Do you want to know more about mobile UX design principles? Learn about how to recognize major UX mistakes and follow key principles of UX right here. Don&rsquo;t make those UX mistakes on websites anymore!

Do you want to make great mobile UX design? Avoid major UX mistakes and make your creation outstanding ☝ Click here to learn about what UX design is and how to fix common UX mistakes on websites.

7 UX Mistakes That Kill Your Conversion Rate

The app logo seems to be an insignificant detail, but this is it that catches the user's eye in the first place. So, its creation is a top priority task.

A beautiful and memorable app logo is already half the success. Did you know that the quality of the app logo depends on whether you will download the application? We know how to make a successful clickable app icon. Contact us!


How to Create a Successful App Logo?

Read our article that tells you all about the correct calculation of the average cost of app design.

How much does it cost to design an app? The question is really crucial - at least if you want your application to be profitable and successful. Of course, professional app design costs more, but it leads to better results 

How Much Does It Cost to Design an App?

To keep up with users&rsquo; constantly changing needs and preferences, the design elements of existing websites should be updated regularly and created based on fresh trends. So the question is: &ldquo;What are the current web design trends and how to take advantage of them now to stay afloat in the future?&rdquo; In our previous article, we talked about&nbsp;Mobile App Design Trends.
We encourage you to keep reading our newest blog post, in which we&rsquo;ve picked the X recent web design trends that can help to improve your brand awareness and business.
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Trend #1: Geometry</h2>
From&nbsp;squares and rectangles to triangles and hexagons, geometric patterns, shapes, and lines are taking web design to a higher level. Geometric forms are associated with modernism. Nowadays, when most designs strive for clarity and simplicity, the laconic forms of geometric shapes are extremely suitable for the wise placement of content and images as they don&rsquo;t overload the layout and make websites and apps look better-structured and organized.
If&nbsp;you are looking for inspiration of how geometric shapes can be applied, take a look at some&nbsp;<a href="https://www.awwwards.com/50-awesome-websites-with-extraordinary-geometry-elements.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">awesome examples</a> as well as find out what&nbsp;<a href="https://www.awwwards.com/web-design-trends-for-2017.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">patterns and techniques</a> are the hottest across the web.
<img src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/3819/content_content_content_geometry_2.jpg" alt="Top Web design trends 2018" width="800" height="600" />
&nbsp;
<h2 dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">Trend #2: Illustrations</h2>
Today designers are actively using illustrations to get unique images instead of stock photos. They strive to create special illustrations or icons adjusted to each customer. In 2017, hand-drawn illustrations will likely to be in-demand and here is why:
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Illustrations&nbsp;can help appeal directly to the users&rsquo; imagination and allow strengthening their personal connection with a website.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Utilizing illustrations give more control over the content of the image and its details.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">As a rule, illustrations can be a cost-effective method, as it is cheaper than organizing a photoshoot and it can also give you capacity for your creativity and individuality.</li>
</ul>
The&nbsp;reason most designers gradually abandon the use of stock images is that nobody wants his/her work to look like a clich&eacute;. The same goes for brands that struggle to stand out from competitors. The constant use of stock images can reduce the brand&rsquo;s originality as well as cause a risk that some elements can be seen in the works of other designers.
<img src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/3820/content_content_content_illustration.jpg" alt="Top Web design trends" width="800" height="600" />
<img src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/609/content_content_illustration_2-min.gif" alt="Top design trends in 2018" />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">Trend #3: Animations</h2>
Another&nbsp;popular trend is animation. Animated elements are broadly applied in various websites as they can quickly attract visitors&rsquo; attention. The idea of using animation in web design is not new, however, in 2017 this trend continues to gain its momentum. Furthermore, given the increased number of professional tools for creating animation, we can suppose that motion graphics will become more attractive and exquisite.
The&nbsp;animation is an extremely useful tool in web design unless it is used solely for decorative purposes. Today designers create animations using JavaScript and CSS, which helps to add moving elements on the website without overloading it. More importantly, animations are now used to improve website usability rather than just for fun. Animation is a great tool that makes websites better and easier to use.
<img src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/610/content_content_animation-min.gif" alt="Web design trends in 2018" width="800" height="600" />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">Trend #4: Microinteractions</h2>
Every&nbsp;day we perform hundreds of extremely simple actions like pressing the elevator button or &ldquo;like&rdquo; someone&rsquo;s post on Facebook or Instagram. We do this consciously, almost automatically, not thinking about the sequence of our actions. We used to call it microinteractions.&nbsp;<a href="http://microinteractions.com/what-is-a-microinteraction/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Microinteractions are contained product moments that revolve around a single use case</a>. They are details that happen when we perform a certain number of tasks. In other words, microinteractions help websites and apps feel little more human by offering the user acknowledgment.
Despite&nbsp;all the simplicity and evidence of certain virtual acts, the web design microinteractions can be decisive. We send exchange messages, like someone&rsquo;s food on Instagram or share important messages on Facebook. Appropriate design of such interactions allows working with website intuitively, while inappropriate can lead to user&rsquo;s disappointment due to the obvious quirkiness and poor functionality of the Internet resource.
<img src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/611/content_content_micro-min.gif" alt="Top design trends 2018" width="800" height="600" />
<img src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/612/content_content_micro_2-min.gif" alt="Web design trends" width="800" height="600" />
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Trend #5: Bright and Saturated Designs</h2>
Minimalism&nbsp;is stepping back in 2017 and we expect to see more brands turning to bright and saturated colors. Different colors and gradients can help the user to better distinguish the content on your website. With the right chosen colors, you can significantly improve your website conversions.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.colorcom.com/research/why-color-matters" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">According to Colorcom</a>, when making purchasing decisions, more than 92% of people base their decision on visual factors, mainly colors.
In&nbsp;fact, what seemed to be a trifle can significantly improve your website conversion, thus leading to higher brand visibility. A&nbsp;<a href="https://moz.com/ugc/case-study-how-using-color-psychology-improved-our-website" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">recent MOZ case study</a> proved that changing the color of a button text from green to yellow resulted in 187.4% increase in website conversions!
