Some team members despise design system governance. They see it as a roadblock to rapid growth, creativity, and flexibility. However, design system governance can foster scalability and creativity if properly implemented while maintaining design and usability consistency.

Good design system governance prioritizes users before growth and profits. Company culture also plays a significant role in how a company implements a governance process that team members follow and embrace.

The tools UX and engineering teams also have an impact on design system governance. UX teams must update design tools to match changes to the final product, exposing the process to human error!

With UXPin Merge, teams don’t need to worry about updating two different design systems. UXPin Merge syncs our editor tool with code components from your Git repo or Storybook integration (allowing you to connect with React, Revue, Angular, Ember, and many more), eliminating the need for separate design systems and mitigating human error.

See how UXPin can enhance your design system governance!

What is Design System Governance?

Design system governance is the process and protocols for maintaining and updating a product’s design system.

Even minor changes, like changing an app’s close icon from an X to a — must go through a multi-step approval and implementation process.

Design system governance fulfills several purposes:

• Maintain’s design and brand consistency
• Prevents poor design decisions—leading to usability issues
• Encourages team members to think creatively and try to solve problems with the tools on hand before attempting to make changes
• Ensures updates consider accessibility
• Keeps the entire organization informed of changes
• Updates digital product and design documentation

Without effective design system governance, editing and updating new components is a free-for-all that could create usability issues, inconsistencies and ruin the product’s reputation.

The Challenges of Maintaining a Design System

There are many challenges to maintaining a design system. Every organization must have a dedicated individual or team to manage its design system. 

Here are six common challenges to maintaining a design system and why an effective governance model is essential!

Company Political Forces

Sadly, even successful design systems aren’t safe from power struggles within an organization. Team members might call on executive power to either push or block design changes, overriding the initial decision of a design system team.

Conversely, governance keeps executives and other stakeholders well informed on design changes and the reasoning, making it easier to get buy-in and approval.

Managing Input From Multiple Teams and Departments

A design system is not only for UX and engineering teams. Product teams and other stakeholders share ownership of the organization’s design system. 

Managing all of this input can be challenging without a proper system of governance.

Design Systems are Often an Afterthought or Side Project

In many organizations, especially fledgling startups, the product’s design system isn’t a priority. It’s a side project a UX designer maintains in their spare time or over the weekend—feebly trying to maintain consistency with the demand for growth!

In this environment, a design system is prone to abuse and poor design decisions. Often UX teams have to undo changes to fix usability issues due to poor governance.

Poor Communication

Without proper communication between departments, teams, and individuals, a design system falls apart. For example, two teams might unknowingly work on the same task separately, or worse, crucial usability changes go forgotten because everyone thought “someone else was working on it.”

Design system governance fosters organization-wide communication, so everyone is updated and informed!

Reluctance from Team Members

When teams are reluctant to adopt the product’s design system, they choose the parts they like and develop a “better way” to design the rest. New team members or those not involved in creating the design system believe they can do better—thus undermining the hard work of others.

This reluctance can not only affect the product’s usability and consistency but create unnecessary conflict.

A governance model with multiple checks and balances prevents team members from hijacking a design system.

Reluctance to Change

Sometimes the opposite is true. Design system managers believe the system is fine the way it is, blocking any changes. A design system is never complete. It’s a work in progress that must evolve for the organization to grow.

The Single Source of Truth Dilemma

Many companies struggle with the single source of truth dilemma—working with a single dataset between all departments, primarily UX design, product, and engineering.

The UX team works with design tools, engineers with code, and the product team (often with limited technical know-how) uses all sorts of tools, including powerpoints, PDFs, and paper, to name a few. 

With this scattered workflow, maintaining a single source of truth is challenging. Often requiring additional staff and resources to ensure everyone is up-to-date. Even with good systems of governance, the single source of truth dilemma is a constant challenge.

Global payment giant PayPal solved its single source of truth dilemma with UXPin Merge. PayPal uses UXPin Merge to build and maintain its design system for internal user interfaces with code components from a Git repository.

When developers implement new changes, UXPin’s design editor’s components update simultaneously, so designers and engineers always work with the same design system. 

Establishing Design System Governance Standards

There are four primary scenarios where a design system requires changes or updates. These scenarios require a submission process where teams must ask a series of questions and tests before prototyping or requesting amendments.

• Introducing new elements – Establishing a workflow for adding new elements ensures design system integrity while providing every team member with an equal opportunity to make additions. 
• Promoting patterns – Patterns fall into two categories: one-off or best new practice. Teams must test these new patterns against what’s currently available before promoting them.
• Reviewing and adapting patterns – Every design system must have a team (at least two members) to review patterns before release. This review process ensures new elements meet the standards and practices of the current design system.
• Releasing design system updates – Rather than releasing new updates when they’re ready, teams must establish a release schedule for updates. A strict release schedule ensures teams follow quality assurance and documentation processes correctly.

An effective way to manage this submission process is through a simple decision tree that maps every step a change must follow.

This excellent example from Inayaili de León shows how Canonical’s team adds new patterns to their design system following a simple decision tree—from concept to release.

Inayaili admits that, like their design system, the decision tree is a work-in-progress that they update and refine as the product evolves.

5 Different Design System Governance Models

Design system governance models refer to the frameworks and practices that organizations use to manage, maintain, and evolve their design systems. Effective governance is crucial to ensure consistency, scalability, and collaboration across teams, especially as design systems grow and evolve over time. Here are some common design system governance models:

1. Centralized Governance Model

In a centralized governance model, a single, dedicated team (often called the design system team or design system core team) is responsible for the development, maintenance, and updates of the design system. This team typically includes designers, developers, and product managers who collaborate closely to ensure the design system is aligned with the organization’s brand and user experience goals.

Key Characteristics:

• Unified Control: The design system team has full control over the design system’s direction, updates, and maintenance.
• Consistency: Centralized control helps maintain a high level of consistency across all components and design tokens.
• Streamlined Decision-Making: With a single team making decisions, changes and updates can be implemented quickly and efficiently.

Pros:

• Clear ownership and accountability.
• High consistency and quality control.
• Efficient decision-making and streamlined processes.

Cons:

• Can become a bottleneck if the team is small or overburdened.
• May lack input from various product teams, potentially leading to a less flexible or adaptable system.

2. Federated Governance Model

A federated governance model, also known as a decentralized or hybrid model, involves multiple teams contributing to the design system under a set of shared guidelines and standards. In this model, the design system team still exists, but other product or feature teams also have the ability to contribute components, patterns, or updates.

Key Characteristics:

• Shared Responsibility: Different teams contribute to the design system, fostering a sense of ownership and collaboration.
• Guidelines and Standards: The design system team provides overarching guidelines, but individual teams have flexibility within those guidelines.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Encourages collaboration across teams, promoting innovation and diverse perspectives.

Pros:

• Increased flexibility and adaptability.
• Encourages innovation and input from various teams.
• Reduces bottlenecks by distributing the workload.

Cons:

• Potential for inconsistencies if guidelines are not strictly followed.
• Requires strong communication and coordination among teams.

3. Community-Driven Governance Model

In a community-driven governance model, the design system is managed in a more open, collaborative manner, often with contributions coming from across the organization, including designers, developers, product managers, and other stakeholders. This model relies heavily on community involvement and collective decision-making.

Key Characteristics:

• Open Contribution: Anyone in the organization can propose changes, updates, or new components.
• Community Moderation: A committee or group of maintainers oversees contributions, ensuring they meet quality and consistency standards.
• Collaborative Decision-Making: Decisions are often made collectively through discussions, voting, or consensus.

Pros:

• Highly inclusive and democratic.
• Promotes widespread adoption and engagement.
• Encourages diverse perspectives and innovation.

Cons:

• Can be challenging to maintain consistency and quality.
• Decision-making can be slower and more complex.
• Requires a strong governance framework to manage contributions effectively.

4. Mixed Governance Model

The mixed governance model combines elements of the centralized, federated, and community-driven models, depending on the needs of the organization and the maturity of the design system. This model provides a flexible approach to governance, allowing teams to adapt based on specific circumstances, project requirements, or organizational culture.

Key Characteristics:

• Flexible Approach: Different governance styles are applied to different parts of the design system, based on complexity, importance, or other factors.
• Balanced Control: Centralized control is maintained for core components, while more flexibility is allowed for less critical elements.
• Adaptive Governance: The governance model can evolve over time as the design system and organization grow.

Pros:

• Balances consistency and flexibility.
• Can adapt to changing needs and contexts.
• Allows for experimentation and innovation.

Cons:

• Can be complex to manage and communicate.
• Requires clear guidelines to prevent confusion and maintain coherence.

5. Open Source Governance Model

The open source governance model is similar to the community-driven model but typically involves an external community beyond the organization. In this model, the design system is open to contributions from anyone, and the community helps drive its development and evolution.

Key Characteristics:

• External Contributions: Contributions come from a wide range of external developers, designers, and other community members.
• Open Development: The design system’s development process is transparent and open to public scrutiny.
• Community-Driven Decision-Making: The community plays a significant role in shaping the direction of the design system.

Pros:

• Leverages a broad pool of talent and ideas.
• Encourages rapid innovation and evolution.
• Promotes transparency and inclusivity.

Cons:

• More challenging to maintain quality and consistency.
• Requires robust community management and governance structures.
• Risk of diverging goals and priorities among contributors.

Choosing the Right Governance Model

Selecting the right governance model for your design system depends on several factors, including the size and structure of your organization, the maturity of your design system, and the level of collaboration and flexibility you want to promote. Some organizations may start with a centralized model and evolve to a federated or community-driven approach as their design system matures and adoption grows.

Ultimately, effective design system governance should align with your organization’s goals and culture, fostering collaboration, maintaining consistency, and ensuring scalability as your design system evolves.

A Step-by-Step Governance Model Example

There are many ways to approach design system governance, but here is a 10-step process inspired by design system guru Brad Frost:

1. Use what’s available – Product teams must exhaust every effort to find a solution using the current component library. This means a design system must be well documented and accessible to everyone. If the current design system does not fulfill the new requirement, teams can proceed to step two.
2. Contact design system (DS) team – Product teams contact the DS team to discuss the problem and the proposed changes. Again, the DS team and product team will work together to find an existing solution. With intimate knowledge of the design system, the DS team might uncover something the product team missed. If there is still no solution, teams proceed to step three.
3. Determine if the change is one-off or part of the design system – The product team and DS team decide whether the amendment is a one-off (snowflake) or part of the design system. One-off changes usually fall on the product team, while the DS team handles design system changes. Either way, teams must prioritize and schedule the changes.
4. Initial Prototyping – Teams prototype and test product changes.
5. Initial Review Process – The DS team and product team review the results from prototyping and testing. If both teams are satisfied, they proceed to the next step. If they determine the changes are lacking, teams return to prototyping and testing.
6. UX & Dev Testing – Once designs pass the initial review, they go to UX and development teams for further testing to ensure the changes meet user experience and technical requirements.
7. Final review – The product team and DS team meet again to review the results of UX and dev testing. If both teams are satisfied, they proceed to the next step. If not, they iterate.
8. Documentation and schedule release – Teams document the new changes, update the changelog (e.g., Github), and schedule the release.
9. Changes released – Changes are released, product version bump according to versioning guidelines, all teams notified (Slack, Asana, Trello, Github, etc.).
10. Quality assurance – Product teams review the final changes for quality assurance.

You can see how this 10-step process will mitigate all of the six common design system challenges we outlined earlier. With multiple checks and balances, a design system maintains its integrity while communicating changes to the entire organization.

While this process solves many design system challenges, checks and balances don’t eliminate human error. Teams need a tool to provide a single source of truth!

Improving Design System Governance with UXPin

UXPin Merge bridges the gap between design and code, creating a single source of truth, so designers and engineers always work with the same tools.

Popular vector-based design tools don’t solve the problem. Designers and engineers must update and sync identical systems separately—an ineffective workflow prone to error.

UXPin is a code-based design editor syncing code components via Git or Storybook to allow product teams, UX designers, and developers to work with the same components—no need to update systems separately!

Lastly, because prototypes are code-based, product updates and design system changes are significantly quicker to engineer.

Ready to switch to the only design tool that fosters good design system governance? Discover UXPin Merge to get the most of your design system and keep all the design and code components up to date.

The post Design System Governance – Scale Your Design appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Modern websites and apps rely on front-end frameworks to develop, maintain, and scale user interfaces. React’s Javascript library is arguably the most popular front-end framework with many component libraries to build digital products.

We’re going to explore the top React UI libraries and how to choose the right one for your next project.

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What is React Component library?

A React component library is a collection of pre-built UI components specifically designed for use with React applications. These libraries contain reusable components that cover a wide range of UI elements, such as buttons, forms, modals, navigation bars, cards, and more.

React component libraries aim to streamline the development process by providing ready-made components that adhere to best practices in terms of design, accessibility, and functionality.

What to consider when choosing a React component library

Below are six things to consider when choosing a React library for your next project. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and some of these factors may not apply to the product you’re building. 

1. Popularity

GitHub’s star rating allows you to quickly compare each React UI library’s popularity. The weekly downloads on npm also show how many people use the component library. Generally speaking, a React library’s popularity means it’s well established and serves its purpose.

2. Issues

Like star rating, a library’s GitHub issues can tell you a lot about its popularity and how well it’s maintained. Even if the library has minimal issues, do any of these affect the product you’re trying to build? 

3. Documentation & Support

Documentation is an important consideration when choosing a React UI library. You want to avoid running to Stack Overflow every time you run into trouble or want to know how to use specific components. Good documentation is updated regularly and gives you a comprehensive understanding of the library.

You also want to know if the React library has support directly from the creators or via a dedicated community forum. There are times when you need expert advice to overcome challenges. The ability to reach out for help (even if that means paying) is crucial to get issues sorted quickly and keep the project moving.

4. Customization

One of the downsides to using a component library is its constraints and lack of customization. For some projects, customization isn’t a factor, but if you’re looking to develop a unique UI, the ability to build your own design system is vital.

Explore the library’s documentation to see if they offer instructions for customizing the components and how easily you can achieve your desired results.

5. Browser or Device Compatibility

Depending on the app you’re designing, you’ll want to know the component library’s browser and mobile compatibility. The quickest way to research browser/device compatibility is by searching GitHub’s issues or Stack Overflow.

6. Accessibility

Accessibility is a time-consuming but necessary consideration for digital product design. If a React library hasn’t considered accessibility when designing components, then it’s something you’re going to have to do yourself, which takes us back to points 3 and 4–documentation and customization.

Which is the best React component library?

The best React component library for your project depends on your specific needs and preferences. It’s recommended to evaluate each library based on factors such as documentation quality, community support, active development, and alignment with your project requirements before making a decision.

Comparing the libraries involves assessing various aspects such as design philosophy, component offerings, theming capabilities, documentation, community support, and ecosystem. Take Material-UI (MUI) and Ant Design as examples.

Material-UI provides a comprehensive set of React components following the Material Design system. It includes components like buttons, cards, forms, navigation, and more, with a wide range of customization options.

Ant Design offers a rich collection of components tailored for enterprise applications, including layouts, forms, navigation, data display, and more. It provides components specific to data visualization and business logic.

5 React Component Libraries

These are our five best React UI libraries for 2024.

Note: Information regarding GitHub stars and NPM downloads are accurate as of March 2024.

MUI (Material-UI)

• GitHub Stars: 91.3k
• Weekly NPM Downloads: 3.4M
• Official website: mui.com

MUI is one of the most comprehensive and widely used React component libraries. The library is built on Google’s Material Design UI, one of the most extensive UI kits in the world.

MUI – Components

MUI has a massive component library for designers to build everything from mobile and web applications, websites, and even wearable apps. 

MUI Core features fundamental UI components you see in everyday digital products, while MUI X offers a list of advanced React components for building complex user interfaces, like data tables, data pickers, charts, and more.

For those of you who would like to try design with MUI code components, sign up for a UXPin trial and get 14-day access to UXPin. Read more about MUI 5 Kit in UXPin.

MUI – Theming & Customization

One of MUI’s biggest appeals is the ability to theme and customize components. Designers can use MUI as a foundation to scale designs fast but also adapt the library to build a custom design system for their product or organization.

Designers can also take advantage of Material Design and MUI’s comprehensive guidelines to avoid usability issues when customizing components.

MUI also has a template marketplace to purchase React theme templates for dashboards, eCommerce websites, landing pages, and more.

MUI – Documentation

MUI’s documentation is as detailed and comprehensive as its component library. Its curators have taken great care to provide designers and developers with step-by-step instructions and guidelines for installation, usage, customization, accessibility, and more.

There are also tons of videos on YouTube from MUI’s large community of users and contributors offering best practices, tutorials, tips and tricks, how-to guides, and more.

React-Bootstrap

• GitHub Stars: 22.2k
• Weekly NPM Downloads: 1.3M
• Official website: react-bootstrap.github.io

Founded in 2011, Bootstrap is one of the oldest and most popular open-source CSS frameworks for websites and web applications. Bootstrap was one of the first CSS frameworks to prioritize mobile-first web development, allowing designers to build and scale responsive websites quickly.

React-Bootstrap replaced Bootstrap Javascript while ditching resource-heavy dependencies like JQuery to build a comprehensive but simplistic React component library.

React-Bootstrap – Components

If you’re familiar with Bootstrap, then you’ll instantly recognize React-Bootstrap’s generic-looking component library. Like its CSS predecessor, React-Bootstrap features UI components that favor web design rather than mobile applications.

React-Bootstrap – Theming & Customization

React-Bootstrap is very generic with minimal styling, making it easy for designers to tweak and customize. Bootstrap’s defined classes and variants make it easy to select and customize components using CSS.

Due to Bootstrap’s long history and wide usage, you can find tons of free and premium React-Bootstrap themes and templates for everything from admin dashboards to multiple purpose websites, eCommerce, landing pages, and more.

React-Bootstrap – Documentation

React-Bootstrap has excellent documentation, albeit not as detailed and comprehensive as MUI. React-Bootstrap’s simplicity and naming convention make it one of the easiest React libraries to understand, use, and customize.

Bootstrap is also featured extensively on Stack Overflow, so you’ll likely find answers to most issues. There are also loads of blogs and YouTube videos offering advice, tutorials, design projects, and more.

Semantic UI React

• GitHub Stars: 13.2k
• Weekly NPM Downloads: 253k
• Official website: react.semantic-ui.com

Semantic UI React is a popular alternative to React-Bootstrap. Like React-Bootstrap, Semantic UI started as an open-source CSS framework that its contributors used to build React components.

Semantic UI React – Components

Semantic UI React offers an extensive range of UI components for websites and web applications. The components provide cleaner, more modern styling than Bootstrap while remaining minimalist and simplistic.

Semantic UI React uses the FontAwesome icon set, including over 1,600 free icons and 7,864 Pro (paid).

Semantic UI React – Theming & Customization

Semantic UI uses an intuitive, straightforward naming convention that makes it easy to customize components. The documentation also provides a step-by-step guide for theming with Semantic UI React. Unlike MUI and React-Bootstrap, Semantic has very few template options. 

Semantic UI React – Documentation

Semantic UI React’s interactive documentation provides you with CodeSandbox examples to inspect the code and play around with components. 

The docs also allow you to switch between an example, code, and props to visualize the component from multiple angles.

Ant Design (AntD)

• GitHub Stars: 89.9k
• Weekly NPM Downloads: 1.2M
• Official website: ant.design/docs/react/introduce

Ant Design (AntD) is another popular, widely used React component library developed by Ant Group–parent company to Alibaba, China’s biggest online marketplace. Like MUI, AntD offers a vast component library for both web and mobile applications.

AntD is the only React library featured in this article that uses TypeScript – a form of Javascript.

Ant Design – Components

AntD has a massive component library for desktop and mobile, including UI patterns like infinite scroll and pull-to-refresh for mobile devices. Ant Design ProComponents offers a range of advanced React UI elements ( similar to MUI X) for building complex interfaces.

You can also find a vast library of pre-made templates and scaffolds to kick start your project and build UIs much faster.

Ant Design – Theming & Customization

AntD uses design tokens or variables for devs to customize and theme components. The UI library uses Less and provides a complete list of all AntD variables in GitHub.

Ant Design – Documentation

AntD’s comprehensive documentation provides step-by-step instructions for using and customizing. You can also inspect each component in CodeSandBox, CodePen, or StackBlitz.

Chakra UI

• GitHub Stars: 36.4k
• Weekly NPM Downloads: 523K
• Official website: chakra-ui.com

Chakra UI is a Nigerian-based React component library founded by Segun Adebayo. You can choose between Chakra’s free component library or Chakra UI Pro, which offers pre-made complex UI components to build interfaces faster.

Chakra UI – Components

Chakra UI’s component library caters to web-based applications and websites. The library offers the choice between TypeScript or Javascript React components, depending on your preference. Chakra’s designers follow WAI-ARIA standards, so every element is accessible.

The stylish UI components look similar to Semantic UI, with dark and light options available.

Chakra UI – Theming & Customization

Chakra’s designers created the UI library to be fully customized using variables to meet product and brand requirements. Charka also integrates with Create React App, Framer Motion, React Hook Form, and React Table to extend the library’s usage and customization.

Chakra UI – Documentation

Chakra UI has excellent documentation with guides, video tutorials, examples, FAQs, links to connect with core team members, and an active Discord community. 

Chakra’s users are extremely passionate and enthusiastic about the React library, and there’s always someone to connect with to ask questions.

Design Using React Components With UXPin Merge

One of the challenges of using a React library is that only few tools allow you to design UIs with real components. UXPin Merge allows you to assemble layouts with React components from Git repo, Storybook, or npm. See how it works. Discover UXPin Merge.

The post 5 Best React Component Libraries of 2024 appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

A prototype is an early model or simulation of a product used to test and validate ideas before full-scale production. Prototypes vary in fidelity from simple sketches of a user interface to fully interactive digital models that resemble the final product. They serve to gather user feedback, identify usability issues, and refine design concepts, helping ensure that the final product meets user needs effectively.

Prototyping is one of the most critical steps in the design process, yet prototypes still confuse some designers and project teams.

Key takeaways:

• A prototype is a representation of the end-product that is used in order to see if the product teams are building the right solution for their desired users.
• There are several types of prototypes: a paper prototype that’s basically a sketch of a product, digital wireframe, functional prototype, and more.
• Prototypes differ in terms of their fidelity to the final product. Low fidelity means prototype doesn’t include many details while high-fidelity prototype can be fully functional and behave like a real product.
• There are a couple of ways of creating a prototype depending on the level of fidelity you want to achieve. You can start with a paper or build a prototype in code. Let’s discuss what that means.

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What is a Prototype?

A prototype is a simulation of a final product which design teams use for testing before committing resources to building the actual thing.

The goal of a prototype is to test and validate ideas before sharing them with stakeholders and eventually passing the final designs to engineering teams for the development process.

Prototypes are essential for identifying and solving user pain points with participants during usability testing. Testing prototypes with end-users enables UX teams to visualize and optimize the user experience during the design process.

Engineering is expensive, and making changes to a final product is often not as straightforward as teams may anticipate. So, finding and fixing errors during the design process is critical.

Another common misconception about prototyping is that it only needs to be done once or twice at the end of the design process— it’s not true. 

One of our mottos that we believe at UXPin is “test early and test often.”

