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Top Tools to Help You Create the Perfect Mobile App UI

The 7 essential tools to create mobile application product design and UI design

An artisan is only as good as his tools, an old saying goes, and that one sits well in the world of mobile app UI development. Building an app’s UI is a large, long and demanding endeavor. A proper team needs to be set up. There needs to be a clear vision on what they wish to achieve. They need to be able to communicate with ease and speed. They need to be able to work together, which is challenging in its own right, given that remote working is mainstream nowadays. Quality analytics and optimization tools are needed. We’re just scratching the surface here.

In such a world, having all the right tools could very well mean the difference between failure and success. The good news is — there is an ocean of tools out there to help you. The bad news is — there is an ocean of tools out there to help you. How do you choose the right ones? What do you consider the right ones in the first place?

We’re here to cut down on the time needed to find the right tools. Below you’ll find our pick of the seven recommended tools that can help mobile UI designers in the building, optimizing and organizational phases of their work.

You’re welcome.

Photoshop CC and XD CC

Every interface design tools list starts with Photoshop CC. The go-to tool for all mobile app UI needs, Photoshop CC is seen as simple yet powerful, easy to use, yet potent. Reviewers will tell you Photoshop CC gives app pros more power, speed and freedom, offering features like automated image assets exporting and slicing, or Smart Sharpen, helping mobile app UI elements “stand out”.

Photoshop CC is part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite, so if you haven’t already given it a try, make sure to also check out Adobe Experience Design CC (XD CC for short, also previously known as Project Comet). This tool focuses on design and prototyping, allowing app pros to create high-fidelity prototypes for their mobile app’s UI.

Being a cloud tool, a subscription is required. A single app (either Photoshop or XD) costs $9.99 per month, while all CC 13 apps combined will set you back $49.99 a month.

Apps are more than the sum of their parts. Building a mobile app UI is more than just designing an interface or squishing nasty bugs. Things like communicating with the design team, sending drafts to clients, commenting and analyzing on various elements, making dozens, hundreds of tweaks on the go and going back-and-forth among a large team sometimes gets downplayed.

Design tools sometimes focus on the actual execution (building elements), and not the buildup to the execution. Invision is one of those platforms that pays attention to the entire mobile app UI building process, and that is why it is among the most loved tools out there. Client feedback is a breeze, version history and syncing is similar to those on Google Drive which is really cool, but perhaps most importantly, it allows app pros to mockup mobile gestures, which is usually one of the bigger pain points for mobile app dev teams.

The app creation cycle doesn’t end when the app gets to an app store. At that point, it’s roughly at the middle of its hopefully long journey. Now is the time when analytics and optimization takes center stage. One of the most popular and beloved apps in the app optimization universe is Apptimize. Praised mostly for its simple and effective A/B testing features, Apptimize turns iteration cycles into a playground where all app pros enjoy coming back to. Also worth mentioning is the Feature Flags tool, which give app marketers the possibility to test within a subset of app users.

Apptimize starts at $995 a month, a pack which supports up to 100,000 monthly active users. For custom plans you’ll need to give them a shout.

Although traditional quantitative analytics tools are a logical go-to for analyzing and improving on a mobile app’s UI, there is so much more that can be done and understood if qualitative analytics tools are added to the mix. Unlike quantitative analytics, which revolves around numbers and figures, qualitative analytics focus on the subjective qualities, on the context, on the app’s intangibles. It can help uncover how users feel and react to an app, help squish bugs, but most importantly, help understand the levels of intuitiveness and user-friendliness of the UI.

When it comes to qualitative analytics, Appsee is the industry leader and a clear winner in the race. Appsee’s touch heatmaps help app pros see exactly where users are interacting with an app, allowing them to get a deeper understanding of their app’s UI elements that get most, or least attention.

Touch heatmaps come in a form of a visual overlay, based on aggregated gesture data. They use a red gradient representing areas that get most attention, and a blue one for the exact opposite.

With such a tool, app pros can compare different elements of their mobile app UI and make informed decisions on how to improve on the UI and consequently, the overall UX.

In the micro-universe of app mockups and prototyping, there is a huge battle for supremacy among a couple of big names. Apps like Moqups, Fluid, or UXPin, are all considered highly valid choices, however it’s Proto.io that takes the crown. It allows app professionals to create mockups without knowing any code. It comes with extensive user guides and video tutorials which makes it user-friendly for app pros of all proficiency levels. There’s also a vivid community that is more than happy to answer any question. Some of the options it features includes an onboarding carousel, slide-in lateral menus, or pull-to-refresh features.

The app offers a free plan that allows for one project and up to five screens. If you would like to have more projects (and screens) there is a Freelancer plan for $24, which includes one user and 5 active projects. Proto.io also offers larger plans at $40, $80, and $160 per month.

Drawing up diagrams, flowcharts and wireframes is part of everyday work for product designers, product managers and other various mobile app professionals. Finding the perfect platform for this work means striking the balance between flexibility, an abundance of features, and attractive pricing. There are plenty of platforms worth mentioning in this space, like Microsoft’s Visio, or Creately, which seem to float highly on the list of flowchart apps, but it’s Lucidchart that reigns supreme. App pros get to create an unlimited number of free accounts and can use them to create an equally unlimited number of diagrams. The catch? You’re limited to 60 objects per diagram.

Its main advantages are that this is a cloud-based app that works in all the popular browsers, allows collaboration in real-time, sharing and exporting to vector PDFs, JPEG or PNG images. It also prides itself on ‘enterprise-level’ security and administration controls.

For pricing, you’ll have to contact the company directly.

Communicating with the team and properly assigning tasks and responsibilities is crucial to building a perfect mobile app UI. The bigger the team, the harder it becomes to organize workflows, making it more likely that elements might slip through the cracks. Sporting a well-crafted communication and collaboration app helps ease this burden. Instantly Asana comes to mind. A cloud-based organizational platform that works both on desktop and mobile, is currently one of the more popular tools in its industry (and for good reason).

Asana is a fairly comprehensive tool with many standout features, but if were to highlight one, it would be the way it handles tasks. Tasks can be assigned to different team members, but they can also be added as followers so that they may track the progress and get notified, via email, when different changes occur. The tool can be used for free, with two paid options — Premium and Enterprise. Premium will set you back $9.99 per member per month, while for Enterprise you’ll have to give the boys and girls over at the company a nudge.

Other notable mentions in the category include Trello and Podio.

Final thoughts

With mobile app UI building being such a challenge, it is easy to get tangled up in the web of development, collaboration, communication, analytics and optimization tasks. With the right tools, app pros can remove the clutter from their lives, streamline the app UI design process and make sure they get the best possible outcome in the least amount of time and with close to zero frustration in the process.

It sounds like a dream, but with the above-mentioned tools, that dream is that much closer to reality.