prototypes need little or no explanation because they respond to user interactions like code.

2. Bridging the Gap Between UI Design and REAL Prototypes

Figma: Design and develop UI design ideas in Figma

UXPin: Push past Figma’s limitations to create advanced prototypes in UXPin

While Figma offers the features to create beautiful designs and mockups, designers hit a brick wall at the prototyping stage. UXPin’s Figma plugin allows design teams to leverage the best qualities of both tools to create high-fidelity prototypes in UXPin.

Make changes and iterate on UI designs in UXPin, or only use it as a prototyping tool using Figma for designing and editing–the choice is yours!

3. Enhanced User Testing

Figma: Testing limited to basic click/tap interactions, user flows, and navigation

UXPin: Immersive prototypes that accurately replicate the final product

Figma’s vector-based constraints and limitations prevent accurate testing. Designers must use multiple frames to achieve basic interactivity, and many components are impossible to reproduce.

As a code-based design tool, UXPin enables designers to build prototypes limited only by  the feasibility of what devs can build–without writing a single line of code! These complex, dynamic prototypes give design teams valuable insights to improve the user experience and identify business opportunities.

Designers also pinpoint critical usability and accessibility issues when testing with UXPin prototypes, resulting in less UX debt and higher quality design project outcomes.

4. Faster Iterations

Figma: Multiple frames and components to mimic end-product’s behavior–changes and redesigns are time-consuming

UXPin: Uses layers and states on a single screen allowing changes in a few clicks

One of the challenges with prototyping in Figma is that designers must create multiple frames and components to mimic code’s interactivity. These interactions feel awkward and non-intuitive. They’re time-consuming to design and make changes.

In UXPin, designers work with pages and layers. Instead of switching between multiple frames and pages, designers work on a single canvas, making changes via the Properties Panel. This workflow is more intuitive and facilitates faster iterations so that designers can solve issues much quicker.

5. Smoother Design Handoffs

Figma: Lots of documentation, back and forth comms with devs, videos/GIFs to mimic interactions, and links to other tools

UXPin: Prototypes replicate the end-product experience and interactivity, reducing the need for lengthy documentation and additional tools

Designers often use tools like After Effects and others to replicate motion and interactions. Why? Because design tools lack fidelity and functionality. Designers also create transitions and interactions that engineers can’t reproduce due to technical constraints. Switching between multiple tools and files is also confusing, time-consuming, and increases errors.

With UXPin, designers don’t have to use additional tools because they can design components and interactions that accurately mimic code. No need for videos/GIFs, back-and-forth communication, and long-winded PDFs to explain what the prototype is supposed to do.

Designers can create documentation in UXPin with annotations on prototypes, so engineers and stakeholders don’t have to switch between multiple files–everything is in one place! Devs and stakeholders can use UXPin’s Comments on Preview to ask questions, tag team members, and even assign comments for edits.

With realistic prototypes, supporting documentation, and collaboration in one place, design handoffs are smoother with less friction in UXPin.

UXPin–An End-to-End Design Solution

While you can design in Figma and prototype in UXPin, it means using two tools when you only need one! UXPin offers a comparable design experience to Figma, including collaboration, wireframing, information architecture design, mockups, and designing components from scratch!

With UXPin’s end-to-end design solution, designers don’t need to switch between tools because they can do everything inside UXPin, including building, managing, and sharing a design system.

Reducing tools not only streamlines UX workflows but also reduces costs, allowing design leaders to reallocate valuable resources elsewhere.

Stakeholders have little time or patience to decipher image-based prototypes and the accompanying documentation. UXPin prototypes need less explanation, allowing stakeholders to enjoy a final product experience. This immersive experience elicits meaningful stakeholder feedback while increasing buy-in for design solutions.

Say goodbye to the limitations of image-based design, and hello to enhanced prototyping, collaboration, and design outcomes with UXPin. Discover how UXPin can revolutionize your product design workflows and deliver exceptional user experiences to your customers. Sign up for a free trial.

The post Turn Figma Designs into Interactive Prototypes appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Buttons are essential components in any digital product. While there are many ways to design a button, designers must follow principles and best practices to create familiar and intuitive user experiences.

Button design is more than choosing a shape and color. Designers must consider a button’s states, placement, size, responsiveness, consistency, icon usage, suitable text/labels, and more.

Design beautiful UI elements that look and function like code components using UXPin. Sign up for a free trial to explore the world’s most advanced design, prototyping, and testing tool.

