Design matters.
Design is more important than ever in product development and there’s a growing amount of data to prove it. This is a story about a mobile app development agency that came to realize the importance of design.
Meet Atomic Robot
Atomic Robot was founded by three software engineers who met while working together in Cincinnati, OH, on Kroger’s mobile app development team. They helped launch Kroger’s first mobile app almost eight years ago, which reached a million users in the first year. Not bad.
Eventually, the three decided to quit their day jobs and start a venture of their own. In 2011, Atomic Robot was formed.
The Mobile Wave
The timing could not have been more perfect. In 2011, there were half-a-million apps available for download in the iOS App Store and Google Play Store. That number has since grown by more than 600% — over 4 million apps are available today. Furthermore, experts predict that the growth in the mobile app market is far from over; it’s expected to triple its current size by 2021.
Riding this wave, the Atomic Robot founders built a team of top-notch engineers and the company became a leader as one of the most trusted agencies in the region for mobile app development. Atomic Robot has built apps for Kroger, Walmart Labs, Bicycle Playing Card Company, and others. And there are some big projects in the works for VITAS Healthcare and Procter & Gamble.
Ever the futurists, Atomic Robot has been preparing itself for another rising trend in product development: the explosion of UX and UI design.
The Design Era
Culture-shifting technology is now ubiquitous — the smartphone in your pocket is vastly more powerful than the computers used by NASA to put humans on the moon. We stand on the shoulders of the thousands of men and women who built, and continue to build, the infrastructure of the modern world and beyond. These engineers are in many ways responsible for a burgeoning era of product development that will see design become more and more important to companies and customers alike.
Because there are millions of apps to choose from, customers are seeking out the best app experiences. Appetites for higher quality user experiences are more voracious than ever.
When it comes to millennials, 21% say they’ve deleted an app just because they didn’t like the app icon. Let that sink in. In other words, one in five millennials — sit in on any marketing meeting in the world and the topic of how to market to millennials will likely come up — aren’t even getting past your app icon.
And it’s not just millennials that have a low tolerance for less-then-stellar design. 86% of all users say they’ve deleted an app because of poor performance. Most users will put up with an icon they don’t love on their home screen but only a small fraction will stick around with an app that doesn’t function the way it’s supposed to.
Fortunately, companies are beginning to realize that design is not only a way to satisfy customers but also a major boon to the business. A recent study by consulting firm McKinsey shows that the companies who perform best in terms of design outperform their industry peers by a wide margin:
“Their growth in terms of revenue is nearly double that of their peers, while their growth in terms of shareholder returns is 70% higher,” says Ben Sheppard, a partner at McKinsey in London.
This is good news for designers and even better news for users, who benefit from app experiences that are more useful and intuitive than ever before.
Robots in Design
Atomic Robot employed its first design intern in 2015. Today, the design team has grown to include a Creative Director, Senior User Experience Designer, Junior User Experience Designer, and three rock star interns.
Collectively, the team has over 30 years of experience across many aspects of the design process. We’ve worked on everything from graphics to video to copywriting to branding to building companies of our own. And we’re all pretty nerdy about designing for mobile.
What makes the Atomic Robot design team unique is that we’re working alongside developers every day to build practical designs that take into consideration the technical constraints of iOS and Android. Additionally, because we’re hanging around developers all day, we are constantly pushing our designs into new territory, leveraging technical opportunities that we would have never thought possible. It’s a beautiful thing.
Design matters at Atomic Robot. And if you’re interested in building mobile apps that stand out because of their elegance and ease of use — and, of course, their app icons — it probably matters to you too.
Did you know you can hire our design team? Email us at design@atomicrobot.com if you’re interested. We can help take your app’s user experience to the next level and help you build a mobile strategy. We would love to help.
