What Is UI/UX Design? A Comprehensive Guide

No matter how innovative is your business model, your app or website needs to ensure that it offers an optimal customer experience. This customer experience relies on the UI/UX design and the ease of interaction that follows.

To avoid such a failure, you will have to up your UI/UX design game to make your product/service usable. The UI (user interface) takes care of the visual representation of features and the UX (user experience) ensures that the users are satisfied and can perform the intended action effortlessly.

A well-designed user interface could raise your website’s conversion rate by up to 200%, and a better UX design could yield conversion rates up to 400%. — UX Planet

UI/UX design is the backbone of your digital product or service and the app design cost that you initially invest brings multiplied benefits.

In this write-up, we will explore everything around UI/UX design and how to nail customer experience on a holistic level.

What is UI (User Interface)?

Offers visual delight

The graphical front-end of the app or the website that is visible to the users is known as UI or user interface. In other words, UI is the layout and the visual design of the app or the website. The various UI elements include — buttons, navigation bars, categories, images, animations, videos, and textual content.

Given 15 minutes of time, 59 percent of people will read or browse through something beautifully designed rather than something plain and boring. — Adobe

Even color choices, fonts, spacing, and sizing define the user interface. In simple words, if the UI elements are arranged and categorized nicely and the user likes what they are looking at, you have a good website or app UI design.

Here’s a glimpse into good UI vs bad UI:

What is UX (User Experience)?

Judges a digital product or service based on usability

User experience is the overall experience of a user when they interact with the app or website. How do they feel about using the interface? Can they find/discover features or they have to struggle to perform the intended action? Is the design intuitive or confusing?

The answers to these questions help in understanding how good or bad is the experience design. For your product to be a success, it is essential to consider user experience seriously because if the users find the experience confusing, you are likely to lose them to a competitor.

Here is an example of a bad UX design. The design below is neither intuitive nor logical — making it a bad user experience overall.

Source: Reddit

Difference Between UI and UX

User interface and user experience are often treated as a single entity as both of the concepts need to fall in place for ensuring an overall satisfactory customer experience.

The simple difference between UI and UX — UI ensures that the users have a delightful visual experience. Whereas, UX takes care of functionality and user satisfaction.

The table below summarizes the difference between UI and UX in a simplified way:

We can say:

UI (User Interface) + UX (User Experience) = CX (Customer Experience)

Top 10 UI/UX Design Principles

Various principles need to fall in place when designing the user interface. The most critical ones include:

1. Place the control in users’ hands

This principle implies that the user should be able to perform the action they intend to without any impediments across the touchpoints. The users should feel powerful and in control, i.e., what they want is what they are served.

For example, user 1 wants to register through a Gmail account, user 2 wants to register using their mobile number, and user 3 wants to skip the registration altogether. The UI/UX should enable all the registration and onboarding options so that all the users are satisfied.

2. The Interaction Should be Meaningful

According to this principle, you should focus on creating a user interface that only relies on meaningful elements. The UI should be free of unwanted elements that only beautify the design but neither are intent-driven nor add value.

For example, your home page should only be having a hero image, primary tagline, CTA button, your USP in concise words, and some social proof. Adding anything more than that would only ruin the user experience.

3. Lower Down Cognitive Load

Cognitive load refers to the mental power that a user uses to understand a product and its functionalities. However, for creating a powerful UI, you need to make everything natural for the user.

For instance, if the user clicks on the “Buy Now” option, it should redirect to the checkout page automatically. The labeling here plays a vital role too. That is if the label says anything like “Procure Now” instead of “Buy Now” — you’ll be only adding to the cognitive load. Make the design look obvious and intuitive instead.

4. Create a consistent User Interface

Keep your design consistent across platforms, i.e., the design should be similar on a mobile application and the website. If you maintain a consistent UI, you promote intuitiveness, understandability, and usability.

The mobile app, the website, and the mobile web experience should be consistent. i.e., the theme should be the same throughout. Experimenting with the design in this aspect would only lead to losing your brand identity.

5. Comply with User Needs

A good user experience design takes care of the user’s needs. To understand what your users want, you could conduct data analytics based on historical and current data to get a fair idea. Or, you could also A/B test parts of your design to see how your audience engages with it.

