We encourage you to keep reading our newest blog post, in which we&rsquo;ve picked the X recent web design trends.

Web Design Trends 2017: How to Be up to Date

Mobile design goes beyond simply looking stylish and engaging users with bright colors and fun illustrations. User-oriented and innovative features play an equally important role. To make sure your app design stays relevant in terms of both style and user experience, it's important to stay up-to-date on current app design trends and use best practices.&nbsp;
Meanwhile, the introduction of conversational interfaces and personal assistants of different kinds doesn&rsquo;t mean we&rsquo;re ready to abandon more customary user interface patterns.
In this article, we&rsquo;ll try to analyze what&nbsp;<a href="https://agilie.com/expertise/technology/ui-ux-design">mobile app design</a>&nbsp;trends that buzzword the beginning of 2024 will - hopefully - live up to the end of the year and will actually mean something for product design and human-computer interaction in general.
Here&rsquo;s what we see as the most interesting mobile design trends for the year 2024.
More material design applications including:
<ul>
<li>Experimenting with material trends such as card interfaces</li>
<li>Meaningful transitions</li>
</ul>
Detours from material design principles like:
<ul>
<li>Less flat-ish feel</li>
<li>More color diversity</li>
<li>Icons going back to thin outline</li>
</ul>
Experimenting with UI patterns:
<ul>
<li>Alternative UI patterns instead of hamburger-like menus</li>
<li>Exploration of various prototyping tools</li>
<li>Mobile-first orientation of web apps</li>
</ul>
Adapting mobile design to new means of interactions such as:&nbsp;
<ul>
<li>Сonversational interfaces</li>
<li>AR and VR</li>
</ul>
Let's look at the main trends of mobile applications for iOS and Android in 2024 - forewarned means armed.
<div id="form-description" class="form-description" data-title="Key takeaways" data-text="Even with the claims of some that the trends are only temporary, our experience suggests otherwise. There are certainly UI/UX trends that have moved into the permanent category, such as dark mode or the use of real photos, which are now considered common practice. It is important to realize that trends that become best practices remain relevant for a long time, so adopting them early makes you an innovator, or at least attracts the attention of users.