According to Elementor’s Director of UX, the website building platform’s designer – there should be an average of four to five prototyping sessions, depending on the complexity of a given UI design.

Teams should create a prototype of every possible iteration of the design—even your early basic ideas for solving a user need. Prototyping shouldn’t be reserved only for beta tests of the final version; you should test basic and more complex versions of the end-product.

If testing a prototype produces new insights about how users interact with your product, then it’s worth taking the time to gather user feedback and iterate—whether that’s paper, low-fidelity or high-fidelity.

Prototyping Tools

A variety of tools and methods are available for creating prototypes in UX design, each offering different features and capabilities. Tools like UXPin, Figma, Sketch, and Adobe XD are popular for creating both low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes. These tools allow designers to build interactive prototypes with dynamic elements, transitions, and animations, enhancing the ability to test and refine designs.

Read about top prototyping tools for designers and developers.

Prototype in UX Design

In UX design, a prototype serves as a preliminary version of a product, allowing designers, developers, and stakeholders to explore and validate design concepts before full-scale development. Prototyping is a critical step in the UX design process because it bridges the gap between a concept and its final execution, ensuring that the end product meets user needs and expectations.

Qualities of Effective Prototypes in UX Design

Prototypes are crucial tools in the UX design process, embodying several key qualities that make them indispensable for creating successful, user-centered designs:

1. Visualizing and Testing Ideas

Prototypes allow designers to bring their ideas to life in a tangible format, making it easier to explore and test different concepts. This hands-on approach provides a clearer picture of how a design will function in real-world scenarios, enabling designers to make more informed decisions and iterate quickly based on what works best.

2. Enhancing User Experience

An effective prototype goes beyond static visuals by simulating interactive user experiences. This enables designers to identify usability issues early on, ensuring the design is intuitive and user-friendly. By testing these interactions in a prototype, designers can refine the user journey and enhance the overall quality of the final product.

3. Facilitating Feedback and Collaboration

Prototypes serve as a concrete representation of design ideas, making them an excellent tool for gathering feedback and fostering collaboration among team members and stakeholders. By providing a visual and interactive reference, prototypes ensure that everyone involved in the project can review, discuss, and align on the design direction, fostering a more collaborative and consensus-driven development process.

4. Reducing Development Costs

One of the most valuable qualities of prototypes is their ability to catch design flaws and usability issues early. By identifying and resolving these problems before full-scale development begins, teams can avoid costly changes later in the process. This proactive approach reduces the risk of expensive rework and helps maintain project timelines and budgets.

5. Enabling Rapid Iteration

Prototypes are inherently flexible, allowing for quick changes and adjustments based on feedback, testing, and analysis. This quality is vital for refining the design to meet user needs and achieve project goals. The ability to iterate rapidly ensures that the design evolves in response to real user insights, making it more effective and aligned with the intended user experience.

Types of Prototypes

We’re going to explore prototypes in three types of prototypes: paper, digital, and HTML.

Paper Prototypes

A paper prototype is a prototype that is drawn on a paper or a digital whitebaord. Such a prototype is used during the early design stages, like a design thinking workshop while designers still brainstorm ideas.

Paper prototyping works best during early design stages where design teams collaborate to explore many concepts fast. Team members sketch ideas by hand using simple lines, shapes, and text. The emphasis is on lots of ideas and speed, not aesthetics.

UX Teams lay paper screens on the floor, table, or pinned to a board to simulate user flows. A common practice for testing these prototypes is to have one person play “the product,” switching the sketches according to how the real user behaves.

A low visual/low functional paper prototype.

Advantages of Paper Prototypes

• Fast — You can sketch a prototype in minutes, which is why paper works so well for testing lots of ideas. You can draw a prototype quickly (even during a brainstorming meeting), so you haven’t wasted more than a few minutes if an idea falls flat. 
• Inexpensive — You only need a maker pen and paper to create prototypes, making the process cheap and accessible.
• Team-building — Paper prototyping is a collaborative effort, and often teams have fun coming up with fresh ideas. It’s a fantastic team-building exercise, and these free-thinking sessions often inspire creativity.
• Documentation — Team members can keep physical copies of paper prototypes, notes, and todos for quick reference during future iterations. 

Disadvantages

• Unrealistic — No matter how skilled the art or craftsmanship, paper prototypes will never be more than hand-drawn representations of a digital product. So, while they’re quick to draw, paper prototypes produce little or no results when doing user testing.
• False positives — Sometimes, paper prototypes don’t validate ideas properly. What seems like a good idea on paper might not work effectively in a digital wireframe.
• No gut reactions — Paper prototypes rely on the user’s imagination, adding a break between seeing the stimulus and responding to it. That “gut” reaction is crucial for a successful UX.

Considering these advantages and disadvantages, we recommend paper prototyping only during early-stage design. Once you move from paper to digital, there shouldn’t be any reason to revisit hand-sketched prototypes for the same designs or user flows.

For more information on paper prototyping, check out these helpful resources:

• Paper Prototyping as a Usability Testing Technique by Justin Mifsud
• Better Use of Paper in UX Design by Marcin Treder
• iPhone User Interface Design, Paper Prototype Design (video)
• Printable Paper Prototyping Templates courtesy of Tripwire Magazine

Digital Prototyping

Digital prototyping is an exciting part of the design process. Prototypes start to resemble the final product allowing teams to test and validate ideas.

There are two types of digital prototypes:

• Low-fidelity prototypes: a user flow using wireframes
• High-fidelity prototypes: a user flow using mockups

Low-fidelity prototypes allow research teams to outline basic user flows and information architecture. High-fidelity prototypes go into more detail, testing user interfaces, interactions, and how usability participants interact with a product.

Designers build prototypes using design tools like Figma, Adobe XD, and others. Sometimes non-designers, from product teams use Powerpoint or Google Slides to simulate user flows.

UXPin is unique because it allows designers to create prototypes that look and function exactly like the final product—something you cannot achieve with other popular design tools!

Advantages of Digital Prototyping

• Realistic interactions — Testing with high-fidelity digital prototypes lets UX teams see how users interact with the final product, thus effectively iron out any usability issues.
• Flexibility — Test early and test often! You can start with lo-fi prototypes that become progressively more advanced as the product design process moves forward.
• Speed — While paper prototypes might be the fastest way to test ideas, digital prototypes are the quickest way to test usability issues. Once a product gets to the engineering stage, changes cost significantly more time and money.

Disadvantages

• Learning curve — Before you can build a prototype, you’ll need to learn and understand the software—which is why product teams often use Powerpoint instead of a specialized design tool. The good news is that most design software incorporates the same tools, so it’s relatively easy to switch between them.
• Cost — As you move from low-fidelity to high-fidelity prototyping, time and labor costs increase.

A prototype’s success depends on teams outlining clear objectives and KPIs for each usability study. Without a proper plan, designers can get side-tracked, adding unnecessary features and interactions!

Here are some helpful resources for creating digital prototypes:

• A 10-Minute Rapid Prototyping Lesson by Marek Bowers

HTML & JavaScript Prototyping

On rare occasions, teams might build HTML & JavaScript prototypes to get more accurate results. The downside to this approach is that coding comes with considerable time and technical costs.

But with UXPin Merge, that isn’t the case!

Product designers (and non-designers) can create code-based high-fidelity prototypes that look and function like the final product.

For example, with UXPin’s Merge technology, teams can use React components pulled from a Git repository or Storybook components to create fully functional high-fidelity prototypes. With UXPin Merge, participants never have to “imagine” what a button or dropdown will do because the prototype functions like the final product!

Low Visual/High Functional Prototype built-in HTML. (Image credit: Mike Hill)

Advantages

• Final product functionality — HTML prototypes provide participants with an accurate model of the final product.
• The technical foundation for the final product — Building an HTML prototype provides researchers with a valuable research tool and provides developers with the foundations for building the final product.
• Platform agnostic — You can test your prototype on virtually any operating system or device, and the user won’t need to run outside software.

Disadvantages

• Dependent on designer skill level — Your HTML prototype is only as good as your ability to code. Poorly coded prototypes could introduce usability issues that don’t have anything to do with UX design!
• Inhibits creativity — Coding takes time and focus to build a usable prototype. Designers might not achieve the same level of innovation or creativity as using a familiar design tool.

Here are some helpful resources on HTML prototyping:

• Designing with Code by Andy Fitzgerald
• The Advantage of Rapid Prototyping by ZURB
• UXPin Merge for interactive prototyping by Robert Kirkman

The Prototyping Process

There’s no single best process for prototyping; it all depends on the product and application. Below are the three most effective prototyping processes, each intended for different scenarios.

(Note: We advise that you ALWAYS test the prototype when going from lo-fi to hi-fi.)

Paper => Lo-fi Digital => Hi-fi Digital => Code

Most designers follow the paper => lo-fi digital => hi-fi digital => code process for prototyping—it’s how we designed UXPin :).

Teams collaborate to develop lots of ideas, sketching wireframes on paper and creating user flows before committing to digital. Here, UX teams will use common brainstorming methods like crazy eights or asking “how might we” questions to get into an end-user mindset.

A lo-fi digital prototype (wireframe) tests crucial elements like navigation and information architecture early in the design process. Teams can use feedback to make quick adjustments to wireframes before committing to mockups.

Once teams complete navigation and information architecture, designers build mockups resembling the final product—adding color, content, interactions, and animations.

When researchers have exhausted testing, UX teams hand over designs to engineers to develop the final product.

Paper => Lo-fi Digital => Code

Going from Lo-fi prototyping to code is an old approach that few teams ever use these days. While lo-fi prototyping is cheap, it doesn’t catch many of the usability issues high-fidelity prototypes expose.

Product developers without design skills might use the paper => lo-fi digital => code method because it’s quicker for them to code than learn how to use a design tool.

The process is exactly like the example above, except that teams will skip the hi-fi digital step.

Low fidelity prototype created during a Yelp redesign exercise. 

High fidelity prototype created during a Yelp redesign exercise.

HTML Prototyping => Code

Solo developers might skip any early prototyping methods and go straight to code. With no one to bounce ideas with, it can make sense for a developer to jump straight in.

Essentially, the prototype creates a foundation and evolves into the final product. This prototyping method is only effective for skilled product developers with efficient workflows.

Even designers with excellent design skills might want to avoid this method of prototyping. Low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototyping are significantly faster than building and editing code.

Paper =>UXPin Merge – Hi-fi Prototyping => Code

With UXPin Merge, you can accelerate the UX process through rapid prototyping. Create fully-functioning high-fidelity prototypes using UI code components to provide participants with a life-like model of the final product.

UX teams follow the standard paper prototyping processes as outlined above. Next, designers build high-fidelity prototypes using UXPin Merge just by dragging and dropping ready interactive UI blocks on the canvas.

The outcome: no more “imagining!” Your prototype will work just as the final product. Prototyping in a code-based design tool like UXPin Merge means engineers can build the final product significantly quicker than working with vector-based designs. Discover UXPin Merge.

The post What is a Prototype? A Guide to Functional UX appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Interactions are vital for prototyping because they provide usability participants and stakeholders with a realistic user experience. The problem many designers have is building interactive components is time-consuming, and the results are underwhelming in most design tools.

Discover component-driven prototyping with UXPin Merge and how you can use interactive components to create fully functional prototypes to enhance cross-functional collaboration and user testing. Visit our Merge page for more details and how to request access to this revolutionary UX design technology.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

Discover UXPin Merge

What are Interactive Components?

Interactive components (or interactive elements) are reusable UI elements from a design system and include interactivity by default. This interactivity is a game-changer for designers who usually work with UI kits and have to add interactions for every project.

Design teams can set interactions, states, and other animations to create immersive prototypes that accurately represent the final product.

Interactive Components Benefits

Here are several benefits of interactive components.

1. Fewer Artboards

Traditionally, creating interactions using a design tool required multiple artboards to achieve basic functionality. Designers can achieve the same results with a single artboard using interactive components.

2. Faster Time to Market

Creating fewer artboards means less design work for designers, and interactive components are reusable, so designers only have to set interactions once–saving significant time during the design process.

Once engineers are familiar with the approved components, the design handoff process is much easier, saving further time on project delivery.

The result of all these time savings?–faster time to market.

3. Increased Consistency

UI kits increase design consistency, but they still leave some ambiguity regarding interactions. Designers must set these interactions themselves, leading to errors and inconsistencies–especially if the project doesn’t specify interactivity guidelines!

Interactive components have interactivity “baked in,” so everyone has the same states, microinteractions, and animations. These baked-in interactions increase consistency while enhancing efficiency because designers have fewer setup tasks and errors to fix.

4. Better Testing and Feedback

User and stakeholder feedback is crucial for design projects. This feedback drives decision-making to deliver user-centered products that align with business goals.

Most design tools lack the fidelity and functionality to perform simple interactions engineers achieve with a few lines of code. Interactive components make it easier to replicate code functionality, resulting in immersive, realistic prototypes for usability testing and stakeholders.

5. Increase Design System Adoption

One of the DS team’s jobs is evangelizing the design system to increase adoption. Interactive components are a powerful tool in design system evangelism because they create efficient workflows for product development teams, thus increasing the likelihood of adoption.

6. Scaling Design

At UXPin, we’ve seen how component-driven prototyping and interactive components help scale design. Our favorite example is how PayPal used UXPin Merge to scale its design process without hiring new staff.

Connecting Merge to interactive components hosted in a repository allowed PayPal’s product teams (with little or no UX/design tool experience) to complete 90% of design projects 8X faster than skilled UX designers previously could.

Interactive components made the design process more accessible to non-designers because they reduced the learning curve significantly.

PayPal’s UX team built an interactive component library, including layouts and templates, and used React props to set design system constraints. Product teams simply drag and drop to build prototypes for usability testing and design handoffs.

Interactive components allow orgs to give more UX responsibilities to non-designers, like product teams (or engineers in the case of another UXPin Merge user, TeamPassword), thus scaling design with growing the UX team.

You can create interactions depending on the conditions like click, hover etc. on the ready components!

How to Incorporate Interactive Components in UXPin Prototypes?

To incorporate interactive components into your product prototypes, there are many steps you can take. Make sure that forms can actually be filled out; boxes can be checked; and links can be clicked on.

Make as many components of your design actually workable as you can; this allows users to have the experience of trying to use the product, and it can give you some insight into how your product works and how people will (or want to) use it.

Using Interactive Components in UXPin

Since the first release of UXPin more than a decade ago, interactive components have been core to our design tool, providing designers with a solution to build prototypes that accurately replicate the final product experience.

UXPin has four powerful features to create interactive components:

• States: Create multiple state variants, each with different properties and interactions for a single component.
• Variables: Capture user input data and use it to create personalized, dynamic user experiences.
• Expressions: Javascript-like functions to create complex components and advanced functionality–no code required!
• Conditional Interactions: Set if-then and if-else conditions based on user interactions to create dynamic prototypes with multiple outcomes to accurately replicate the final product experience.

One helpful strategy is including pre-built components (called “forms” at UXPin)  that you can easily drag and drop in our platform. (No need to design these from scratch!) 

Advanced Component Customization with UXPin

In UXPin, components are not just static design elements; they offer advanced customization capabilities that enable designers to create dynamic, interactive prototypes.

Unlike traditional static components, UXPin components can be enhanced with multiple states, conditional logic, and even real data integration. This flexibility allows designers to create high-fidelity prototypes that closely mimic the functionality of the final product.

• Multiple States: Each component in UXPin can have multiple states (e.g., default, hover, active), which can be easily switched within the prototype. This feature allows designers to showcase different interactions and user flows without needing to create separate screens for each variation.
• Conditional Logic: UXPin allows components to change dynamically based on user actions or predefined conditions. For example, a form component can display error messages or success notifications based on the user’s input, providing a realistic preview of the user experience.
• Data Integration: Components in UXPin can integrate with live data, making them highly functional for testing and development. By connecting components to real data sources, designers can create prototypes that behave like real applications, enhancing the accuracy and effectiveness of usability testing.

4 Examples of Interactive Components in UXPin

Here are some interactive component examples from our examples page to see how you can start. For now, let’s see what you can do with states, variables, expressions, and conditional logic.

Example 1: Button

Example 2: Input and text area 

Example 3: Radio button 

Example 4: An interactive sign-up form

→ Download a ready .uxp file to import into your UXPin account. 

Want to create one by yourself? Here’s a tutorial. 

Interactive Components in UXPin Merge

Merge takes component-driven prototyping and interactive components to another level. Instead of designers building components in UXPin, Merge imports a design system library from a repository.

These Merge UI elements are truly interactive components because behind them is code from a front-end framework like React, Vue, Angular, etc. You can import your organization’s design system or use an open-source library.

Designers don’t ever have to see or write code to use Merge components; they only work with the visual elements to build fully functioning prototypes. They also have access to component properties via UXPin’s Properties Panel to make changes within the design system’s constraints.

Learn more about Merge and how to request access.

Designing with Merge Interactive Components

Step 1: Grab Components From the Design System

There are three ways to import interactive components into UXPin using Merge:

• Git Integration: Connect a React component library directly to UXPin
• Storybook: Sync front-end frameworks like Vue, Angular, HTML, Ember, Web Components, and more (see the complete list here)
• npm Integration: Import open-source libraries from the Node Package Manager (npm)–a fantastic DIY option for designers. Read more about the npm Integration and how it works.

Imported Merge components appear in UXPin’s Design System Libraries in the left sidebar. Designers click or drag the UI elements they need from the sidebar to appear on the canvas. They can also use multiple design systems and UXPin elements and even combine them to create new components which they can save as Patterns.

Step 2: Make Changes

When designers click on a Merge component, its properties appear in the righthand Properties Panel. Those with technical skills can switch to JSX and adjust the code directly–a flexible workspace to match your preferred workflow.

Step 3: Share and Test

Designers can use Preview and Share for usability testing or when sharing prototypes with stakeholders. UXPin’s Comments feature allows teams and stakeholders to collaborate on prototypes and assign comments for team members to action.

Step 4: Design Handoff

Preview and Share also features Spec Mode, where engineers can inspect elements and click on Merge components to view and copy JSX changes. Designers can also include prototype documentation with annotations explaining each element and user interface.

Check out Design Handoff: What it Looks Like with UXPin Merge for a short tutorial.

Interactive Components UXPin Merge vs. Figma

Here’s a quick overview of how Figma’s interactive components feature compares to UXPin Merge components.

Single Source of Truth

Figma’s interactive components allow designers to replicate some fundamental interactions. However, organizations must still manage two design systems–one UI kit for designers in Figma and a separate component library hosted in a repository.

The problem with this workflow is it requires additional resources to manage and update two systems while increasing the likelihood of errors.

With Merge, design teams and engineers pull components from the same repository. Designers see visual elements, and engineers use the code behind them. Any changes to the repository automatically sync to UXPin and notify all teams of the update. Designers can also use Version Control to switch between different design system versions.

Fully Interactive

Figma’s interactive components aim to mimic code, whereas code powers Merge, giving design teams fully interactive UI elements.

With Figma’s interactive components, you’re essentially creating states. With Merge, you get complex functionality like real date pickers, data tables, graphs, inputs, responsive design, and much more!

Smoother Design Handoffs and Cross-Functional Collaboration

Design handoffs are seamless, almost non-existent when using Merge because designers and engineers use the same component library. Design teams can’t make changes outside of properties set by the design system, so there are no surprises for engineers.

Merge significantly reduces development time because engineers can copy/paste production-ready code from the repository and grab component props from UXPin to begin front-end development.

Figma’s components are vector-based artboards. Although many plugins convert Figma design files to code, it’s rarely usable, and engineers must still re-program it to meet their product’s format and structure.

In summary, Merge is a code-based technology that syncs design and development to form a single source of truth. Figma’s interactive components offer basic functionality (mostly state variants) that reduces the number of artboards designers use to create interactions.

Use our Figma plugin to copy Figma designs into UXPin. Reach higher interactivity of prototyping.

Bridging Design and Development with UXPin Merge

One of the standout features of UXPin is its Merge technology, which bridges the gap between design and development by allowing designers to use actual code components within their prototypes. This feature ensures that the components in UXPin are the same as those in production, maintaining consistency and reducing the risk of discrepancies between the design and the final product.

• Code-Based Components: With UXPin Merge, designers can import coded components from a repository (like GitHub) and use them directly in their design projects. These components are not just visual representations; they are the actual components that will be used in the final product, complete with all the functionality and interactivity defined by the development team.
• Single Source of Truth: By using code-based components, UXPin ensures that there is a single source of truth for both designers and developers. This approach eliminates the need for redundant handoffs and rework, as any changes made in the design are immediately reflected in the code, and vice versa. This seamless integration fosters better collaboration and streamlines the product development process.

How to Get Started Prototyping With UXPin Merge

Ready to get started with component-driven prototyping in UXPin using Merge? You have two options:

• Open-source libraries: Open-source libraries are best for teams who lack an active dev support or they just want to get some basic understanding of how they can work with components before comitting to them.
• Private design systems: If you’d like to sync your product’s private design system to UXPin, visit our Merge page to request access, and one of UXPin’s technical staff will contact you to help with onboarding.

The post What are Interactive Components? Bring your Prototypes to Life in UXPin appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Components are a fundamental aspect of modern UI design tools, enabling designers to create reusable elements that maintain consistency across projects.

While both UXPin and Figma offer robust component systems, they have distinct differences in functionality, flexibility, and integration with other tools. This post will explore these differences, helping you decide which platform might be better suited for your design needs.

Optimize design-to-development handoff, create prototypes that are full of interactive UI components, such as input fields, clickable menus, and sortable data tables. Simplify design with UXPin Merge. Discover UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

Discover UXPin Merge

What are Components in Figma?

Figma’s documentation states, “Components are elements you can reuse across your designs. They help to create and manage consistent designs across projects.” Designers create Figma components using shapes, icons, images, text, and even other components. These components are vector-based, visual representations of the coded UI components engineers use to develop the final product.

Understanding vector-based design elements

While Figma’s vector-based are aesthetically accurate, their static nature means they’re graphical representations rather than functional UI elements or design patterns.

Most image-based or vector-based design tools have this limitation. Designers can make things look beautiful, but they can’t accurately replicate the experience. The platform renders vector graphics that cannot handle live data.

Improved workflow, not output

Figma’s Config 2023 releases make it easier for designers to build semi-interactive prototypes and components, but little has changed on the user testing end. Figma’s components still render the same; the company has just simplified the workflow.

Instead of using multiple frames to create interactivity, designers can apply the interactions, like state changes, directly to the components. While this is a massive step forward for simplifying designer workflows, it doesn’t change the tool’s vector-based limitations.

How Can You Use Components in Figma?

Here’s how Figma handles components:

1. Flexible and Easy-to-Use Components:
   • Component Variants: Figma introduced a feature called Component Variants, which allows designers to group similar components (like different button styles) into a single parent component. This simplifies the component library and makes it easier to manage and switch between different variations.
   • Nested Components: Figma supports nested components, where a component can be used within another component. This feature is particularly useful for creating complex UI elements that are built from smaller, reusable components.
2. Instance Overrides and Detachment:
   • Overrides: Figma allows for overrides in component instances. Designers can change text, colors, and other properties without affecting the master component. This flexibility is crucial for customizing components to fit different use cases without breaking the overall design consistency.
   • Detaching Instances: Figma allows you to detach an instance from its master component, effectively converting it into a standalone element. This feature provides greater flexibility but comes at the cost of losing automatic updates from the master component.
3. Collaboration and Real-Time Editing:
   • Real-Time Collaboration: Figma’s biggest strength is its collaboration capabilities. Multiple team members can work on the same file simultaneously, seeing each other’s changes in real-time. This feature is ideal for teams working in fast-paced environments or needing to collaborate closely on design projects.
   • Comments and Feedback: Figma includes built-in tools for commenting and feedback, making it easy for teams to discuss changes directly within the design file. This helps streamline the design review process and keeps all feedback centralized.