A&nbsp;good example of the color combo is duotone. Duotone is a combination of the color spectrum of two colors. It can be shades of two colors or completely opposite tones. In web design, the duotone is often used as a color stabilizer and can help create a dominant image as well as increase readability of the text by giving more space and contrast.
<img src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/613/content_content_bright_colors-min.gif" alt="Top design trends" />
<img style="margin: 5px; width: 800px; height: 600px;" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/332/content_bright_colors_3.gif" alt="" />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">Trend #6: Cinemagraphs</h2>
The popularity of&nbsp;<a href="http://cinemagraphs.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">cinemagraphs</a> is growing by leaps and bonds. Cinemagraphs are characterized as photos with elements of a video that make websites look more stylish and engaging. Cinemagraphs are eye-catching and can easily appeal to users. The main reason to use cinemagraphs on your website is that they help to better communicate with visitors as well as breathe life into your website or app by giving a degree of depth with movements on a high-quality photo.
<h2 dir="ltr">Trend #7: Video</h2>
Video is the next trend that will continue booming in 2017. Use video to create better communication with your user and personalize your brand. Moving from static to dynamic elements,&nbsp;video is gaining its popularity and is becoming one of the key elements in modern web design trends. What used to be a large-format photo on the background is now becoming a wide-screen video. &nbsp;
Video plays an essential part when creating a website or an app and here&rsquo;s why:
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">EyeView suggests that video on a landing page can increase conversion up to 80%.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">According to&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/video-marketing-statistics#sm.0001folpmqr97de5ukq1cnpp226my" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Hubspot</a>, by 2018, a video will be 79% of all consumer internet traffic.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Adding video on your homepage can increase conversion up to 20%.</li>
</ul>
Advanced technologies allow to use the better resolution and reduce download time. Therefore, in 2017 more videos will be used in web design. Video is already used as a background on the websites, thus increasing time spent on the web page. With&nbsp;<a href="https://www.awwwards.com/websites/video/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">video being one of the most powerful tools in visual communication</a>, the static background looks a bit boring and old-fashioned.
<img src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/614/content_content_video_2-min.gif" alt="Web design" />
<img src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/616/content_content_video_3-min.gif" alt="Web design trends" />
&nbsp;
<h2 dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">Trend #8: Typography</h2>
If the text on your web page is going to be long, make sure that it is readable as well as pleasant to readers&rsquo; eyes.
Typography is body language. Very often the role of typography in design is underestimated and more attention is paid to illustrations, photos or other graphic elements. Good typography can lead to a significant improvement of UI and UX. The designer is responsible for organizing words and letters in a way to convey a message that will evoke emotion and set a tone. In most cases, typography is about visual effect rather than text. Well-Structured typography can greatly support your overall design.
If you are looking for ideas or inspiration for using typography on your website, check out&nbsp;<a href="https://www.typewolf.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Typewolf</a> or&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nurturedigital.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Nurture Digital</a>. These are great sources where you can delve deeper into digital typography.
<img src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/619/content_content_landpage-min.gif" alt="Web trends in 2018" width="800" height="351" />
<img src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/617/content_content_typo_2-min.gif" alt="Web design" width="800" height="600" />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">Trend #9: Scrolling</h2>
There were times when designers criticized scrolling (whether it&rsquo;s vertical or horizontal). However, in the era when&nbsp;<a href="http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Presentations-and-Whitepapers/2014/The-US-Mobile-App-Report" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">mobile is becoming the leading digital platform</a>, the action of sliding content across monitor or display is gaining its popularity and becoming one of the key elements in the list of the latest web design trends. Scrolling allows you to easily navigate through web pages while eliminating the need for additional clicks. In general, scrolling changes the approach to web design, focusing more on the user's&rsquo; needs. Long scrolling websites are very adaptable and they encourage users to stay longer on the web page.
<img src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/618/content_content_scrolling_2-min.gif" alt="trends in 2018" width="800" height="600" />
<h2 dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">Trend #10: Emphasis on Landing Page</h2>
A famous actor Will Rogers once said: &ldquo;You will never get a second chance to make a first impression&rdquo;. Think of your company&rsquo;s website as a crucial step in establishing a good connection with your potential visitor, customer or user. The aim of a landing page is to capture visitors&rsquo; attention and turn them into potential leads. Every business craves for having a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2015/01/15-landing-pages-with-outstanding-ux/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">creative and a unique landing page</a> in a way to introduce the product&rsquo;s features and benefits in a good light.
<img src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/619/content_content_landpage-min.gif" alt="Top design trends USA" width="800" height="351" />
<img src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/620/content_content_landpage_2-min.gif" alt="Top Web design trends in 2018 USA" />
The good designer aims to create a product that will work on multiple devices and attract a global audience. Keep in mind that responsive design can change the way brands interact with consumers.
There is a logical development towards service design and visual trends replace one another. Interfaces are moving away from the &ldquo;picture&rdquo; to &ldquo;interaction&rdquo; and for this reason, motion design in terms of the amount of information delivered to the user is almost equal to graphic design. There is a continuous standardization of UI design. The quality of mock-ups, ready-made animation scripts, color palettes has grown significantly. It helps designers to create a harmonious and effective interface, spending a minimum of resources to develop a visual style.
At Agilie, we pay close attention to the constantly changing trends in graphic and web design that allow us to be at the forefront of&nbsp;<a href="https://agilie.com/expertise/technology/web-development" target="_blank" rel="noopener">web development</a>. You may ask why it&rsquo;s so important for you to know those trends if you are not a designer or a web developer? Well, it&rsquo;s not a secret that for business to be successful, an online presence is equally important as the offline. With the website being your business card, it is important to know how to attract more customers through visual content.
&nbsp;
Ready to start applying those new web design trends,&nbsp;<a href="https://agilie.com/contacts" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">contact</a> our team!
&nbsp;
&nbsp;
<h2 dir="ltr">&nbsp;</h2>