For instance, use AR to create functional user interfaces that allow customers to try out furniture, for example, before buying it. Or imagine that your mobile app allows users to try on clothes to see how they will look before buying - augmented reality can be the perfect tool to make the shopping process even more interactive.">
<div class="form-description-title">Key takeaways</div>
Even with the claims of some that the trends are only temporary, our experience suggests otherwise. There are certainly UI/UX trends that have moved into the permanent category, such as dark mode or the use of real photos, which are now considered common practice. It is important to realize that trends that become best practices remain relevant for a long time, so adopting them early makes you an innovator, or at least attracts the attention of users. For instance, use AR to create functional user interfaces that allow customers to try out furniture, for example, before buying it. Or imagine that your mobile app allows users to try on clothes to see how they will look before buying - augmented reality can be the perfect tool to make the shopping process even more interactive.</div>
<h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 30px; font-size: 26px; color: #262b33; font-family: sans-serif;">1. More material design and a step off from flat</h2>
Google&rsquo;s material design had made it from a hot trend in 2015 to an app industry standard in 2016. As for now, however, the material design principles are not considered as some kind of dogmas by UI/UX designers. Material 3 marks the latest release of Google's open-source design system. You can utilize Material 3 to design and develop products that are visually appealing and user-friendly. In 2023 these principles work rather as road signs to show the general direction user flow and layouts should take to deliver the best user experience.
For example, card-based UI turned out to be an ideal way to deliver information and content in mobile apps. Card-based interfaces help organize large amounts of different content easily, just splitting it into accessible chunks. The different kinds of card layouts had been constantly in the highlight throughout 2020 and 2022, and don&rsquo;t seem to be going anywhere in 2024.
<img style="width: 796px; height: 595px;" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/257/content_cards_jpg.jpg" alt="cards layout" />
<a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/3209261-Pro-Timetracker-Debut-on-Dribbble" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Time tracker app</a> concept using the purely card-based interface.
Another tendency is fusing more complex graphic elements and effects into simplistic flat-inspired material design. No, skeuomorphism isn&rsquo;t back (not yet, at least), but some of its distinctive elements, like shadows or translucent elements, are enjoying more attention from UI designers.
<h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 30px; font-size: 26px; color: #262b33; font-family: sans-serif;">2. Brutalism</h2>
Brutalism is one of the latest trends in application design. This style is guaranteed to add expressiveness to your design. Brutalist UI design features include a black-and-white color palette, bold typography, and heavy use of photography inspired by the architectural style of the 1950s.
Brutal design can be less "clean" compared to other styles: fonts are often a bit hard to read, elements and typography can appear tightly spaced and are characterized by sharp edges. Therefore, not every project can use brutalism, and you should make sure that your audience understands and appreciates this refined approach. If your target audience is young people, and your project is focused on art and creativity, why not?
<img style="width: 800px; height: 600px;" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/258/content_flash_garage.gif" alt="flash garage" />
<a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/2896331-Flash-Garage-concept" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Gadget</a><a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/2896331-Flash-Garage-concept" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> battery management app</a> concept uses black as a theme color which contrasts with functional UI elements.
Meanwhile, more calm, minimalistic color palettes aren&rsquo;t going anywhere, either. Altogether, this means we&rsquo;ll see a much wider range of visual solutions this year.
<img style="width: 800px; height: 600px;" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/259/content_taxico.gif" alt="taxi app design concept" />
<a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/3219922-TAXICO-taxi-for-kids" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Taxico app</a> concept features a calm color palette.
<h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 30px; font-size: 26px; color: #262b33; font-family: sans-serif;">3. Animation</h2>