What are Components in UXPin–and how are they different?

The principle of UXPin components is the same as Figma, but instead of working with static images, UXPin renders HTML, CSS, and Javascript behind the scenes, giving designers greater fidelity and functionality to play with. When combined, UXPin components enable design teams to create fully interactive prototypes.

For example, designers can program any form field to mimic code-like functionality. Using text components, they can capture a username and password at registration and ask the user to use those same credentials to sign in, accurately replicating a sign-up flow.

Understanding interactive prototypes

Interactive prototypes closely mimic the final product by responding to user engagement like clicks/taps, swipes, scrolls, inputs, etc. These prototypes enhance testing because designers can present stakeholders and test participants with an authentic user experience.

There are two ways to create fully interactive prototypes:

• Using code–requires engineering input
• Using a code-based design tool–no engineering input

This code-based approach allows designers to create components like dropdown menus, accordions, image carousels, and other complex UI patterns.

How Can You Use Components in UXPin?

Here’s how UXPin handles components:

1. Dynamic, High-Fidelity Components:
   • Interactivity and States: UXPin allows you to create interactive components with multiple states, which can simulate real user interactions. For example, a button component can have hover, active, and disabled states, which are easily switchable within the prototype.
   • Conditional Logic: UXPin supports conditional interactions, meaning components can change based on user input or specific conditions. This feature is particularly useful for creating dynamic and interactive prototypes that mimic real-world applications.
   • Live Data Integration: UXPin components can integrate live data, making them highly functional for testing and development. This capability allows designers to connect components to real data sources, enhancing the fidelity of the prototype.
2. Code-Based Components with UXPin Merge:
   • Merge Technology: One of the standout features of UXPin is its Merge technology, which allows designers to import coded components from a repository (such as a GitHub repository). This means the components in UXPin can be the actual production-ready code, ensuring consistency between design and development.
   • Single Source of Truth: With Merge, there’s a single source of truth between designers and developers. Components behave exactly as they would in the final product, allowing for seamless handoffs and reducing the risk of design inconsistencies.
3. Component Instances and Overrides:
   • Editing Flexibility: In UXPin, component instances (copies of the original component) can have overridden properties, such as text or color, without affecting the master component. However, updates to the master component will propagate to all instances unless specific properties have been overridden.
   • Design System Integration: UXPin supports comprehensive design systems, which can include components, patterns, and documentation. This makes it easy to maintain a cohesive and consistent design language across projects.

Key Differences Between UXPin and Figma Components

Both UXPin and Figma offer powerful component systems, but they cater to different needs and workflows. UXPin is ideal for teams that require high-fidelity prototypes and a seamless transition from design to development, while Figma is perfect for collaborative design work with a focus on quick iterations and feedback. Understanding these differences can help you choose the right tool for your specific project needs.

• Interactivity and Prototyping: UXPin excels in creating high-fidelity, interactive prototypes with conditional logic and live data integration, making it ideal for projects that require detailed user testing and development-ready components. Figma, on the other hand, is better suited for quick iterations and real-time collaboration, with less focus on prototyping complex interactions.
• Code Integration: UXPin’s Merge technology provides a direct link between design and development, allowing for production-ready components to be used in design. This is a unique feature not present in Figma, which focuses more on design collaboration rather than integrating with code.
• Design System Management: Both tools support design systems, but UXPin offers more robust features for integrating and maintaining a single source of truth across design and development. Figma’s design system tools are excellent for managing visual assets and components but lack the depth of integration with development workflows that UXPin provides.
• Collaboration: Figma is unparalleled in its collaboration features, allowing multiple designers to work simultaneously in a shared environment. UXPin offers collaboration features but is more focused on the transition from design to development, making it a stronger choice for teams looking to integrate their design system closely with their codebase.

Merging Design and Development

UXPin’s proprietary Merge technology allows organizations to sync a design system from a repository to UXPin so that designers can use interactive components in the design process. Merge gives designers all the powers of code without writing or seeing a single line.

While the setup requires some engineering input and technical expertise, once this initial process is complete, Merge automatically syncs updates to UXPin, and notifies design teams of the new release.

You can import any kind of component, pattern, or page template using Merge, including graphs, data tables, date pickers, video/audio players, dashboards, and more.

UXPin Merge vs. Figma Dev Mode

Figma’s Dev Mode allows engineers to inspect elements from a technical perspective, including CSS and front-end code. Figma automatically generates this generic code in a design-to-code workflow. While this code is helpful, it’s not production-ready and, in most cases, redundant because it won’t align with every product’s syntax and programming practices. 

UXPin Merge works the opposite way in a code-to-design workflow: sending visual components from a repository rather than generating generic code from the design tool. The Merge components designers use in UXPin are exactly the same as those devs use for front-end development. Component properties, including interactivity, sync to UXPin, so designers never have to set these up or make adjustments.

This Merge workflow eliminates design drift and reduces technical debt because designers and engineers work with the same UI library within the same constraints, creating a single source of truth across the organization.

Comparing UXPin Merge & Figma Components

We’ll use two identical Material Design button components to illustrate the differences between Figma and Merge. We’re using Material Design 2’s UI kit in Figma and imported MUI’s React components into UXPin using Merge–MUI uses Material Design as a foundation for its React component library.

We’ve dragged a component from each UI library onto the canvas without applying any changes. 

Figma:

UXPin:

You’ll notice the UXPin component is interactive by default, with hover and click interactions defined in the repository. The Merge component is fully interactive because it’s an actual code component rather than a graphical representation.

The Figma component is not interactive by default because it’s essentially an image. Designers must set these interactions up in the design tool before prototyping. They must also share lots of supporting documentation and component variations at design handoff so engineers understand what to build.

Spec Mode vs. Dev Mode

Merge’s Spec Mode is also very different from Figma’s Dev Mode. Dev Mode allows designers to inspect elements with suggested CSS and other code–which we’ve already established is not production ready. Designers must also share each Figma component’s variants, interactions, animations, triggers, etc.

UXPin only displays the Merge component’s JSX properties (spacing, typography, size, etc.) for the prototype’s default or initial state. Developers already have the same UI library, which they import into their project from the same repository to start development. They simply copy/paste the JSX code from UXPin and apply it to the relevant component in their IDE.

Developers don’t need additional documentation detailing each component’s interactions, triggers, etc., because the design system team has already defined these properties in the repository. These baked-in constraints mean designers can’t change a component’s interactivity, whereas, in Figma, they can detach a component instance from its master component and change its properties.

Prototyping in Figma vs. Prototyping in UXPin

For the most part, the design environment, tools, and workflow is similar in Figma and UXPin. The differences are following.

Frames vs. pages

One of the biggest differences is Figma follows a frame and artboard workflow, while UXPin uses pages with a separate canvas for each screen. Designers can visualize the pages on a single screen as they would in Figma using UXPin’s Overview.

Adding interactivity

Figma’s Prototype feature allows designers to add basic interactivity with limited user actions. Config 2023 releases make it easier to change component states using Variables, but these are still far from the code-like experience necessary for accurate testing.

UXPin’s Interactions include many user triggers and actions for desktop and mobile prototyping. As Merge components are interactive by default, designers focus primarily on navigational interactions like page transitions and popups, allowing for faster designing and iterating.

Testing scope

Due to Figma’s lack of fidelity and functionality, designers are limited by what they can test using the platform. Design teams often use plugins, integrations, or other tools to increase prototyping scope, which increases costs, time, and other resources.

With UXPin Merge, designers can build fully interactive prototypes indistinguishable from the final product without plugins or integrations. They can also use APIs to connect to external services, significantly increasing testing scope. These advanced prototypes allow designers to collect meaningful insights during testing to make accurate design decisions for better product outcomes.

Ready to experience the benefits and ease of working with a code-to-design workflow? Visit our Merge page for more details and how to request access to this revolutionary technology.

The post Components in Figma vs UXPin (+ Other Design Tools) appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

When it comes to building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), the goal is simple: deliver value to users as quickly and efficiently as possible. As a technical designer with coding skills, I’ve seen firsthand how the right approach can turn an idea into a market-ready product. With the increasing complexity of digital products, it’s more important than ever to build MVPs that are not only functional but also user-centric. Let’s dive into the best practices for creating an MVP.

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What is an MVP?

An MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product. It’s the most basic version of a product that can still deliver value to users. Eric Ries, the author of The Lean Startup, describes an MVP as a version of a new product that allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. The essence of an MVP is to start small, focus on core functionalities, and then iterate based on user feedback.

Why Build an MVP?

Building an MVP allows you to test your product idea with real users before investing significant time and resources into full-scale development. The benefits include:

• Validating Market Demand: Ensure there’s a demand for your product before committing to a full launch.
• Minimizing Development Costs: Avoid wasting resources on features that users don’t want or need.
• Faster Time to Market: Launch your product quickly and gain a competitive edge.
• Attracting Early Adopters: Build a loyal user base from the beginning.
• Gathering User Feedback: Use real-world feedback to guide future development.

As Steve Jobs famously said, “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology.”

What is the Best Approach to Building an MVP?

1. Lean Startup Methodology

The Lean Startup methodology, popularized by Eric Ries, emphasizes building a simple version of your product and improving it based on feedback. This approach aligns perfectly with MVP development because it focuses on efficiency and learning from users.

2. Agile Development Practices

Agile development practices advocate for incremental and iterative progress. This method is ideal for MVPs as it allows you to adapt quickly to changes and incorporate feedback throughout the development process.

3. Customer-Centric Approach

A successful MVP should always keep the end-user in mind. In the words of David Kelley, founder of IDEO, “Fail faster to succeed sooner.” This mindset encourages experimentation and quick iteration based on user feedback, ensuring that the final product resonates with your audience.

How to Design a Software MVP

Step #1: Identify the Core Problem

Start by understanding the key pain point your software addresses. Ask yourself, “What problem is my product solving?” The answer to this question will guide the entire MVP development process.

Step #2: Focus on Core Features

Once the core problem is identified, prioritize the features that solve it. This focus ensures that your MVP remains lean and efficient, delivering only what’s necessary to address user needs.

Step #3: Create Wireframes and Prototypes

Before diving into development, visualize your MVP with prototypes. Tools like UXPin Merge allow you to create fully functional prototypes that look and feel like the final product. This approach is faster and more efficient than traditional design methods, enabling you to test and iterate quickly.

Step #4: User Experience (UX) Considerations

Even an MVP should prioritize user experience. A well-designed interface can make a significant difference in how users perceive and interact with your product. Remember, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works,” as Steve Jobs highlighted.

Step #5: Choosing the Right Technology Stack

Select a technology stack that supports rapid development and scalability. Whether you opt for web-based technologies, mobile platforms, or a combination of both, the key is to choose tools that allow for quick iterations and easy updates.

Steps to Build an MVP

1. Market Research

• Identify Target Audience: Conduct surveys, interviews, and analyze demographics to understand who will use your product.
• Analyze Competitors: Study existing solutions, their strengths, and weaknesses. Tools like SWOT analysis can be useful here.
• Assess Market Needs: Identify gaps in the market where your product can offer a unique value proposition. Use data analytics to predict trends and customer behavior.

2. Define the Problem Statement

• Clarify the Core Problem: Use insights from your research to pinpoint the exact problem your users face.
• Create a Problem Statement: This should be a clear, concise statement that guides the entire team. For example, “Our product aims to reduce the time it takes for freelancers to invoice clients by 50%.”

3. Outline Core Features

• Prioritize Features: List features that directly solve the core problem. Use techniques like MoSCoW (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won’t have) to prioritize.
• Map Features to User Needs: Ensure each feature addresses a specific user need identified during market research. Avoid feature bloat by keeping the initial MVP simple and focused.

4. Create User Stories

• Develop User Personas: Create detailed personas representing your target users.
• Write User Stories: User stories should describe how users will interact with each feature, e.g., “As a freelancer, I want to quickly generate an invoice so I can save time on administrative tasks.”
• Define Acceptance Criteria: Set clear criteria for when a user story is considered complete, ensuring it meets the needs and expectations of users.

5. Choose the Right Technology Stack

• Evaluate Technology Options: Consider the scalability, speed of development, and future needs when choosing tools and frameworks.
• Integrate UXPin Merge: Use UXPin Merge to bridge the gap between design and development. This tool allows you to create a prototype that is nearly identical to the final product, which can drastically reduce redesigns and speed up the development process.
• Ensure Compatibility: MakReady to take your MVP from concept to reality? Try prototyping in UXPin! With UXPin, you can create fully interactive prototypes that look and feel like the final product, enabling you to validate ideas before any code is written. Collaboration is seamless—designers, developers, and stakeholders can work together in real-time, ensuring that everyone is on the same page. Plus, the built-in feedback loops make it easy to iterate and refine your MVP quickly.e sure that the chosen stack is compatible with your existing infrastructure and future product goals.

6. Develop the MVP

• Set Development Milestones: Break down the development process into manageable sprints with clear goals for each.
• Build Core Features First: Focus on developing the essential features outlined earlier, ensuring they are fully functional and meet the problem statement.
• Continuous Integration: Implement continuous integration (CI) practices to streamline development and catch issues early.

7. Test the MVP

• Conduct Unit and Integration Testing: Ensure that individual components and their integrations work flawlessly.
• User Testing: Involve real users to test the MVP in scenarios that reflect actual usage. Collect feedback on usability, performance, and functionality.
• Iterate Based on Feedback: Use the feedback to make necessary adjustments before the final launch.

8. Launch and Gather Feedback

• Plan a Soft Launch: Consider launching your MVP to a limited audience to gather initial feedback without overwhelming your team.
• Collect and Analyze Feedback: Use surveys, interviews, and analytics to understand how users interact with your MVP.
• Refine and Iterate: Based on the feedback, refine your product, prioritize new features, and plan the next iterations.

How Long Should an MVP Take to Build?

Typical Timeframes

On average, an MVP can take anywhere from 4 to 12 weeks to develop, depending on the complexity of the product and the size of the team.

Factors Influencing Development Time

Factors such as the complexity of the problem, the scope of features, the technology stack, and the team’s expertise all influence the time it takes to build an MVP.

Tips for Speeding Up the Process

To accelerate development:

• Focus on essential features.
• Use no-code/low-code tools for rapid prototyping.
• Maintain a tight feedback loop with users.

As Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, wisely put it, “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

MVP Development Best Practices

1. Continuous User Involvement

Involve users throughout the development process. Their feedback is crucial for ensuring that the MVP meets their needs and provides real value.

2. Emphasizing UX/UI Design

Even an MVP should have a polished user interface. A good UX/UI design can make the difference between a product that users love and one they abandon.

3. Leveraging Agile Methodology

Agile practices allow for quick iterations and continuous improvement. This methodology is perfect for MVP development, where adaptability and responsiveness are key.

4. Data-Driven Decision Making

Use analytics and user feedback to guide your decisions. This approach ensures that your product evolves based on real user needs, not assumptions.

What are Successful MVPs?

1. Dropbox

Dropbox started as a simple MVP with a basic file-sharing feature. By focusing on solving a specific problem, Dropbox was able to attract early adopters and iterate quickly based on feedback.

2. Airbnb

Airbnb’s MVP was a simple website that allowed users to book short-term lodging in their area. The focus was on solving the problem of finding affordable accommodation, and the company rapidly iterated based on user feedback.

3. Spotify

Spotify’s MVP was a desktop application that allowed users to stream music. By focusing on delivering a seamless user experience, Spotify quickly gained traction and expanded its feature set based on user feedback.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

1. Overloading with Features

Avoid the temptation to add too many features to your MVP. Focus on solving the core problem, and leave additional features for later iterations.

2. Ignoring User Feedback

User feedback is invaluable for guiding the development process. Ignoring it can lead to a product that doesn’t meet user needs.

3. Misjudging Market Needs

Thorough market research is essential. Misjudging market needs can result in an MVP that fails to gain traction.

FAQs

1. What is the best approach to building an MVP?

The best approach is a combination of Lean Startup methodology, Agile practices, and a customer-centric focus.

2. How do you design a software MVP?

Focus on solving the core problem, prioritize essential features, create prototypes using tools like UXPin Merge, and involve users throughout the process.

3. How long should an MVP take to build?

Typically, 4-12 weeks, depending on complexity and team size.

Build your MVP today

Building an MVP is about starting small, staying focused, and iterating quickly based on user feedback. By following the steps outlined above, you can create a product that not only meets user needs but also lays the foundation for future growth.

Remember, the goal of an MVP is not to create a perfect product but to learn as much as possible with the least amount of effort. As you embark on your MVP journey, consider using tools like UXPin Merge to streamline the process and build prototypes that are closer to the final product. This approach can save you time and resources, allowing you to bring your product to market faster. Try UXPin for free.

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Figma is a powerful web-based design tool that has become designer’s favorite as it allows to create, collaborate on, and share user interface designs in real-time. Founded in 2012 by Dylan Field and Evan Wallace, Figma has grown to become one of the leading tools in the design industry due to its unique features and capabilities.

Although it offers a great collaborative design experience, Figma is not the best when it comes to interactive prototyping, design handoff, and code-based design. Let’s analyze Figma competitors and analyze what makes this design tool so popular.

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What is Figma?

Figma is a web-based design tool that simplifies teamwork and UI design.

Figma’s focus on accessibility, powerful features, and collaborative capabilities has made it a preferred choice for designers and teams worldwide, transforming how digital products are designed and developed.

What is Figma used for?

Figma is best suited for designers with UI and UX design projects that require detailed, UI designs and robust collaboration features.

It is used for:

• Brainstorming — Figma is a great tool for idea generation; it released a complimentary tool FigJam, where team members can create artboards and flowcharts during brainstorming sessions. An alternative to Figma for brainstorming is Miro.
• Prototyping — Figma Figma enables designers to create high-fidelity, interactive prototypes with various transitions and animations​. Figma’s alternative for prototyping are UXPin or Axure.
• UI design — Figma is praised for its design capabilities and it’s used to design the graphical user interfaces of websites, mobile apps, and other digital products. It provides design functionalities to create detailed, high-fidelity mockups. An alternative to Figma in UI design was InVision or Adobe XD. Now, it’s the tools that we will cover in this article.
• Design system — Figma supports the creation and management of design systems, which are collections of design elements and guidelines that ensure consistency across a UI design. It also helps with version control. Figma’s alternative for design systems is Sketch or UXPin.
• Graphic design — Figma provides robust vector editing tools that allow designers to create intricate illustrations and detailed vector graphics. Figma’s alternative for graphic design is Canva.
• Wireframing — Figma is also used for creating wireframes, which are low-fidelity representations of a design’s structure and layout. Wireframes help designers plan the basic structure and flow of a user interface. An alternative for Figma for wireframing is UXPin, Balsamiq, and Axure.

How Figma came to be?

Figma’s backstory is rooted in the vision of its founders, Dylan Field and Evan Wallace, who sought to transform the design industry by creating a more collaborative and accessible tool. Founded in 2012, the idea for Figma emerged from their desire to overcome the limitations of traditional design software, which was often platform-specific and lacked real-time collaboration features. Field’s Thiel Fellowship provided the initial funding and mentorship necessary to bring their idea to life.

The official launch of Figma in 2016 marked a significant shift in the design landscape. As a browser-based tool, it allowed designers to work on any device with internet access, facilitating seamless collaboration akin to Google Docs. This innovation quickly garnered attention, leading to substantial venture capital investments and a growing user base. By 2021, Figma had reached a valuation of $10 billion, reflecting its widespread adoption and impact on the design community.

Figma’s success is also attributed to its focus on community and extensibility. The platform introduced features like plugins, FigJam for whiteboarding, and a vibrant community for sharing resources and ideas. Despite an attempted acquisition by Adobe in 2023, which was ultimately abandoned, Figma has remained independent and continues to innovate, aiming to democratize design and make powerful tools accessible to all designers​.

Figma in numbers

Here are the key numbers associated with Figma.

• User Base: As of March 2024, Figma has over 4 million users, including designers from major companies like Microsoft, Google, and Uber.
• Market Share: The number of designers using Figma as their primary tool rose from 20% in 2018 to 77% in 2021, highlighting its rapid adoption and popularity in the design community​.
• Valuation: Figma’s valuation grew significantly over the years. It reached $2 billion by April 2020 and $10 billion by mid-2021. Despite an acquisition attempt by Adobe that valued Figma at $20 billion falling through, the company remains highly valued at approximately $8.3-9 billion as of late 2023.
• Funding: Figma has raised substantial funding across several rounds, including $25 million in Series B (2018), $40 million in Series C (2019), $50 million in Series D (2020), and $200 million in Series E (2021)​.
• Collaborative Files: Over 3 million Figma files are shared within teams every month, underscoring its collaborative nature and widespread use among design teams​.

Why is Figma so popular?

Figma is a user-friendly design platforms that designers love because of at least 5 features.

• Real-Time Collaboration: Multiple users can work on a single design file simultaneously, providing live feedback and making collaborative design seamless​. All it requires to work is an internet connection, as Figma is a web app.
• Design Systems and Reusable Components: It supports the creation and management of design systems, ensuring consistency and efficiency in large-scale projects​​.
• Comprehensive Toolset: Figma offers a wide array of design tools, from vector graphics and typography to layout and composition, all within an intuitive interface.
• Community: Figma boasts a vibrant community where users can share templates, tips and plugins for streamlining the design process and reducing the learning curve.
• Plugin Ecosystem: Figma has an extensive plugin ecosystem for integrating Figma with other tools, simplifying workflow and enhancing its functionality.

Top Figma competitors

1. UXPin
2. Moqups
3. Framer
4. Sketch
5. Marvel
6. Axure

UXPin

UXPin is a Figma alternative for advanced prototyping. While Figma is a vector-based design tool, UXPin is code-based, meaning that you can set up the most advanced interactions on the components level and then copy the code behind it to use in development. With UXPin, you can create clickable menus, data-rich tables, interactive forms, dynamic content, and more.

It’s an end-to-end design tool, so you don’t need plugins or extra seats to test or hand over the final prototype to development. The specs are available without extra seats. UXPin also helps teams set up code-based design system, keep version control, and collaborate by sharing the design with others for commenting or annotating.

UXPin is also known for its Merge technology. It’s a drag-and-drop technology for using fully coded React or Storybook components to design an interface. It’s perfect for teams with matured design systems (like Porsche) or engineer-driven companies who don’t have enough designers on their team.

Check out other articles that compare UXPin and Figma:

• Figma vs UXPin – Storybook integration
• Figma vs UXPin – Prototyping
• Figma vs UXPin – Design System
• Figma vs UXPin – Components
• Figma vs UXPin – React code export

Moqups

Moqups is a wireframing tool for designing basic wireframes that look like paper prototypes, user flows and basic mockups – three essential steps in the design process. This is a well-loved alternative to Figma’s FigJam, their whiteboarding solution with amazing integrations with Jira and Confluence.