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

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What is a Button?

A button in UI and UX design is a graphical element typically appearing as a clickable area on a digital interface. Its primary purpose is to convey a specific call to action (CTA), thereby directing user interaction within the system.

Buttons serve as interactive cues informing users that an action will occur upon activation. Through various visual cues such as color, text, and states, including disabled states when applicable, buttons effectively communicate with users, guiding them through the interface and facilitating desired interactions.

Despite its seemingly straightforward nature, the strategic implementation of buttons is crucial for ensuring intuitive and efficient user experiences across digital platforms.

Buttons vs links

Many digital products and websites use buttons and links incorrectly. There is a simple rule to follow when deciding between a button or link: Links are for navigation, and buttons are for performing actions.

Types of button UI

There are four types of buttons, and each button conveys a different message to users:

• Contained Button: Often used as the primary button for CTAs and important actions. Contained buttons use a background color with contrasting text.
• Outlined Button: Also referred to as a secondary or ghost button, and often placed next to a primary button as an alternative action, like “Cancel” instead of “Submit.” Outlined buttons use a transparent background with a contrasting border and text.
• Text Button: Also called a flat button and often used for low important actions, like date pickers. Text buttons have no background or border, with only the label colored and visible.
• Toggle Button: Designers use toggle buttons for two or more related actions–like switching dark/light mode on an app or bold, italic, and underline in word processors. Designers use states to indicate which option is active.

Modern mobile apps also use a floating action button (FAB) for important actions. Designers often place FABs at the bottom of the screen so that it’s a thumb’s reach from the user.

The basics of button UI design

Designers and engineers can modify several button properties:

• Background – The background of a button refers to the color or image that fills the area behind the button’s content. It’s essential for providing visual contrast and emphasis, helping the button stand out against the surrounding interface elements.
• Label – The label of a button is the text or symbol displayed on its surface, conveying the action or function associated with the button. A clear and concise label ensures users understand the purpose of the button and encourages interaction.
• Icon – An icon is a graphical symbol or representation often used alongside or instead of text in a button. Icons can enhance visual communication, particularly for actions with universally recognized symbols, and contribute to a clean and minimalist design.
• Padding – Padding refers to the space between the content of a button (such as text or icon) and its edges. Adequate padding ensures that the button’s content is visually separated from its border, improving readability and touchability on both desktop and mobile devices.
• Margin – Margin is the space around the outside of a button, separating it from neighboring elements. Proper margin helps maintain visual balance and prevents overcrowding, allowing users to interact with buttons without accidental touches or clicks.
• Border – The border of a button is the visible line or stroke that outlines its shape. Borders can be solid or dashed, and they contribute to the button’s visual appearance and hierarchy within the interface.
• Border radius – Border radius refers to the curvature of the button’s corners. Applying a border radius creates rounded corners, softening the button’s appearance and adding a touch of visual elegance to the design.
• Drop shadow – A drop shadow is a visual effect that creates the illusion of depth by adding a shadow beneath the button. This effect helps lift the button from the background, making it appear more prominent and tactile. Drop shadows can enhance the overall aesthetics and usability of a button in UI design.

What are typical button UI states?

Designers use states to provide context and communicate with users. There are six types of button states. We explain them briefly here, but if you want to read about them at length, we have a dedicated article about button states.

1. Default: How a button looks without any state. A default button could be contained, outlined, or flat, depending on your UI design and design system
2. Active: Tells the user they have pressed the button
3. Hover: Activated when a mouse cursor hovers over a button. Hover tells the user this is a clickable element
4. Focus: Used to indicate selection when using the keyboard or assistive technologies
5. Disabled: Indicates the user can’t click the button until completing another task
6. Loading: Communicates the system is processing the user’s action

What are the best practices for designing button UI?

Designers must follow certain principles for designing buttons and user interfaces. Use these button design best practices to guide your next project.

Button Hierarchy and Placement

Designers must consider button hierarchy and placement to provide users with clarity and highlight the most important action. Google’s Material Design recommends designers must create emphasis through color:

• High emphasis (Primary): Use a bright color, preferably a contained button, to show this button is most important. Avoid using more than one high-emphasis button on a single screen.
• Medium emphasis (Secondary): Use a lighter shade of your high-emphasis color to signify this button is less important. 
• Low emphasis (Tertiary): Use a text button or outlined button with a transparent background to show users its low importance.

