The experience makes the product, not the features, and the goal of a UI/UX designer is to make users effective. Afterall, the design and experience of a product is what attracts and keeps users. Therefore, adopting the “mobile first” approach is all about minimalism, and simplifying the design helps improve usability. The relationship between storytelling and design is that you need the story for people to understand how [the product] relates to them.
Mobile App Design Process
If you're going to solve a problem, you want sufficient information to solve it, therefore work on getting people to see research as a part of doing design well. It's important to use real data, which will help design realistically. The concept design stage is intended to establish the product's form and function in a visual representation.
- Research and analyze
- Categorize the problems you uncover
- Create personas, empathy maps, journey maps, wireframes and mockups
- Run ideation exercises to generate ideas
- Build and test a prototype
- Send the final prototype to development
- Launch the product
- Return to step 1 based on user feedback
Effectively applying motion in a digital product is largely about considering attention and your user's goals. Intentionally designed motion can be a powerful tool to guide users' attention exactly where you want it, and motion directly related to the current task is a strong reinforcement mechanism. Designing products to ignite strong emotions is one way to make them memorable.
The best UX comes from diligent attention to what the consumer wants and consistently iterate and innovate to make that happen. In addition, I am a proponent of visual development, which bridges the gap between designer and developer. Apps can be built quicker and more efficiently, while also being truer to the original vision because visual development is very hands on.
Lastly, I devote considerable time learning Google's Material Design and Apple's Human Interface guidelines in an effort to embrace the best practices in user interface design for these specific platforms.