Mobile apps are a vital part of our daily routines. We wake up with the alarm, plan our day with an organiser, track our health with a fitness tracker app and find leisure in games and other entertainment services.
These are all different areas in our lives where we use apps to aid us. But any usual person will only have one alarm app, one organiser and a select few of the entertainment apps, like maybe YouTube and Netflix. The amount of apps available today in the App Store and in the Google Play Store is enormously huge. Only about 10% of the available apps tends to stick on to its users, become the most preferred app in its niche of operation. Why? Out of the many factors people consider while judging apps, among their speed, flexibility and responsiveness is a sleek and user friendly user interface (UI). In fact, it is one of the first things that people notice about an app, consciously or subconsciously, before downloading an app. All of the popular apps we use have their own unique user interface and User Experience(UX) that gives them a brand of their own.
( An interactive UI attracts more users for your app)
So if you are a budding app developer trying to make the next big Facebook or YouTube, you might wanna look into using some of these wireframing tools to build your own definitive user interface and user experience that’ll make your users hooked.
1.Adobe Experience Design
Adobe XD, as the name suggests is a powerful tool which enables you to craft powerful user interfaces. With it, you can set up smooth and sleek user experiences as accurate as you envision it. It is available for free in both Mac and Windows and can be easily downloaded from the Adobe website.
The app is divided into two sections – Design and Prototype. Design lets you “draw” the UI which you have in mind, with a click and drag interface. It has several tools like drawing shapes, pens, and such similar stuff that you’ll find in a drawing app. You can also import other assets or images drawn with other software, in several formats.
(The design section)
The prototype section is for linking up the different pages or screens. You can define what each button or element will do when you click or drag or interact with them. Its basically wiring up the pages.
(The prototype section for linking up the pages)
There is also a “preview” feature with which you can run your app in you smartphone or even your computer to look and experience how it feels. Overall, Adobe XD is a powerful software which can be used by bare beginners and professionals alike to build engaging interfaces.
2.Sketch
Sketch is the staple design tool for professionals who use Mac. It is a very powerful and easy tool, but unfortunately, it has only been released for Mac. Sketch incorporates features like a complete toolkit and code export facility. A “Design once, Reuse everywhere” promise is given by the developers.
A vast array of libraries and add-ons allows easy sharing of design and collaboration among developers and designers. Vector graphics editing can be done with high precision. Sketch being an app dedicated solely for UI design, it is very powerful and gets work done compared to the other general use editing apps, like Photoshop, used for UI designing.
Adding to all these good features it even has features to export the design as CSS code directly. It is one of the most preferred UI design apps used by designers all over the world.
3.Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop has been an industry standard for many years, and is still one of the most used image processing software. It has a variety of uses, making it ubiquitous in the photo editing field, ranging from professional photographers to astrophotographers to graphic design artists including UI designers.
As it is not a dedicated wireframe development app, there are several cons to using Photoshop, like for example, you can only work on a single art board at a time. But on the plus side, photoshop has several extensive features and tools. It features a heavy weight editing environment compared to the lighter XD or Sketch.
Also, the time invested in learning Photoshop will yield more in the future as you can use it in several other fields
One of the facts that I remember while writing this article is how I always noticed that the photographers at digital studios are almost all the time using Adobe Photoshop.
Image Source:-
Adobe XD - Self
Sketch - www.sketchapp.com
Adobe Photoshop - www.adobe.com/Photoshop