By applying button hierarchy principles, users can complete important actions without much thought. If you use a single button for every action, users will have to examine each to determine which one they must press.

Correct button placement is also essential to guide users through a digital product. If you place two buttons side-by-side, always use a contained button as the primary action and outlined or text button for the secondary action. 

For example, if you have “Save” and “Cancel” at the bottom of a form, “Save” would be the primary action with the higher emphasis.

Button Consistency

Designers must use buttons consistently throughout a digital product. If you use a contained button for a primary action on one screen, repeat this choice throughout.

Designers must also be consistent with button sizes, fonts, icons, colors, border radius, whitespace, and other properties to create a familiar user experience that’s easy to navigate.

Button Sizing & Spacing

Size matters when it comes to buttons, especially on mobile applications where users use their fingers. Designers must use appropriate button size and spacing to ensure users don’t accidentally hit another element. 

Designer Taras Bakusevych recommends making UI elements a minimum of 48×48 pixels to avoid touch target errors. 

Button Labels

Labels should be as short and meaningful as possible. Designers must also keep labels on a single line for legibility. 

Button text language is also critical for conveying the correct message and action to users. For example, if you’re removing a song from a playlist, the correct phrasing would be “Remove” instead of “Delete.” Delete might confuse the user into thinking they’re deleting the song from their device or application.

Capitalization is also a critical factor designers must consider. Google Material Design recommends using uppercase for languages that allow it, while UX Movement says to use sentence-style capitalization.

The argument for sentence-style capitalization is better for users with reading disabilities like dyslexia. Google reasons that uppercase “is to distinguish the text label from surrounding text.”

The best option is to test your product with users. Color, contrast, size, UI layout, and many factors impact legibility, so there is no one-size-fits-all for capitalization.

Button Accessibility

Accessibility is a critical factor in modern UX design and product development. Designers must test UIs using tools and diverse usability participants to ensure buttons and other UI elements meet accessibility standards.

The color contrast between the label and background is one of the biggest considerations for button accessibility. With UXPin’s built-in accessibility features, designers can test color blindness and contrast on the fly–keeping them focused in UXPin rather than turning to external tools.

Label size, spacing, and padding can also impact accessibility. These properties are harder to test using tools, so designers must use usability testing to get meaningful results.

Devices & Screen Sizes

Recognizing how buttons look across different devices and screen sizes is crucial for designers. For example, dialog boxes look completely different on Apple devices compared to Android. The floating action button also looks different on iOS vs. Android.

Designers also need to consider how buttons will appear across multiple screen widths. For example, a button with a long label might not look the same on mobile vs. desktop.

Designing Buttons in UXPin

Designing buttons using an image-based design tool can be challenging. The static nature of image-based tools means buttons lack interactivity, functionality, and fidelity.

With UXPin’s code-based design tool, designers can create authentic user experiences with components that look and function like code. Here are some of UXPin’s advanced features to enhance your button design.

Components

Designers can build buttons from scratch and save them as Components to reuse throughout the design. Designers can also share these components through a shared design system to maintain consistency throughout the team.

States

UXPin States allow designers to create multiple states for a single UI component, like a button. For example, you can design the six-button states mentioned above, each with different properties that change according to user and system actions.

Designers can also use UXPin’s States for other components like carousels, dropdown navigation, accordions, and more.

Interactions

Create code-like interactivity using UXPin’s Interactions. Designers can choose from an extensive list of triggers and actions for desktop and mobile interactions. 

UXPin takes interactivity one step further with Conditional Interactions, allowing you to create dynamic, unique experiences based on user and system actions.

Variables & Expressions

With Variables and Expressions, designers can build high-fidelity prototypes with interactivity mirroring code.

For example, using UXPin Variables, designers can create a dynamic pay button that displays a variable total from a shopping cart, “Pay $25.”

You can also use Variables to create a personalized user experience during testing, like a welcome message with the name from user input or populating a profile page.

With Expressions, designers can validate form fields, like emails and passwords, and even disable a button until the user completes a form’s required fields.

With UXPin’s advanced prototyping features, the possibilities are endless. Designers can design prototypes that look and function like code, saving countless hours developing an identical prototype simply for testing purposes.

Sign up for a free trial and start building your first UXPin prototype immediately. Install one of UXPin’s free example apps to see how to create working buttons and other UI components.

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