The Design’s Role in App Development

To better understand the design role and the respective definitions of user experience and interface, we can use the house analogy: if the user experience (UX) lays the house’s foundation and organizes it to suit the inhabitants’ needs, the user interface (UI) magnifies the experience: it adds the personality and final touches to the house. What is the common ground between these two practices? Placing the user at the heart of the process, by positioning ourselves as spokesperson. Understanding the users’ multiple needs requires that the design team relies on both the strategic contributions collected during the discovery phase and the documentation provided by the client – but the team also conducts certain activities to deepen its knowledge on the user path: searches, tests, user flows… These actions are adapted to each project.

‘‘We concretely rely on three pillars that allow us to launch a web or mobile project’’, says Alexia. The first pillar consists in the clients’ business goals. Indeed, the digital tool must meet these needs, such as improving client relations, or optimizing the employees’ work. The second pillar is the product vision. For this reason, we need to wonder in what direction the digital tool will go in its future versions, for example. The third and last pillar is, of course, the user, who must be at the project’s centre: ‘‘We’re creating this tool so that real people will use it’’, adds Alexia. A perfect solution consists in ‘‘balancing the budget, the timeline, the client’s marketing efforts and the technological feasibility’’, says Catherine. There could be millions of answers to a single problem. However, the optimal solution is reconciling the best experience for both our user and our client.

Because the UX and the UI design are central in the digital tool’s development, collaboration in the design team is a key principle. This can be seen in the tools used: whether it be through Figma or Miro, many internal and external collaborators can work together on the digital tool’s progress. Indeed, this allows us to work with every core business at nventive, but also with the client’s professionals: strategists, product owners, solutions architects, developers, quality assurance analysts, project managers, etc. The designers – and the UX/UI design team – participate in the projects’ different phases to represent the users’ needs.

The design team’s place in app development is constantly evolving. It has become bigger and bigger in the projects in the last years, because being ‘user-centric’ is the key to success that allows us to offer digital tools that truly meet the user’s needs. Lastly, we must remember that the digital solution must be an evolving project. An application is a live ecosystem that must continuously be improved and fed, or it might shut down.

Enjoy the podcast!