<p id="isPasted" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; caret-color: #414141; color: #414141; font-family: sans-serif; font-weight: 500; text-align: left; font-size: 1rem !important;">Animation remains a trend in program design, attracting the attention of users for its interest and effectiveness. From micro-interactions to full-scale illustrations, witty animations always add a fun layer to the user interface.
Let Agilie create not only fun but an effective UI/UX design for you! Tell us about your project, and we'll take care of all the details.
The possibilities are endless when it comes to animation styles and approaches. You can experiment with typography, add custom artwork to input screens, or simplify app navigation. Pay attention to the 3D design trend: claymorphism, which combines the physicality of clay with the interactivity of modern interfaces, is becoming one of the most popular trends in 2023. This style gives a sense of playfulness and nostalgia, and also promotes a more active interaction with the user.
With the introduction of 5G, designers no longer need to worry about slow internet, opening up opportunities to implement more complex ideas in the field of animation in 2023.
<h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 30px; font-size: 26px; color: #262b33; font-family: sans-serif;">4. Microinteractions</h2>
Microinteractions have become not just a trend in the design of UX applications, but already a mandatory practice for any digital design. These small interactions, such as button animations or sound notifications, make the user experience more natural and interactive. They add fun and individuality to the interface, giving it a unique character.
Microinteractions can include various elements such as movement, animation, sound effects, or even haptic feedback. In particular, they use visual cues that are clear and intuitive to provide feedback between the user and the interface. This helps bridge the gap between physical and digital perception and provides a responsive experience for users.
Microinteractions are small but important UX elements that make an app easier to navigate and more user-friendly. They also add to the overall mood of the app and contribute to branding through small animated details. At the same time, it is important not to overload the user with too many microinteractions to avoid overload.
<img style="width: 800px; height: 600px;" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/634/content_content_10_tomplay.gif" alt="animated icons design trends" width="800" height="600" />
Animated icons for <a href="https://www.behance.net/gallery/34364779/Tomplay-interactive-sheet-music" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Tomplay</a>, an interactive sheet music app.
<h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 30px; font-size: 26px; color: #262b33; font-family: sans-serif;">5. Alternative UI patterns</h2>
Today, many designers see the hamburger menu - the menu we all are so accustomed to - to be a controversial UI pattern, which has its pros and cons. It surely helps to structure in-app navigation, considering the small amount of space mobile devices provide. But it also appears that not all users even realize those three horizontal lines are a significant navigation element, and using the hamburger-like hidden drawers can&nbsp;<a href="https://thenextweb.com/dd/2014/04/08/ux-designers-side-drawer-navigation-costing-half-user-engagement/#.tnw_z465gJHf">seriously reduce</a>&nbsp;user engagement.
Now, designers try out various&nbsp;<a href="https://www.justinmind.com/blog/hamburger-menu-alternatives-to-mobile-uis-most-controversial-pattern/">alternatives to the hamburger menus</a>&nbsp;like using more contextual and intuitive hidden navigation elements, placing navigation in tabs, adding floating action buttons, and experimenting with iOS&rsquo;s 3D-touch technology, allowing users to peek on hidden menu elements.&nbsp;
Which of these patterns will become the next mobile UI trend is yet to be seen.
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">6. Interaction experimenting&nbsp;</h2>
And here appears the question: how to find the interaction patterns that appeal to users best? Why not try experimenting? The new prototyping tools appear now more often than any time before, and each of them offers some new possibilities to professional UI/UX designers in means of building, presenting, and testing new interactions, user flows, and combinations of interactions.
We at Agilie have tried different prototyping tools including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sketchapp.com/">Sketch</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.protopie.io/">ProtoPie</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/experience-design.html">Adobe XD</a>&nbsp;and others, and we&nbsp;<a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/3293259-Hoteller-motion-prototype-ProtoPie">keep experimenting</a>&nbsp;and building concepts in order to the most simple and user-friendly product design solutions.
<h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 30px; font-size: 26px; color: #262b33; font-family: sans-serif;">7. Conversational interfaces</h2>