It’s a great collaboration tool that makes project management easy. With enterprise clients on board, such as Microsoft, Sony, Amazon, Moqups seem to be a perfect choice for teams who need a common workspace for brainstorming sessions. The tool is also great for working with freelancers on app or web design.

The tool also allows you to create templates for reuse and share across the team. It has an affordable pricing and works offline.

Framer

Framer is a compelling Figma competitor for web design. It helps create and publish websites without having to write code. It works in a drag-and-drop for creating a layout of blogs, landing pages, forms, and more.

It’s a great Figma alternative if you want to create a website that needs to be live fast. Framer is more than just a design tool. It helps you with SEO, performance, localization, and any other thing that’s in a web master’s scope of expertise.

It’s recently added AI feature that works like this — write a prompt, telling AI what kind of a website you’re building, and in return, get a ready-to-go site. It works like magic!

Framer isn’t great at prototyping because it’s main job is creating websites. It makes collaboration between designers, engineers, and product managers easy, yet if you need to create a high-fidelity prototype for user testing, try a tool like UXPin, Axure or Marvel.

Sketch

Sketch is a Figma competitor for teams that work on Macs — it’s a Mac app. It’s recently revamped it’s product to support interactions, design token export, and more things that make designer-developer handoff frictionless.

Sketch has been around since 2010 when designers used Photoshop to create mockups or wireframes. It’s a real dinosaur but it doesn’t seem like it. It’s a user-friendly prototyping tool that speeds up product development and a great Figma alternative. It has a version control, design system management and history that makes design process easier.

Marvel

Marvel advertises itself as a design tool that even non-designers can use. This might be appealing to small startups who look for a wireframing and mockup solution that everyone on the team can use. It’s used in finance and consulting markets as well as by companies such as BlaBlaCar or Stripe.

The prototyping tool doesn’t compare itself to Figma, but from its Marvel vs Invision landing page, we can learn that it’s a tool for advanced prototyping and design handoff that allows teams to build and handover their designs to the engineering team.

Marvel is praised for having a small learning curve and easy user interface, but the users complain that it is too basic to create advanced prototypes.

Like Figma, it works in artboard mode and it has vector editing tools that help you mimic user interactions to an extent. We recommend you to try Marvel as it has a free version that you may enjoy for creating basic screens.

Axure

Axure is an old-school prototyping tool that’s a great competitor to Figma when it comes to advanced prototyping. It supports interactions, such as conditions, triggers, and actions for creating a prototype that tests user experience. Those interactions can be tricky to set up as the learing curve is rather steep, but it’s all worth it.

Axure works in the cloud now, but it also has a MacOS and Windows apps for those of you who prefer work offline. It’s well loved by user experience designers, product managers, and business analysts at enterprise corporations, and design teams who require robust user feedback before implementing the design.

Which Figma competitor do you want to try?

There are many more Figma competitors on the market, but we decided to outline six of them that you may consider when looking for a Figma alternative or another tool to speed up your design process.

Some of well-loved tools have been sunsetted or they stopped getting new clients, such as Adobe XD (which was a part of Creative Cloud) or InVision that was great for design systems.

Framer is best for web design, Sketch is great for Mac users, Moqups and Marvel come in handy for smaller teams, while Axure and UXPin are great for robust prototyping when you need to use live data. Pick the one that fits your purpose.

If you want to use a prototyping tool that connects design and development, try UXPin Merge. Design production-ready prototypes that don’t need translation from design to code, because you work with coded components from the start. Try UXPin Merge.

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User flows are integral to the UX design process. These valuable UX artifacts help product teams visualize flows and processes from users’ perspectives to reduce errors and enhance the user experience.

This article takes a deep dive into user flows, their importance, the principles that guide them, the visual representations, and the various types of flows.

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What is User Flow in UX?

A user flow is a graphic visualization representing the sequence of steps, decisions, and actions users perform while navigating a digital product, app, or website.

Product teams typically focus on one task or goal at a time, such as an onboarding sequence or eCommerce checkout. Designers build prototypes of these user flows to test the user experience with usability participants and stakeholders, iterating on feedback until they have a product ready for development.

Importance of User Flows in UX Design

User flows help product teams visualize the paths users take through an application or website to complete a specific task or achieve a goal. This visualization enables teams to identify friction points and opportunities within user flows and design solutions to fix them. 

Additionally, designers can look at optimizing flows to create more efficient and satisfying user experiences.

Benefits of a well-designed UX flows

A well-designed user flow offers many important benefits for users and the organization:

• Improves usability: optimized user flows feel intuitive, simplifying decision-making while reducing cognitive load, resulting in a user-friendly experience where users don’t get lost or frustrated. 
• Better retention: when a digital product meets user needs, allowing them to complete tasks and achieve goals, they’re more likely to keep using it and share their positive experience.
• Higher conversions: streamlining user flows removes roadblocks and obstacles for tasks that generate revenue for the business, like signups, purchases, subscriptions, etc.
• Reduce costs: optimized user flows remove redundant screens and features, resulting in many cost-savings, including design, development, maintenance, server requests, API usage, etc.
• Improved accessibility: design teams can visualize and optimize user flows to meet accessibility requirements, making user interfaces more inclusive while increasing the product’s user base.
• Data-driven design decisions: analyzing user flows provides valuable insights into user behavior and preferences, allowing designers to make informed decisions based on actual data rather than assumptions. Data-driven design decisions deliver products and experiences that meet user needs, making them more intuitive, enjoyable, and user-friendly.

UX Principles of Effective User Flows

Successful user flows incorporate UX principles that guide design concepts and decision-making. Here are some fundamental UX principles to consider when designing user flows:

Clarity and simplicity

Your user flows must be easy to understand and navigate. Avoid complex designs or features that people must learn before using them. Navigation and interaction elements must be consistent, predictable, and straightforward. When you force people to overthink a process or interaction, they’ll abandon it for an easier option, even at a higher cost.

Consistency

Maintain a consistent design language, layout, patterns, and interaction design throughout your product and user flows. Design consistency increases familiarity resulting in a more intuitive, user-friendly experience.

Flexibility

Design flows that cater to different needs, preferences, and abilities by offering multiple ways to complete tasks–for example, providing alternate paths, shortcuts, or input methods.

Feedback and communication

UI feedback guides users and manages expectations as they navigate user flows–for example, progress indicators, visual cues, status information, messages (success, error, etc.), and alerts. This communication informs users of the system status, whether their action was successful, and what to do next.

Anticipate user needs

Designers can utilize user research to predict and address user needs to prevent obstacles and roadblocks. Adding helpful tips and error prevention features enables users to solve problems faster for more efficient and streamlined flows.

Minimize steps

Designers can streamline user flows by eliminating unnecessary steps, actions, and decision points. Minimizing these points of friction increases efficiency while reducing errors and drop-offs.

Focus on user goals

Would you rather use a product that helps you achieve your objectives efficiently or one inundating you with business value proposals and other irrelevant content? Design user flows that prioritize the user’s goals and desired outcomes with features that enhance efficiency and success.

Accessibility and inclusivity

Ensure that users with diverse abilities, preferences, and devices can use your products, navigate flows, and complete tasks. Designers must consider how factors like font size, color contrasts, keyboard navigation, language, and screen-reader compatibility impact user experiences. Read more about accessibility here: Web Design Accessibility Checklist.

Types of User Flow Visualizations

Before we explore the user flow types, it’s important to explain the visualizations design teams use to map these journeys. 

Flowcharts

User flowcharts (user flow diagrams) are a diagramming technique used across many industries to represent the information flow, decision points, and user actions. These visualizations use symbols, arrows, and other shapes to depict elements, processes, decisions, and data input/output.

Wireflows

Wireflows combine wireframes and flowcharts to provide a detailed view of a user’s journey through an interface. These visualizations describe each screen’s layout as well as how users and information flow between them. 

Wireflows help visualize user interactions with specific elements and understand the context of these interactions. Designers and engineers can use these wireflows to visualize information architecture and navigation in greater detail.

Screen-flows

Screen-flows are annotated screenshots or mockups illustrating a user’s path through a product. These high-fidelity versions of wire-flows allow designers and stakeholders to visualize user flows in greater detail with screens that accurately represent the final product.

Storyboarding

Designers use storyboarding similarly to the film industry, using a series of illustrations, images, or screens to show a user’s journey. Storyboarding is helpful as it allows design teams to zoom out from the user flow and visualize a user’s environment and circumstances.

For example, if you’re designing an app for food delivery drivers, you’ll need to visualize the user flow from multiple perspectives:

• Walking
• Cycling
• Scooter/motorbike
• Car
• Van

Storyboard combined with user flows helps design teams empathize with users better to deliver more relevant solutions.

Types of User Flows

Here are seven common user flow categories. Design teams can use the techniques and mediums above to visualize these user flows.

Task flows

Task flows represent the steps users must follow to complete a specific task. These flows focus on sequential user actions and decision points, often visualized using a flowchart. Task flows are particularly helpful for identifying pain points and optimizing user journeys.

Onboarding flows

Onboarding flows allow product teams to visualize and design the product’s initial setup and introduction. These flows incorporate account creation, tutorials, feature highlights, and personalization options to familiarize users and get them started quickly.

Conversion flows

Conversion flows are crucial for generating revenue and growth. These flows represent the steps toward a desired action or outcome–for example, newsletter signups, purchases, plan upgrades, etc. Designers typically aim to minimize friction and distractions for these flows to maximize conversion rates, upsells, and other revenue-generating activities.

Navigation flows

Navigation flows outline the structure and architecture of a digital product. These visualizations help design teams understand how users move between screens, sections, and features. They can use these insights to prioritize features and content so users can find things faster and complete tasks more efficiently.

Account management flows

Users often need to update account information like addresses, passwords, billing details, app preferences, subscriptions, etc. Account management flows allow designers to simplify these administrative experiences so users can return to more important tasks.

Error flows

Error flows allow design teams to simulate issues and design solutions to fix them. They can use these insights to improve the user flow and eliminate errors from occurring or create appropriate feedback for users to correct problems.

Offboarding flows

Offboarding flows guide users through discontinuing a product or service, like canceling a subscription or deleting their account. These flows must be as efficient as onboarding to minimize frustration, increasing the chances of winning back customers.

How to Create a User Flow in 8 Steps

Here is a step-by-step framework for creating user flows.

Define the goal and entry points

Identify the task or goal you want to analyze–this could be one of the above user flows or something specific to your product. This goal will help determine the scope and focus of your user flow and which visualization is most appropriate.

If you are designing a website user experience, another good practice before creating your flows is to determine and map out where your users are coming from. Based on Morgan Brown’s advice in Stop Designing Pages and Start Designing Flows, we’d recommend you consider the following sources for your web or mobile prototype:

• Direct traffic
• Organic search
• Paid advertising
• Social media
• Referral sites
• Email

Identify personas

Your product may have many user personas. Determine which of these is most relevant to the user flow. You may assess the user flow for multiple personas to ensure it meets everyone’s needs and expectations.

For templates and helpful tips on creating personas, check out the chapter “Analyzing Users Before Diving Into Design” in the free ebook The Guide to UX Design Process & Documentation.

List user actions and decision points

Break down the user journey into a list of individual actions and decision points. Consider each step a user must take to achieve goals and their choices. For example, a signup screen might have several options, including email signup and multiple social logins. Each option will have a different path to completing the signup process.

Map the flow

Start by sketching your flows on paper or in a digital tool to iterate on many ideas fast. This should be a collaborative effort where team members share ideas and suggestions.

Once you have a basic outline, you can create your user flow in a design tool. UXPin offers five built-in design libraries, one of which is aptly named User Flows. UXPin’s User Flows library includes everything teams need to create and share user journeys, including:

• Flow lines for every conceivable direction
• Action blocks
• Icon blocks
• Labels
• Devices (mobile, tablet, desktop)
• Gestures

Here are a couple techniques for outlining your flow.

Writing-first Approach to Outlining a Flow

You can use the writing-first approach, which Jessica Downey writes about in her article Jumpstarting Your App Conception Without Sketching UI. This outlining method helps flesh out ideas and build a “common understanding” of each page of your app or site.

Let’s create one for, say, a banking app. The scenario: someone wants to turn on auto deposit. Note in the outline below, content in [brackets] represents action buttons/links.

Step 1: Would you like to set up auto deposit?

[Set auto-deposit]

Step 2: Select Deposit Frequency

[Once per month][Twice per month]

[Every other week][Every week]

Step 3: Deposit Once per Month

[Select calendar day]

Step 4: Set Amount

Display amount field

[Set auto-deposit]

Shorthand Approach to Outlining a Flow

You can also try  a shorthand approach used by Ryan Singer at Basecamp. Ryan’s approach treats flows as ongoing conversations.

For our banking app example above, we can create a shorthand for Steps 2 and 3 that looks something like this:

To see how Singer demonstrates shorthand for Basecamp and how he can illustrates complex flows with this outlining process, check out A Shorthand for Designing UI Flows.

Add screens

If you’re designing a wireflow or screen-flow, you can add relevant wireframes, mockups, and screenshots depending on the level of fidelity you need for your user flow.

Include system feedback

Add system feedback and responses such as error messages, success notifications, or loading indicators. This detail will help designers and engineers create the appropriate UI components and content to guide users.

Review and iterate

Analyze the user flow for potential improvements, pain points, or friction. Share the visualizations with team members and stakeholders for feedback and iterate until you have a flow ready for prototyping.

Prototype and test

Create a prototype of your user flow in a design tool. UXPin’s built-in design libraries (iOS, Material Design, Bootstrap, and Foundation) provide designers with UI components and patterns for web and native applications. Drag and drop UI elements from the Design Libraries panel to create high-fidelity mockups you can test in the browser or use UXPin Mirror for mobile app testing.

Create fully interactive prototypes using advanced UXPin features to achieve results that accurately replicate the final product:

• States: allow designers to create multiple states for a single UI element and design complex interactive components like accordions, carousels, steppers, and more.
• Variables: capture data from user inputs and create personalized, dynamic user experiences–like a welcome message using data from the name field in a signup form.
• Expressions: Javascript-like functions to create complex components and advanced functionality–no code required!
• Conditional Interactions: create if-then and if-else conditions based on user interactions to create dynamic prototypes with multiple outcomes to accurately replicate the final product experience.

Enhance your user flows with high-quality prototyping and testing from UXPin. Start designing the user experiences your customers deserve with the world’s most advanced design tool. Sign up for a free trial.

The post User Flows – How to Create Perfect User Flows for Smooth UX appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Mastering the art of prototyping is akin to wielding a powerful toolset that empowers designers and developers to iterate, refine, and ultimately deliver products that resonate deeply with their audience.

In this article, we embark on a journey through the spectrum of prototype fidelity, from low-fi sketches to high-fi interactive simulations. Each step of the way, we’ll unravel prototype examples that illuminate the nuances and possibilities inherent in each approach. Whether you’re a seasoned UX designer seeking inspiration or a newcomer eager to grasp the fundamentals, this exploration promises insights aplenty.

But before we dive in, allow me to introduce you to UXPin—a comprehensive prototyping platform that empowers designers to bring their visions to life with unparalleled ease and efficiency. By seamlessly integrating design and prototyping capabilities, UXPin streamlines your workflow, enabling you to iterate rapidly and collaborate seamlessly. Ready to elevate your prototyping game? Sign up for a trial today.

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What is a prototype?

A prototype is a preliminary version or model of a new product, system, or design that is developed to test and validate concepts, features, or functionality before proceeding with full-scale production or implementation.

Prototypes are used in various industries, including product design, software development, engineering, and manufacturing, to gather feedback, identify potential issues, and refine designs early in the development process.

Prototypes are created for several reasons, all aimed at improving the final product or system. Here are some key reasons why prototypes are created:

1. To Validate Product Idea: Prototypes allow designers and developers to validate concepts and ideas early in the development process. By creating a prototype, they can test assumptions, explore different design options, and gather feedback from stakeholders before investing time and resources into full-scale development.
2. To Clarify Requirements: Prototypes help clarify requirements by providing a tangible representation of the product or system. They enable stakeholders to visualize and interact with the user interface design, facilitating discussions and ensuring that everyone has a shared understanding of the project goals and expectations.
3. To Identify Issues: Prototypes help identify potential issues and challenges before they become more costly to address later in the development process. By testing prototypes with users or stakeholders, designers can uncover usability problems, technical limitations, and design flaws early on and make necessary adjustments.
4. To Explore Solutions: Prototypes allow designers to explore different solutions and design alternatives. By creating multiple prototypes, designers can compare different approaches, evaluate trade-offs, and determine the most effective design direction for the final product.
5. To Gather Feedback: Prototypes serve as a tool for gathering feedback from real users, customers, and other stakeholders. By testing prototypes with target users, designers can gather valuable insights, preferences, and suggestions for improvement, which can inform subsequent iterations of the design.
6. To Reduce Risk: Prototyping helps mitigate risks associated with the development process by allowing designers to experiment with ideas in a low-risk environment. By identifying and addressing potential issues early on, prototypes help reduce the likelihood of costly mistakes and delays during later stages of development.
7. To Improve Communication: Prototypes serve as a communication tool for conveying ideas, concepts, and design decisions to potential investors. They provide a common visual reference point for discussions and facilitate collaboration among team members, ensuring that everyone is aligned and working towards the same goals.

Read about prototype definition and types in this article: What is a Prototype?

Types of prototypes

Types of prototypes include:

1. Paper Prototypes: These are low-fidelity prototypes created using paper, sketches, or mockups to visualize the layout, structure, and flow of a design. Paper prototypes are inexpensive and quick to create, making them ideal for early-stage concept testing and brainstorming sessions.
2. Wireframes: They are basic, skeletal representations of a design or interface, typically created using wireframing tools. They focus on layout and functionality, omitting detailed design elements such as colors and graphics. Wireframes help designers and stakeholders visualize the structure and interaction flow of a design.
3. Digital Prototypes: They are interactive representations of a design or product created using prototyping tools. These prototypes can range from low-fidelity mockups to high-fidelity simulations, depending on the level of detail and realism required. Digital prototypes allow for user testing, usability evaluation, and iteration before product development.
4. Functional Prototypes: Functional prototypes are fully or partially functional versions of a product or system that demonstrate key features and capabilities. These prototypes often involve interactivity to replicate the behavior of the final product. Functional prototypes are used to validate technical feasibility, performance, and user experience.
5. Proof-of-Concept Prototypes: Those are experimental models created to demonstrate the feasibility of a new idea, technology, or approach. These prototypes focus on validating core concepts and principles, often with limited functionality or polish. Proof-of-concept prototypes are used to assess the viability of an idea before investing further resources in development.
6. Throwaway Prototypes: Throwaway prototypes, also known as disposable or rapid prototypes, are quick and rough prototypes created with the intention of being discarded after use. These prototypes are often built using tools and are not intended to represent the final product accurately. Instead, they are used to explore ideas, experiment with design concepts, and gather feedback early in the development process. Throwaway prototypes are valuable for generating new ideas, iterating rapidly, and validating design decisions without investing significant time or resources.
7. Workable Prototypes: Those prototypes are working models of a user interface. Unlike throwaway prototypes, workable prototypes are more polished and refined, aiming to closely resemble the final product in terms of functionality and performance. These prototypes may involve the use of actual components, hardware, or software code to simulate the behavior of the final product accurately. Workable prototypes are used to validate technical feasibility, test usability, and gather user feedback in real-world scenarios. They serve as a crucial step in the product development process, helping to identify and address potential issues before proceeding to full-scale production or implementation.

Prototype examples you need to see

Example 1: Paper prototype

Paper prototypes are are low-fidelity representations of user interfaces created using pen and paper. They are simple sketches of user interfaces that include rough sketches of UI elements such as buttons and tabs while every new paper piece shows a simulation of next steps of a user flow. They are great communication devices during brainstorming or talking with stakeholders.

Here is an example of a mobile app paper prototype by Aaron Barko found on Medium.

Notice that the prototype has a cut-out an iPhone and the designer can move it to indicate next step. Its kept in a black-and-white color scheme and all UX writing is written by hand. The designer prepared a smaller pieces of paper to indicate different options in a drop-down menu.

To create a paper prototype, prepare sketching materials such as pens or pencils for drawing your interface elements. Your pens may be of different thicknesses to represent different types of UI elements (e.g., thick lines for buttons, thin lines for text). You may want to have different sizes of paper depending on the complexity of your prototype and the level of detail you want to include.

Your paper prototype doesn’t have to be black and white. You can use markers or highlighters for adding emphasis to certain elements or highlighting important areas of your prototype.

Example 2: Wireframe

A wireframe is a simplified visual representation of a digital interface or product. It outlines the basic structure, layout, and functionality of the interface without getting into detailed design elements like colors, images, or typography. Wireframes are typically created using basic shapes, lines, and text to convey the placement of elements and the flow of information.

The focus is on capturing the overall layout and structure of the interface, as well as the interactions and navigation paths that users will follow. Designers usually use digital tools to make wireframes, such as UXPin, Figma or Balsamiq.

Here’s an example of a website wireframe in Balsamiq.

You can see that its a low-fidelity representation of a real-life website. There’s a frame for asset, some placeholder text, but overall, details don’t matter. It’s still early in the design process to be able to tell how the UI will look like beside the structure and layout.

Before diving into this type of prototyping, it’s helpful to have a clear understanding of the user flows and basic layout of your user interface. User flows map out the paths that users will take through the interface, while wireframes provide a simplified visual representation of the interface structure.

Example 3: Mockup

A mockup is a higher-fidelity representation of a digital interface or product compared to a wireframe or a paper prototype. While wireframes and paper prototypes focus on the basic structure and layout of the interface, mockups add more visual detail, including colors, typography, images, and other design elements.

Here is a design mockup found on Dribbble, a website where digital designers share static mockups, video prototypes, and graphic designs to showcase their understanding of design or prototyping process.

Notice that this mockup provides a more detailed representation of the final look and feel of the interface. They incorporate colors, typography, images, and other visual elements to showcase the visual style and branding of the project. They include realistic visual elements and often simulate the appearance of the final product as closely as possible.

Mockups still focus on visual design rather than functionality what makes them great for gathering feedback on the visual design and aesthetics of the interface. They are often shared with stakeholders, clients, or team members for review and approval before moving on to the prototype development phase.

Example 4: High-fidelity prototype

High-fidelity prototype can be in the form of a static mockup or functional prototype. What matters here is the level of detail. They serve as powerful communication and validation tools in the design process, allowing designers to convey their design concepts effectively and gather feedback on the user experience before moving into the product development phase.

High-fidelity prototypes closely mimic the visual appearance of the final product, including detailed graphics, typography, colors, and branding elements. They often use actual assets such as images, icons, and logos to provide a realistic representation of the interface.

One example of a high-fidelity prototype is this website made by UXPin.

You can see that it has a well-defined color palette, carefully picked font pairing, great use of whitespace and clickable form. You can use this prototype as a template for practicing UX design, add a FAQ section, new sites, and more. Try it now by signing up for UXPin trial.

Example 5: Functional prototype

A functional prototype is a type of prototype that not only demonstrates the visual design of an interface but also simulates its functionality and behavior. Unlike static prototypes, which focus solely on the appearance of the design, functional prototypes provide a tangible representation of how the final product will work and behave.

Functional prototypes help validate the technical feasibility of the design by demonstrating how different components and features work together in a functioning system. They can identify technical issues, bottlenecks, or limitations early in the development process.

