Low-Code and UX: How do they work together?

User experience (UX) has earned greater respect in recent years, with there being a notable correlation between high customer satisfaction and high returns. Forrester has even stated that a well-designed user interface could raise a website’s conversion rate by up to 200%, while a better UX design could yield conversion rates by up to 400%. Frictionless applications are more likely to engage users, and in turn develop their relationship with a brand or organization. With customers demanding faster delivery, the difficulty is creating these quality experiences under shorter timeframes. 

This article will explore how low-code can not only rapidly produce applications, but help keep UX design at the forefront of development.

Defining Low-code

Before we dive into the relationship between low-code and UX design, let’s start by defining low-code itself. 

Low-code accelerates the development of applications by minimizing the amount of manual coding required, using visual, modular design elements. This allows for a far wider category of people to create their own applications, while professional developers can greatly boost their productivity and cut down on repetitive coding segments. No-code shares many of these attributes, but aims to eliminate coding altogether, and is usually aimed for a ‘citizen developer’ audience who may not know how to program. This usually comes at the trade-off of customization, which in isolation may make it less optimal for creating a unique UX. However, both tools have made great strides in potential, and are an effective way of bridging the gap between business and software development. In a sense, their own success stems from the quality user experience that they offer developers and non-developers alike.

Without a doubt though, the ability to rapidly prototype software is one of the biggest draws to low-code, providing organizations the speed and agility to react to changing markets and customer needs. And crucially, without great financial expense or developer dependency.

A potential drawback to this rapid creation of software is that applications may lack the visual polish or aesthetics of a solution that has been hand-coded from scratch. However, not every application needs a flashy design, with a solution’s usability generally taking precedence. Despite its inherent speed, low-code can still cater for a seamless UX, and may even make its creation more manageable than traditional methods of development.

UX Design and Low-Code Platforms

Reduced coding does not automatically equate to poor UX. It is unlikely that users will lament an application’s lack of hand-written code, but they will almost certainly curse a design that favors technical complexity over their needs, resulting in a product that is hard to navigate or unwieldy. With low-code, it is possible to balance rapid development with a strong end-user focus.

Sometimes coding considerations can overshadow an application’s design. With the time and resources saved through low-code though, more time can be spent fine-tuning an application’s UX. Moreover, low-code platforms can incorporate pre-built UI assets (such as dashboards templates, progress bars and switches) that can be reused across different applications. This is a helpful way of standardizing quality UX design across multiple applications, ensuring that icons, text, and other visuals remain consistent. 

This is not to say that low-code removes the potential for UX design creativity. With a range of different pre-built tools at hand, experimentation can become a more natural part of the design process. Developers and business users can quickly play with different designs, finding the right setup that matches the needs and behaviors of their customers.

As well as engendering creativity, low-code’s ease of use means greater prospects for collaboration. And greater collaboration means that more skilled and knowledgeable people can get onboard a project. By using a shared, visual language, business experts who know the customer best can therefore play a more active role in developing an application, providing a constant layer of feedback. Many businesses are striving to make the customer experience a more central part of their ethos, and a collaborative development environment is a step in the right direction.

Finally, it will be important to align a development platform with your desired design goals. As touched on previously, platforms that offer only no-code may not have the reach to create a bespoke UX, and even low-code may not be enough in more complex use cases. This is why a platform like Plant an App, which combines no-code, low-code and custom code capabilities, will help teams quickly sculpt an application’s UX, but without compromising on quality. Furthermore, platforms that offer extensible services can provide teams the option to draw from leading third-party design tools, and match their product with the industry standards that their customers expect.

Conclusion

Using a low-code platform can make software development a dynamic and inclusive practice, empowering developers and business users alike to create applications faster than ever. And with the right platform, it’s possible to leverage low-code development to create a superior user experience.

While traditional coding will always have its virtues in application design, low-code tools are unveiling new ways of defining the user experience. This includes clever pre-built tools and a more visual representation of a final product. Different applications will always have their own unique requirements, but if the objective is to create the best UX in the shortest time possible, low-code development provides a compelling alternative.

Whether you’re a product designer, a front-end developer, or a UX specialist, Plant an App provides the perfect environment to quickly create applications with seamless user experiences. Packed with a rich set of highly customizable UI components and integration options, you can create people-centered products with true value.