Users appreciate reduction of effort when performing an action. If you place appropriate CTAs across the UI/UX design — you’ll be helping them transit from one part of the journey to another — thus, complying with their needs.

6. Maintain a Hierarchy

Hierarchy relates to information architecture, i.e., the organization of your content across the website or the app. With respect to this principle, the content should be well-organized, labeled, and clearly represented.

Site Mapping helps in creating a meaningful information architecture. It helps in illustrate the hierarchy of the categories and content across the design and the parent-branch relationship between them.

7. Focus on Confirmations

Whenever a user performs a critical action like filling a form or making payments, a confirmation should be taken.

For example, a user makes a wrong choice or changes their mind, the confirmation should be asked to ensure they are certain of the action that follows.

8. Accessibility

Accessibility is one of the most essential parts of the design. According to the accessibility rule, anyone with a disability should be able to access the website/app without much effort. In simple words, your design should be inclusive.

For example, optimizing your user experience design for voice search can help accelerate your efforts in enabling accessibility.

9. Focus on Findability and Discoverability

Findability means that the user can find and use features that they know already exist. Whereas, discoverability means that the user can locate and use features that they are unaware of. Your design should make both findability and discoverability easy.

For example, a user already knows that they can send mails through gmail and can easily compose and send them — that is findability.

But, did you know that gmail has a snooze option that lets you choose emails you want to snooze and then they will only appear after the chosen time frame is over. You didn’t know about this feature earlier, but now you do — that is discoverability.

10. Storytelling

The overall experience that the user has with your digital platform should be holistic and connected, i.e., it should tell a story. With effective storytelling, the different touch points should logically connect without falling apart.

For instance, a user is making a payment — all the screens and the steps involved should follow a path that goes from choosing the payment method to payment acknowledgment.

UI/UX Design: Essential Elements

The design team has to strategically think through the UI/UX before finalizing coming up with a prototype and the fully-fledged design.

There are certain fundamental elements of UI/UX that every design team needs to consider when brainstorming through ideas. Some of these crucial elements include:

1. Human-Centered Design

A human-centered design is an approach that takes the human perspective into account when finalizing the UI/UX design. In simple words, create a design that the human likes and can easily use too instead of adding anything that appeals to the designers but otherwise does not add value to the product.

People ignore design that ignores people. — Frank Chimero, Designer

Another term that resonates with the human-centered design is — ergonomics, i.e., designing your product to make it usable by humans.

2. User Psychology

User psychology is all about stepping in the shoes of your target audience and understanding their likes, dislikes, and needs. Understanding your target audience around these parameters helps in designing better and effectively.

For a better understanding, create buyer persona templates that list down their location, basic information, challenges, needs, problems, etc.

Here’s an example of a buyer persona template to take inspiration from:

3. Typography

Typography is the way you play with your text in the dean — mainly its font, color, and style.

When you are designing, the most important text that you want the user to focus on should be large in size. For example, in a blog — the headline’s font is large but the font size of the content is comparatively smaller.

Also, when choosing the font style it should be consistent throughout. Lastly, the colors that you use should complement the overall design and should evoke positive emotions.

Color psychology plays a trivial role here. Here’s an overview of different emotions related to different colors.

4. Design Thinking

Design thinking is a cognitive approach that focuses on problem-solving creatively and practically. By applying design thinking, you can solve complex design problems effectively.

5. Visual Hierarchy

Visual hierarchy means that the website or the app UI design is prioritized and organized based on importance. The most essential elements go at the top and likewise the importance decreases as the user scrolls down the page.

It is similar to the eye testing technique that doctors use. The alphabets that are the largest are placed at the top and as you read through the lines below, the font decreases.

6. Information Architecture (IA)

Information architecture revolves around structuring, labeling, and organizing content across the website/app. A good information architecture promotes the findability of features and their usability.

IA majorly focuses on — clean UI/UX, findability and discoverability, and the ease to perform the intended action.

7. Dark Patterns

Dark patterns are tricks and gimmicks that brands use to lure customers into something they did not intend to in the first place.

A dark pattern is a type of user interface that appears to have been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things that are not in their interest and is usually at their expense. — Harry Brignull, Introduced Dark Patterns

For example, a user can easily subscribe to your product or newsletters but when they wish to discontinue and unsubscribe, finding that option becomes a challenging task altogether. This type of dark pattern is called roach motel.