Similarly, startups may build functional prototypes to get buy-in from investors. It works similarly to a 3D model of a physical product as other people can get a feeling of what you want to build and how it will behave like. Some people need physical models to spark their imagination.

Those prototypes include interactive elements that simulate user interactions and behaviors. This may include clickable buttons, input fields, dropdown menus, and other interactive components that allow users to navigate through the prototype and perform tasks.

In some cases, functional prototypes may include real data or content to provide a more realistic user experience. This could involve integrating dynamic content feeds, sample data sets, or actual text and imagery that would be used in the final product.

Here is an example of a functional prototype by UXPin. It’s an auction app.

It’s fully clickable and it looks like a final product that has been developed by engineers. But it’s not. It’s a functional prototype. You can use it as if you use a regular app that’s on your phone. It’s responsive to user action and it transfers data from one step to the other. Such an app is possible to build in UXPin.

Example 6: Coded prototype

The final prototype example we want to show you is coded prototype. This prototype isn’t build in code by a developer. It’s build in a designer’s environment with coded components – a small building blocks of most apps. UXPin, unlike most design tools, renders real code, so there is always code in the background that you can hand over to development.

The example here is a sign-up flow build with UXPin. Here’s a full tutorial on how to build a sign-up form like this one.

If you want to learn coded prototyping, follow our mini-course on using UXPin Merge.

Create code-first prototype with UXPin

Those prototype examples demonstrate versatility and applicability across various design contexts, including paper prototypes, wireframes, mockups, and functional prototypes. Each type of prototype serves a specific purpose in the design process, helping designers to effectively communicate ideas, test functionality, and refine designs before final implementation.

With UXPin, you can turn your ideas into reality quickly. It’s like having your design and prototype tools all in one place, saving you time and hassle. Plus, it makes teamwork a breeze, allowing you to collaborate smoothly with others. Ready to take your prototyping skills to the next level? Try UXPin for free today.

The post Examples of Prototypes – From Low-Fidelity to High-Fidelity Prototypes appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Design-to-code is a familiar workflow. Designers create a prototype using a design tool, and developers convert it to code–a simplified version of the standard product development process.

UXPin Merge turns this process upside down with a revolutionary code-to-design workflow. This article explains code to design and how it enhances the product development process with four case studies, including FinTech giant PayPal. Learn more about UXPin Merge.

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What is Code to Design?

Code to design is a UX workflow developed by UXPin using Merge technology. With UXPin Merge, you can use coded UI components to build fully interactive interfaces, and once you’re done with your design, export production code. The components aren’t translated from design to code. They are code.

The code-to-design workflow offers several benefits for designers, stakeholders, and engineers:

1. Designers build fully interactive prototypes, increasing testing scope during the design process.
2. Designers don’t design from scratch, thus reducing time to market.
3. Stakeholders can grasp design’s vision because prototypes behave like an end-product.
4. Design handoffs are smoother because designers and engineers use the same source of truth.
5. Teams share a design system which adoption is no longer an issue.
6. The drag-and-drop workflow makes product design more accessible to non-designers, and developers, stakeholders, researchers, and more can create a prototype on their own.

Design to Code vs. Code to Design

Design to code results in misalignment

Design to code is the traditional UX workflow. Design teams create mockups and prototypes using standard image-based design tools, which developers convert to code.

The biggest challenge with a design-to-code workflow is that it creates a gap between designers and engineers. To bridge that gap, designers must use external tools, write detailed documentation, and meet with devs to explain how prototypes and interactions must function.

Even with all this extra work and explanation, the final product often doesn’t meet the designer’s specifications and expectations. Designers and engineers argue over who is to blame, but the real issue is a language barrier. Designers work with vector graphics tools, while engineers work with code.

Code to design boosts collaboration

A code-to-design workflow bridges the gap between designers and engineers. They still speak different languages, but a technology like Merge facilitates the translation between design and development.

Design teams work with visual UI elements, while engineers work with the code powering them–the same component from two perspectives.

Teams working with a design system benefit most from this code-to-design workflow.

With design-to-code workflow, teams work with two versions of the design system:

• Image-based UI kit for design tools
• UI component library for programming

Code to design eliminates this separation because design teams and engineers use the same component library from the same repository–creating a true single source of truth.

Code to Design Use Cases

You’re probably thinking, “this code-to-design thing sounds great, but how does it translate to real-world product development?” Glad you asked. Here are four use cases where companies use code-to-design for product development.

PayPal

In 2019, PayPal completely redesigned its internal product development process using UXPin Merge. PayPal’s internal UX team had a unique challenge–they had five designers to over one thousand engineers managing 60+ products. No two products looked the same, and each had usability and design inconsistency issues.

Erica Rider, UX Lead EPX at PayPal, was tasked with solving this problem. To add a layer of complexity, Erica had to create a workflow that enabled PayPal’s product team to design, test, and deliver products. They lacked design skills and had little design tool experience.

After trying several solutions using traditional image-based tools, Erica discovered Merge. PayPal’s UX team used Merge to sync a customized Fluent UI design system to UXPin.

PayPal’s stakeholders wanted to test the effectiveness of this new code-to-design investment. Erica’s experiment involved creating two versions of a one-page prototype: one using an image-based tool and the other using the UXPin Merge. The results were better than expected:

• Image-based tool: over one hour
• UXPin Merge: 8 minutes

The Merge prototype had far superior fidelity and functionality. And, with some coaching, PayPal’s product teams achieved the same results.

Read PayPal’s full case study.

Iress

Software developer Iress was on a four-stage process to design system maturity.

• Stage one: PDF style guides
• Stage two: HTML pattern library with CSS
• Stage three: UI kit and component library
• Stage four: a fully integrated single source of truth with no design or code required for releases

Iress was stuck on stage three, unsure how they would bridge the gap between design and development to reach the final goal–until the team discovered code-to-design approach.

This workflow ticked all the boxes for Iress at that moment:

• A single repository serving designers and engineers the components they need to build and release products.
• Better alignment between designers and engineers, with seamless design handoffs.
• No designing or front-end programming from scratch.
• No design drift or inconsistencies across the organization.
• Realistic, interactive prototypes give testing participants and stakeholders an accurate representation of the final product.
• The opportunity to experiment with theme switching for dark mode or multi-brand design systems.

Read Iress’ full story.

TeamPassword

The first two use cases were enterprise products. But what can code-to-design do for startups and small teams? TeamPassword operates in the highly competitive password management market. The startup’s biggest challenge is that they don’t have any UX designers.

For a startup entrusted with people’s passwords and sensitive data, usability issues and design inconsistencies erode trust, ruining TeamPassword’s reputation and resulting in churn.

TeamPassword’s engineers did all the design and user testing using code prototypes. While these prototypes accurately represented the product’s functionality and user experience, building and iterating on ideas was time-consuming.

In 2022, TeamPassword switched to the MUI design system, which they synced to UXPin using Merge. Instead of developing prototypes, engineers used their custom MUI React library in UXPin. This code-to-design workflow significantly reduced time-to-market while eliminating usability issues and design drift.

When TeamPassword’s developers update the design system repository, the change automatically sync to UXPin, so they always have the latest version. Merge’s Version Control allows the team to track changes and switch between versions during testing.

Read TeamPassword’s full case study.

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dotSource

dotSource is a German-based digital product consulting and development agency. The company uses multiple design systems to deliver products and solutions to clients.

dotSource’s biggest problem in delivering these products was redundant processes and duplicate work with two design systems–a UI kit for design and a component library for development. The design system’s documentation created a third piece the team had to maintain.

dotSource’s “single source of truth” was actually three sources, not one–a problem many organizations encounter with design systems.

dotSource knew they had to make their single source of truth code-based but didn’t know how to achieve this workflow using traditional image-based design tools–until they discovered UXPin Merge.

dotSource uses Merge’s Storybook Integration to sync its design system to UXPin. Storybook allows dotSource to update the design system’s repository, documentation, and UXPin’s components with every release.

“Switching to a code-based design workflow is the only way around these image-based limitations. A code-based prototyping tool like UXPin with Merge technology enables this workflow by rendering code (instead of vector graphics), just like a browser. In UXPin, UI components look and behave exactly as they do for developers, effectively bridging the gap between design and development–a real single source of truth.” – dotSource

Read dotSource’s full article.

How Does Code to Design Work in UXPin?

Product teams have two options when importing code components into UXPin:

1. Import a product design system
2. Import an open-source UI library
3. Use built-in libraries available on trial

There are three ways to bring these libraries into UXPin:

• Git Integration: syncs React component libraries from a repository to UXPin.
• Storybook Integration: allows teams to sync many front-end frameworks, including React, Vue, Angular, Web Components, and Ember, to name a few (find the complete list in Storybook’s docs).
• npm Integration: designers can import UI components from open-source libraries from the npm registry using the Merge Component Manager (MCM).

We have three tutorials for using the npm Integration and Component Manager:

• React-Bootstrap
• Ant Design
• MUI

The Git and Storybook integrations are a little more complex, requiring technical skills to complete the Merge setup with UXPin’s Technical Support Team.

Ready to get started with code to design? Set up a trial and see how it speeds up your product development process and keeps your team on the same page. Try UXPin Merge for free.

The post Code to Design Complete Guide for 2024 appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

In the high-tech digital UX design world, pen and paper can still be the preferred choices for fast low-fidelity prototyping. Contrary to assumptions, UX teams spend a lot of time away from the computer, writing on sticky notes, whiteboards, notepads, and adding annotations to paper prototypes.

The more planning and preparation designers can do before sitting down at the computer, the quicker they can design wireframes, mockups, and prototypes. Paper prototyping is a crucial part of the early UX design thinking process because it fosters collaboration, allowing designers to explore lots of ideas at a minimal cost.

With UXPin, design and development teams can jump straight from paper prototypes to high-fidelity prototyping, significantly accelerating the design process. Build consistent, high-quality digital experiences. Sign up for a free trial and explore UXPin’s prototyping features today!

Build advanced prototypes

Design better products with States, Variables, Auto Layout and more.

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What is Paper Prototyping?

Paper prototyping is the process of developing ideas and designing user flows using hand-sketched “screens” that represent a digital product. Paper prototypes test on a high-level user experience rather than interaction design.

Paper prototypes are low-fidelity because they don’t have any functionality. For this reason, paper prototypes designers rarely share paper prototypes outside of the department.

The primary goal of paper prototyping is to map our information architecture and visualize user flows.

Design teams often lay paper screens on a desk or flow and imagine how real users would navigate to reach an end goal. The designs are rudimentary and usually sketched in black and white. Content is limited, with only headlines and call to action links displaying any legible text.

Sometimes, teams will build a mock iPhone or Android device using a piece of cardboard to simulate swipes, scrolls, and other basic functionality. These mock devices also allow designers to see how their designs might look within the confines of a mobile phone—especially useful if you’re designing a mobile app.

While the main benefit of paper prototyping is speed, some designers use tools like UI Stencils to design accurate, aesthetically pleasing screen layouts—vital if you plan to present paper prototypes to stakeholders or testing participants.

UXPin’s journey started with a similar paper prototyping product called Web Kit. A paper pad paired with a design tool that automatically turns paper prototypes into wireframes. UXPin has evolved into an end-to-end prototyping solution, allowing you to create prototypes that are production-ready from the start. Try UXPin for free.

Paper Prototyping Digitally

With tools like reMarkable and Apple Pencil, teams can collaborate remotely while enjoying the speed and versatility of the physical paper experience.

Using digital sketch tools can accelerate the paper prototyping process. Designers can make changes faster (without needing to redraw a screen), attach detailed notes, and upload finished prototypes instantly to design tools like UXPin to build high-fidelity prototypes or go with wireframing.

Paper prototyping digitally also reduces paper and plastic waste, which is better for the environment :)

Advantages and Disadvantages of Paper Prototyping

Aside from speed and flexibility, there are several advantages and disadvantages to paper prototyping. 

Here are some of the pros and cons of paper prototyping from our free eBook: The Ultimate Guide to Prototyping.

Advantages:

• Rapid iteration — It’s easier to discard a paper design that took 5 minutes vs. a digital mockup that you spent more than an hour perfecting. 
• Low cost — Paper is cheap, and even additional tools and kits won’t break the bank. 
• Increased creativity — The freedom of pencil and paper fosters experimentation and new ideas. Design tools have their place in the design process but can stifle creativity in the early design stages.
• Team-building — Paper prototyping is a rare opportunity where teams get together in a creative environment. Working with pen and paper brings out child-like energy, which can help form bonds and strengthen coworker relationships. 
• Minimal learning curve — Everyone can sketch ideas, making paper prototyping a great way to involve other departments like marketing, development, and stakeholders.
• Documentation — Paper prototypes serve as excellent documentation. Designers can make notes and outline ideas to reference throughout the project. They’re excellent UX artifacts.

Disadvantages:

• No user reactions — With no user feedback, it’s difficult to know whether or not your ideas will work. Even if you test your paper prototypes with participants, the feedback will be limited.
• Inaccurate feedback — Outside of UX teams, paper prototypes might be challenging to interpret, limiting any accurate or meaningful feedback. 
• Potentially unnecessary — With rapid prototyping tools like UXPin, paper prototyping might add additional, unnecessary steps to the design process. UXPin comes with pre-made design systems, so designers can quickly drag-and-drop high-fidelity elements to design and edit working prototypes quickly.

Sign up for a 14-day trial and see how quickly you can turn paper design concepts into high-fidelity prototypes that function like the final product using UXPin. 

When to Paper Prototype

Jake Knapp of Google says that “paper prototyping is a waste of time“—but admits that paper prototyping is useful for early-stage conceptualizing.

Once you move from paper to digital, there’s no reason to return. Some designers might return to paper prototyping for new features or a product redesign. But even then, returning to paper prototyping might be unnecessary.

That said, paper prototyping is perfect for early-stage conceptualizing. Its speed, ease, and simplicity make it accessible to all teams (including non-designers) while fostering experimentation and creativity—something you can’t achieve with a digital canvas.

Paper prototypes are ideal for:

• Brainstorming meetings and sessions
• Basic internal user testing early on

How to Paper Prototype

Paper prototyping is the fun part of product design. It’s an opportunity for team members to brainstorm and sketch ideas. 

Don’t worry about how beautiful your sketches look. Even the best UX designers aren’t brilliant sketch artists! The goal is to visualize your ideas and get the creative juices flowing.

Creating a paper prototype involves three main steps:

1. Prepare Materials

Gather materials like paper, pens, markers, sticky notes, and scissors. You may also use a whiteboard or large sheets of paper to sketch user interfaces.

2. Sketch Interfaces

Draw basic screens, user interfaces, and key components of the design on separate pieces of paper. Represent user flows by arranging these sketches in sequence.

3. Simulate Interaction

Lay out the sketches in the order of user interaction. Simulate the user experience by manually switching between sketches based on user actions, gathering feedback to refine the design.

For a detailed guide, check out UXPin’s article on prototyping.

6 Tips to Building Paper Prototypes

1. Use printer paper and cheap pencils/pens. Ruled or line pads often stifle creativity as designers get side-tracked drawing between the lines rather than developing lots of ideas.
2. Start with a warm-up! Sometimes it takes a few sketches to loosen up and get into the flow. Crazy eights is a fantastic paper prototyping method to design many versions of the same screen fast. After a couple of crazy eights rounds, you’ll have many ideas to expand on.
3. Prototype mobile-first or progressive enhancement. Start with the smallest screen and adjust the layout as you scale the viewport (this applies to mobile and web design. Scaling up is much easier than scaling down because you prioritize content and avoid elaborate desktop layouts that don’t translate to mobile. Side note: UXPin’s Auto Layout lets you automatically resize, fit, and fill your designs. A handy feature for mobile-first design. 
4. Stick to one sketch per screen (a piece of paper). Paper prototyping requires you to create user flows by placing pieces of paper in sequences. You’ll also switch these around or add new screens. If you have more than one screen on a piece of paper, you lose this speed and flexibility.
5. Iterate as the ideas come to mind. The goal is quantity, not quality. When you create lots of paper prototype ideas, you often end up taking bits from each to get the final result—like a Lego set, but with paper.
6. Planning is crucial for a successful paper prototyping session! Ensure you have enough pens (black fine-tipped markers work best), paper, scissors, glue, post-it notes, index cards, tape, cardboard, and anything else you think your specific project might need. A whiteboard and marker are also great for outlining user flows collaboratively. Pro tip—assign the job of preparing your paper prototyping to an arts & crafts enthusiast! Every team has at least one, and they always make sure you have more than enough of everything you need!

Testing & Presenting Paper Prototypes

Testing & presenting paper prototypes outside of the UX department is always tricky. The stakeholders or usability participants have to “imagine” what will happen, which can confuse or divert focus from what you’re trying to present. Nevertheless, a study by Jakob Nielsen found that 75% of usability issues can be identified with simple, low-fidelity prototypes like paper ones.

Here are some tips for presenting and testing paper prototypes:

• Designate one person other than the presenter as play the “human computer” or product simulator – The person playing the human-computer will simulate scrolling, swiping, navigating to different screens, and other functionality.
• Rehearse – Rehearsing is essential so that the presenter and simulator are in sync. The presenter can work out a good cadence for the simulator to keep up with the presentation.
• Follow standard usability test best practices – Standards like using a minimum of 5 users and recording the tests still apply. You can download our free Guide to Usability Testing for more understanding of usability standards and practices.
• If you’re giving users a paper prototype to inspect, ensure you provide guidance and annotations, so they know where to focus and what they’re supposed to test.

Prototyping in UXPin

Whether you’re building a mobile application or a new website, UXPin provides designers with tools to build advanced prototypes; most leading design tools simply can’t!

Don’t take our word for it! Sign up for a free 14-day trial and test UXPin’s powerful prototyping features for your next project. 

The post Paper Prototyping: The 10-Minute Practical Guide appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Are you ready to elevate your design workflow to the next level? In this comprehensive tutorial, we’ll delve into the world of UXPin Merge, empowering you to seamlessly integrate your React app components into the UXPin editor for high-fidelity prototypes.

Gone are the days of static designs. With UXPin Merge, you can dynamically link your React components, ensuring that your prototypes are always in sync with the latest developments in your codebase.

Get ready to unlock the full potential of UXPin Merge – let’s dive in!

Design UI with code-backed components.

Use the same components in design as in development. Keep UI consistency at scale.

Try UXPin Merge

What is UXPin Merge?

UXPin Merge is a technology for designing with coded UI components that are backed with production-ready code. It’s part of UXPin – a code-based design tool for highly realistic and accurate prototyping. With this tech, you can grab all the specs, JSX code, and any other asset and hand them over for developer to make the entire product development workflow 8.6x faster.

UXPin Merge tutorial – How to use this technology?

UXPin Merge technology works like a drag-and-drop UI builder. You take a component out of the design library in UXPin and put it on the canvas. Then, after you’ve done arranging the layout and setting up components props, you can copy a ready React code (or CSS code for Tailwind library) to your development environment or open it in StackBlitz.

You can build anything you like. From simple dashboards that automate your team operations to more complex, e-commerce stores which front-end is decoupled from the back-end. UXPin has a few templates and patterns to get you started.

We highly recommend you watch a video tutorial of how to use UXPin Merge presented by a real-life web developer, Rachel. She did a wonderful job of walking you through all the panels, functionalities, and features of Merge technology, and she also shows you how to do a design handoff with UXPin Merge.

Watch it on Youtube. Here’s the full playlist of UXPin Merge tutorial.

How to integrate your own components, step by step

UXPin Merge supports Storybook components and React components from open-source libraries, such as MUI, Ant design or Bootstrap.

We want to give more details and show you how easy it is to integrate a React-based library into Merge to design with code on a day-to-day basis. All that without learning how to code!

UXPin Merge allows users to import their existing custom React components in a seamless fashion to create interactive prototypes using real code, which is unlike anything else traditional design tools offer.

This eliminates the need for designers to manually maintain a “second” design system within their design tool and instead provides the entire team with a single source of truth. The result? The disconnect between designers and developers is gone when building digital products. 

We want to save you time so we’ve designed this tutorial to integrate Mozilla’s React Todo App example with Merge. After the integration, you’ll be able to use the app’s components to design an interactive Todo list prototype within UXPin!

Remember to start by requesting access to Merge – you can do it here. After the verification process and the setup, you’ll be ready to design with code! Also, don’t worry about integrating with GitHub – we don’t have any requirement of where the codebase should be located, so you can use whatever you want!

The components

The Todo app has three React components:

1. Form – create a todo item.

2. FilterButton – filter todos by their current state.

3. Todo – a todo list item.

These components are in the `src/components` directory and are outlined in the screenshot below:

When this tutorial is completed, a designer will be able to create a prototype with these components. Your real-world custom design system (DS) likely has many more than three components. However, the concepts we’ll illustrate in this tutorial should apply to your DS as well.

Set up UXPin Merge

To begin, fork then clones the following link https://github.com/mdn/todo-react. Then install our UXPin Merge NodeJS package, which includes our CLI.

1. Navigate into your project folder cd todo-react
2. Install UXPin Merge and It’s CLI NodeJS bundle with: yarn add @uxpin/merge-cli–dev
3. Ignore the UXPin Merge build directory with: echo ‘/.uxpin-merge’ >> .gitignore

A custom design system requires two additional config files:

1. uxpin.webpack.config.js
2. uxpin.config.js

UXPin typically doesn’t need to use your entire existing Webpack build process. We’ll use a more minimal and default build for UXPin. Create a uxpin.webpack.config.js file and paste the following code into it:

const path = require("path");
const webpack = require("webpack");
 
module.exports = {
    output: {
      path: path.resolve(__dirname, "build"),
      filename: "bundle.js",
      publicPath: "/"
    },
    resolve: {
      modules: [__dirname, "node_modules"],
      extensions: ["*", ".js", ".jsx"]
    },
    devtool: "source-map",
    module: {
      rules: [
        {
          test: /\.(s*)css$/,
          use: [
            {
              loader: 'style-loader'
            },
            {
              loader: 'css-loader',
              options: {
                importLoaders: 2
              }
            },
          ]
        },
        {
          loader: "babel-loader",
          test: /\.js?$/,
          exclude: /node_modules/,
          options: {
            presets: ['@babel/preset-env', '@babel/preset-react'],
          }
        },
      ]
    }
}

For components you want to use in UXPin Merge, you must specify their file directory in the uxpin.config.js file at the top of the directory of the repo. As you can see in the code snippet below, we’ve only added the ‘Form’ component src/components/Form.js  for now and will add the other components later in the tutorial. 

Create a uxpin.config.js and paste the following content into the file:

module.exports = {
  components: {
    categories: [
      {
        name: 'General',
        include: [
          'src/components/Form.js',
        ]
      }
    ],
    webpackConfig: 'uxpin.webpack.config.js',
  },
  name: 'Learn UXPin Merge - React Todo list tutorial'
};


Lastly, Babel-loader will be used by Webpack to create the app bundle. To install babel use the following commands: yarn add babel-loader –dev then yarn install .

CONGRATULATIONS👏 You’re all good to go and have the minimum configuration required to view the Form component.

Experimental Mode

Using the settings provided in `uxpin.webpack.config.js`, Experimental mode bundles your components and opens a browser window. You can lay out components in a similar fashion as the UXPin Editor. After Experimental Mode loads, drag and drop the Form component from the sidebar onto the project canvas:

We have the Form component but it lacks styling. For that, we’ll create a Global Wrapper Component.