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

Over the course of 2016 we&rsquo;ve heard of many technology trends: chatbots, virtual and augmented reality, voice assistants, and so on. 2017 is the high time to find the best ways for people to interact with these technologies.&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 <a href="/expertise/technology/ui-ux-design" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">mobile app design</a> trends that buzzword the beginning of 2017 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 2017.

More material design applications including:

<ul>
	<li style="text-align: justify;">Experimenting with material trends such as card interfaces</li>
	<li style="text-align: justify;">Meaningful transitions</li>
</ul>

Detours from material design principles like:

<ul>
	<li style="text-align: justify;">Less flat-ish feel</li>
	<li style="text-align: justify;">More color diversity</li>
	<li style="text-align: justify;">Icons going back to thin outline</li>
</ul>

Experimenting with UI patterns:

<ul>
	<li style="text-align: justify;">Alternative UI patterns instead of hamburger-like menus</li>
	<li style="text-align: justify;">Exploration of various prototyping tools</li>
	<li style="text-align: justify;">Mobile-first orientation of web apps</li>
</ul>

Adapting mobile design to new means of interactions such as:&nbsp;

<ul>
	<li style="text-align: justify;">Сonversational interfaces</li>
	<li style="text-align: justify;">AR and VR</li>
</ul>

Now, let&rsquo;s explore each of these points in detail.