Personal assistants and chatbots were indeed the technology trends of which everyone spoke throughout 2022. Now, it&rsquo;s time to figure out the best way to connect people with data-driven algorithms by creating capable conversational interfaces, whose usability and functionalities extend far beyond the abilities that regular personal assistants have now.&nbsp;
Imagine the &ldquo;assistant-as-app&rdquo;, an interface messenger-like that can accomplish sophisticated tasks through a natural dialogue with you. And this is only one example of what UI/UX designers can do by employing machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) technologies to build the most convenient human-computer interactions.
<img style="width: 800px; height: 450px;" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/263/content_siri-search1.jpg" alt="conversational interfaces" />
<h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 30px; font-size: 26px; color: #262b33; font-family: sans-serif;">8. Anticipatory design</h2>
Chatbots are not the only way to effectively use data-driven algorithms for providing better services and products. As&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hick%27s_law">Hick&rsquo;s law</a>&nbsp;suggests, the wider the choice lies before the user, the more time and effort it would require for them to make a choice. Too many choices lead to decision fatigue, and in the case of user experience design, it may be fatal: people just won&rsquo;t waste their time and effort on making choices. As the solution to this problem, there is the concept sometimes dubbed as&nbsp;<a href="https://medium.com/digital-experience-design/a-radical-mindshift-in-ux-anticipatory-design-390e457e4db8#.oixx2b8xp">anticipatory design</a>.
Anticipatory design implies utilizing user behavior data to predict people&rsquo;s choices even before they realize they need to make them. The goal of the anticipatory design is to provide apps with more contextual awareness and narrow down user&rsquo;s choices to one option -&nbsp;the one&nbsp;they need at the exact moment. While this might sound a little dystopian, contextually aware apps can provide much more value to users and make the human-computer interaction as simple as never before.
<h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 30px; font-size: 26px; color: #262b33; font-family: sans-serif;">9. Further exploration of VR and AR</h2>
Virtual and augmented reality have been around for a long time, but we can expect these technologies to become even more important and true UX design trends in 2023. You may be asking why? Apple gave us a few pointers on its own VR/AR headset. And as we all know, when Apple creates something new, it instantly becomes a trend.
Augmented reality is one of the most exciting mobile app design trends in 2023 because it doesn't require any additional hardware, but has incredible effects. For example, users can see a virtual catwalk when choosing clothes or evaluate how the furniture looks in their room. And this is not to mention the potential of AR in the gaming industry.
Over 60% of mobile app developers are using virtual reality (VR) in their designs.
As an alternative, it&rsquo;s pretty possible VR and AR might fit their own niche, just like did wearables - another long-standing inhabitant of various trend lists.
<img src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/3787/content_content_content_design_trends_vr_1.jpg" alt="VR" width="800" height="533" />
<h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 30px; font-size: 26px; color: #262b33; font-family: sans-serif;">10. More responsive websites</h2>
Finally, web browsing has become an integral part of any mobile device user&rsquo;s life.&nbsp;
<a href="https://www.brawnmediany.com/blog/the-crucial-role-of-mobile-friendly-website-design-in-2023/">Google's move to mobile-first indexing</a>&nbsp;is revolutionizing the rules in the SEO world. This means that Google prefers mobile versions of websites when determining search engine rankings. This change is logical, given that a significant part of Internet traffic is now generated from mobile devices. If your website isn't mobile-optimized, it may not rank well in search results, potentially resulting in less regular traffic.
In order to maintain and improve your website's search engine visibility, it is extremely important to have a responsive design that provides an effective look and functionality on mobile devices. A mobile-friendly website will help you stay competitive in search engine rankings.
And as the market goes mobile-first, designers must answer to this by building responsive websites that work, look, and feel consistent on mobile screens just as they are on desktops.
Year after year, the direction which mobile design trends take doesn&rsquo;t change drastically, but the trends themselves grow in detail and adjust to people&rsquo;s and the market&rsquo;s current needs and technological trends. Which trends from our today&rsquo;s top we&rsquo;ll see in the best app design 2024? Only time will show.