8. Content Strategy

Design is not a siloed task. The design usually goes with content, which implies that a content strategy needs to be aligned before moving ahead with brainstorming around design and vice versa.

For instance, you are refurbishing your website design. In this case, you will choose a website or app UI design and then plan your content around it. On the other hand, if you are writing a white paper, a blog, or an article — you will draft your content and then decide for its design alongside.

9. Skeuomorphism

In design, skeuomorphism is the designing of UI elements similar to the real-life design of the object. In simple words, if the design of a UI element suggests its usage without much guessing, it follows skeuomorphism.

For example, a digital calculator is similar to the design of a real-life calculator. Why? Because users are familiar with the design and thus find it easy to use it without many challenges.

UI/UX Design Process

The UI/UX design process includes the following stages:

1. Conduct User Research

Understanding your users starts with knowing who your target audience is and what are their pain points. If a similar business model already exists in the market, you will have to analyze where it falls short of meeting customer expectations.

The techniques that can be applied for effective user research include:

Run User Surveys
Interview potential target audience
Run polls across social media platforms
Create buyer persona templates

2. Ideation

Once you have a fair idea of user problems and their needs, you can move on with the next step, i.e., ideation. This stage revolves around brainstorming UI/UX design ideas that help solve the problems at hand and hence mutually finalizing them.

Some of the best techniques for executing ideation include:

Braindump — each of the team member writes problem along with the solution on post-its and then shares for review
Mindmapping — writing problem in the middle of the paper and writing different solutions on the same paper and discussing it later with the group
Storyboards — visual and graphical representations of user journeys in the form of stories
Bodystorm — physically enacting scenarios to come up with the best and effective solution to user problems

3. Build Prototype

Once the design team has come up with the best solution, it is time to convert it into a prototype. A prototype is a basic version of the app or the website that validates the UX/UI flow and how the system will enact holistically.

A prototype helps stakeholders, designers, and developers see a near-to-life version of the product. Also, it helps in seed funding as it gives an idea to the investors about your value proposition.

If any changes are required, refinements are made to the prototype, or else if approved — the team moves ahead with the final design activity.

4. Design

The final design is worked upon where the system and the product design are finalized and work is assigned across the team. Here the UI/UX designers and the developers work in tandem to create an app or website.

Each of the touchpoints is designed and then integrated into the system. The team first prioritizes design elements that are essential for the MVP launch and move on with implementing them.

5. Test

Once the design is completed, the quality assurance team tests its working and wholeness. If any errors occur, they are reported back to the developers and designers who again rework to eliminate the bugs.

Usability testing is also conducted at this stage with a set of users to check how they react to the visual design and its functionality. Changes are introduced based on the feedback.

6. Maintenance

When the MVP or the fully-fledged product is launched in the market, the team waits for initial feedback. If any part of the UI/UX design goes amiss, the team will rework it to satisfy user needs.

Further, new features and design changes are introduced in the future depending on newer digital disruptions and changing user needs.

UI/UX trends for 2021

The most popular UI/UX trends that are redefining the definition of design in 2021 include:

1. Vector Graphics

Vector graphics are design elements that are created using shapes, lines, and connecting points — giving the design an illustrative feel. Every other brand (small or big) is leveraging vector graphics as they:

Occupy less space
Are engaging
Are easily scalable
Can be easily altered

Here’s a vector graphics example:

2. Neomorphism

Neomorphism is an in-between version of a skeuomorphic design and flat design. In this design, the UI elements appear to be placed behind the background. When the user selects or hovers over that element it protrudes out of its background, bringing it to life.

It is similar to a keyword design, where the buttons are a bit raised from the base.

Here’s an example of neomorphic design:

3. UX Writing

UX writing refers to using action-oriented words with your design copy. Write words that complement your design and say exactly what the audience wants to hear is the objective of UX writing.

UX writing is majorly applied to — titles, command buttons, CTAs, labels, radio buttons, descriptions, etc.

UX writing example:

4. Micro-Interactions

Micro-interactions are small moments that improve the interaction between the user and the system. Micro-interactions make a user journey delightful, thus making them like your product more, which further helps build brand loyalty.

To create meaningful micro-interactions, add functional animations along with user actions. For instance, when you hover over a button or make a selection, a small animation validates the user action.