<h2 style="text-align: justify;">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 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. In 2017 these principles work rather as road signs to show the general direction user flow and layouts should take in order 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 2015 and 2016, and don&rsquo;t seem to be going anywhere in 2017.

<img alt="cards layout" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/257/content_cards_jpg.jpg" style="width: 796px; height: 595px;" />

<a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/3209261-Pro-Timetracker-Debut-on-Dribbble" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Time tracker app</a> concept using the purely card-based interface.

Another tendency is fusing more complex graphic elements and effects into the 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="text-align: justify;">2. More diversity in colors</h2>

Color palettes this year seem to be more diverse than they were in previous years. Today&rsquo;s apps and websites feature vibrant, contrastive colors, dark backgrounds, unexpected color transitions, and even elements with a shy skeuomorphic feel to them.

<img alt="flash garage" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/258/content_flash_garage.gif" style="width: 800px; height: 600px;" />

<a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/2896331-Flash-Garage-concept" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Gadget</a><a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/2896331-Flash-Garage-concept" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> 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, too. Altogether, this means we&rsquo;ll see a much wider range of visual solutions this year.

<img alt="taxi app design concept" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/259/content_taxico.gif" style="width: 800px; height: 600px;" />

<a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/3219922-TAXICO-taxi-for-kids" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Taxico app</a> concept features a calm color palette.

<h2 style="text-align: justify;">3. Custom graphics</h2>

Throughout the last couple of years, custom illustrations began to play a prominent role in mobile apps&rsquo; UI, appearing more and more alongside photos and simplistic icons. 
Illustrations give mobile apps personality and character, help build brand identity and brand awareness among the users - that&rsquo;s something that hard to achieve using regular photography.

<img alt="orangery app" height="600" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/3786/content_content_content_artboard_2_2x.jpg" width="800" />

<a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/3272975-Orangery-app" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Personal orangery app</a> concept depicts plants using custom illustrations instead of photos.

<h2 style="text-align: justify;">4. Icons back to minimalistic outline</h2>

Over the recent years, in-app icons went from skeuomorphic design to flat which had sequentially transformed to outline icon style presenting more and bolder lines. As for the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017, in-app icons are coming back to thin, minimalistic outline design.

Another icon-related trend is animated icons. Putting motion into icons provides your app&rsquo;s users with more sensible feedback and, therefore, more authentic user experience.&nbsp;

<img alt="animated icons design trends" height="600" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/634/content_content_10_tomplay.gif" style="width: 800px; height: 600px;" width="800" />

Animated icons for <a href="https://www.behance.net/gallery/34364779/Tomplay-interactive-sheet-music" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tomplay</a>, an interactive sheet music app.

<h2 style="text-align: justify;">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 <a href="https://thenextweb.com/dd/2014/04/08/ux-designers-side-drawer-navigation-costing-half-user-engagement/#.tnw_z465gJHf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">seriously reduce</a> user engagement.

Now, designers try out various <a href="https://www.justinmind.com/blog/hamburger-menu-alternatives-to-mobile-uis-most-controversial-pattern/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">alternatives to the hamburger menus</a> 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 <a href="https://www.sketchapp.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sketch</a>, <a href="https://www.protopie.io/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ProtoPie</a>, <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/experience-design.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Adobe XD</a> and others, and we <a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/3293259-Hoteller-motion-prototype-ProtoPie" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">keep experimenting</a> and building concepts in order to the most simple and user-friendly product design solutions.

<h2 style="text-align: justify;">7. Conversational interfaces</h2>

Personal assistants and chatbots were indeed the technology trends of which everyone spoke throughout 2016. 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 employing machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) technologies to build the most convenient human-computer interactions.

<img alt="conversational interfaces" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/263/content_siri-search1.jpg" style="width: 800px; height: 450px;" />

<h2 style="text-align: justify;">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" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Hick&rsquo;s law</a> suggests, the wider the choice lies before the user the more time and effort it would require for them to make a choice. Too much choice leads 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 <a href="https://medium.com/digital-experience-design/a-radical-mindshift-in-ux-anticipatory-design-390e457e4db8#.oixx2b8xp" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">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 - the one 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="text-align: justify;">9. Further exploration of VR and AR</h2>

Virtual and augmented reality have been on the lists such as this one for at least three years a row. Now, they, at last, started to take shape both at hardware and software levels.