In this article, we&rsquo;ll speak about&nbsp;what we see as the most interesting mobile design trends for this&nbsp;year.

Mobile design trends 2017: material design, alternative UI patterns, anticipatory design, AR and VR and more.

Top 10 Mobile App Design Trends 2017

Since its appearance in 2014, Google&rsquo;s Material Design language has set up the way designers view and build interfaces for years ahead.&nbsp;
At first glance, it seems that Material Design is just a new graphical way to provide more vibrant colors and shadows. Actually, it&lsquo;s a new approach to developing different kinds of software products and their functionality. Material Design provides an extensive library of design patterns and guidelines that work for any medium. Originally used mainly for Android apps and Google products, its principles have quickly found their way to iOS and web design.
One of the many highlights of Google&rsquo;s design language is the new approaches to animations and transitions. In this article, we&rsquo;re going to provide you with some tips on these aspects of Material Design based on our team&rsquo;s own experience.
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">What is Material Design</h2>
<a href="https://material.io/guidelines/material-design/introduction.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Material Design</a> is&nbsp;a new approach to user interaction with the program elements. It has originated from information cards from the Google Now service. Google developers have come to the conclusion that elements must have physical properties - thickness, shadow, speed, so a user could have an impression of interacting with real tangible objects. Paper is the basis of the material. Take its physical properties, add bright colors, spectacular animations, minimalism and you&rsquo;ll get Material Design.
<img style="width: 800px; height: 318px;" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/232/content_material_design.png" alt="" />
The principles of Material Design
The material has not only physical properties. It can change size and color, be split into parts or merge into a solid sheet. Animation in Material Design is a very important part of the concept. It takes into account the physical properties of objects, their acceleration, and deceleration, the inertia. The movement of objects is smooth and convenient for visual perception. However, it should be used only when it&rsquo;s needed, without overloading the content. Due to this, the design does not return to complicated skeuomorphism, and, at the same time, it is not as simple as a flat design.
Here, we gathered ten main principles that help you understand how to create truly meaningful transitions and animations using material motion.
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">10 main principles of animation in Material Design</h2>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">1. Everything in the interface must follow a certain logic.</h3>
The quality of <a href="https://agilie.com/expertise/technology/ui-ux-design" target="_blank" rel="noopener">user experience</a> within an app mainly depends on how the user flow is designed. Material Design promotes the idea to make the user flow as seamless and natural as possible.
The material can change shapes and each object can move independently during the transitions between screens. For example, pop-up windows and buttons appear from the button that the user clicks, not in the middle of the screen, or one screen can smoothly transit into another while preserving some elements from previous one, yet reshaping them.
<img style="width: 600px; height: 450px;" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/233/content_material_fitness_transitions.gif" alt="fitness app material design animations" />
Our <a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/2069918-Fitness-Tracker-Material-Design" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">fitness tracking app concept</a>. We wanted to deliver screen transitions in the most logical and natural way.
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">2. All objects must respond to touch with animation.&nbsp;</h3>
According to the Material Design guidelines, all interactive material objects must respond to users&rsquo; touch in one way or another.
Thus, the effect of ripples radially spreading on the interactive surface is the most common interaction animation in&nbsp;Material Design. Another material reaction to a user&rsquo;s tap is bouncing and hovering effects on an object a user interacts with.
Having all micro-interactions in an app to provide visual feedback to users&rsquo; actions makes the UX more immersive and enjoyable.
<img style="width: 382px; height: 399px;" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/234/content_material_design_ripples.gif" alt="material ripples effect" />
Ripples and hovering effects as the response to an interaction. Source: android-developers.googleblog.com
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">3. Use icon animations.</h3>
It&rsquo;s a relatively new but very promising concept. Users do not pay attention to these details, but the general perception of the application becomes easier. Some icons like a hamburger menu or back button can morph as the button's function changes, others can appear from the context buttons&nbsp;with the circular reveal effect. Here&rsquo;s an example of how it can be done:
<img style="width: 640px; height: 480px;" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/684/content_content_material_design_cards_layout_chat-app_-_600-min.gif" alt="chat app with cards layout" width="640" height="480" />
Our <a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/2879618-Chat-App" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">chat app concept</a> uses card layout and different icon animations
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">4. While the elements are separated, the selected object is visually lifted.</h3>
The Material Design concept provides great possibilities to create a feeling of a space consisting of physical objects on the other side of the screen. Use shadows and animations to achieve this sense of space and visually lift the object you want to highlight - make it hover above other material objects.
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">5. All the elements must move in a coordinated manner and in the general direction.&nbsp;</h3>
Chaotic motion and object's&rsquo; appearance on a screen distracts and confuses a user complicating their perception of the objects. Also, it&rsquo;s better not to stagger objects letting the next to appear before the animation of the previous one isn&rsquo;t even finished.
<img style="width: 600px; height: 450px;" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/704/content_content_material_design_animation_1-min.gif" alt="material motion" width="600" height="450" />
An example of animation in Material Design <a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/1717585-Google-s-Material-Design-Animation" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">by Balraj Chana</a> features transitions with a number of gradually animated elements that appear in one general direction.
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">6. Before you create a transition, it&rsquo;s important to understand what information needs emphasis.</h3>
So you could compose both objects&rsquo; layout and the way they appear on the screen during the transitions. This will allow you to combine pages visually without a sharp movement and create the most intuitive user flow.
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">7. Transitions between pages should be smooth and contain common elements.</h3>
To make the user flow feel even more seamless, you can move some elements from screen to screen, so that a user doesn&rsquo;t get lost and knows where they are.
<img style="width: 600px; height: 450px;" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/235/content_material_design_login_touch_animation.gif" alt="login screen animation" />
A login screen for our <a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/2034562-To-Do-Manager-Login" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">To-Do Manager app</a>. The app icon present on both screens ensures the consistent transition from one screen to another.
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">8. Acceleration and deceleration of the objects should be smooth.</h3>
To make transitions comprehensible for users, ensure all motions are smooth and as close to reality as possible. As Material Design aims to replicate the physics of the natural world, the smoothness of motions can be emphasized by the inertia during acceleration and deceleration of animated objects.
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">9. Each material object can have its own timing.&nbsp;</h3>
There is no need to animate objects simultaneously, it&rsquo;s more natural if they appear one by one, so a user could look through the objects gradually. When objects appear on the screen all at once, it&rsquo;s overwhelming and eliminates a clear focus.
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">10. Duration is important.</h3>
While Material Design makes it possible to create smooth transitions, it&rsquo;s important to find the ideal duration for each animation. Too slow animations are distracting and will harm the user flow. In the same time, too quick transitions can be confusing. A designer&rsquo;s challenge here is to find the perfect balance between speed and clarity of transitions.
<img style="width: 600px; height: 450px;" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/236/content_2_-_preview.gif" alt="material design animations" />
Material Design animations by Jelio Dimitrov
The animation is the very core concept of Material Design. It&rsquo;s not just a trend, but a necessary component which simplifies the navigation, improves the user experience, and, ultimately, breaths life into a product.
Want us to help you design your mobile app or website? <a href="https://agilie.com/contacts" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Contact us</a> and let's discuss&nbsp;your ideal product!

