UI/UX Design and Strategy for Tech Platforms

Whether your organization is designing an educational platform, mobile app, desktop app, or SAAS platform, you must emphasize UI/UX design. The UI and UX impact everything from the user’s ability to learn, the amount of value gained from using the platform/app, to the length of customer lifetime value. It might seem like a gargantuan task to make this a part of your development process, which may be true; however, coming up with a strategy for implementing UI and UX design can make it easier.

The first step is understanding that UI is simply a part of UX. UI is a big part of UX and will impact UX significantly. Once you understand this, you can focus on the UI to build the foundation for the platform you are working on. The UX can come later once you understand how the UI will be set up and how it will work with your content, features and functionalities.

The second step is to build a strong UI. You’ll need to understand what you want to achieve with your app or platform. Then, you’ll need to study your target user and determine his needs and wants. It will help to analyze other similar apps or platforms that are popular. You’ll be able to learn the kind of structures and progression that makes sense in the UI. You can then blend it with your ideas and develop something that matches your organization and your target user base.

The third step is to come up with an outstanding UX design. You’ll come up with ideas for improving areas like visual design, communication, information architecture, loading time, content strategy, customer support, etc. Building the UI first makes the UX design much easier, as you’ll have a strong foundation to build on. Focusing on the UX can lead to confusion as you’ll find yourself going back and forth to tweak the UI and UX to design something substantial.

Next, you’ll have to test your platform to see how people respond to your design. This can be done by studying how users use your app and asking them for feedback. The feedback will be an incredibly valuable tool that you can use to improve your app for the platform. If users have trouble with a specific function of your app or platform, you’ll quickly hear about and figure out what you need to improve.

Finally, you’ll have to go back to the drawing board to fix problems, improve the design, and smooth out your UI/UX design. If you’ve done a great job planning your design, there will be little to no major improvements. Usually, it’ll be a matter of fixing small errors and making minor improvements.

As you can see, working on UI and UX design differs from web design. You cannot assume that a graphic or web designer has the experience and expertise to develop a great UI and UX design. This is especially the case for tech platforms which are often more complex than websites. So if you want to improve the effectiveness of your tech platform, you must hire a UI/UX designer.

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