The user interface is without a doubt one of the most important components of a modern app. It’s the touchpoint between the user and the service that your business is providing them. Therefore, exceptional care should be taken when designing the user interface.
How intuitive your user interface is depends on many different factors. What business owners need to realize, though, is that they need to make sure that it feels natural and intuitive. A clunky UI isn’t going to get them anywhere and it actually has a higher chance of turning users away from the product.
That’s obviously an outcome that most business owners would want to avoid. There are a number of ways through which it’s possible to achieve a user interface that’s highly appreciated by users.
What is UI Scale?
With users relying on so many devices these days, apps can’t take a one-size-fits-all approach to their user interface. It’s imperative for developers to ensure that the app looks and feels natural on devices with all screen sizes.
Nothing is worse than seeing the UI of an app all stretched out on a device that has a display size larger than what the app is optimized for. This leads to a drop in the user experience and raises the possibility of the user never coming back to the app again.
Fortunately, modern operating systems make it very easy to scale up the UI, so developers don’t have to write the code from scratch for every individual screen size that they wish to support.
Google's Android OS, for example, provides a way to scale up the UI on the whole system. Even game development engines like Unity have a relevant component that allows for the game UI layouts to support a wide variety of different screen resolutions and layouts.
UI Scale is what enables users to enlarge aspects of the user interface like the text and graphics when they appear too small due to a resolution discrepancy. It will uniformly scale GUI objects to suit the screen resolution.
How is UI scale used in web development
Web development presents complex issues of design. Something that designers have to keep in mind when starting out is the physical size of the screen as well as the resolution. They must have an understanding of what sizes to design for and exactly how the design that they create will look on those screens.
The most common screen resolution over the years has been 1024 x 768 but it's not of much relevance today as it used to be. That's because of the simple fact that the devices that people use to consume the majority of their online content have changed significantly over the past few years.
To ensure that users get a consistent experience across desktop and mobile devices, developers now prefer response web design as the solution to the screen size challenges.
The idea here is to move away from using fixed-width websites and rely on media queries in CSS instead. This creates websites that respond in size to the different viewports of devices, no matter of how big or small their screens may be, to provide the best possible user experience to the visitor.
Since mobile traffic now accounts for the bulk of global online traffic, developers absolutely have to pay attention to how mobile friendly their web app would look from the get go. Google also ranks websites that have a responsive design favorably.
Different approaches to creating UIs in custom apps
Creating UIs for custom apps is a delicate task. The rate of adoption for an app is directly related to how good it's user interface is. In an era of sleek and intuitive apps, an app with a clunky user interface instantly stands out and develops a reputation of not being good enough.
There are many different user interface design tools that strive to make it easier for developers to create modern and responsive UIs for their custom apps. Flutter is one of them. It's a free and open-source mobile UI framework from Google.
Flutter enables developers to create native mobile apps with one codebase. This means that they can create apps for both iOS and Android devices by using just one programming language and codebase.
The Flutter Framework consists of a UI Library that's based on widgets. It provides developers with a large collection of reusable UI elements like sliders, buttons, and text inputs that they can use in their apps. These elements can be further personalized for a more customized look and feel.
Fluid UI is another solution that's widely used for designing the user interface for custom apps. It offers a comprehensive collection of pre-built UI kits for Android, iOS, web apps, and more.
Developers can prototype in high or low fidelity depending on the style they prefer. The prototypes can be created quickly and shared. It's also possible to visually link prototypes together. Feedback, collaboration, and sharing are all built into Fluid UI.
Proto.io is another widely used approach for creating the user interface of a custom app. It aims to make the process easier for developers by offering them with many design and prototype templates. That also makes it easy to use since no coding is required to create the prototypes.
Another benefit of this solution is that it allows you to import UI components from Photoshop. Proto.io has additional features like the ability to create animations that show the flow of the app across different screens. This comes in handy when the app is meant to work on devices with varying screen sizes.
Many developers also prefer BuildFire. It's an end-to-end app development platform that offers powerful functionality for mobile app developers. They can easily create a prototype of the app that they're designing. BuildFire provides customizable functionality for more personalized components, fonts, colors, and more. A fully functioning app can thus be designed with this tool that can work across both iOS and Android mobile platforms.
Get a developer who can scale your UI the way you want
By now, you have come to realize just how important the user interface is to a custom app. In this day and age, the user interface alone can make or break a web app or mobile app. That’s because it’s the first thing that users judge when they’re using a new app.
So if the user interface isn’t good enough or if it looks outdated, chances are that the user won’t be coming back. There’s also the risk of generating a negative perception for the app because that user won’t likely be recomming your app to people in their circle.
That’s why it’s so important to make sure that the user interface you develop for your app takes in mind the latest trends, user preferences as well as suitability for the particular niche that it’s in. All of these things must be thoroughly researched before the work actually begins.
Not everyone will be able to create the kind of user interface that you’re looking for. You will need to work with highly skilled developers that are capable of bringing your vision for the app to life. There will be many who claim they’re capable but will fall short of expectations.
The developer that you need to work with should have ample knowledge of the latest trends in user interface design. They should also be highly proficient in the core development work. The UI alone isn’t everything. You also need to ensure that the app’s features work as they are supposed to.
Look no further than Zibtek. We’re one of the world’s leading software development companies with over a decade of experience. We have worked with clients from both Fortune 500 companies and startups alike, helping them bring their ideas to life.
We have experienced user interface and user experience developers on our team who can leverage their experience to enhance the interaction between your target customers and your digital brand.
Our UI design process includes references, the entire graphic interface, animation prototypes, complete UI guidelines and kit in addition to the final review to ensure that everything is exactly how you want it to be.
We also take great care to be sure that the user interface for your custom app scales appropriately for any device and screen size used to access it. This is done so that your users always have a consistent experience no matter what device they use to access your custom app.
Zibtek is based in the United States with offices in Salt Lake City, Utah. We also manage a global talent pool of highly skilled developers, user interface designers, product testers, and more.
If you’re stuck with a UI project, need custom app development, or just require consultation on your next steps as you look to take your brand online, we can help. Reach out to Zibtek today and our team will be happy to discuss your options with you in order to bring your vision to life.