Using a Global Wrapper Component to apply CSS styles

Just like your custom design system, this Todo app contains global styles. These are specified in the `src/index.css` file. All of our components need the styles specified in this file. We can load this file via a Global Wrapper Component. This component will wrap around every component we drag onto the UXPin canvas.

Create a wrapper file:

Copy and paste the following into `UXPinWrapper.js`:

import React from "react";
import '../index.css';

export default function UXPinWrapper({ children }) {
  return children;
}

The `import ‘../index.css’;` line ensures our CSS styles are loaded prior to rendering each component.

We need to tell UXPin to use this wrapper file. Add the following to uxpin.config.js:

wrapper: 'src/wrapper/UXPinWrapper.js',

Experimental mode should open a new browser window with a styled Form component:

Adding the FilterButton with a customizable name

Now we’ll work on adding the FilterButton to UXPin Merge. These buttons are displayed below the Form component:

Adding this component will be similar to the Form component. However, I’d also like to give designers the ability to specify the text that is displayed within the button. We’ll do that via the `prop-types` package.

Component propTypes are mapped to the UXPin properties panel when editing a component. The existing FilterButton component doesn’t use prop-types so let’s add this to `FilterButton.js`:

import React from "react";
+ import PropTypes from 'prop-types';

function FilterButton(props) {
  return (
@@ -15,4 +16,9 @@ function FilterButton(props) {
  );
}

+ FilterButton.propTypes = {
+   name: PropTypes.string
+ }

+FilterButton.defaultProps = {
+  name: 'Button Name'
+};

export default FilterButton;

Two of our three components are now working with UXPin Merge. We have one component remaining: the Todo component.

Adding the Todo component with a wrapper

We’re moving on to our final component: the Todo. These are displayed within the list of todo items in the UI:

When adding the FilterButton, we edited the FilterButton.js file to add propTypes. What if you want to isolate your Merge-specific changes and don’t want to modify the source code of your components? We can create a wrapper that is specific to the Todo component for this. It’s similar in concept to the Global wrapper component we used to apply CSS styles but will be specific to the Todo component.

Type the following:

mkdir -p src/components/merge/todo 

touch src/components/merge/todo/Todo.js

Copy and paste the following code into Todo.js. 

import React from 'react';
import PropTypes from 'prop-types';

// Import the original component
import TodoM from '../../Todo';

function Todo(props) {
  return <TodoM {...props}/>
}

Todo.propTypes = {
  /**
   * If `true`, the todo will be marked as completed.
   */
  completed: PropTypes.bool,

  /**
   * The name of the todo.
   */
   name: PropTypes.string,

  toggleTaskCompleted: PropTypes.func,
}

Todo.defaultProps = {
  name: 'Do Laundry'
};

export default Todo;

We’re importing the original Todo component as `TodoM` and returning this component in our newly defined `Todo` function. We specify propTypes just like we did with the FilterButton component on our newly defined `Todo` wrapper function.

Add ‘src/components/merge/todo/Todo.js’ to uxpin.config.js and restart using ./node_modules/@uxpin/merge-cli/bin/uxpin-merge –disable-tunneling. After Experimental launches a new window, click-and-drag the Todo component onto the canvas:

You’ll see the Todo component along with the default “Do Laundry” todo name. This default name is only applied when using Merge.

Pushing to UXPin

Until you push your design system to UXPin the components are only visible to you. To let your design team use these components we need to push the component bundle to UXPin. Creating and pushing a Merge design library requires two steps:

1. Create the library within the UXPin UI

1. Go to your UXPin account

2. Enter the UXPin Editor

3. Create a new library

4. Select the option import React components

5. Copy the Auth token (don’t share it with anyone and do not place it in any files checked into git repository. This token provides direct access to the library on your account.) The process looks like this:

2. Push the library via the uxpin-merge CLI

Using the token created from the previous stop, run the following from within the project repo:

./node_modules/@uxpin/merge-cli/bin/uxpin-merge push –token YOUR TOKEN 

Your design team can now access the Merge library.

Using the Merge library within UXPin

Now that the Merge design library has been pushed its time to test it out within the UXPin editor:

• Reload the UXPin Editor in your browser.
• Select the “Learn UXPin Merge” design system in the bottom left corner of the editor.
• Click and drag the components from the sidebar to the canvas.

You should have a solid looking prototype:

How does a designer hand off a prototype back to a developer?

Previewing and Exporting

Now that we’ve built a quick prototype in UXPin we’re ready to export it back to our app. We can preview the output and then use Spec mode to copy and paste the JSX code for our components.

Click the play button in the upper right corner of the editor. Once the preview loads click the “Spec” link at the top. You can now click on the components and view the JSX code to generate them in the right panel:

It’s great to push an initial version of our design system. However, you’ll likely need to push out quite a few updates over time.

Pushing an Update

The FilterButton has a “pressed” state to indicate the currently active filter. Looking at the live React app, here’s the difference between the pressed and not-pressed state:

Let’s add support for this state. Make the following change to `src/components/FilterButton.js`:

FilterButton.propTypes = {
-   name: PropTypes.string
+   name: PropTypes.string,
+   isPressed: PropTypes.bool
}

Commit the change to git and push to UXPin:

Merge components are automatically synced to the most recently pushed code. To show the latest, reload the tab showing the UXPin editor. Select a FilterButton. In the right panel of the editor you should see a new “isPressed” property.

Select it to activate this state:

Follow this same flow (git commit + uxpin-push) when you make future changes. Prototypes will automatically use the latest pushed version of components.

Speed up building your product by 8.6x

You’ve taken a React app and pushed its components to UXPin Merge. You’ve also learned how to push updates when you modify components or add new ones. Now your design team can use these components to create high-fidelity prototypes within the UXPin editor.

You can browse the source code for this project on GitHub. To learn more advanced Merge techniques see our Merge docs or reach out to us at hello@uxpin.com.

Don’t have UXPin Merge yet? First, remember to go through the process of requesting access to make the most of designing with code! Try UXPin Merge for free.

The post Design with Code – UXPin Merge Tutorial appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

A perfect website isn’t made in one smooth creation and launch effort. Seamless and fully functional sites are the result of careful prototyping. Prototypes allow early imperfections to be weeded out of websites and offer opportunities to maximize the effectiveness of your site.

A business’s website is, oftentimes, the first impression made on investors and customers. Understanding how to perfect your website through prototyping is crucial for early success, which is why this article covers website prototyping in depth.

Create a website prototype that you can actually test with users. Build an interactive prototype in UXPin and design a UI that brings the whole team together. Try UXPin for free.

Build advanced prototypes

Design better products with States, Variables, Auto Layout and more.

Try UXPin

What is a website prototype?

A website prototype is an early version of a site that serves as a starting point. The ability to prototype creates room for exploration, refinement, and perfection in an effective way. One of its best aspects is that it creates a space for development prior to publishing a website.

A prototype can start out in a low-fidelity format and contain a simple outline of the site’s form and function. This outline can evolve into a high-fidelity prototype with all of the details and interactive design intended for the final product.

The flexibility of website prototyping benefits all parties. Designers and developers have a space to perfect their products, while stakeholders can get a realistic idea of the interface early on. Even clients benefit from the flawless user interface that prototyping helps develop. 

Benefits of website prototypes

Let’s highlight the most notable impacts website prototyping offers, so you can visualize how your business will benefit.   

Visualization

Visually appealing platforms are best created through a visually informed process, like prototyping. A powerful system allows multiple iterations, as the early image of a site develops into something fully functional.

The ability to visualize each step of a site’s development in real time gives everyone involved a chance to be included and inspired. Designers and developers have the option to constantly tweak and interact with their work to find the perfect fit for a site. The ability to actively assess the direction of a project also benefits stakeholders who may not fully understand a team’s progress and goal without interactive visuals. 

Early feedback

Nothing is more time-consuming and fruitless than completing a project only to find that, at some point, things are headed in the wrong direction and need to be redone. Prototyping is an effective strategy for avoiding these late-development pitfalls.

When teams are able to interact with their design during all stages of construction, feedback is easily generated and implemented. With the ability to test and reorient the direction of a platform at any time, it is far less likely that the end product will miss its goals at completion. 

User experience testing

The final product is all about its users, so why not integrate user input as early into the design process as possible?

Prior to a product’s completion, the user interface and user design can be tested on real users with a prototype. This allows for a fully interactive experience, so users can test and provide feedback on all functions of a website. 

Risk reduction

Website design can be riddled with hidden pitfalls that only become blatantly apparent when the site is published. User interface issues like confusing navigation and inconsistent design styles can diminish your website’s impact. 

Interactive prototyping helps mitigate these risks by bringing issues with website form or function into plain view prior to publishing. What would have been a costly complication, is little more than a slight tweak with a prototype.

You can even reduce risks beyond functionality by using a prototype to ensure the product aligns with the visions of stakeholders. An alignment with company goals is much easier to assess when the site can be easily reviewed during its creation by anyone in the company.

Clear communication

A cohesive and smoothly functioning platform is the result of a well-connected team. While there are plenty of ways to foster general teamwork, communication on a singular product is best accomplished with a shared source of information.

A prototype is the perfect central point of information for a website design team to communicate through. Contributions from all members can be seen and interacted with in this format, allowing all members to be on the same page and discuss various points of improvement. 

Efficient iteration

Editing a fully published website is a very complex process that can be avoided with the right tools. The ability to repeatedly create new iterations of a project with ease helps build the best product you can.

An effective and efficient process for creating new iterations of a project encourages teams to make more edits prior to publishing and pursue more creative concepts. As a result, final sites are more likely to run smoothly and stand out from cookie-cutter competitors’ sites.

User-centered design

User research can only go so far. This form of user integration may work for concept creation, but as platforms are developed, more specific user input is needed. Prototypes offer an opportunity to explore user interactions in a way that is unique to your website.

By granting test users access to interact with and review a prototype of a site, teams gain a better understanding of what improvements can be made. Issues that may have otherwise been missed by a busy design team can be highlighted by users, and this information can inspire impactful improvements. 

Defining the scope

Defining and maintaining scope is an important part of any project, and websites are no exception. With multiple individuals involved in the creation of a website, a loose scope can result in projects taking up more time and resources for developments that are not necessary.

Prototypes act like an outline, allowing teams to define the scope of their work early on. Specifying what features are needed creates a foundation for focus, where any additions that fall outside of the project’s scope can be easily caught and redirected.  

Stakeholder approval

Stakeholders may not have an in-depth understanding of website design, making it difficult to describe a product and receive approval. Prototypes provide an accurate visual reference that makes projects easy for stakeholders to perceive and approve.

Cost savings

The later mistakes are caught, the larger and more costly they tend to be. Early resolution of design errors or flaws in a prototype can prevent mistakes from growing into a financial burden in the final version of a site.

Design exploration

Exploration tends to be most inviting and effective when it is easy and without risk. Prototypes provide designers with a risk-free space to indulge in creative whims and the best prototyping systems allow easy access to a variety of design tools.

This form of exploration opens up opportunities for new design styles that might help your website stand out and impress its audience. 

How to create a website prototype

If website prototyping sounds like it would benefit your business, that’s great! Here are a few important things to consider before getting started to maximize your prototype’s potential.

Run preliminary work

Well-executed ideas tend to have one thing in common, research. Understanding how, why, and for whom you plan to design a website should come before all else. Take time to identify your target audience with some preliminary user research studies. Understanding what users want and marrying those concepts with what your website is meant to do can set up a successful foundation.

While you can’t expect to have every answer at such an early phase, it is worth trying to answer every core question you can think of regarding your future website. For example:

• What is the purpose of your site?
• How would you categorize your website; as a blog, a sales platform, or something else?
• Who is your intended audience?
• How will your audience interact with your website?
• What features will your site need to succeed?
• How will your website be similar to others in its category?
• How will it be different?

The more preliminary work you do, the easier and more precise the following design steps will be. For more information on preliminary work, explore the product development guide.

Sketch out your first visuals

With all of your key elements and goals in mind, it’s time to create the precursor to your prototype. This original outline is often referred to as a wireframe and its goal is to outline your website’s key features.

This rough draft should detail things like the site’s information architecture, interactive elements, and basic design ideas. Details and precision are not the main goals during this phase, so wireframes can be generated with mockup tools or hand-drawn sketches. A little paper prototyping know-how can go a long way in this stage. 

Create a prototype with UXPin

Now it’s time for the main event; a prototype that is flexible, interactive, and capable of representing a completed product. Your wireframe initiates this process, by directing focus towards the key aspects of your design. Meanwhile, the prototype allows for the addition of new details.

The traditional prototyping process can be lengthy and complex, but advancements in technology have simplified prototyping. UXPin is one such tool, designed specifically to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of prototyping in website design.

UXPin prototypes are designed for simplified previewing so your team can check for imperfections and get feedback with ease. Previews can be tested in multiple browsers or even viewed on mobile devices to ensure they meet your standards in all formats. With UXPin Mirror, you can even see the difference your updates make in real time on mobile devices.

A library of advanced features ensures that your UXPin prototype will accurately encapsulate every detail you intend to have in a completed website. Create various states for interactive components, design a drop-down menu that supports smooth navigation, or organize with tab menus, navigational drawers, and many other options.

The opportunities for customization in the prototyping phase don’t stop here. Variables can be added to personalize user experiences and expressions can be used to compute a variety of values, like those in a virtual shopping cart. You can even generate conditional interactions to have your site respond differently based on users’ interactions. 

UXPin’s professionally designed prototyping tool allows you to create all of the complex functions necessary for a professional website, through a simplified system that does not require you to learn how to code.     

Validate your concept and refine your website prototype

Once you have generated a prototype that fits your goals, it’s time to test. An interactive and fully functioning prototype can be used to test how well users are able to navigate your website. Record how long it takes users to discover and use specific features, identify challenges, and observe how your design is received.

With a flexible prototype, revisions can be easily implemented based on user response and then those revisions can be retested to refine your website into its final form.

A Practical Example of a Website Prototype in UXPin

When designing for users, you need to know their end goals and actions along the way. The two are called content and user flows, respectively, and together they form the heart of any great website.

But how do we go from an information outline to interactive design? In this post, we’ll discuss how to turn a set of content into a prototype, rapidly.

Step 1: Assemble a content inventory

What are we designing? Many designers start from the outside and work their way in, crafting the containers and framework before examining the information that users spend more time with.

When you start designing from the inside out, you design with the user in mind. What they need to see immediately will gain prominence over what you want them to notice second. Navigation bars deserve less attention than the call to action, for example.

As importantly, a content-first approach is also naturally a mobile-first approach. Mobile devices have more limitations, screen size, and bandwidth to name a few, and so designing within these parameters force you to prioritize content ruthlessly.

A content inventory is an organized list, spreadsheet, or equivalent document containing all the elements relevant to the end-user. A good inventory acts as a hierarchy of information divided into sections.

Your completed content inventory lays out all the possibilities for your user flows.

Step 2: Plan the core flow with informed decisions

A complex project like a banking website will require many flows, such as:

• Changing a password
• Viewing investment options
• Reviewing 401k
• Ordering checks
• Opening a new account, or closing an old one
• Transferring funds to or from a different bank
• Paying the credit card balance

Each flow requires a user to weave through multiple content pages. For the sake of this tutorial, we’ll focus just on the credit card payment process, one of the most crucial flows. When you prototype, focus first on the riskiest or most fundamental user flows.

Let’s write it out this user flow:

• The user lands on the homepage.
• The user completes their login information and redirects to their dashboard.
• The user clicks into their credit card balance.
• The user chooses an account from which to pay the balance. Then submits the request and confirms their balance is paid off.

That sounds like a lot of steps, but there are only three decisions involved: deciding whether or not to pay, choosing an account from which to do so, and choosing to confirm the transaction. Each step must be clear and effortless in our prototype.

Step 3: Build the prototype

In this case, we’ll build a user flow that lets people pay off their credit card balance at a fictional bank.

Given real content, our goal is to build a mid-fi. Unlike lo-fi prototypes, which act like boxy wireframes, or hi-fis, which show branding in place, mid-fis demonstrate the flow of decisions users take to accomplish a task.

If you’re limited on iterations, mid-fi prototypes are the perfect choice since you don’t waste time on visual design but still provide enough detail for user testing.

In a mid-fi, functional prototype, you’ll want to show:

• Correct layout of UI elements (navigation, primary content, etc.)
• Basic colors
• Basic interactions (no advanced animations or states yet)
• Correct typography
• Images in the correct dimensions

Here’s how we’d make it work for our bank website.

Login page

Logging in is easy: a simple form on the bank’s home page lets users securely enter their account. But we don’t neglect this obligatory step because it’s the user’s first interaction with the bank and its brand. Everything from the color scheme to the microcopy must fit with the friendly-yet-professional tone.

Account overview

Upon entering their username and password, they see a dashboard that includes their account information. The purpose of this screen is to give the person an overview of their accounts. There are no ads, no upsells, and secondary information is pushed to one side. It’s all about their money.

To help them decide if it’s time to pay, we’ll include their credit card balance on this screen.

Payment process

According to the user flow, we know that the person’s next move is to choose to pay the card balance. That’s an easy click — and presents a second decision. At this point, he or she must choose the account to withdraw money from.

Decisions take time and cognitive power, so we should make choosing an account dead simple. Each account is listed with as little information as necessary (the account name and balance).

Next, the person reaches their third decision: whether or not to commit the transaction. At this point, all they need to know is what the transaction’s about. That means we can eliminate the previous decision’s options.

A new screen, or even a simple modal window, will present the information they need to make that decision. Specifically, the account name, the amount to pay, and the approve and disapprove buttons.

Success! Clicking the right button confirms that the balance is now cleared.

Getting close to reality makes it work

Notice that each screen in this design uses both realistic colors, typography, and layout — in addition to real microcopy. It’s not fully polished, but enough to start testing.

At this point, we just need to add some basic interactions so people can click through the screens. Once that’s finished, it’s time to collect feedback, iterate as needed, and then test with our users.

To complete your prototype, just repeat all the above steps with each user flow.

Build your own prototype in UXPin

People visit an interactive website to accomplish a task, not use a widget or admire its graphics. That makes the flow along with real content as important as developing a prototype’s UI.

Content-centric design helps find their way along that path. If you’d like to try what you learned in this guide, go ahead and start your free trial in UXPin.

The post Website Prototyping: The Hands-on Guide appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

We asked UXTweak to write for you about prototype testing. The following article is a guest post by Daria Krasovskaya, their Head of Content and Designer. Enjoy!

If you have just finished your design prototype and you are looking for ways to validate your design look no further. In this article, we have collated everything you need to know about prototype testing including best practices to take on board when implementing it.

Prototype testing is an excellent way to test a design and to ensure that it meets the needs of the user while serving the goals of the business. Prototype testing is a quintessential user research methodology that can massively help UX teams make data-informed decisions and create user-centered products.

What is a prototype?

A prototype is a tangible representation of a product that is constructed to validate design concepts and processes, enabling refinement before the product goes to full-scale production. Based on the unique needs of the product and the stage of the product lifecycle different types of prototypes can be deployed:

• High-Fidelity Prototypes: These are detailed models that can imitate the final product. This type of prototype is used later down in the product development process to refine the usability of the product.
• Low-Fidelity Prototypes: These are simple models that are used early on in the product lifecycle to test and validate the design concepts that the product will be built upon.
• Wireframe or Paper Prototypes: These are very basic representations outlining the structure and layout of the product and can take the form of either wireframes or hand-drawn paper prototypes

What is prototype testing?

Prototype testing is a UX methodology that involves the evaluation of a prototype to validate a design or identify areas for improvements before the product advances to full-scale production.

Prototype testing occurs in a critical phase and can help UX professionals ensure that the product aligns with the needs as well as expectations of its users. Depending on the type of prototype, the test can assess general user experience, functionality, usability as well as the overall aesthetics of the product in question.

Why Is It Important to Test a Product Prototype?

Engaging in prototype testing can have a host of advantages for the development of a product as it is an unmissable opportunity to see the product through the eyes of its intended users. This adds a unique value to the whole design process and the development of the end product. 

Here are the main benefits of conducting prototype testing:

Iterative Improvement

Prototype testing is the epitome of the continuous improvement mindset in UX design. Prototype testing allows UX professionals to identify potential areas for improvement when it comes to the usability, functionality, and aesthetics of a product aiding in this way in the incremental rectification of any flaws. UX is an iterative process and so is prototype testing!

Cost and Time Savings

Creating prototypes and testing those early on in the UX process is an excellent way to save money, time, and resources. Prototype testing allows for cost-effective and time-efficient tweaks in the product before this goes into production, saving product professionals from expensive redesigns and reworks.

Stakeholder Communication

As mentioned earlier prototypes are tangible representations of a product. Hence, those can act as great tools to ensure that teams are on the same page when it comes to the development of the product.

On top of that, prototype testing offers an unmissable opportunity to gather feedback from internal stakeholders as well as ensure that the product still serves the strategic goals of the business while meeting user needs.

Risk Mitigation

Another critical benefit of prototype testing is that it serves as a risk mitigation mechanism. With prototype testing, UX professionals can identify and address risks and challenges early in the development process boosting in this way the chances of the product being adopted by its intended users.

When it comes to prototype testing, mobile prototype testing should not be neglected. According to Unswitch, the global mobile phone market statistics show that as of 2023 there are 4.6 billion smartphone users worldwide.

When Should You Test A Prototype?

Prototype testing is an iterative, dynamic process and should not be perceived as a one-off task to be ticked off a list. Thus, the testing of prototypes can and should happen through product development. In those earlier stages, prototype testing can be a great method to validate a concept.

Once the idea has been validated, prototype testing can help you test basic functionalities and ensure that the product is not against the main mental models of its intended users.

At later stages, just before or after the launch, testing of prototypes can help assess overall user experience and continuously pinpoint areas for improvement to meet the constantly changing user needs.

Kinds of Products for Prototype Testing

Prototype testing is a versatile tool, hence why it can be applied to a host of products, spanning software applications and platforms. Any digital product entailing some sort of user interface can be tested using a prototype. However, it is worth noting that physical products such as household appliances or even medical devices can also benefit from prototype user testing.

Types of Prototype Tests

There are an array of prototype tests out there each serving distinct purposes when it comes to evaluating a product. Quantitative and qualitative testing are the two most well-known categories. Additionally, prototype testing can be characterized either as moderated or unmoderated depending on the presence of a facilitator.

To better learn and digest the unique nature of those categories we have created two handy tables outlining their main characteristics and differences:

Qualitative vs Qualitative Testing

Moderated vs Unmoderated Testing

How to Conduct Prototype Testing?

If you are just starting your prototype testing journey, this step-by-step guide can help you conduct effective software prototype testing and make data-informed decisions toward more user-centric products.

1. Plan Your Prototype Test

Start by setting clear objectives for your test. For example, you might want to focus on usability or maybe user satisfaction. Once your goals are all set it is time to choose the type of prototype testing that best suits the needs of the project. Begin by creating testing scenarios that align with the goals of your study. Use your user personas to define your audience and recruit your test participants.

2. Choose a Prototype Testing Tool

Selecting the right prototype testing tool can make or break your prototype testing efforts. Choose the appropriate tool based on the unique requirements of your testing but also on the ease of integration with your prototyping tool.

