The Best Tools for designing a Mobile App

Mobile App development industry is expanding by the day, transforming the way businesses operate worldwide. The ever-increasing number of smartphone users in the global market has resulted in this tremendous popularity of the mobile applications. Could this be the reason why every enterprise is investing in a mobile app? Certainly, Yes.

Designing mobile apps have become more streamlined and simple these days – credits to the various easy-to-use design tools. Once you are clear with your mobile app idea, you need to select an appropriate design tool that will help you design user-friendly apps for your end users. If you are a mobile app designer and want to refine your design toolkit then we have got you covered.

This blog post shares 5 best tools for designing a mobile app. I am sure, you will find the right tool as per the type and functionality of your app.

1. PhoneGap

PhoneGap is an open source platform great for building cross-platform mobile apps, this tool is easier to use and is widely used by professional designers. The interesting thing is, this tool is best suited for mobile apps that do not completely rely on phone’s built-in features for performance.

This free tool is a product of Adobe and is in great demand among developers due to the features, functionality, and overall support it offers. Again, it is a versatile platform that allows designers to design app for all the popular platforms such as Android, iPhone, Windows, and Blackberry.

The only limitation with this tool is, if you are thinking of designing a graphic-intensive app then this may not be a good option as performance issues may occur.

2. Xamarin

Xamarin is a versatile tool that shines at creating native apps for multiple platforms. Surprisingly, with this tool designers can create an app from start to finish using only c# code base. It allows develops to design great apps quickly using the same Apis, language, and IDE. Another major benefit of using  Xamarin is, it allows developers to share 75% of created code across all major mobile platforms. And this dramatically reduces the cost of app development and the app can be created in relatively less time.

If you want to design an app exclusively using C# then this tool is your best bet. This platform is quite popular and has been used by many big brands as well like Foursquare, Microsoft and IBM to name a few.

3. Axure

If you want to create fully interactive mobile apps and looking for an easy to use the tool then let your search rest here. Axure allows designers to create mobile applications and wireframing websites without any need for coding. The tool also consists of all the documentation tools that are required to make the design choices and record the layouts.

It is an elaborative application that has been devised for advance level prototyping solutions.It offers great functionality and gives the option to add interactions, ready-to-use components, patterns, make master pages and more. It surely helps designers to create more impressive  mobile app designs. And, if you are a code freak then the good news is, it gives you an option to code as well.

For Axure, you have the option to either go for the Standard edition or the Pro edition with advanced features.

4. Monocross

Monocross is an open source mobile framework that allows designers to create mobile applications for all popular platforms. This tool supports C#, mono framework, Microsoft, and .net. The interesting thing about this tool is, while still coding in C# designers can enjoy full access to the native device APIs.

Moreover, this tool reduces development time to a great extent as developers are not required to struggle with the minor intricacies of every platform. However, there is one downside of this tool especially for beginners or first-time users as there is only very limited material or support material is available online.

5. Kony App Plattform

Kony is the first choice of enterprises who are in search of a tool that can help them meet with their growing demand of mobile applications. It is an integrated, cross-platform mobile app development tool that is widely used by developers with the sound knowledge of javascript.

Kony is loaded with many impressive features such as API connection, app preview facility, automatic coding, drag-and-drop functionality, and more. Another impressive thing about this tool is, it comes with pre-built apps that provide enough support material to educate beginners and it accelerates the development process.

Despite being packed with such amazing features there is not enough material available for first time-users or novice developers that have made learning curve steep.

Wrapping up

These tools pave the way for designing high-performance apps but you need to take right design decisions. Each tool mentioned here has its own strengths and limitations, pick the one that matches your design needs seamlessly and give life to your mobile app idea. Happy Designing!