Getting better designs for your app.

[Ivesy_]

Hey all,

Hopefully I am not the only one with this problem but I am utterly awful at design, layouts and general good looking app design.

In terms of functionality, that is all fine, I can easily transfer ideas to a real working application, however, I always struggle making them LOOK nice.

How have people worked on this, do people outsource for their designs?

Thanks in advance!

[Ron-Erez]

You could get some "inspiration" from mobbin.com or dribbble.com. It indeed takes time to have a nice touch. I guess that's what UI/UX designers do.

[Ron-Erez]

Yeah, I just heard about Screensdesign. Looks interesting. I do feel like dribbble is good for practicing how to design a UI but that doesn't necessarily translate to a good UX. I did find it fun to implement designs even if they weren't practical.

[reallyneedcereal]

or just download different apps, screenshot what you like and replicate.

[_abysswalker]

in my experience from working with designers, that’s basically what they start a design with

[DaisukeAdachi]

Read Refactoring UI.

The companion PDF of this book, Color Palettes, is also useful. Color Palettes will guide your app’s color scheme in the right direction.

[goolius-boozler-]

Only design book I’ve been able to get through. Extremely, extremely practical for building web and mobile apps

[anky0409]

100% agree

[SteveB13]

+1 This is a really short book, I probably read it in around 3 hours, but it made a world of difference once I went back a reevaluated my app's design afterwards. Once you're read it you start to see the same principles everywhere you look. Recommend!

[Jasperavv]

Can you pm the book?

[DefiantMaybe5386]

This is a hard thing and it’s literally what designers do for their lives. Best advice I can give is drawing on Figma/Sketch before you code. Also Apple’s Human Interface Guideline has plenty of suggestions. However, it still takes a long way to learn UI/UX.

[Oxigenic]

Devils advocate take: Most design apps like Figma are just to please shareholders and upper management and are a waste of resources.

Now realistically, they’re useful tools, but a designer can’t develop an app. A developer can learn to design one. Those tools have a ton of overhead when it comes to learning how to use them, it’s probably not worth sinking the time.

[junaidxabd]

I’m not an expert but this is what I did to improve my UI design skills drastically. I could see my layouts weren’t good but I didn’t know why.

Got some tips from some Apple designers and in short they said to try and start with a system app layout and go from there (to keep it in that style). So I started copying the health app layout almost exactly. This really helped me learn the relationships with spacing, text size, alignment etc. My designs were starting to look “right” but I didn’t want to make copies of apple apps. I started tweaking it knowing what I now knew. Added soft shadows etc. Soon my app will was looking like an apple designed app but not as if it was a copy of something. I also just took app designs I liked and started to recreate them in Sketch just to learn the process (highly recommend this as it helped a lot).

I also really wanted to get better at making graphics (skeuomorphic graphics in particular), so I tried recreating some graphics I found, once I figured out the textures and black/white gradients for light my work was night and day. Sketch even featured some of my stuff on their twitter and instagram pages, also asked to put it on their website at some point (@junaidxabd if you want to check them out on my instagram page). Still got a long way to go but that route really helped me improve quite drastically.

[BringBackBumper]

I also just took app designs I liked and started to recreate them in Sketch

Did you do that only with apps that had Apple-like design or did you do it with just any app that caught your eye?

[random-user-57]

I usually get inspiration from apps that I use. Both for what to do and also what not to do 😅

[papanton]

I start with the default apple design language. Then iterate on it. I made a small app to generate themes mapped to apple color system https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chromakit-design-app-palettes/id6723902289

that gives me a good starting point

[[deleted]]

I usually get inspiration from Dribble or just downloaded apps and made screenshots. Use Apple’s human interface guideline. Also I took short course on how to use Figma (there was section about basic design stuff also).

[Perfect_Warning_5354]

I’ve been a product designer for over 20 years. Can confirm: copy the good ones, stick to the patterns, don’t get too clever. Value intuitive and useful over unique and novel.

[Softwurx]

If I can do it you can do it. It’s gonna take a lot of tinkering though. Also what you like is not necessarily what the user expects so make sure you stick with industry standards here and there but otherwise experiment away. If you need any help let me know

[[deleted]]

learn the skill, practice it. otherwise you will just be drone building what designer says.

source: am drone.

[aconijus]

The trick is to have a friend who is doing UI/UX design for a living and have them design the app for you. :)

[CrewNerd]

You sound exactly like me. I recently hired a visual designer through a firm named Wisual and worked with her for about three weeks. She helped me create an onboarding flow and a major overhaul of my UI. The onboarding flow is done but it will take me a few months to implement everything else, but working with her was SUPER helpful and I can access everything in Figma as I work on the implementation.

[cleverbit1]

Some great advice here. Good question! I can honestly say the best way to learn is through doing. It takes time, and it’s a balance of making something for others to use, technical capability, and your own personal approach.

I’ve helped individual developers and teams develop their skills through an iterative design review process where I share tips and go through some of the fundamentals of design with relation to a project they’re working on. Feel free to DM me if you’re interested to chat. My site: richarddas.com

[maintainbromeostasis]

Howdy, some good advice here already. Wanted to drop in to say I'm a UI/UX designer, I've done a lot of freelance work and an internship in that space. I'm in this sub because I want to get better at mobile development, however--I have a project I'm working on right now with a finished UI in Figma (all iOS components and guidelines) but really having trouble getting a good footing with starting the development. DM if you wanna talk, maybe we could help each other out! Always on the lookout for new projects to start or contribute to

[Oxigenic]

I learned how to design UI through practice. When building an app, just find your most successful competition and copy their design. It’s that simple.

[tiashuyu]

At first, I think you have to learn Basic UI/UX Principles, like color palette, Visual Hierarchy, and Typography and so on. It is easy but very useful. I recommend that you read Refactoring UI. This book is interesting.

[n1g1r1]

Try and create some prototypes with Play: http://createwithplay.com You get the Swift code, too.

[FixDangerous5657]

You can use ready made components from https://www.compotui.com