At first glance, it seems that material design is&nbsp;just a new graphical way to provide more vibrant colors and shadows.

Material design is not just a new graphical way to provide vibrant colors and shadows. This design is based on a new way of user interaction with program elements

Tips for Animations in Material Design

In a <a href="https://agilie.com/expertise/technology/mobile-development">mobile app development</a> industry, design quite often becomes a vague, inexact term. When someone says they want to hire a designer, you never sure if they mean a person who deals with product interfaces, or a professional who outlines the way how a user should act within an app, or they seek a designer just to draw some icons or make up animations.
In fact, <a href="https://agilie.com/expertise/technology/ui-ux-design">product design</a> has a more complex part in app development.
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Design is the foundation of your product and the key to achieving your business goals</h2>
The ultimate success for any product - mobile and web apps included - &nbsp;is to achieve the established business goals, which is impossible without a user&rsquo;s engagement with the product. In this situation, the key to achieving user engagement and, ultimately, your business goals is product design.
Product design is a system that connects user interface, user experience, graphics, and motion. Combining all these elements, a product designer creates&nbsp;visual language, a universal communication medium that will - if used right - drive your product&rsquo;s both production and marketing success.
<img style="width: 800px; height: 479px;" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/173/content_visual_language.png" alt="design visual language" />
The best product design lies within finding the balance between marketing needs and user desires, and, thus, outlines the shortest path to solving user&rsquo;s problem. To achieve this, a product designer must make sure that an app:
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">is easy to comprehend and use</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">solves your business objectives and answers target user&rsquo;s needs</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">has a unique visual appearance.</li>
</ul>
Finding this balance and, finally, delivering such a product is a laborious work for the whole development team, that is based on making numerous tough decisions on both small and big ideas.
We at Agilie believe that a truly successful app is the one created with designers&rsquo; participation at all stages - from outlining the initial concept and business plan to marketing and support.
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">How exactly design contributes to your app&rsquo;s ultimate success</h2>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">1. Design establishes communication and helps define app&rsquo;s competitive advantages</h3>
From the earliest stages of app development - requirements gathering and project planning, - the client and the design team tightly collaborate in order to crystallize the vision of the final product and find the shortest and the most resource-effective path to implement that vision.
Designers carry out the market analysis and gather data on the target audience and competing products. This information helps the team:
1) ensure user engagement
2) make a product unique and create a new niche on the market.
&ldquo;Design is a collaborative effort between designers, manufacturers, distributors, and consumers&rdquo; - <a href="https://www.wired.com/2015/01/what-matters-to-the-worlds-most-important-designers/">says</a> Kim Colin, Industrial Facility co-founder, and we at Agilie are totally up to this idea.&nbsp;
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">2. The design makes an app simple and accessible</h3>
Very often, speaking about the importance of simplicity in product design, people point at Apple products as examples. At the first glance, it seems that Apple&rsquo;s solutions have no complexity behind them, but,&nbsp;in fact, they are results of tough and sophisticated decisions.
<img style="width: 800px; height: 479px;" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/177/content_jony_ive.png" alt="product design simplicity" />
In product design, simplicity isn&rsquo;t just visual minimalism. Simplicity is ensuring that a user understands easily how the app works and gets engaged with it fast. And it&rsquo;s a designer&rsquo;s work to find a key to a product&rsquo;s simplicity by cutting off everything that clutters the user experience.&nbsp;
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">3. Design helps avoid failures</h3>
The design&nbsp;is also an effective risk-control solution. Designers are experts in user behavior within apps and know how a user experience should be built. They also understand the market&rsquo;s competitive environment&nbsp;and can distinguish potentially winning and losing decisions in advance.
