Concept & Design

Why is a good UX/UI concept important?

In order to offer users a positive user experience, a good UX/UI concept is crucial. Only with the help of structured content can a prototype, meaning a coherent design of clickable screens, be created that will be accepted by users.

Only after successful acceptance tests should the prototype be passed on to development. The guidelines created by our UX/UI professionals, which record important information about design and operation, can support the development team during implementation.

Prototyping

Why prototyping?

After our UX/UI experts are sufficiently familiar with the topic and the target groups, for example through previous user research methods, and the requirements for the application to be implemented, we carry out prototyping. This describes the visualization of ideas or requirements. The resulting prototype provides a basis for discussion without having already made any development effort.

When designing prototypes, our UX/UI professionals not only draw on information from user research, but also consider other UX standards, such as interaction principles and heuristics.

Using an iterative process that regularly solicits feedback from users, the first sketched idea of a low-fidelity prototype is refined into a detailed high-fidelity prototype.

What differences are there in prototyping?

Low fidelity prototyping

Low-fidelity prototypes (LoFi prototypes) outline the workflow determined together with the customer and a possible division of the content. They are conceptual drafts of an application that represent its logic and structure.

LoFis can already be used for usability tests to give a first impression of the planned software and to check the rough concept. Selected test persons of the target group receive clickable wireframes to test the user guidance. Because of this method, we receive early feedback, which in turn flows into further concept development and visualization.

High fidelity prototyping

High-fidelity prototypes (HiFi prototypes) correspond in detail to the desired appearance of the application to be created. They give the customer and stakeholders an exact idea of the concept before development begins. During its development, specified corporate designs and design guidelines are considered.

During the development process, they are therefore an important basis for the implementation of the software and, like LoFi prototypes, serve to conduct usability tests with users.

Guidelines

Why should guidelines be created?

In order to facilitate the implementation of the prototype as a functional application and to document the design, we record specifications for the appearance of the application in style guides and its operation in operating guidelines.

What kind of different guidelines are there?

Styleguide

To properly design an application, design specifications on fonts, colors, and the appearance and status of components such as buttons, text fields, etc. should be defined to ensure a consistent design. Our UX/UI experts use the appropriate tools to create style guides to support the developers in the correct implementation of the design template, which can then be made available to the customer.

Use-Guideline

Specifications for the operation and behavior of individual components or related operating elements are recorded in operating guidelines.

They are particularly useful if a prototype cannot fully reflect the operation or complex behavior is required.

Information Architecture

Why is an information architecture useful?

The creation of an information architecture is particularly useful for complex software in order to visualize the structure of the application. It describes the information that should be accessible to users and arranges it in a structured way, similar to a hierarchy diagram. Typical questions that the information architecture should answer are, for example, “Where am I?”, “Where can I get to from here?”, “What information can I find on this page?”

Even if an information architecture is not visible in the user interface, it has a significant impact on the user experience, because the faster users get to their destination, the more satisfied they are. In UX design, it is therefore important to keep a rough overview of the content and functions that will be implemented in the application.

How do I build a useful information architecture?

In order to build an information architecture that corresponds to the ideas and mental models of the users, card sorting, for example, is suitable. In this method, core terms are written on different cards and participants of the target group are asked to sort and name these cards in groups. The result of this method is a sitemap, i.e. a structural view of the application. This should then be checked using tree testing to test the findability of content. In tree testing, representative users are given search tasks that they must solve on a predefined hierarchical structure.