Mobile devices with VR-ready displays like Xiaomi Mi 5, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, and Google Pixel are already on the market, so the changes are now more feasible than ever before.

We can&rsquo;t guaranty that 2017 will be the year when VR and AR will change the way we interact with apps, but it still can be. 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 alt="VR" height="533" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/3787/content_content_content_design_trends_vr_1.jpg" width="800" />

<h2 style="text-align: justify;">10. More responsive websites</h2>

Finally, web browsing has become an integral part of any mobile device user&rsquo;s life. Moreover, the websites with non-mobile-friendly UX <a href="https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users-easily-access-content-on.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">aren&rsquo;t indexed high by Google starting from January 2017</a>.&nbsp;

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.

&nbsp;

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 best app design 2017? 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

In 2016, we took on ticket booking apps, tried making banking apps more visually appealing, tested different interactions for e-commerce apps, and a lot of other stuff. In this article, you&#39;ll see the animations Agilie&#39;s design studio had been crafting throughout the last year.

Let&rsquo;s start!

<h3><a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/3060365-Banking-app">Banking app concept</a></h3>

by Lina Lysenko

<img alt="banking app animation" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/243/content_2_banking_app.gif" style="width: 640px; height: 480px;" />

Most banking apps are quite dull-looking, and working with them sometimes feels really like going into a bank - boring and uninspiring. In this concept, we decided&nbsp;to add some colors to the digital banking routine and imagine how to make a banking app stand out from a bunch of other similar apps.

<h3><a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/2896331-Flash-Garage-concept">Energy saving and management app concept</a></h3>

by Alexey Radzhabov

<img alt="energy saving app" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/244/content_flash_garage.gif" style="width: 640px; height: 480px;" />

Little by little, the electric power is replacing gasoline and even being employed in more unexpected cases. The Flash Garage project aims to help you track the statuses of your batteries on your electricity-powered skateboard, bicycle or scooter.

<h3><a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/2832006-Cinema-App">Cinema tickets booking app concept</a></h3>

by Yegor Kosinov

<img alt="Cinema app" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/255/content_4_-cinema_app_gif11.gif" style="width: 400px; height: 301px;" />

We at Agilie are all keen movie lovers and, therefore, moviegoers. That&rsquo;s why we&rsquo;re so concerned about finding new visually appealing and convenient ways to buy cinema tickets. This concept is one of such takes on quick and easy ticket booking process - just choose a movie, make few taps, and here you go with your digital ticket.

<h3><a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/3132086-Booking-concept">Easy tickets booking app concept</a></h3>

by Yegor Kosinov

<img alt="ticket booking" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/254/content_1_-booking_app_concept11.gif" style="width: 400px; height: 300px;" />

And here&#39;s a slightly different approach to online ticket booking.

We often buy cinema, concert, or even theater tickets online while being on the move. In such situations, tiny input forms turn the booking process into quite a painful endeavor. This concept of a cinema ticket booking app that solves the problem by offering large UI elements and employing simple gestures to make the ticket-buying process fast and convenient, regardless the situation.

<h3><a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/2879618-Chat-App">Material-based design concept for a messaging app</a></h3>

by Lina Lysenko

<img alt="messaging app material" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/245/content_5_chat_app.gif" style="width: 640px; height: 480px;" />

Here, we experimenting a little with applying Google&rsquo;s Material Design to a messaging app. Navigating through a simple card layout, a user can make calls, and create group and secret chats.

<h3><a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/2781759-Financial-App-Onboarding">Wirex</a><a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/2781759-Financial-App-Onboarding"> financial app onboarding</a></h3>

by Lina Lysenko

<img alt="" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/246/content_6_financial_app_onboarding.gif" style="width: 640px; height: 480px;" />

Meet the onboarding animation for a <a href="/blog/your-own-cryptocurrency-from-scratch-everything-you-need-to-know-to-create-your-cryptocurrency">Wirex</a>, a financial app designed by the Agilie team.&nbsp;The onboarding showcases how easy a user can manage your bitcoins and card accounts using the Wirex app: send, convert, and manage money with just a few taps with the Wirex application.

