Build.me Revolutionizes the Process of App Designing
Estimated reading time: less than 7 minutes
When it comes to designing apps, there are two things in focus, user-friendliness and functionality. Ensuring the two are of optimal quality is quite of a challenge.
Speaking from users’ perspective, we treat apps as our allies and somewhat as problem-solvers that are available to us 24/7, right there, from our pockets. They provide us with what we crave the most – convenience and efficiency. From fitness apps and those focused on productivity to different media apps that ensure we don’t miss any type of relevant content, we are happy to enjoy these tasty fruits of technology that better our lives.
Today, there are around 2.1 million apps available for Android users and around 2 million for iOS, which, you have to agree, are pretty staggering numbers.
But, as end users, we rarely think about the process of creating these apps and just how much effort is needed to get them right, especially in terms of designing and improving dozens of prototypes and testing UX.
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Cleverly, SAP has recognized the need on the market for a solution that will enable independent software vendors to rapidly build, plan, and commercialize their applications within a single partner program. It is something you’ve never seen before. Introducing, Build (build.me), a comprehensive set of cloud-based tools for building apps.
Kickstart Your App-building Project, Fast and Easy
Build has everything you need to design enterprise apps everyone will love. The best thing about it? It is community-driven. By bringing app builders together, the platform simplifies the wholesome process of creating apps.
Build has a strong foundation that includes the following four elements:
- Gallery
- Learning
- Prototyping
- Feedback
As someone who is determined to create an app and is facing a blank page, it can be very difficult to get started. Build’s rich gallery offers a catalogue of Fiori prototypes you can use as a reference or even remix, clone and customize in order to fit your end users’ needs. Kind of like when you’re creating your own website and starting with a template you then personalize according to your needs. This helps you kickstart the process of app designing the right way as it shortens the path of finding a strong starting prototype.
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By exploring existing apps and prototypes, you can find the best UX patterns and implement them into your own solution.
Learn More and Create High Fidelity Prototypes
In order to create an app product that’s certain to delight your users, you have to consider their needs, the way they are already used to interacting with apps, what’s logical and intuitive for them in terms of user-friendliness, etc. All of this requires a fair amount of design thinking.
Given the fact designing thinking is a skill that needs to be learned, you have an opportunity to master it within Build. The fascinating thing here is the way these lessons are organized. Content is understandable and comprehensive, it is a well designed step-by-step process that makes learning fun and easy. The guidance provided is inspiring and helps you think outside of the box.
The learning cards within Build are divided into three phases:
- Discover
- Design
- Develop
Each of these phases consists of three steps that work as instructions. With such guidance, you are certain to explore various options that solve a certain problem you’ve identified, then test the best possible one, prototype and iterate the design with a group of users. Finally, you can start developing and validate your findings, and then set out to the market.
When it comes to prototyping, you can easily create clickable mockups of your apps right from your hand-made sketches. With SAP UI5 elements, you can easily drag-and-drop these mockups and bring them to life, which comes in handy for the first phase of prototyping.
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As we already mentioned, Build has built in Fiori controls. You can easily select a template and leverage it, drag a pattern or create your own. For the most realistic testing of the prototype, you can import data from Excel so that your users get the real feel of the value the app will bring to them.
What makes Build precious is the fact all of the prototypes have real code behind you can easily access and use when finally deciding on the final version of your app.
Get Real Feedback and Join the Conversation
Anyone who has ever tried to build an app knows how hard it can be to bring users in the testing phase and get a relevant sample of feedback that you can actually use to better the product.
Build helps you bridge this obstacle. You can collect informal feedback and even create remote usability studies for each design change you implement.
The data you get is quantitatively described and easily accessed via your account. For instance, you can see how many participants gave their feedback and view them individually, you can check annotations and comments, see the average, slowest, and fastest time spent on testing. Most importantly, you can get a clear overview of participant rates and use these insights for the future.
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If you want, you can also interact with the community, share ideas and exchange knowledge, get feedback from other app builders, and learn in the process. It’s great that you can connect with others and really make the most of their expertise. In the bigger picture, participating in these conversations is what can make your app extraordinary.
SAP Also Offers Their Own UX Design Services
What Build has to offer is quite impressive. However, if you prefer hiring a design professional who will help you bring your idea to life, SAP offers their own UX design services. Their team relies on the human-centric approach and they can help your company set the perfect UX strategy. SAP helps various companies strive by providing them with:
- Advisory service
- Realization service
- Innovation service
SAP has developed a specific environment for designers and thus enabled for great ideas to collide and great minds to effectively collaborate. The SAP AppHaus is a creative space which exists in three different locations (Heidelberg, Germany, Palo Alto, California, and Seoul, South Korea) which brings people of different disciplines together, working towards developing meaningful projects. With the agile methodology, progress is fast and new breakthroughs are easily achieved.
The team has even developed a unique user experience calculator that goes beyond just taking in mind the interface you’ve put in place. It takes in mind both monetary value and human value, with a specific focus on task effectiveness, task efficiency, and user satisfaction.
Needless to say, the ultimate goal for organizations is to come up with a solution that is cost-efficient, brings great ROI, and creates the best possible experience for end users. The ultimate challenge remains to actually get from idea to realization and actually achieve the above mentioned.
Build has truly revolutionized the way we think about designing and testing apps and we are proud .ME has been chosen as such a clever part of their inviting domain name.
Do you have an idea that could potentially bring people together or be so innovative to fundamentally change the way we work or think? Consider .ME as your online home, make your project memorable!
