UX and UI designers work closely with engineers throughout product development to build and implement functional user interface design concepts and wireframes. Regular communication, feedback and testing are required to ensure collaboration works smoothly and deliver a user experience that aligns with intended design goals.
Nick Budden, a serial entrepreneur who worked as a UI/UX designer, wanted the designers to spend solely on design work, not handoffs or meetings with engineers. To address some inefficient steps in the design process, Budden established the Phase in 2017.
“Implementing the UI is an expensive, time-consuming manual process that involves designers, product managers and engineers,” Budden said in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch. “Comprehensive user testing will also be delayed until the process is complete.”
The Taipei and Berlin-based startup is building a no-code platform that will help UI/UX designers create fully interactive prototypes, with 13 million on Thursday from Gobi Partners, New Economy Ventures and Palm Drive Capital He said he raised dollar funding. , Shilling VC, Squareone, Wi Harper, 42cap, and 500 Global.
Today, the startup has released its UI animation tool, the first product to compete with Adobe After Effects and Figma. According to the phase, when the software creates an interactive website or app simulation, the UI/UX and product designers “no manual coding or [using] An error-prone AI plugin. “It can also export UI code ready for production, speeding up the design process.
According to Budden, Phase’s products are much easier for UI/UX designers than other tools such as Adobe After Effects and Figma. “A key differentiator for Figma is the integrity of the prototype. Therefore, Figma allows you to prototype 20% or 30% of the actual website. After that, the other 70% the prototype is not running. Or you can create 80%. Then you need to communicate with the engineers, product managers, and people have to understand that,” Budden says. “Our products are built to run 100% of your actual websites and apps.”
This is probably the first in a series of releases, and this year and next year, its three UI designs and code tools for wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) will have all the manual work you need this year and next year There are plans to streamline the UI/UX Design, Budden told TechCrunch. Three new features are UI Advanced Prototyping, UI Design, and UI Code Export.
“UI animation hasn’t seen it as a standalone market for a long time. It’s an opportunity to go to today’s market, but when a tool like Figma integrates animation as a built-in feature, that window will close,” says the CEO of Phase. told TechCrunch. . “Our strategy is to get only the early traction with animation now and move the roadmap to a larger market before that shift occurs.”
Soft launch in Korea
Phase first introduced the platform in Korea in May after finding a trusted local partner to help launch.
The designers adopted new tools by observing their discussion and use of them, leading to widespread adoption of design tools, noting that this influence is often “hyperlocal.” For example, designers in London are primarily influenced by others in the area.
“Because of the dynamics of this region, we were able to launch each region and be deeply involved with each design community and build momentum,” Budden said.
There are around 100,000 designers in Korea, and the phase says that more than 10,000 people have tested it within weeks of the product’s launch. This practical approach has successfully launched community growth, at least in Korea, but not as well as it hoped in other regions.
“The large market has a more distributed design community that makes it difficult to gain traction. After months of struggling to replicate Korea’s success, we have shifted gears and made global “We’ve opened a beta,” the Phase CEO said. “We saw rapid and sustained growth by adjusting our strategy to go to the market. That momentum, combined with product stabilization, has now come out of the beta.”
The Phase aims to enter the US and European markets as its next priority.
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