Do you know that there are over 2.5 million apps listed on the Play Store as of now? While there are millions of apps out there, only a few are known for their designing appeal. Your app’s overall design can be responsible for making it a success or a failure. Therefore, to help you develop stunning apps, I have handpicked the five best tools for mobile app designers that you must explore.
Mobile App Designing 101: Things to Know
Gone are the days when any run-of-the-mill design for a mobile app would be a hit. Now, designers are taking an extra step to provide a memorable user experience. To do that, designers focus on the following parameters:
- Layout
- Usability
- Scalability
- Interactive Design
- Accessibility
- Engagement
- Desirability
To achieve these parameters, a reliable designing solution is needed. Since there are plenty of design tools out there, consider the following things in mind while picking an ideal solution:
- Features: At first, look at the overall features like the design elements, widgets, templates, etc., that are present in the application.
- Scalability: There should be options to scale your design on different perspectives with automatic adjustments for layouts.
- Preview: You should be able to get an instant preview of your designs so that you can check how the user would render them.
- Collaboration: It is recommended to pick a tool that would let you collaborate with your team and assign permissions.
- Other features: Look for features like version history or import/export options for development handoff.
5 Best Tools for Mobile App Designing for Novices and Pros
Here are some of the best app designing tools that are used by both beginners and pros alike.
1 Wondershare Mockitt
Wondershare Mockitt is a freely available online tool that provides dedicated options for rapid prototyping, wireframing, and other designing solutions. Without the need for installing anything on your computer, you can access Mockitt as an online tool on any platform.
Prototyping
- On Mockitt, you can find more than 5000 various design elements, widgets, and other vectors that you can instantly use for designing.
- There are also more than 500 different templates for various platforms that you can readily use and customize.
- You can also use Mockitt to link various entities, change the state of your widgets, and use other dynamic elements to create high-fidelity prototypes.
- Users can get an instant preview of their designs and can also export them in different formats like APK, Swift, and more.
- Mockitt also lets us collaborate with others by managing different users and maintaining a version history of our projects.
Flowcharting
Apart from app designing, you can also access a dedicated flowcharting tool in Mockitt. It provides simple drag-and-drop solutions to come up with stunning flowcharts. You can collaborate with your team, use its wide range of templates, and export your flowcharts in different formats.
Designing
If you want, you can also use the inbuilt designing solution of Mockitt to create icons, graphics, vectors, etc., from scratch. You can access tools like Pen, Boolean, Bezier Curve, etc., to work on your designs of all kinds and readily export different layers.
2 Sketch
Sketch is one of the most popular designing tools, which is available online or as a Mac application. While it has a significant learning curve, it offers some of the most advanced design features out there.
- Sketch offers dedicated tools to design anything from scratch or customize the overall design of your app via its available widgets.
- You can explore a wide range of app templates in Sketch or reuse various design elements to make your job easier.
- There is a provision to get instant previews of our designs on Sketch, and you can also collaborate with others via its web-based version.
- Once the designs are ready, you can save their CSS files or export them to numerous other applications.
3 Flinto
If you use a Mac, then you can also take the assistance of Flinto to design mobile apps. It is a lightweight Mac application that offers drag-and-drop features to come up with stunning app designs in less time.
- Flinto has an extensive range of 2D and 3D elements that you can use to create your app’s design.
- You can set up different gestures, work on video layering, and connect numerous elements to develop dynamic apps.
- There are options to set up micro transitions and animated transitions to improve the fidelity of your designs.
- Other features include Figma/Sketch integration, haptic controls, instant preview, sound effects, and more.
4 Zeplin
Zeplin is a powerful publishing tool that would let you work on your app’s back end and design, all in one place. From team collaboration to plugin integration, you can do it all on Zeplin.
- On Zeplin, you can integrate work from tons of other places like Sketch, Figma, Adobe XD, and Sketch.
- There are plenty of plugins and widgets in Zeplin that you can use to create the overall design of your mobile applications.
- You can also work on the back-end CSS of your designs and get a real-time preview of your work on Zeplin.
- Apart from scalability features, there are also options to collaborate on your designs with your team on its cloud-based dashboard.
5 Figma
Lastly, you can use Figma as a brainstorming tool or come up with your mobile apps’ overall design. It offers tons of online features, making it one of the best tools for mobile app development and rapid prototyping.
- On Figma, you can explore hundreds of design elements and an extensive library that would let you reuse various widgets and elements.
- Since Figma is pretty easy to use, it will let you develop all kinds of designs via drag and drop features.
- You can get an instant preview of your designs and even invite your colleagues to collaborate on projects in one place.
- Several other features include automatic dynamic layouts, element states, version history, CSS exporting, and more.
As you can see, there can be many tools that can help you come up with stunning designs for your mobile apps. Out of them, I would recommend exploring an online solution like Wondershare Mockitt. Since it is freely available and offers a wide range of features, it would let you develop some of the best designs for your mobile apps in less time.