5. Dark Themes

Dark themes are popular and a standard practice that every product follows nowadays. A dark theme allows a user to implement a black (dark) background in the nighttime to save the eyes from exposure to extra brightness and contrasts.

This UI trend also goes on to enhance the UX as this small change focuses on empathy. This design practice is suitable for your website or app if you have more traffic in the evening rather than daytime.

6. Flat Design

Flat design is a UI/UX style that focuses on creating 2D design elements that add simplicity to the overall design. It is also referred to as a minimalistic design that ditches the flashy design.

Brands are using flat design not only for the logos but throughout the interface to improve its likeability. Even vector graphics follow the flat design approach as it evokes positive emotions and cuts through the unwanted clutter.

Here’s an example of flat design:

7. Glassmorphism

Glassmorphism is gaining traction as it improves the overall design and gives it a fresh look. In glassmorphism the UI elements look transparent and follow a multi-layered approach that gives an impression that the different elements are floating in space.

Credits to its glassy and transparent look, that the design is termed as glassmorphism.

Here’s an example of glassmorphism:

UI/UX Design: Best Practices

Some of the best practices for designing UI/UX include:

1. Focus on Creating Omnichannel Experiences

Omnichannel experience means — offering a consistent UI and connected experience across devices, platforms, and touchpoints. By focusing on an omnichannel experience, you are improving brand consistency.

For example, you have an eCommerce business. A customer adds the item to the cart on the app but does not complete the checkout process. Now if they login to the website, they should be able to move ahead from the same step where they left on the app.

This holistic and connected setup improves the user experience and makes their journey delightful.

2. Often Rely on A/B Testing

A/B testing means that you create two versions of a design element to see which one works better in terms of interaction and engagements.

For example, if you are offering a free downloadable resource through a clickable CTA, the designer can create two different versions for it — with both of them varying with respect to fonts, colors, background, text, etc.

Now, you can run the two versions alternatively for a week each and check which one performs better, and stick to it.

3. Follow the Elements of Art

The seven elements of art that you need to follow across your UI/UX design include:

Line: By adding lines, you create a sense of understandability of objects on the user interface. In simple words, lines help distinguish between elements on the interface.
Shape: The different shapes of the objects on the interface should evoke familiarity. For example, a hamburger icon is created by placing three small parallel lines. People are familiar with the shape and understand what it does when clicked upon.
Space: Every element on the interface should be appropriately placed. In other words, a balance should be maintained — neither too many whitespaces nor too much clumsiness.
Texture: This is about creating a visual texture created by playing with other elements such as color, lines, and shapes. The right texture describes a feeling and sets out a meaningful experience.
Size: Focus on the sizing of different elements of the design. The images, the text, and the other design elements should be clearly visible to the naked eye and should appropriately fit to the screen irrespective of the device one uses.
Color: Using the right color combinations is highly important for UI/UX designers. Colors are associated with emotions, which is why using subtle and colors related to positive emotions should be prioritized.

4. Focus on Personalization

Personalization is changing the UI/UX design based on individual users and their preferences. This is best implemented by Netflix, where the content feed depends on users watching history.

The homepage content of Netflix is different for every user. Another example could be Amazon, which showcases products related to the customer’s past purchases.

Personalization enhances the user experience X times and makes a customer stick to the brand. For implementing personalization, implementing machine learning and recommendation systems is imperative.

5. Try Repetitions

Repeating a UI design element across touchpoints and platforms means that you are trying to build brand consistency. This practice strengthens the design and keeps it connected throughout.

For example, the menu and the logo placed at the top stay consistent throughout the user journey — whether they are on the home page, discovery phase, or the checkout phase.

This makes the users feel powerful and gives them control, thus improving the user experience on the whole.

6. Rely on Breadcrumbs

These are the little trails that the designer leaves to help a user understand — what part of the journey they currently in. It is related to giving users control over design and adding awareness to their journey.

These breadcrumbs are placed at the top of the mobile app or website and are clickable too (in case the user needs to return to the previous journey phase).

7. Follow Collaborative Design Practice

Collaborative design practice is the process where designers and developers work together to create an app or the website. The collaborative design practices solve the problems associated with working in silos.

For instance, a designer comes with a finalized design but it is not technically feasible to implement. In this case, the design efforts would be a waste.

