Jun 11, 2020
Top App Design Agencies Worldwide
Find the best App Design Agency in the world for startups, B2B, SMB, enterprise, SaaS, boutique. In San Francisco (SF), New York (NYC), London (UK), Portland, Los Angeles (LA)
Last Updated: February 1, 2023
These days any business needs an online presence, and there is no better way to create a great user experience when your product or service has a complimentary mobile or web application that utilizes all modern technologies and form factors of devices. From iPhone screens to Apple TV and Apple Watch apps, the digital experience can help to solve lots of needs of the customers. In the post-COVID world, digital user interfaces need even more attention and a professional approach. We created a list of ui/ux agencies that we think might be good for your next app!
Hire the Best App Design Agency for your project
1. Ramotion
App design company that create mobile apps and web products with great conversion, low cost of maintenance and consistent user experience.
📍San Francisco, CA, USA🇺🇸
👤Top clients
Salesforce, Turo, Tile
2. Tivix
Established software design company specializing in the agile design of web and mobile applications
📍San Francisco, CA, USA🇺🇸
👤Top clients
Apple, Bayer, VMware
3. Rootstrap
Outcome-driven web app design agency
📍Los Angeles, CA, USA 🇺🇸
👤Top clients
MasterClass, Google, Salesforce
4. Icreon
An award-winning customer experience transformation web app design agency that helps challenger brands
📍New York City, NY, USA 🇺🇸
👤Top clients
IMG Models, National Geographic Channel, FOX Movies
5. DCSL GuideSmiths
The most trusted bespoke software and web app design and development firm in Europe
🌐 dcsl.com
📍London, United Kingdom 🇬🇧
👤Top clients
Mitsubishi, Hospify, Skanska
While choosing the right app design company, make sure the follow a standard design process:
With all the various processes and methodologies evolving in the industry all the time, how do you choose the right one for your app design project? Luckily it doesn’t need to be that complicated. Pick one and run with it, or follow a simplified process with a few considerations for the specific platform of mobile apps. Most UI/UX processes include the same basic elements and can be scaled to fit the project size and complexity. The important thing is that you define your process and stick to it. Even a simple process can help keep your project on track and running smoothly. These steps usually look something like this:
- Describe the Problem to be Solved
- Brainstorm Solutions
- Iterate and Test Best Solution
- Develop and Deliver Solution
Describing the Problem
Sometimes a project is initiated without a clear reason. Simply because everyone has an app these days isn’t a great reason to tackle this type of project. Why does your client or business need an app specifically? Is it intended to be an alternative to a mobile web site? A quick and easy way to access your services? An open mind is essential here.
This step has a variety of names but essentially comes down to research. Start with your client or business stakeholders. Using interviews or surveys explore the goal of the app. Look for key functionality and features, but also why they think their users will want the app. You can also conduct competitive research to get a feel for what other businesses are doing with their apps. Download their apps and see first hand what they do and how they work. Check out their social media presence, the app reviews, and other online resources to get different perspectives.
Next, talk to existing customers and other potential users. The tools and techniques are similar. Surveys, interviews, and observations of real customers can help you determine whether the stakeholders are on the right track, what they are missing, and what is just not needed.
At the end of all this research, you should have a good idea of what the app needs to offer. Artifacts of this phase should include a simple problem statement, personas, and use cases.
Brainstorming Solutions
Now that you know why you are doing the project, you can start thinking about all the various ways you might be able to solve the problem you identified. Open minds are still important in this step. No idea should be left unspoken, and many should be explored.
The entire design team can collaborate here to throw out ideas. Start with sketches and concepts. The more the better. Your competitive research is helpful to generate more ideas and get a feel for what just plain doesn’t work.
This step is also iterative. Once you’ve generated a lot of ideas, select the best options and plan some user testing. Tailor the test for the design concepts and functionality. If the app has a lot of features and information, a card sort exercise may be helpful. Interviews and talk aloud testing with low fidelity sketches, storyboards, or wireframes will help you narrow down the concepts to the best ones to refine and flesh out.
Don’t be surprised if you develop a new perspective on your problem statement or a novel way to tackle it. In addition to the artifacts already mentioned, you may also have a good feel for the taxonomy to be used, the overall architecture of the app, and even some early content.
Iterating and Testing
In the last step, you developed lots of ideas, exploring the breadth of possibilities. During this step, you dig deep into the full functionality of one or two great ideas. Develop more detailed, higher fidelity prototypes and content that can be tested thoroughly with users. Refine, test, repeat until most of the user issues and points of confusion are ironed out.
Include a design review, or two, with your client or stakeholders during this step as well. Prepare a professional presentation with the overall concept, high-level feature list, and early sketches of a couple of options you are designing. Avoid details like colors and graphics in the early part of this step to keep the reviews focused on flow and behaviors, rather than easy distractions. At the end of the step, when you’ve worked through challenges and have a solid design you can add these elements in and review again with the team.
Developing and Delivering
After obtaining approval, it’s time to bring your design to life. Provide all artifacts and assets you created in the iterating step to the development and testing teams. This could include graphics, style guides, templates, content, and of course wireframes and prototypes.
The development team will turn all of this into real code and the testing team will create test cases based on the functional requirements you documented in earlier steps. Your job isn’t complete though, as you may be called upon to answer clarifying questions, work through issues, and do functional testing to identify bugs. You might need to design edge case solutions or other functionality that got missed as well.
Summary
Using a set process to design your app not only keeps you on track but helps you to communicate with your client or stakeholders. When designing an app, there are special considerations for size, interactions, common design patterns, and users. Overall, however, the underlying fundamentals of UX and UI design should be followed whatever process you choose.