<h3><a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/2902496-Payment-preloader">Payment preloader for </a><a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/2902496-Payment-preloader">a tickets</a><a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/2902496-Payment-preloader"> booking app</a></h3>

by Yegor Kosinov

<img alt="online payment preloader" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/247/content_7_payment_preloader.gif" style="width: 640px; height: 480px;" />

Most of us prefer buying tickets online using a mobile app. But we don&#39;t like staring at an empty screen while waiting for the payment approval. So why not to wait for it with some popcorn?

<h3><a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/2637299-Carousel">Carousel view concept for a shopping website</a></h3>

by Alexey Radzhabov

<img alt="shopping carousel" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/248/content_8_carousel.gif" style="width: 640px; height: 480px;" />

Why not try something new for shopping websites? Here&#39;s an elegant&nbsp;carousel for the product catalog. It turns showcasing items into a fun, interactive process.&nbsp;

<h3><a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/2608426-STITCH-Shopping-app-UI-Kit">Animated UI kit for an e-commerce app</a></h3>

by Lina Lysenko

<img alt="shopping app UI kit" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/252/content_stitch.gif" style="width: 640px; height: 480px;" />

An elegant and clean UI kit for the concept of a&nbsp;shopping app called <a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/2485821-S-T-I-T-C-H">STITCH</a>. All components here are vector-based, fully compatible and editable. Layers are organized, carefully named and grouped.

<h3><a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/2558081-Tomplay-icons-animation">Animated icons for a music app</a></h3>

by Alexey Radzhabov

<img alt="animated icons" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/249/content_10_tomplay.gif" style="width: 640px; height: 480px;" />

Animated icons are a good tool to make interactions fun and intuitive. <a href="https://www.behance.net/gallery/34364779/Tomplay-interactive-sheet-music">Tomplay</a>, an interactive sheet music app allows students to learn and practice playing numerous music instruments, learn different scores, and make own scores and recordings.

&nbsp;

The year 2017 has only begun, but it promises to be even more productive for our team. We have already crafted some new cool animations which you can check out on our&nbsp;<a href="https://dribbble.com/agilie">team page on Dribbble</a>. Also, take a look at Agilie&#39;s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.behance.net/agiliebunny">projects on Behance</a> and follow our <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/agilieninja/">brand new Pinterest page</a>.&nbsp;

Oh, and don&rsquo;t miss new stories on our <a href="https://medium.com/@agile_ninjas">Medium blog</a> - there will be a lot of interesting stuff on UI/UX design and app development coming this year!

In 2016, we took on ticket booking apps, tried making banking apps more visually appealing, tested different interactions for e-commerce apps.

Best animations 2016 by the Agilie design team

Agilie Design: The Year 2016 in Animations

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.

The Importance of Product Design for Mobile and Web Apps

When it comes to <a href="/expertise/technology/ui-ux-design" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">creating animated prototypes for websites</a> and <a href="/expertise/technology/mobile-development" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">mobile apps</a>, our design team normally prefers using tools like <a href="https://www.invisionapp.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">InVision</a> and <a href="https://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects.html?promoid=KLXLW" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Adobe After Effects</a>. Nevertheless, we&rsquo;re always open to experimenting and often try alternative UI prototyping tools, especially when we have to deal with unusual tasks.

This time, we decided to explore <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/muse.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Muse</a>, a website building tool from Adobe. Let&rsquo;s see how it worked out.

<h2 style="text-align: justify;">The case</h2>

The team needed to present a fully functional landing page for an elite eyewear company&rsquo;s website. The page is a long read featuring several scroll transitions (including parallax scrolling effects), a product catalog, and headlines and photos appearing with &ldquo;fade in&rdquo; and &ldquo;fade in up&rdquo; effects.

<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Why Muse?</h2>

Adobe After Effects was simply not the right tool for the task. Although animating such a page with After Effects would take comparatively little time, we still wouldn&rsquo;t have got a fully functional website prototype with working transitions and scroll effects.

InVision, in its turn, doesn&rsquo;t support parallax scrolling effects, and our prototype had to rely on these effects heavily.

So, we needed a tool designed specially for creating responsive websites and able to preview prototypes right in the browser.

&ldquo;Create gorgeous HTML5 websites without writing code,&rdquo; the headline on the Adobe Muse&rsquo;s homepage was saying. It seemed to be exactly what we were seeking for.