This is why, working collaboratively to solve a problem is the best solution. It helps trim down the app or website design cost while ensuring faster time to market.

UI/UX Designers + Developers = Collaborative Design

Conclusion

UI/UX is the backbone of your website or app. Without a powerful user interface and user experience, your innovation will not make the desired difference and will eventually fail no matter how unique your app idea.

In this write-up, we covered everything about UI/UX design and how it is a crucial element to consider when you create an app or a website.

To begin with your product development journey — hire a website design company or a mobile app design company that understands your vision and holds experience in the field.

Design is your brand’s organic business evangelist. Make sure it creates a lasting impact both on visual and functional aspects.

OTT Apps : The New Era of Video Streaming with Social Media Components

The acronym OTT stands for Over-the-top. This convenient shortened little term focuses on the new delivery method of film and TV content over the Internet, done without the need for traditional cable or satellite pay-TV services. OTT apps offer a wide diversity of content thus creating an immersive and engaging experience for consumers. Due to this, there has been a remarkable shift in the media consumption behaviour and pattern of the consumer. The last few years have witnessed an acceleration in this shift.

The rise of Over-The-Top platforms has changed how we create, distribute, and consume content. In the terms of the larger Media and Entertainment industry, OTT has a proven transformative impact. Revenue from OTT media is expected to reach 158.84 billion dollars by 2024. This is approximately more than double generated in 2018 that was 67.8 billion dollars. This service has been a witness to massive growth over the eight years. Revenues saw exponential growth from 6.1 billion dollars in 2010 to over ten times that amount in 2018. The ‘Over the top’ (OTT) video consumption has rapidly evolved globally over the last year.

According to an EY and FICCI report, titled ‘Billion Screens of Opportunity’, the OTT sector in India grew by 59%. From ₹13.5 billion in 2018 OTT sector is expected to hit ₹24 billion by 2021. With data availability and affordability of owning a smartphone, has resulted in growth in OTT consumption. India today tops the world in data usage at 9.8 GB per month. Nearly 3 hours a day being spent on their smartphones. Almost more than 30% of this time is spent on entertainment. OTT platforms have been constantly trying to create compelling content for consumers at price points that provide value.

‘Billion Screens of Opportunity’ – Introducing Social Media Components in OTT Apps

Social Media Apps have gone from being an entertaining extra to a fully integrated part of our daily life. More than half of the world now uses social media apps. Cheap data plans, affordable handsets, the increasing popularity of video services, and 4G networks have helped average data consumption per user in India to grow in terms of data consumption. Social media app users are now spending an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes per day multi-networking across an average of 8 social networks and messaging apps. What was once seen as a communications channel between friends now is a multi-billion dollar platforms. Astonishingly, this platform has an incredible influence on people’s lives. 4.57 billion people around the world now use the internet. Among this 346 million new users have come online within the last 12 months.

Video consumption has been on the rise with a spurt in the number of OTT apps like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and other regional content platforms. Players are adopting aggressive distribution and pricing strategies, including sachet pricing and mobile-only packs. Even marketers know intuitively that the right type of visuals and videos are more effective in gaining engagement overall social media apps. The OTT services explosion has led to the emergence of distinct patterns of content consumption over the past few years. Content consumption has become rampant outside the house and went beyond the traditional television sets. The last two years have seen the rise of OTT apps as a medium of entertainment stupendously. In the fiscal year 2019, the revenue from subscriptions for OTT video platforms across India amounted to approximately twelve billion Indian rupees.

The Future Blend – FLYX, RAVE and Teleparty

Industry estimates indicated that OTT viewers spend an average of 24 minutes per session deciding what to watch. With more streaming services and content in the pipeline, the hassle is only predicted to increase. Discovering the right kind of content that suits your taste and choice has been an issue with consumers. The survey finds that amid so many options, consumers prefer to discover new content based on recommendations. 53% of consumers primarily discover new content based on recommendations from friends and family. Only 21% make the choice based on suggestions from the platform itself.

Acknowledging and addressing this issue entrepreneur Shashank Singh and Mayank Mishra came up with an idea for a unique app called FLYX. Another innovative approach to the amalgamation of social media and the OTT apps was introduced by Michael Pazaratz through his app called Rave. The year 2020 forced even the most popular OTT apps like Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu and HBO to adapt to the demands of the users thus launching, Teleparty. Let’s review the development of these OTT platforms defining the new era of Video Streaming with Social Media Components.