3. Run the Test

Run the prototype sessions and try to capture both qualitative and quantitative data. Do not forget to take thorough notes and create reports so that you don’t miss a beat!

4. Analyze Results

Next up is analyzing the results. Identify patterns and take into consideration both your qualitative and quantitative data before drawing any conclusions. Prioritizing the issues that you identify based on their severity or impact.

5. Iterate & Repeat

Now it is time to translate the findings into actionable recommendations for the design team. Implement the changes on the prototype and make sure to add additional rounds of testing to validate the positive effect of the improvements made. Continue to refine and test until you are happy with the final product.

Best Prototype Testing Tools

Here is our top pick when it comes to the prototype testing tools that are currently in the market:

1. UXtweak

Featuring a seamless integration with the major prototyping tools like UXtweak allows for effortless prototype testing. Its easy-to-use interface makes UXtweak accessible to professionals of all levels while its dedicated support team offers specialist guidance throughout. Last but not least, UXtweak’s platform boasts a user panel for recruitment that can massively streamline your prototype testing studies.

2. Lookback

Lookback is another robust tool that enables prototype testing. It boasts a live remote testing tool that allows UX researchers and designers to interact with participants in real-time while its collaboration features foster collaboration among team members.

3. Userlytics

Userlytics is a comprehensive UX analytics tool that features a remote prototype testing tool. It also boasts a nicely done multimedia feedback tool that allows the participants of the prototype testing to give feedback in different forms such as written notes and audio as well as video.

4. Optimizely

Optimizely is another great experimentation platform that allows for prototype testing. Boasting tools like A/B testing and remote session recording, this platform offers data-driven insights and personalization features that can up your prototype testing game.

Tip: You can also test the prototype inside of UXPin with our FullStory integration. Nevertheless, we encourage you to give our friends at UXtweak a shot. Try UXtweak for free. 

How to Recruit for Prototype Testing

Recruiting participants for prototype testing is a quintessential step in every prototype testing study. The validity of the insights is highly dependent on recruiting quality, and diversified participants who are representative of the target demographic. To achieve this make sure to define the specific characteristics of the targeted population and consult your user personas before you engage in participant recruitment. 

Another great tip is to use specific screening questions to ensure that the participants are representative of the demographics you are targeting. Once this is done, do not pigeonhole yourself into recruiting participants solely from one channel.

Instead, use an array of recruitment channels such as social media or relevant online communities to attract diversified participants that will offer richer insights into your study. 

Always remember that thoughtful participant recruitment can yield quality and actionable results contributing to a more user-centric product.

Best Practices for Prototype Testing

If you are looking to start your prototype testing journey, here are a few golden rules to keep in mind:

Combine Quantitative and Qualitative Data

Integrating both qualitative and quantitative methodologies into your prototype testing studies can go a long way. While numerical stats can help you quantify user behavior, qualitative insights can reveal the ‘why’ behind user behavior. This allows for a more rounded understanding of the intrinsic motivations and needs of the user and results in a more user-centric design process.

Include Realistic Scenarios

When conducting prototype testing it is easy to get carried away and jump pack the sessions with multiple scenarios and edge cases. Stay on track by crafting realistic tasks for the participants. Using real-world tasks will help participants to engage with the prototype in a more realistic way making the insights more actionable.

Diversify Test Participants

This is one to treasure! As mentioned earlier, participant recruitment is the alpha and the omega of every prototype testing study. Always aim for diversity in your test participants as this will provide broader insights into needs and expectations and will give you a more comprehensive understanding of your target users.

Ensure Consistency Across Tests

Last but not least, always ensure consistency across the different prototype testing sessions.

Consistency ensures that the insights gained from your prototype testing sessions are reliable and most importantly comparable.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Testing Prototypes

Here are some common pitfalls to avoid when testing prototypes:

Neglecting Accessibility Considerations

Tempting as it might be, do not fail to take into consideration accessibility in your prototype testing sessions. Failing to do so can result in designs that are not inclusive and that overlook basic user needs.

Ignoring Mobile Testing

Mobile users are on the rise so do not ignore mobile prototype testing. Always test the mobile experience and never assume that the desktop performance can be a good indicator of the user experience on mobile devices.

Failure to Document Insights

Yes, you’ve read this right! Failing to document insights is one of the major pitfalls when it comes to prototype testing. Do not neglect to thoroughly document and take quality notes from each prototype testing session to avoid losing valuable insights or jumping to conclusions.

The gist of it

Prototype testing plays a crucial role in aligning the design with both the needs of the users and those of the business. This is one of the top user research methodologies that are worth integrating into your UX design process as it can hugely help UX teams build more user-centric products. To get the full out of your prototype testing, adopt an iterative approach towards prototype testing and never treat it as a one-off task to be crossed off your list.

Build interactive prototypes with UXPin, an all-in-one design tool that covers the entire design process, from ideation to design handoff. Try UXPin for free.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Prototype Testing appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Prototyping tool is a product that helps designers create a replica of the final product, used for user testing, presenting to stakeholders, and handing off to developers. Most design tools offer a prototyping as an additional feature, but you will get to an advanced prototyping with dedicated tools.

UXPin is one of the companies leading the code-based design revolution. Sign up for a 14-day free trial to explore UXPin’s advanced prototyping features for your next digital product or web design project.

Build advanced prototypes

Design better products with States, Variables, Auto Layout and more.

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UXPin

UXPin is a code-based prototyping tool which means that your design can be fully interactive. Unlike many leading design solutions, UXPin doesn’t need plugins – everything you need for prototyping and testing is built-in!

UXPin gives you the option to download the software on your desktop (Mac & Windows) or use it in the browser. The benefit of downloading UXPin is that you can continue working even when you’re offline.

You can test prototypes in the browser or use UXPin’s Mirror app to run prototypes on mobile devices (including iOS and Android). UXPin’s documentation is excellent, covering every aspect of the tool with step-by-step instructions and video tutorials.

UXPin also has another advantage over the rest of prototyping tools – UXPin Merge for building fully-functioning prototypes with React components.

With Merge, you have the option to sync React components via Git repo, npm or use the Storybook integration for Vue, Angular, Web Components, Ember, and more. It helps design a layout and launch a product 10x faster.

Figma

Figma is one of the most widely used design tools. They have a big, engaged community with lots of YouTube content and detailed documentation.

Figma has built-in prototyping functionality with a mobile app to test prototypes on multiple devices. You can work in the browser or download Figma to work offline on your desktop.

While Figma is excellent for early stage concepts, advanced prototyping is still not perfect, and it’s unlikely that designer can create a prototype that’s ready for user testing.

In 2023 Figma added a lot of features that simplify interactive prototyping, yet Figma’s inputs are still limited, and UX researchers can’t test any actions that require users to enter information. The tool makes it difficult to create dynamic user flows that adapt to user interaction.

Add interactions to your prototypes made in Figma. Use a plugin for importing Figma designs to UXPin for interactive prototyping. Check out the tutorial: Quick Tutorial: Make Figma prototypes interactive in UXPin.

Adobe XD

Adobe XD is another popular user experience design tool. However, it got discontinued in 2023.

One interesting Adobe UX prototyping feature was Auto-Animate which saved time for specific interactions. With Auto-Animate, you could create the first and last frame of an animation sequence and Adobe XD filled in the rest. The feature didn’t work for all animations, but it saved a significant amount of time when creating something like a parallax effect.

Invision

Invision was a strong prototyping component for many years, yet it decided to shut down. It was an amazing prototyping tool, yet compared to other tools on the market, it wasn’t not strong enough for creating interactive UI designs in 2024.

Invision had a great Design System Management feature, which is handy for managing your design system and providing developers with CSS and starter code at handoffs. DSM integrated with Storybook so that designers and developers could create one sharable design systems that would fit into both worlds. Unfortunately, teams using Invision couldn’t use Storybook components to build prototypes like you can with UXPin Merge.

If you’re looking for an InVision’s alternative in 2024, talk to us and see what you can create with UXPin Merge.

Framer

Framer is one of the top prototyping tools in 2024 for creating web layouts. It has an AI feature for rapid prototyping. Users type in what kind of a website they want and Framer gives them a design to customize. It embraced AI very quickly.

Other notable features include Layout and Insert Menu, which allow you to design and iterate concepts fast. Although impressive, UXPin offers similar features with Auto-Layout and built-in design libraries.

Framer’s Smart Components feature offers similar functionality to UXPin’s States, but not as comprehensive. Using Variants and Variables, you can give elements a hover or pressed state, like toggling a switch or activating a checkbox.

While Smart Components is a step up from other vector-based design tools, it still doesn’t give you as much fidelity as you get from UXPin’s States, Interactions, Expressions, and Variables features.

More Design Tool Comparisons

Check out more popular prototyping tools and how they stack up against UXPin:

• Marvel App
• Justinmind
• Proto.io
• Axure
• Zeplin
• Balsamiq

Would you like to try UXPin?

If you’re looking for a design tool, there are plenty (including the five listed above) that designers can use to create beautiful low-fidelity wireframes and mockups.

But designing a user experience requires testing, which means you need high-fidelity prototypes, not mockups! UX designers design products for coded products but conduct user testing on image-based prototypes. It’s impossible to get accurate and meaningful results. Invariably there will be usability issues that make their way into the final product.

With code-based tools like UXPin, designers can build functioning high-fidelity prototypes. Usability participants don’t have to “imagine” that a button or input works; they can use it as they would with a final coded product.

Join the user experience design revolution. Sign up for a 14-day free trial and discover better prototyping and testing with UXPin.

The post Top 5 Prototyping Tools for 2024 appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

One of the questions organizations ask themselves at the start of a new project is, “do we adopt a component library or start from scratch?” There are pros and cons to weigh, and it depends on the project’s scope and priorities. 

One of the most popular component libraries is MUI – a comprehensive React UI library modelled at first on Google’s Material Design UI. 

We’re going to take a look at MUI, why you’d want to use it, what makes it different from other component libraries, and how you can get started designing your next project.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to design in code? UXPin Merge is a revolutionary technology that allows teams to create fully functioning layouts without design skills. Find out more about Merge.

Design UI with code-backed components.

Use the same components in design as in development. Keep UI consistency at scale.

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What is MUI?

MUI is a massive library of UI components designers and developers can use to build React applications. The open-source project follows Google’s guidelines for creating components, giving you a customizable library of foundational and advanced UI elements.

MUI also sells a collection of React templates and tools, giving you ready-made user interfaces to tweak for your project. 

Why Would You Use a Component Library Like MUI?

Designers often use UI kits to build new products or feature add-ons for existing projects. These libraries allow designers to drag and drop the components they need to design interfaces quickly. 

Let’s explore 7 reasons why you would want to use the MUI component library.

1. Faster Time-to-Market

In today’s highly competitive tech landscape, time-to-market is a metric that organizations always seek to optimize. A component library gives designers and developers a massive headstart with thoroughly tested UI elements ready to go.

Designers can drag and drop elements to build user interfaces and customize components to meet product and branding requirements. Design teams can spend more time designing great customer experiences rather than getting bogged down building and testing UI components from scratch–a process that increases time-to-market significantly!

Usability testing is much faster because designers can prototype, test, and iterate quickly. If a user interface isn’t working during testing, they can make changes on the fly, drawing from a massive library, to get instant feedback from participants and stakeholders.

When it comes to the design handoff, engineers can install the component library and copy/paste changes from prototypes and style guides to develop the product without starting from scratch.

2. A Single Source of Truth

One of the biggest design system governance challenges is maintaining a single source of truth. It’s not uncommon for product teams, UX designers, and developers to have out-of-sync design systems–resulting in errors, rework, and massive headaches and challenges for DesignOps.

Using MUI’s component library can significantly reduce these challenges while creating a single source of truth between design and development. Designers and engineers will still have separate design systems (image-based for designers and code for engineers), but MUI gives them the same starting blocks.

When using Merge with UXPin’s code-based editor, designers and engineers use the same design system components synced via a single repository. Any updates to the repo sync back to UXPin, notifying designers of the changes. You can connect Merge using Git for React component libraries or Storybook for other popular technologies.

3. Design Consistency

Consistency is vital for user experience, building trust, and brand loyalty. Using the same UI components allows designers to increase consistency while minimizing errors and rework.

4. Scalability

Scalability is another vital product design factor. If you’re building a design system from scratch, designers must design, prototype, and test new components before scaling the product.

With MUI’s comprehensive UI library, designers can search for the components they need to prototype and scale right away. Engineers can copy/paste the identical React components from MUI and customize them to the designer’s specifications.

MUI X includes a library of advanced React components teams can use to scale complex products even faster, including data grids, date pickers, charts, pagination, filtering, and more.

5. Easy Maintenance

A component library like MUI comes with detailed documentation for installing, using, updating, and customizing components. Designers and engineers can use this framework to maintain the organization’s design system, making it easier to establish governance systems and protocols.

MUI also provides how-to guides for migrating from one version to the next. So, organizations can take advantage of the latest UI styles, technologies, and trends whenever MUI releases an update.

6. Accessibility

Those experienced with setting up a design system will know the time and money it takes to ensure every component passes accessibility standards. MUI’s designers have taken great care in designing components to meet WCAD 2.0 accessibility guidelines – reducing the work for researchers and designers.

It’s important to note that even when you design interfaces using accessible components, you must still test navigation and user flows to ensure the product as a whole meets accessibility standards.

7. Skills Empowerment

MUI’s open-source component UI library empowers startups and young entrepreneurs to build new products–especially in developing nations where they don’t have the same access to education, mentoring, and skills transfer.

The library is also incredibly beneficial for charities, non-profits, NGOs, and similar organizations who want to develop products and tools but don’t have the budget to invest in a design system. 

Anyone can leverage the skills of MUI’s talented designers and developers using the same component library used by Fortune 500 companies to develop sophisticated digital products and compete in a global market.

What Makes MUI Stand Apart From Other Component Libraries?

Google’s Material Design UI is arguably one of the best and most comprehensive design libraries in the world. By building on top of Material Design, MUI delivers a React component library to match.

The ability to easily customize MUI using its Theming feature and the libraries’ excellent documentation make it accessible to build products for multinational corporations or a single developer with a product idea.

Because MUI is so widely used, there is a massive global community of designers, researchers, and developers to reach out to for guidance and support. Added to the fact that React is one of the most popular front-end frameworks, makes MUI an attractive component library.

MUI – Interesting Facts and Figures

Here are some interesting MUI facts and figures:

Note: MUI’s stats continue to climb. These facts were accurate as of Jan 2022.

• MUI started in 2014 as Material UI but decided to change its name to differentiate itself from Google. Many people assumed Material UI was a Google product.
• MUI has over 2,200 open-source contributors.
• There are over 2,3 million NPM downloads of MUI per week.
• Over 73,700 stars on GitHub.
• Of the 1,488 respondents to MUI’s 2020 survey, 35% of developers worked in an organization with less than five people.
• In the survey, 27% of developers use MUI for enterprise applications, while 20% use the library for admin dashboards.

UXPin’s MUI 5 Kit

Using UXPin Merge’s MUI integration, you can leverage the power of prototyping with UI React components.

MUI helps you create designs with fully functioning code components. With a single source of truth, designers, developers, product teams, and others can collaborate more effectively with fewer errors and friction.

Higher fidelity means better usability testing with meaningful feedback from participants and stakeholders. The result? A better overall user experience and increased business value.

Find out more about UXPin’s MUI kit and how you can sign up to request access to this revolutionary code-based design technology: MUI library in UXPin: Design Faster.

Syncing a Component Library With UXPin Merge

With UXPin Merge, you can build fully functioning high-fidelity prototypes with an open-source component library. With complex UI components like menus, forms, tabs, data tables, date pickers, accordions, and more, you can build beautiful and functional layouts in minutes. Check out Merge.

The post What Is MUI and What Do You Need to Know About It? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Are you creating a React app or website? If you are, you can use real React components in prototyping. How to that? You will find an answer in this article.

Key tools:

• UXPin Merge
• Framer
• Storybook
• React-Proto

Build React prototypes with your dev’s components coming from Git, Storybook, or npm. Try UXPin Merge and assemble stunning, production-ready layouts 10x faster. Discover UXPin Merge.

Design UI with code-backed components.

Use the same components in design as in development. Keep UI consistency at scale.

Try UXPin Merge

UXPin Merge

UXPin’s Merge technology allows you to import code components from a repository into the design process. You can import your product’s design system or an open-source library to build high-fidelity, fully functioning React prototypes.

With Merge, you can prototype cross-platform applications from wearables to native apps, web applications, and even TVs. You can test prototypes in the browser or via UXPin Mirror for iOS and Android applications.

There are three ways to import code components into UXPin using Merge:

• The Git Integration enables you to import React components directly from a Git repository giving you full access to Merge’s features.
• Merge’s Storybook Integration allows you to connect any Storybook, providing access to more front-end technologies, including React, Vue, Angular, and more.
• The npm Integration uses the Merge Component Manager to import individual UI elements from open-source design systems on the npm registry.

Key features

• Version Control (Git Integration only): any changes to the design system’s repository automatically sync to UXPin and notify designers of the latest release.
• Patterns (Git Integration only): grow your library by creating new patterns using design system components or incorporating elements from other design systems.
• Drag-and-drop workflow: drag components from UXPin’s Design Libraries onto the canvas to create user interfaces. Adjust pre-defined properties via the Properties Panel to change styling, interactions, etc.
• Collaborative: product teams can collaborate with stakeholders via UXPin’s Comments–even if they don’t have a paid UXPin account.
• Spec Mode & Documentation: design handoffs are smoother with Merge because developers already have access to the same repository. They can use Spec Mode to inspect properties, measure distances, copy production-ready component CSS and JSX (Git Integration only), and view the product’s Style Guide and Documentation.

Pricing

Starts from $119 per month when paid annually.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Single source of truth: With UXPin Merge, you can import and use the same React components in the design process as devs use for the final product, effectively bridging the gap between designers and developers.
• Real data: designers can incorporate actual product data using JSON, Google Sheets, or CSV. They can also capture user inputs using Variables and use that data to populate a profile account or provide a dynamic, personalized user experience.
• Interactive prototyping: using React components for prototypes means designers can create interactive replicas indistinguishable from the final product.

Cons:

• Limited to Javascript: UXPin Merge only works with Javascript libraries and frameworks. 
• Technical setup: product teams will need technical assistance to make their component library’s repository compatible with Merge; however, UXPin has a boilerplate and offers technical support to make this easier. Designers can use the built-in libraries, including MUI, Material UI, Ant Design, and Fluent UI, which don’t need any configuration.

Storybook

StorybookJS is a UI development environment allowing devs to build components in isolation. Developers, designers, and other stakeholders can visualize different states of every UI element, creating a component-driven development environment. It supports various frameworks, including React.

While Storybook is excellent for internal prototyping and component-driven development, it lacks tools and features for user testing. A great workaround is using Merge’s Storybook Integration to import your organization’s Storybook projects for prototyping in UXPin.

Storybook and UXPin Merge combined effectively bridge the gap between designers and developers while creating a single source of truth across the organization.

Key features

• Component Stories: Write Stories to display different states of your components.
• Addon ecosystem: Extend Storybook’s capabilities with a robust ecosystem of plugins.
• Component-driven development: Develop one UI element at a time, viewing all its properties, interactions, and variants.
• Documentation: Auto-generate documentation based on your stories and components.
• Automated testing: Run multiple tests before release to ensure components meet code syntax, design principles, accessibility, and other custom requirements.

Pricing

StorybookJS is open-source and free to use. However, some addons or integrations might have associated costs.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Framework agnostic: While prominent in the React community, it supports various Javascript frameworks.
• Rich ecosystem: A wide variety of addons and integrations allow you to tailor Storybook to your needs.
• Collaborative: Designers, developers, and stakeholders can collaborate, ensuring consistent UI/UX.

Cons:

• Technical expertise: Storybook is a developer tool, meaning you must have programming and Javascript skills to use it.
• Configuration: Depending on your project’s complexity, it may take time to set everything up correctly.
• Learning curve: Requires understanding of component structure and the framework you’re working with.

Framer

Framer is a no-code design tool for React websites and web apps. The platform’s latest AI feature lets you create responsive starter templates with a few keywords.

Key features

• Code-backed design: Design with React components, streamlining the transition from prototype to development.
• Figma plugin: convert Figma designs to HTML for use in Framer–you must still convert this HTML to React.
• Code-like animations: add Javascript-like animations and effects without writing any code.
• Production-ready code: developers can export code from Framer to build React websites and web applications.

Pricing

Starts from $5 per month per site (project) when paid annually.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Interactive design: Design with code components for realistic interactions.
• No-code development: Create production-ready websites without writing any code.
• Starter templates: Framer offers a vast library of website and landing page templates to get you started–some of these are third-party paid templates averaging $29-$99.

Cons: 

• Cost: Framer is cost-effective for small projects, but its per-site pricing model gets expensive when running multiple sites. If you purchase starter templates, your costs increase.
• Web-only: Framer is a no-code website design tool, limiting prototyping scope–i.e., unable to design cross-platform applications.
• Can’t import components: Unlike UXPin Merge, you can’t import design systems or UI libraries.

React-Proto

React-proto is a prototyping tool designed specifically for React developers. It provides a visual interface for creating React components and their relationships. Developers can drag and drop UI elements to establish parent-child relationships between components, designating state location and prop relationships without writing any code.

Key features

• Component tree visualization: Visualize your entire application’s structure and components’ relationships.
• Interactivity: Interact with your prototype and see changes reflected in the visual tree.
• State management: Designate locations for your state and understand the flow of data.
• Code Export: Translate your visual design into functional React code to begin front-end development.

Pricing

React-proto is open-source and free to use.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Faster prototyping: React-proto’s drag-and-drop interface lets developers edit components and prototypes faster than writing code.
• Cost-Effective: Being open-source, it’s a cost-friendly option for all developers and designers.
• Code Generation: Translating design to code is straightforward, reducing the barrier between design and development.

Cons:

• Requires technical skills: React-proto is not a designer-friendly tool. It requires technical skills, including in-depth React experience, to operate effectively.
• Limited features: React-proto offers few features as an open-source tool and is unsuitable for user testing.
• No support: React-proto does not offer support or onboarding outside of its Github community.

Prototype React Websites and Applications in UXPin Merge

While there are several great React prototyping tools, UXPin is the only platform offering a designer-friendly, familiar work environment. UXPin looks and feels like any other design tool but increases prototyping scope by enabling designers to prototype using code components, including React, Vue, Angular, and more.

Build production-ready layout with React components from Git repo, Storybook, or imported npm package. Assemble UI and increase your productivity. Discover UXPin Merge.

The post Best Prototyping Tools that Use React appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

A functional prototype is a working model of a product that demonstrates its core functionalities. Through UXPin’s Merge technology, designers can seamlessly convey their designs to developers. 

Key Takeaways:

• A functional prototype is a practical representation of a product, showcasing its main functions.
• UXPin’s Merge technology integrates interactive React components into design editors, allowing designers to communicate seamlessly with developers, test prototypes, and transition designs to development.
• Functional prototypes offer insights into user behavior, validate designs, and drive improvements.
• Crafting a functional prototype involves designing with interactions, conducting tests, and embracing a learning process.
• By leveraging Merge technology, designers bridge the gap between prototype creation and development through shared, interactive React components.