Muse allows creating text headlines, paragraphs, buttons, input forms, blocks of media content and more right on the fly. Actually, you can build a whole website from scratch using Adobe Muse, but it can deal with a landing page prototype no worse.

<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Adding content and working with parallax effects</h2>

The landing page mockup was created in <a href="https://www.sketchapp.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Sketch</a>. Then, the content was exported as .svg and .png files which are fully compatible with Muse.

Next, we had to add scroll transition effects to the page. In Muse, working with scroll transitions is operated via the &ldquo;Scroll Effects&rdquo; toolbar that contains motion, opacity, slideshow and animation settings.&nbsp;

<img alt="" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/157/content_muse_scroll_effects.jpg" style="width: 260px; height: 336px;" />

Setting motion speed in the Scroll Effects toolbar in Muse

Here, to create parallax scrolling effects in Adobe Muse, as well as &ldquo;fade in&rdquo; and &ldquo;fade in up&rdquo; effects for appearing elements, we needed only to play with motion and opacity settings: the former allows to set the initial and the final values of the scrolling and fade effects&rsquo; speed, and the latter does the same for the animated elements&rsquo; opacity.

It&rsquo;s pretty simple, but it may take some time to experiment with different values&rsquo; combinations before you get a smooth result.

<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Adding CSS animation effects&nbsp;to the prototype</h2>

The &ldquo;Scroll Effects&rdquo; tools in Adobe Muse allow to create smooth and beautiful parallax scrolling effects, but we also needed to include several animated headlines to our prototype which wouldn&rsquo;t depend on the scrolling speed.

To do this, we linked jquery and animate.css libraries to the prototype using the <a href="https://wow.js.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">WOW.js plugin</a>. Here&rsquo;s a video that explains how to do it in detail:

<iframe align="middle" frameborder="0" height="350" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Vnk_YQv3IPk" width="100%"></iframe> 
&nbsp;

<img alt="" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/162/content_muse_html.jpg" style="width: 468px; height: 500px;" />

Muse allows to assign classes to the created elements and to insert an HTML code right into a page and into the &lt;head&gt; container.

<h2 style="text-align: justify;">A few more valuable features</h2>

Adobe Muse also allows to adding anchor tags that allow a user to jump to a specific location on your page. Anchor tags are often used to create a navigation bar for landing pages.

&ldquo;Scroll Effects&rdquo; toolbar is active only when you have a fixed page width. Thus, if you want to make your prototype adaptive and to apply scroll effects to all the elements, you&rsquo;ll need to set and adjust breakpoints. Breakpoints mark the segments of the screen that can change their proportions or disappear completely depending on the screen or the browser&rsquo;s window sizes.

<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Exporting the prototype as a .html/.css file</h2>

As soon as the prototype was ready, it was time to hand it over to our <a href="/expertise/technology/web-development" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">web development</a> team, so they could prepare it for the presentation in the actual web environment.

Adobe Muse can export a prototype as a .html or a .css file, which means that our web developers got a full-fledged website organized as a set of containers. Thus, the developers had only to edit the existing and add new elements.

<img alt="muse file export" src="https://d12zh9bqbty5wp.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/pictures/163/content_muse_export.jpg" style="width: 493px; height: 500px;" />

<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Final thoughts</h2>

Of course, working on this landing page, we weren&rsquo;t able to explore the full potential of Adobe Muse, so, for now, there will be no ultimate conclusion. We continue testing Muse and have already rated it as an alternative to the usual tools we use for creating prototypes for desktop apps and websites.

The tool is not flawless, though. It really lacks libraries for layers&rsquo; animation, the possibility to work with masks, and the &ldquo;Scroll Effect&rdquo; toolbar is not as intuitive as it can be.

Yet, I&rsquo;d recommend trying Adobe Muse if you want to build a prototype functionally close to an actual website and have no experience of using other similar tools - Muse is quite friendly for the newcomers, yet quite functional to appeal an experienced designer.

Links:

<a href="http://helpx.adobe.com/muse/using/responsive-web-design-muse.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Responsive&nbsp;web design with Adobe Muse</a>

<a href="https://dribbble.com/agilie" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Our Dribbble page</a>

<a href="https://www.behance.net/agilie" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Our Behance page</a>

Our design team&#39;s first look at how to make a working website prototype with Adobe Muse.

Building a working website prototype with Adobe Muse

How to Build a Website Prototype With Adobe Muse

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