FLYX

FLYX is the first streaming social network. It helps its users discover what to watch and where to watch movies. The algorithm is designed5 to recommend shows depending upon the trending list, friend’s suggestions and user watch history.

It is a cross-platform aggregator of OTT content on top of a streaming social network that helps viewers engagingly discover shows and movies from 100+ streaming providers including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, Hulu, iTunes, Quibi, Apple TV+, HBO, Fandango, CBS, NBC, and many more.

FLYX connects you with your friends and family and uses your taste to recommend content from your favorite providers. FLYX’s unique algorithm provides quick and targeted recommendations by weighing users’ viewing tastes as well as suggestions offered by their peers and content on social media. New York-based startup, FLYX wants to make decision-making easier and faster for viewers. This streaming-focused social network pulls content from 100+ OTT apps. FLYX aims to eliminate the requirement of googling for suggestions. The idea is to deliver a service that easily allows for discovering trending content. FLYX believes this will help to keep consumers updated with the latest, valuable content as per various social media platforms.

Features of FLYX

Users of the app can create fun stories about their favourite shows or can ask questions over the platform. They can let their friends know what they are watching in much fun and creative manner. App users can also post these fun stories to their Instagram and Snapchat accounts too. FLYX allows its users to watch and share trailers with their friends. One can also post trailers on their social networks.

FLYX users can create their watchlist on the go and add movies and shows in one central place regardless of where they are available. The app helps the audience connect with their friends to get recommendations based on what they are watching.

FLYX has recently introduced a Share List feature. The feature will enable users to share recommendations of movies and shows with their friends and family and across social media platforms in real-time, according to a release. The feature is available for both Android and iOS users. Users can create a share list by selecting their favourite movies and shows, giving it a unique name, and then share it in their groups. Users can share these lists on FLYX or any other social platform such as Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter. With the Share list, users can drop comments, tag their friends, add more movies or shows, and even use hashtags on their posts. FLYX in its beta version has already done justice to its motto of – Stop Searching, Start Watching.

RAVE

The Rave app lets you stream videos from Netflix, YouTube, and other sites along with your friends from your phone or tablet. Rave syncs up what you’re watching so your group chat can message and voice chat with each other while whatever’s playing unfolds on your screen.

According to the creators of RAVE,

“Rave combines the most popular mobile activities: watching videos, text messaging, and talking over VoIP. It’s the world’s first multimedia messenger app that allows users to watch their favourite videos in perfect sync. All this can be done while simultaneously socializing with friends in real-time. Powered by a millisecond-precise synchronization engine, Rave can transform a collection of phones into a speaker system, or power international karaoke parties.”

Rave is based on the concept of bringing people together around the media they love. The form of media may vary from binging Netflix together or listening to music with friends. Creators of RAVE believe experiences are better when shared. Focusing on our habit of texting, this app lets users chat by voice while enjoying content from YouTube, Netflix, Vimeo, Reddit, Google Drive, etc. The ability to combine your phones to create an instant speaker system has made it so popular among youngsters at the party. Like any other social media app, RAVE also focuses on connecting users with friends and people afar. One can watch movies and shows with their friends or join public raves and meet people from around the world. Rave is a media app like no other, seamlessly connecting users on iOS and Android because together is the new alone.

Teleparty

ott-apps-defining-the-new-era-of-video-streaming-with-social-media-components

Teleparty (formerly Netflix Party) is a new free tool introduced by Google Chrome considering the extended lockdowns and the current state of the economy. Any user with their own Netflix account can install the Teleparty chrome extension on their desktop or laptop devices. With social distancing being advised profusely such OTT advancement seems to be the next normal for the world of entertainment.

The extension allows users to stream movies and TV shows together with their friends on the OTT platform. Teleparty party allows anyone who joins the party to pause, play, fast forward and rewind the movies, so everyone is always on the same time frame. It also allows members of the group to chat and discuss a movie or a show that they are watching together in a side chat bar. The Google extension lets users socialise by watching movies and TV shows together online. Teleparty believes in expanding the horizon to deliver a fun, relaxing experience that is beyond the realm of Netflix.