Building a user-product interaction step by step and carefully analyzing user feedbacks, designers can adjust the product&nbsp;changing its features according to users' needs and, thus, increasing its desirability.
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">4. Design engages and retains users</h3>
A recent <a href="https://uplandsoftware.com/localytics/resources/blog/mobile-apps-whats-a-good-retention-rate/">report by Localytics shows</a> that due to so-called &ldquo;engagement crisis&rdquo;, 75% of app users across all industries churn within 90 days. The only way to retain users in this situation is enhancing the user engagement with an app. Here are some tools used by designers to engage users.
Onboarding. The first impression is the strongest one. Onboarding screens are designed to explain to users how the app works, motivate them to get started, and show them they are being appreciated.
<img style="width: 800px; height: 600px;" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/702/content_content_wirex_onboarding.gif" alt="mobile onboarding design" width="800" height="600" />
An onboarding animation for financial app <a href="your-own-cryptocurrency-from-scratch-everything-you-need-to-know-to-create-your-cryptocurrency">Wirex</a>,&nbsp;by <a href="https://dribbble.com/linalysenko">Lina Lysenko</a>, a UI/UX designer and animator at Agilie
Offering a new activity. These activities depend on the type of your app, but you can see the basic examples in almost every app on the market. It can be an offer to interact with related content or to write something in clear fields or to complete another.
Gamification elements. Activities that lead to earning the rewards address to peoples&rsquo; natural competitive spirit and inspire users to come back quite efficiently. A product designer&rsquo;s objective here is to find a way to wake this competitive spirit in their users.
Notifications. While some suggest that notifications will replace user interfaces in the nearest future, even now they are your most trustworthy ally in the user engagement process. Notifications are direct calls to action that exist both inside and outside the app. Designers&rsquo; duty here is to organize notifications to be precise, relevant and perfectly timed.
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">5. Design shapes your product&rsquo;s identity</h3>
When creating an app&rsquo;s unique look, designers are focused on empathy - one of the main triggers of user engagement. They can make your app stand out with only a&nbsp;few subtle details: well-chosen colors and interactions, and catchy icons that will distinct your app from others. Just look at Facebook&rsquo;s &ldquo;likes&rdquo; and Tinder&rsquo;s &ldquo;swipe left&rdquo;: they have already become brands themselves.
Even such a small detail as a mascot can become a face of your app and a brand trigger. For example, think about Snapchat&rsquo;s Ghostface Chillah, Twitter&rsquo;s Larry the Bird, Android&rsquo;s Bugdroid (yep, these are their actual names), and you&rsquo;ll realize you can&rsquo;t imagine these brands without them.
<img src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/674/content_content_gif_2.gif" alt="design saves your resources" width="800" height="600" />
<a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/2259554-Events-App-Create-meeting">Event app concept</a> by the&nbsp;Agilie Design team
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">6. The design saves your resources</h3>
At last, a thoughtful product design will save you time and money during the app development.&nbsp;
The more effort is put into pre-production activities such like market and user research, building up a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(user_experience)">target user persona</a> and user stories, creating prototypes and gathering feedbacks, the less time your app will need for development, quality assurance, and support activities.&nbsp;
Our lives are shaped by design, though it&rsquo;s not always obvious. The general function of design and the purpose of any app is the same: to simplify peoples&rsquo; life. Thus, all ideas and technologies that you want to stack your app up with must be delivered to users properly - in a usable and intuitive form. And design is a key to finding that form.
by&nbsp;Alexander Demidov, art director at Agilie and Rustam Tagiev, writer

In this article, we will make it clear: what is product design exactly, and why it plays a major role in your app's success.

In today's tech industry, product design has become a victim of misconceptions and wrong interpritations. Many often boil this concept down to interfaces and icons, not realising its complexity and importance for product development. In this article, we will make it clear: what is product design exactly, and why it plays a major role in your app's success.

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