Merge technology integrates React components into a design editor, allowing designers to create prototypes. These interactive React components are utilized by developers in the final product. After designers construct and test prototypes with users, the design is prepared for development. Discover how UXPin Merge works.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

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What is a functional prototype?

A functional prototype is a dynamic representation of how a product design works. It lets you interact with the product to understand its features and flaws, helping you refine your design for a better user experience.

While traditional prototypes might simulate the appearance or layout of a product, they often fall short in depicting its actual behavior. Functional prototypes, on the other hand, introduce the invaluable element of interactivity. Every click, swipe, or scroll is more than a predefined animation—it’s a glimpse into the user’s journey, offering insights into the product’s usability and efficiency.

Functional vs non-functional prototype?

Functional and non-functional prototypes primarily differ in the depth of interactivity they offer. Functional prototypes go beyond appearances, letting you experience a product’s behavior, while non-functional prototypes offer a visual preview without being able to interact with the prototype.

Functional Prototype:

A functional prototype thrives on its ability to mimic the actual functionality of a product design. It’s not just about appearances—it’s about actions, interactions, and user experiences. When you interact with a functional prototype, you’re navigating through a scenario that closely mirrors what a user will do in the product. The features work, the buttons click, and the user flow replicates the real product.

Functional Prototype Example:

Imagine you’re designing a mobile app for a fitness tracker. A functional prototype would allow users to navigate through the interface, tap on buttons to simulate exercise tracking, and even experience the app’s real-time feedback as if they were logging an actual workout. This prototype showcases not only the design but also the real-world usability of the app.

Non-Functional Prototype:

A non-functional prototype predominantly emphasizes the visual aspect of a product. It may look like the final product, sporting its design system components and layout, but it’s devoid of the dynamic interplay that defines user interactions. A non-functional prototype is like a static snapshot—a mere preview of how the product might appear, rather than how it truly functions.

Non-Functional Prototype Example:

Continuing with the fitness tracker app, a non-functional prototype would capture the visual essence of the app—the layout of screens, the arrangement of buttons, and the overall aesthetic. However, it would lack the ability to simulate interactions. Users wouldn’t be able to tap on buttons or simulate workout tracking; they would merely be able view the app’s static visual representation.

What are the benefits of functional prototyping?

Performing functional prototyping offers several advantages:

• Understand how users will interact with your product, avoiding UX design mistakes.
• Validate user experience design concepts through user testing and feedback.
• Refine UX designs iteratively, improving user experience and functionality.
• Enhance collaboration by presenting interactive prototypes to stakeholders.
• Efficiently iterate and innovate, saving time and resources in the design process.

How do you create a functional prototype?

For this process, we will create a functional prototype of a signup form to check if the email and password inputs are filled out and validate the email format as well as the password length for a truly real user experience. This is how your hypothetical functional prototype of a signup form will look like:

1. Set up your canvas

After selecting the blank document from the dashboard, the artboard will open up, and there you can create your signup form.

Identify the screen size of the platform on which your sign-up form will work on:

• Scroll to Canvas size
• Select your canvas size

2. Begin by designing your layout with UXPin Libraries

Once the blank document is open, you’ll see the canvas:

1. Go to Design System Libraries
2. Select UXPin Libraries

1. Select a library to add components to your canvas. You can create your own library of components to easily drag and drop elements into your canvas, in this scenario, let’s use the iOS library.

Design the layout of your sign-up form by adding elements like email and password inputs, along with labels and buttons.

3. Make the email and password input an interactive element

1. Select the email input field
2. Go to Interactions

1. Go to Trigger
2. Set the trigger to Focus

1. Scroll to Action and select Set State
2. Go to Element and select Email input

Next, we will set the state and add the interaction:

1. Go to Set State and select Base
2. Click on ‘Add’ 

Repeat this prototyping process for the password input field.

3. Add a validation logic

Set up logic to check if the email and password fields are filled out. Display error messages if not. Add a new interaction:

1. Select the email input
2. Go to Interactions
3. Go to New Interaction

Next, set up the condition to detect if the email input field is empty:

1. Change the trigger to Focus Lost
2. Go to Conditions and select Content of element in the first field
3. Select Email input (it should be auto selected)
4. Select the condition is empty
5. Click on Add condition to finish

Next, we will confirm the new interaction:

1. Under Action, select Set state
2. Change the Element to ‘Email input’
3. Set state to ‘Empty’
4. Go to Add 

Repeat this prototyping process for the password input field.

4. Set up an Email Format Validation

Next, we will add a condition to ensure the email input follows a valid email format. Follow the steps above to create a new interaction on the email input field.

1. Set the trigger to Focus Lost
2. Select Content of element as ‘email input’
3. Set the condition to matches regex
4. Select Email
5. Click on Add condition

Next, we will confirm the new interaction:

1. Under Action, select Set state
2. Change the Element to ‘Email input’
3. Set state to ‘Incorrect’
4. Go to Add 

5. Set up a Password Length Validation

Add logic to verify the length of the password input meets the required criteria.

Follow the steps above to create a new interaction on the password input field.

1. Set the Trigger to Focus Lost
2. Select Content of element as ‘password input’
3. Set the condition to doesn’t match regex
4. Select Custom and enter criteria for the password input
5. Click on Add condition

Next, we will confirm the new interaction:

1. Under Action, select Set state
2. Change the Element to ‘Password input’
3. Set state to ‘Incorrect’
4. Go to Add 

7. Test the Prototype

Interact with the prototype to experience the flow and test the validations. Ensure it provides an accurate representation of the final product’s behavior.

By following these steps, you’ll create a functional prototype of a sign-up form that showcases the validation of email and password inputs using UXPin.

Design Functional Prototypes with UXPin Merge

Functional prototypes are a vital link between design and development, as demonstrated by our exploration of UXPin’s Merge technology. Merge seamlessly combines design and development by integrating dynamic React components. 

This real-time collaboration lets designers test interactive models and streamlines the design-to-production process. Discover UXPin Merge.

The post Functional Prototype – A Short Guide for Digital Product Designers appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Figma, AdobeXD, and UXPin are three leading user experience design tools for designing digital products. We compared these three platforms and how they stack up regarding UI design, mockups, prototyping, and collaboration. Read on to discover which design tool is best for your project demands and team needs.

Key takeaways:

• By integrating seamlessly with the Creative Cloud suite, AdobeXD facilitates a smooth design workflow with tools like Photoshop and Illustrator.
• Figma is a platform best for real-time collaboration, enabling simultaneous design by multiple users.
• UXPin stands out as a code-based design tool, allowing for complex prototypes and bridging the gap between design and coding with its Merge technology.
• Choosing the right design tool hinges on project complexity, collaboration needs, integration preferences, and prototyping capabilities.

Solve hidden usability issues and identify more business opportunities during the design process with the world’s most advanced user experience design tool. Create a single source of truth across design and development. Discover UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

Discover UXPin Merge

What is AdobeXD?

• Price: $82.49 for Creative Cloud (includes 20+ creative desktop and mobile apps including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, and Acrobat)
• Best for: Adobe users, UI design
• Feature overview:
  • Seamless integration with Creative Cloud, including Photoshop and Illustrator.
  • Auto-Animate enables smooth micro-interactions and transitions, enriching prototype realism.
  • Voice prototype integration helps designers test voice user interfaces.
  • Repeat Grid facilitates rapid duplication of design elements, optimizing repetitive tasks and ensuring design consistency.

AdobeXD is a user experience and user interface design tool from Adobe’s extensive Creative Cloud suite. AdobeXD is a platform for designing, prototyping and sharing interactive designs. Its integration within the Adobe ecosystem allows designers to effortlessly transition between tools like Photoshop or Illustrator, streamlining their design process.

What is Figma?

• Price: $12 – $75
• Best for: UI design, collaboration
• Feature overview:
  • Real-time collaboration enables multiple users to design simultaneously, fostering teamwork and instant feedback.
  • Integration capabilities offer many plugins and third-party apps, enhancing the platform’s functionality.
  • Browser and desktop applications.
  • Dev mode makes it easy for engineers to analyze designs and convert them to code with starter CSS.
  • With Variables, designers can change component properties based on user interactions.

Figma is a vector-based design platform built for real-time collaboration. As a browser-based tool, it eliminates barriers to access, ensuring teams can work synchronously regardless of location or device. Figma’s intuitive interface and powerful prototyping capabilities make it a favored choice for UX professionals. 

The tool’s emphasis on collaboration, with features allowing multiple designers to edit a project simultaneously, has redefined teamwork in the design space, cementing Figma’s position among top-tier design tools.

Does Adobe own Figma?

Adobe announced its planned acquisition of Figma in September 2022. However, the deal still hasn’t gone through and must pass regulatory scrutiny, including an August 2023 European Commission investigation. The regulator’s primary concern is Adobe’s acquisition, which “may reduce competition in the global markets for the supply of interactive product design software and for digital asset creation tools.”

If this deal goes through, it’s rumored that Adobe will discontinue AdobeXD and bundle Figma into Creative Cloud as its user experience design tool.

What is UXPin?

• Price: $39-$149
• Best for: UI design, interaction design, design systems
• Feature overview:
  • Browser and desktop applications.
  • Advanced interactive prototyping allows designers to solve more usability issues and identify better business opportunities during the design process.
  • Real-time collaboration and communication using UXPin’s Comments.
  • States allow designers to create multiple states for a single UI element and design complex interactive components like dropdown menus, tab menus, navigational drawers, and more.
  • Variables capture data from user inputs and create personalized, dynamic user experiences–like their name and profile image in the app bar.
  • Expressions Javascript-like functions to create complex components and advanced functionality–no code required!
  • Conditional Interactions create if-then and if-else conditions based on user interactions to create dynamic prototypes with multiple outcomes to accurately replicate the final product experience.
  • Design with code components (React, Vue, Angular, etc.) using UXPin’s Merge technology.
  • Connect APIs and other digital products using UXPin’s IFTTT integration.
  • Create and share a component library with UXPin’s Design Systems, including assets, documentation, UI elements, colors, and typography.
  • Cross-platform prototype testing with UXPin Mirror for native applications (iOS and Android).

UXPin is a code-based design tool enabling designers to create realistic prototypes effortlessly. The tools Forms and built-in design libraries allow designers to build mockups and prototypes, test, and iterate faster than traditional image-based design tools like Figma and AdobeXD. 

UXPin’s USP is its ability to render code rather than vector graphics. This code-based approach increases prototyping scope and enhances testing for better feedback from stakeholders and users.

Take digital product design to the next level with UXPin’s Merge technology. Designers can import UI components from a repository and build fully functioning prototypes that look and feel like the final product.

What is the Difference Between UXPin and Figma?

At first glance, UXPin and Figma appear similar. Designers will find component libraries and layers to the left and properties and interactions to the right with the design canvas center for both tools. This familiarity makes switching tools easy, especially for UX designers who like to design in Figma and prototype in UXPin.

Here are some of the key differences between UXPin and Figma:

• UXPin is code-based, while Figma is image-based. UXPin’s code-based approach means designers can create code-like functionality and interactions that are impossible to replicate in Figma or AdobeXD.
• UXPin has functioning form fields, including text inputs. Conversely, Figma’s input fields are unusable, non-interactive graphical representations.
• Code-to-design vs. design-to-code. Figma is a design-to-code tool, meaning developers must convert static designs into code. While UXPin offers a design-to-code workflow, it also provides a code-to-design solution, allowing designers to import code components into the design process using Merge.
• Figma uses artboards and frames, while UXPin separates screens into Pages.

Which Design Tool is Best for Prototyping?

Image-based design tools like Figma and AdobeXD are great for wireframing, mockups, and basic low-fidelity prototyping but cannot compete with UXPin’s interactive prototyping capabilities.

For example, you can create aesthetically pleasing forms and user flows in Figma and AdobeXD, but the inputs aren’t interactive, so designers can’t get meaningful insights during testing. They must use external tools or work with engineers to build working prototypes. 

Conversely, with UXPin’s interactive features, including States, Interactions, Variables, and Expressions, designers can design interactions, user flows, and functionality that mirrors a code-based prototype. These advanced features significantly increase prototyping scope, eliminating the need to include developers–even for complex prototype functionality and API integrations.

How to Choose a Design Tool?

Below are pivotal decision-making criteria to help steer you toward Figma, AdobeXD, or UXPin:

1. Project scope and complexity: Any three tools offer comparable experiences and outcomes for straightforward designs. However, if you want to build interactive prototypes or sync design and development, then UXPin is the best option.
2. Collaboration needs: Figma’s simultaneous multi-user functionality becomes indispensable if real-time collaboration sits high on your list. UXPin offers a similar solution via its Comments feature, which integrates with Slack.
3. Platform accessibility: Figma and UXPin’s browser-based applications are essential for prioritizing access anywhere. Conversely, if you’re an Adobe Suite loyalist, AdobeXD better fits your ecosystem.
4. Integration and extensions: Figma’s rich integration ecosystem stands out if your workflow thrives on third-party plugins. However, seamless sync with tools like Photoshop would point you to AdobeXD. UXPin and Merge technology is best if you prioritize syncing design and development.
5. Feedback loop: A streamlined feedback process can be pivotal for modern asynchronous product development. UXPin’s Comments on Preview allows stakeholders and other teams–even if they don’t have a UXPin account–to annotate feedback on prototypes, including assigning comments to specific team members.
6. Advanced prototyping: UXPin offers the most sophisticated prototyping capabilities, but AdobeXD’s voice prototyping is a unique and helpful feature for VUI designers.
7. Single source of truth: UXPin is the only one of these three tools to offer a code-to-design solution via Merge technology. Merge bridges the gap between designers and engineers with a single UI library for design and development, creating a seamless product development workflow and frictionless handoffs.
8. Learning curve: While AdobeXD, Figma, and UXPin offer comparable learning curves, UXPin’s advanced features will take slightly more time to master. The payoff? Rapid design iterations and a faster time to market.

“I liked Figma a lot. It’s a huge improvement over my previous go-to design tool, Balsamiq. But now that I’ve learned how to leverage the powerful scripting capabilities of UXPin and design interactive UIs with the same live HTML UI controls that my engineering colleagues will use in the finished product, there’s no way I could go back.” Anthony Hand, Senior UX Designer.

Why UXPin’s Code-to-Design Outshines Figma and AdobeXD

While Figma and AdobeXD deliver on visual design, UXPin’s code-to-design approach sets it apart by bridging the gap between design and development. By rendering actual code instead of vector graphics, UXPin ensures a prototype’s authenticity, sidestepping the common pitfalls of misinterpreted vector-based prototypes and interactivity.

UXPin’s Merge technology integrates UI components from repositories, enabling fully-functional high-fidelity prototypes that accurately reflect the end product. Figma and AdobeXD rely more on visual representations, often requiring additional tools or developers to bring designs to life. This streamlined efficiency positions UXPin at the forefront of a seamless, accurate, and rapid design-to-development process.

Join the code-to-design revolution to create better designs, improve designer/developer collaboration, and deliver better user experiences for your customers with UXPin and Merge technology. Visit our Merge page for more details and how to request access.

The post What’s the Difference Between Figma vs AdobeXD vs UXPin? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Date pickers are some of the most familiar UI patterns in digital product design. UX designers use date pickers on websites, applications, games, enterprise software, operating systems, and more.

Designers must understand how these date pickers will work across screen sizes, operating systems, devices, etc., to test the impact on the product’s aesthetics, functionality, and overall user experience.

UX designers can’t build date pickers using traditional image-based design tools…but they can with UXPin Merge! This technology allows you to import a fully functional date picker from Git repository or npm package, as well as bring one from Storybook.

The date picker that you will sync to UXPin will behave like a date picker in the end product. No need to link static artboards to create interactions! Request access to Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

Discover UXPin Merge

What is a Date Picker?

Date pickers are UI patterns that allow users to choose a specific date, time, or combination of both–for example, selecting a date of birth. The purpose of these date pickers is to streamline date capture while ensuring format consistency.

Why are Date Pickers Necessary?

People worldwide use different date formats. For example, the United States places the month before the day (mm/dd/yyyy), whereas the UK uses the day, month, year format. 

Although these differences seem subtle, a database cannot distinguish whether the user uses the US or UK format. It can only decipher a date correctly in one or the other format. Let’s look at October 1, 2022, numerically:

• US: 10/01/2022 (10 January 2022 in the UK)
• UK: 01/10/2022 (January 10, 2022, in the US)

In this example, the database would interpret each entry as January rather than October.

Users can also enter this same date multiple ways and use different separators. Here are a few examples:

• Oct 1, 2022 
• Oct 1, 22
• 1 Oct 2022
• 1 Oct 22
• 10-01-22 / 01.01.2022 / 10/01/22 
• 22/10/01 / 2022/10/01

Date pickers eliminate ambiguity and ensure systems receive a consistent, accurate format by users selecting the day, month, and year individually.

Date Picker UI Design for Mobile vs. Desktop

Mobile Date Picker

It’s important for designers to recognize how mobile operating systems like iOS and Android display date pickers to users. The native iOS picker uses an infinite scroll UI, while Android applications use a calendar view displaying the entire month.

A mobile date picker aims to make it accessible to a user’s thumb reach. iOS allows users to scroll using their thumb, while Android’s UI is optimized for thumb taps.

While you can use a custom date picker from your design system, using the native options creates familiarity and reduces the product’s learning curve. If you decide to use native date pickers for mobile apps, make sure you’re not creating usability issues, as we pointed out with iOS.

Desktop Date Picker

Most desktop websites and applications use calendar date pickers. The extra space and mouse make it easy for users to choose a date with just a few clicks. Many products also provide an input field for users to enter a date manually.

Numerical date input fields work well on desktops too. UX designers must include a placeholder and helpful error messages to guide users toward the correct format.

5 Types of Date Picker UI Design

Numerical Input Field

The most basic date picker is a numerical input or text input field. These fields might include a modal popup with a date picker, or users must type out the date with separators.

Some products offer users the option to type the date or use a modal, like this example from US Web Design Systems.

Placeholders must show users how to format the date, i.e., MM/DD/YYYY. UX designers can take this further by applying an auto-format for the date where separators appear as users complete the month and day. Designers can also add helper text below, so users know how to complete the form. See the example.

Dropdown Date Selector

Designers commonly use dropdown date-selectors for websites and desktop applications. These date pickers work well with a mouse, but with little space between options, they might be challenging for mobile device users, especially those with large fingers and thumbs.

Dropdown selectors take up more space than a single input field with a calendar modal. And they’re more time-consuming to complete because users have to select the day, month, and year individually.

Dropdown selectors are best for desktop applications and websites but might create bottlenecks for onboarding forms.

Scrolling Date Pickers

Scrolling date pickers work similarly to dropdowns as users choose a day, month, and year separately. These scrollers are most useful on mobile devices where users can use their thumbs to scroll to a day, month, and year.

Many users complain that scrolling date pickers are not suitable for dates far in the future or past. Scrolling through decades takes time and can be challenging for users, especially those with hand or finger disabilities.

The iOS default date picker is the most common example of a scrolling date picker; however, Apple often uses a calendar picker for dates far in the past or future.

Calendar Date Picker

Calendar UIs are the most commonly used date pickers. These calendar date pickers work well across operating systems, devices, and screen sizes.

As people are used to seeing calendars in physical and digital formats, these date pickers create familiarity for users, reducing cognitive load and the product’s learning curve.

Calendar UIs are especially helpful for date range pickers, allowing users to visualize their choice and make quick adjustments.

Timeline Pickers

Timeline pickers work well for selecting a short date range (up to a week) or timeframe (a few hours). Timeline UIs are especially useful on mobile devices because users can drag indicators to choose a start and end date. 

While you can use timeline pickers for dates, they’re best suited for selecting a time window.

Date Picker UI and UX Best Practices

Date Picker Accessibility

Poorly designed date pickers can be frustrating for users with disabilities and screen readers. Keeping things simple is crucial to ensure date selection is accessible to all users.

Here are some recommendations for making date pickers accessible:

• Use explicit labels for your date fields. For example, if someone is booking an appointment, label the field Appointment Date or Choose an Appointment Date so screen readers and users with cognitive disabilities know what date you need.
• Include format hints in the placeholder and above or below the input field. This validation makes date pickets more accessible while benefiting all users with clear instructions.
• Users must be able to use a date picker using touch, a mouse, screen readers, and a keyboard. UX designers must test date pickers to ensure all users and devices can interact with the UI and choose a date effortlessly.
• Separating day, month, and year fields make it easy for screen readers and keyboard users to enter dates. UX designers can also include a button or calendar icon for users to complete their selection using a calendar, a win-win for all users. (See this date picker example from USWDS).

Date picker accessibility resources:

• Collecting dates in an accessible way by Hassell Inclusion
• Date picker by US Web Design System
• General accessibility guidance for forms by US Web Design System

Show Current Date

It is important to show users the current date and their selection on calendar pickers. Highlighting the current date gives users a reference for their choice, which is especially important for booking travel and appointments.

Differentiating between the current date and the user’s selection is crucial to avoid confusion. Material UI clarifies this distinction with an outline for the current date and a shaded background for the selected date.

Block Unavailable Dates

Choosing a date only to find it’s unavailable is one of the most frustrating user experiences. Users have to start their selection over and try until they find availability. Blocking out unavailable dates allows users to choose without returning to the calendar.

Provide Additional Critical Decision-Making Data

Many travel booking apps, including Booking.com and Airbnb, show the price per night below each date so users can find the best rates. This information creates a positive user experience because the product helps users save money.

Reduce Unnecessary Data

Calendar user interfaces can be busy and overwhelming. Designers must reduce as many UI elements, lines, and other content to make the calendar easier to read and complete tasks. For example, users don’t need to see the days of the week when choosing their date of birth.

UX designers must also use solid backgrounds for modal overlays to block out content behind the calendar, which may confuse users.

How to design a date picker in UXPin

UXPin is an advanced prototyping tool used to create interactive, dynamic, high-fidelity prototypes. Where most prototyping tools require designers to create multiple artboards to prototype just one interaction, UXPin enables designers to use States, Variables, and Conditions to create fully-functioning pages.

To insert a date picker in UXPin, start by clicking on the “Search All Assets” search icon (command + F / Ctrl + F) in the vertical toolbar.

Next, search for “date” or “calendar” using the input field.

Several options will be available under the “Components” heading, some of which are best for touch users and others for keyboard users. “Input calendar”, however, provides a calendar for touch users and an input field for keyboard users, offering the best of both worlds and is perhaps the simplest solution overall.

Styling the date picker Component

UXPin Components are already designed to offer great user experiences, but you’ll probably want to style them to match your brand’s visual identity and app/website’s aesthetic. To do this, use the Properties panel on the right.

If you’re using UXPin Design System Libraries (especially Text Styles and Color Styles), you can utilize the Styles that you’ve already established to help maintain some degree of visual consistency between the date picker Component and the rest of your design.

To customize your component, select the Layer that you’d like to style, navigate to your UXPin Design System Library after clicking on the “Design System Libraries” icon (⌥ + 2 / alt + 2), and then select the Style that you’d like to apply to the Layer.

Using real Components instead

Rather than reinventing the wheel by inserting and styling the same Component over and over again, designers can use production-ready Components that’ve already been built by developers. You can pull them from Git, Storybook, or NPM (no coding required) and they’ll look and work just like the real thing (because they are). Learn about UXPin’s technology that makes this happen. Request access today.

The post How to Design a Date Picker that Makes Your UI Shine appeared first on Studio by UXPin.