Insight into an MVP of OTT Apps

OTT Apps have started a revolution by allowing you to instantly stream the videos. In the age of Netflix, this on-demand environment the bar for video streaming have been raised high. OTT in itself has managed to grab the utmost attention of users, developers and authorities who understand it’s true potential. OTT industry is estimated to grow into a 120 billion dollar industry by 2020. The growing attraction of people towards multiscreen is bound to impact the market in the coming years. Many screen users who have invested in OTT apps have seen a 20% to 30% Increase in their audience and revenue in short time frames. This majorly happened because they took themselves out of a small desktop-only market into a much bigger OTT market by developing mobile apps.

Broadening this whatever, whenever and wherever experience, developers today have an opportunity to develop a significant application along with a business model. Integrating components of live streaming and social networking apps can transform users video streaming experience and would prove to be a significant shift in mindset and approach. As the video service market becomes increasingly competitive, the secret of a successful video service offering is to remain flexible. Establishing a successful business depends on adjusting in line with changing consumer expectations and market conditions. To do this, it is wise to take a core approach and redefine it by user desiring product.

OTT Apps Supported Devices

The ability to watch content as per your convenience on your desired screen is what gained OTT the initial fame. An Internet connection and a compatible hardware device are all that users need today to access and stream desired video content.

Mobile and Tablets: Downloading OTT apps from App or Play Store on your device to stream on-the-go.
Desktop: Accessing OTT video content from desktop-based apps or web browsers.
Smart TVs: Examples for such include PlayStation, Chromecast, Xbox, Apple TV’s, SmartTV’s, FireStick and MORE. Smart TVs are what we truly consider true OTT devices.

Features in your OTT Apps with Social Media Component

Signing Up

An easy signup option, through social media account like Facebook, Instagram etc. This allows the app to discover trending content and provides quick and targeted recommendations. All this is done by weighing users’ viewing tastes and suggestions offered by their peers and content on social media.

Search

Ability to search particular content without having to stream aimlessly. This improves the efficiency of the app by saving time. It is must-have for OTT Apps. The option may offer the ability to filter and segregate options as per the need of the user.

User Profile

This feature of the OTT apps that will connect with the user elegantly by managing their content and information. It will deal with keeping the track of the watch history and the preferred payment and multiple screens in the app option. OTT Apps with Social Media Components may also integrate the ability to form groups within the app itself.

Watchlist

Every OTT application should have the Watchlist functionality. It is similar to a “Wishlist” option on a shopping app or “Watch Later” option on YouTube. Users can just separate and make a list of videos they wish to watch later.

Push Notification

This part of the application would follow up on the video the user is watching. It will send a push notification if there is any update regarding the watched or similar content.

Multilingual Content

OTT players are witnessing a high demand for content in local/regional languages. In a country like India where more than 121 languages been spoken, regional content can bring in a vast amount of app users. According to industry estimates, 75% of new internet users will be from rural India and these users will consume data in local languages by 2020.

Easy Share

The feature will enable users to share recommendations of movies and shows through various messaging apps. They can also share what they are watching with their friends and family across social media platforms in real-time.

OTT Apps – Stop Searching, Start Watching.

A modern-day saying suggests, “The true power of social media is influence.”

Incorporating and encouraging Social media engagement has a prominent impact on the way people consume content. OTT platform that provides hassle-free integration of social media sites will quickly make a place for itself as an easier way to view content. Integrating all major social media platforms provides scope for more engagement with viewers. Social media sites have a vast number of potential consumers that can easily be introduced to the world of online video streaming platforms along with human interaction. OTT apps can allow consumers to sign up on their app/platform using the credentials of their Facebook, Instagram, Google, or any other social media accounts. This provides simpler and faster access to your audio/video streaming content.

The young audience loves this ease when it comes to entertainment. Viewers, especially the youth, expect the same kind of interaction and feel of a community that they experience in other social media activities. With a saturated content market, Streaming Entertainment Provider needs to use social media to your advantage to grow.

Social Media Apps alongside OTT Apps will thrive by establishing themselves as the Hybrid Advancement within the Online Streaming World. To establish such a popular monetized app within the market one needs to understand the Philosophy On Building a Social Media Apps. The start of an established app begins with one unique idea and well- thought business model. YatiLabs excels in executing their client’s complex ideas with ease and elegance. We work closely with our clients to define, design and develop transformative user experiences. To reach out to us, you can easily book a free consultation with our business experts. We look forward to discussing the future with you.

