According to some reports, most mobile apps get deleted within a week after installation. How to avoid such a scenario happening to your product? Hire an app designer who will make your app eye-catching, user-friendly, and providing easy access to all the functionalities that the user really needs! Thanks to their work, a mobile product can turn from being one of the many rarely downloaded apps to one that is not only eye-catching but also keeping the user interested in the long run.
But how to find an app designer that will perfectly match your requirements? We kick off our guide on hiring such an expert with a list of the most important hard and soft skills every professional mobile app designer should possess.
- Good understanding of the app development process
Unlike web designers who sometimes code, app designers usually don’t. They focus on actually creating the look & feel of your mobile product, leaving programming itself to developers.
This means, that when you want to hire app designers, you don’t need to look for one who knows Swift, Kotlin, or any other technology used by devs. However, knowledge of the most important processes of app development is still important. A good app designer must know what can and what can’t be done within the chosen technology, so their design requests can be easily translated into tasks to be done by your dev team.
- Good understanding of platform differences
While nowadays the trend is to keep the mobile app looking the same on any platform and device it is released for, there are some differences that an app designer must consider while doing their work. Two main types of differences to consider are:
a) Differences between systems, most popular being iOS and Android.
b) Differences between devices, e.g. how the app looks on a phone, tablet, and smartwatch, even if they are powered by the same operating system.
- Experience in prototyping on multiple stages of the app development process
Prototypes can vary depending on what stage of the development process they are done. Rapid prototyping, for example, is performed usually before coders start working on the project, in order to present the initial vision behind the app or to review the current user journey. It’s usually done with wireframes or other types of simplified design.
On the other hand, there is high-fidelity prototyping — one done shortly before launch. This kind of prototype usually looks quite similar, or even the same, as the final product. It’s also interactive, so it can be presented to target customers in order to gather feedback on what can be improved before releasing the app.
- Experience with popular app design tools
Adobe Creative Suite (including all the most necessary software by Adobe, such as Photoshop) is, of course, the most common set of tools to be used by an app designer. However, there are also other useful programs that can significantly speed up the whole design process. Some of them are:
a) Sketch — a great tool used most often specifically for app design prototyping.
b) UXPin — another awesome tool used for prototyping.
c) Figma — web app useful especially for early prototyping. It encourages collaborative work and allows to easily leave feedback, so it’s great when your design team consists of a few different members.
d) Iconjar — icon management tool. Perfect for bigger projects or if your app designer is working on multiple projects at once.
- Knowledge of UI and UX best practices
Even if the app looks great and unique, users will still delete it quickly from their device if they don’t understand the purpose of the app and how to use it. That’s why an app designer has to always take into consideration the user interface and user experience best practices when designing your product.
- Ability to create custom content
While working with Stock images and illustrations is very popular, it’s not always the best way to fill your app with this kind of pre-existing content. To make the design of your product more unique, look for app designers who can also build custom visuals for you, including illustrations, cartoons, and small animations.
- Familiarity with pen and notebook
While your app will be at the end designed digitally, physical pen and notebook are sometimes more useful than a tablet and a powerful computer. Quick sketches, prototype drafts, mind maps, schemes of the user journey — all these can be done fast using a piece of paper and something to draw. A good app designer understands the power of these physical items and you should be ready to receive visualizations of some of their ideas in the form of a quick drawing instead of a digital image.
- Adaptability
App designers have to meet the needs of many different people within a company. Project managers, product owners, developers, other teams — everyone might want to have something changed or removed at all. It’s especially important for an app designer to be able to collaborate well with developers. As they will code the whole software in the end, they might conclude that some things in design need to be simplified in order to deliver the product on time.
How to hire an app designer that will really fit your project?
When it comes to designers, their real value can always be assessed by carefully reviewing their portfolio. Education history and certificates won’t tell you much if you don’t see the real designs that the candidate has worked on.
While reviewing the portfolio, you should also focus on finding apps and companies similar to yours. If you do see them, it probably means that the app designer has already some experience in working with your industry and might already have some ideas on how to approach your project.
Reviewing the portfolio might also give you an idea for a few questions that you might ask your app designer candidate during the interview, such as:
- Did you work on this app design by yourself or with some other designers
or
- Did you only create the mobile app design for this specific company or additional visuals, such as social media graphics, were needed as well?
You can follow these with more general questions tackling their approach to working on mobile app designs, as well as technical knowledge. Here are some good examples:
- Tell me about a situation when some part of your design couldn’t be implemented to the final product because of technical limitations. How did you solve this issue?
- Do you have any experience in coding, not necessarily mobile apps? How do you find communicating with developers who often use quite a technical language?
- What are your favorite current trends in app design? Which current or past trends you don’t/didn’t like?
- What is the hamburger menu in mobile app design? What are good alternatives to it?
- What are some ways of improving the user experience while keeping the interface as it is?
- Tell me about a situation when you run an A/B test for one of your mobile app designs.
- Which of your projects would you call your favorite? Why?
- Have you ever worked with AR/VR implementation in a mobile app? If yes, how did you approach it? If not, tell me how would you approach it if you would need to implement it in any of your past projects?
Making the most out of your great-looking app
The look & feel of your app is crucial to attracting customers, but there are more things you have to remember about. Your app won’t function properly if a professional mobile developer won’t be involved in its creation, with data scientists you can understand better what your users want, and a project manager can make sure every new feature is delivered on time and within the budget.
To get the best people onboarded for your mobile app team, contact us at Ideamotive. We run an extensive network of top IT specialists from all over the world, and from every industry. Whatever type of talents you are in need of, we are able to get you connected with them fast so you can start building your app as soon as possible.