Why onboarding screens are a must for every app?

Let’s face it, we’ve all been interviewed at some point or the other in our lives. And while we are giving an interview, our endeavours are to make an everlasting impression during our first 10 seconds with the interviewers. Similar is the case with the apps. The app when greets a new user is being interviewed by them. And the fast paced world of today has made app users impatient, fickle and hard to please than ever. They expect their first contact with an app should leave unceasing positive effect on them. How can we achieve this? This brings us to our topic of “why onboarding screens are a must for every mobile app?”.

The What’s & Why’s of An App onboarding

Onboarding is nothing but a science behind how users react to the app upon their first time use. Apparently, for the new users it is difficult to navigate an app especially when the user interface is uncommonly than they are accustomed to. Shouldn’t there be a set of screens that brief or progressively assist users in navigating an app? Surely an impeccable onboarding would count for the best user experience and ensure a long term ongoing engagement with the app.

Growth guru Andrew Chen stated that about 79% of the users abandon the app within five to seven days of using it. Hence, it becomes pivotal to impress the first time app users in a very small window that lasts not more than 20 seconds. We at Yati Labs do dry run sessions thats lasts less than 20 seconds and if the app fails to impress, it’s time to look into the causes.

“Onboarding at its core is a learning process, so use education techniques to teach users and build their confidence”

The important thing to note is that you have managed to get your app downloaded by the users. Now it is time to live up to their expectations and fulfil the purpose you wanted users to use the app for. Lets talk about variety of approaches that you could implement on the basis of your business case.

Types of Onboarding

Depending on your business, there are different types of onboarding one could implement. There are namely 5 types of app onboarding process and we cite the examples to support you in decision making and to get your users snapped to the app.

Progressive Approach

Progressive approach is used when you want to show new information to the users as they navigate within the app. This process comes in handy,

If your app uses a fresh user interface and user experiences that you think users aren’t accustomed to.
If you are entering a market with a niche idea and you want to guide users at every step until user journey within the app is finished

Action-Oriented Approach

This approach calls for some users actions before the app generates information to them. It is particularly used by the apps that rely on user generated content. For example,

Users are needed to complete certain steps in order for the app to feed them with useful information. For instance, categories selection in Flipboard app.
Quora, the famous Q&A site, onboards its users by prompting them to follow the topics and finding their friends in order to generate the curated content on their feed.

World famous music app Spotify asks users for the artists/genres/categories in order to curate content on their home feed for them.

Advantage-Oriented Approach

This approach weighs benefits more than the features during the initial contact of users with the app. You should use this kind of onboarding process when you want your users to know how this app can impart values into your life and how they could benefit from the same. For example,

Noted app, the tasks taking app in its onboarding process illustrates how users could get their stuff done with ease by simply speaking into their smartphone app or smartwatch app. And all the recordings are saved with timestamps and shared seamlessly across all devices.

Google Docs app also uses advantage-oriented approach to onboard its app users. The core benefits outlined by google via their onboarding are real-time collaboration, syncing and editing with peers.

Features List Approach

As the name suggests, this approach enlists the features i.e what the app does over instead how to use the app in its onboarding screens. This method is advocated for the app owners that want their users to understand how the app functions which is done by designing related visuals and text in the app onboarding screens. For instance,

Nike Run Club app shows how users could benefit from its coaching, workout, challenge and tracking features.

If your app involves some complex functionality it is important that you use the features list approach for onboarding.

Hybrid Approach

The hybrid approach comprises the combination of both progressive and features to convey the users during the app onboarding. The way you could harness the power of this technique is before the signup process or actual usage of the app, communicate with users about the features that progress them with the features as they navigate within the app.

Grammarly utilizes a hybrid approach during its app onboarding process.
Another way of potentially using the hybrid approach is by communicating both the benefits and features during the onboarding process. For example,

If your app provides value and also pertains to some complicated functionality, you could adopt a hybrid process of onboarding.

Positive Onboarding Experience Adds Great Value To Your App

An effective and smooth onboarding experience boils down to your ability to connect the initial steps you’re asking users with the value your product brings at the end of the day. The quicker you guide your users to the app or communicate the value of your app using time-tested education techniques and modern tools like Product Tours, the more likely your new users will turn into long-lasting customers.

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