Free UX/UI tools and software for every beginner in 2022
2022 is a year of opportunities and learning new skills. The last two years of Pandemic have taught many young talents to self-learn and fuel their growth from a career point of view. Currently, this world looks like a pool of opportunities, and there are way too many new fields that one needs to learn about. There is a boom in the UX industry; Metaverse is in the pipeline, so many new terms such as blockchain, virtual reality, crypto, and so on are getting very popular. 2022 looks like a year that makes it even easier for people to pick up a new skill or even quit their job to start something they are passionate about. This blog will make you understand the UX process and tools/software used in each stage.
Who is this blog for?
This blog is for anyone with a brilliant application idea, understands coding but is unaware of the perfect strategy, has a lot of research, and fails to give your findings a user-friendly face! So you could be a student, professional, NOOB, and anyone who wants to start or improve his existing UX process.
(Keywords — Metaverse, UX/UI, design, wireframe, application)
The UX Design process
UX was first coined back in 1993 by Don Norman while working at Apple. Since then, many companies, designers, developers, researchers, and institutions have designed new UX methodologies. This design process works like a guide to help them build the best products with a minimum chance of error. Beginners, and professionals, get confused while working on each stage of the process due to a lack of proper tools and understanding. So let us look at the design process and the tools needed for each step.
Understand — Define — Dream — Design — Develop — Deliver
1. Understand (Discovery)
Every design project starts with understanding the scope of the problem, users, demographics, competition, and a lot of background research. It is an essential stage that acts as the entire project's backbone. You will need to collect a lot of data, user insights, stakeholders' interviews, statistical data, or even conduct an in-house usability test for analyzing the problem. Some free tools listed below will help you get the best results.
- UserBit is an excellent tool for collecting user insights and analyzing and sharing them with the team.
- User Interview — this tool helps you collect all the interviews and insights from users, stakeholders, and even advisors. It is free for the first 100 users and needs premium access to more users.
- The World Bank, Free database, Census India — these three websites are a must-visit while looking for statistical data.
- PDF Drive — this website is excellent for finding and quickly downloading books and PDFs on any subject matter. Books are the most fantastic source of information, and this website is equipped with all the different varieties.
- Use a phone screen recorder, in-house camera (mobile or DSLR), and pen and paper to do quick usability tests.
2. Define
This stage is about being clear of your goal, aka—problem statement. You will have some qualitative and a lot of quantitative data by now. Remember, the first two stages are when we go back and forth to research and analyze the collected data. In this stage, we create a list of the right questions and ask our users by conducting personal interviews and sending survey forms. It helps us understand the real problems our existing and To-be users face. Their statements and insights help us define the key problem areas that require our focus and attention. Finally, we create personas, customer journey maps, empathy maps to make it easier for our team members and stakeholders to understand the insights thoroughly.
- Google forms — this tool comes free with your Google account. It will help you send across your survey forms to a larger group of people and help you analyze the data very quickly.
- UXPerssia, Hubspot — this tool helps you create a good-looking persona after getting insights from the users. It is free for one user but is not accessible for an organization.
- Visual Paradigm is a convenient template design online tool that gives you loads of free templates to choose from.
- Adobe is — a one-stop solution for all your persona, CJM, Empathy map temples that can easily be edited on photoshop, illustrator, or even XD.
- Praxie — streamline your following Ethnographic research by pre-planning and carrying these templates to ensure you gather all the data
3. Dream (think)
This stage is all about ideas, brainstorming, questioning the odds, and dreaming of your product coming alive. You would have collected all the data from possible sources. You would feel more aligned with your team and find it easier to collaborate to achieve your goals. During this phase, you can think of all the possible solutions and plan the execution. In addition, we often work on storyboards, scenarios, product illustrations to understand how our users interact with our product. This process also helps us finalize the information architecture, and task flows for a perfect job.
- Storyboard That — one of the best tools to create quick storyboards with pre-designed characters, backgrounds, and a library of expressions. Use some of these tips while narrating a story — Storytelling guide.
- Canva — create super quick interactive pitch presentations, infographics, and posters to explain your idea in a better way.
- Brainstorming — this website has 29 unique ideas that will help you fuel your next brainstorming session in person. First, make sure you have loads of sticky notes and sketch pens handy for these sessions. Giant whiteboards and chart papers are the best companions for creating strategic plans and visualizing ideas.
- Freeplane — this tool is for your next digital mind-mapping session. You can download and install it on your computer and use it as one Adobe software.
- With over 1000s of templates to choose from, Miro makes collaboration and brainstorming a lot of fun. Just like Figma, you will be able to see users move around on the screen and pitch ideas on a zoom call.
- Coggle — this tool is for your next online mind-mapping session. It is free forever for users to discover all the possibilities of their ideas.
- Ideament — this mobile app (IOS AppStore)helps you design flow charts, task flows, user flows, and even see the flow on the screen.
- Figma template — make unique information architecture with Figma templates.
- Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets — use excels because you know it because it is easy and helps you create rapid information architecture and task flows.
4. Design
Finally, the stage where the product is designed and made ready to be launched. We often get designers, researchers, developers, and stakeholders developing the product during this phase. We know what we will create by this point, and we start building the wireframes/mockups and designing the final look using these free and powerful softwares.
- Figma — is paid in most cases, but if you are a student or work for an institution, you can avail the premium features by getting your account verified. Create low fidelity digital wireframes and high fidelity working prototypes. You can use additional features such as animation, plugins, 2D to 3D, and even write codes for your design.
- Adobe XD — you can use this tool for free if you have a creative cloud account. Explore multiple plugins, community templates, and accessible UI kits to create your wireframes and working prototypes.
- UIZard — create intelligent and quick wireframes here. This tool is free for students and beginners.
- Framer — one of the most fantastic interaction tools helps you create micro-interactions. Create your dream app without using any codes and run it on your phone.
- Hotjar — a usability testing tool that helps you identify issues in your design. You can get heatmaps, user interaction insights, and videos to help you find the key problem areas in your design.
- Google optimizer — an A/B testing tool; if you have worked on a few versions of a website and want to test which out of the two versions is user-friendly, use this free tool to test your product.
- Mockingfish — this tool is free for one year till you get your dream job or funding for your app. Plan and execute A/B tests with multiple users.
5. Develop
Each organization follows different methods to create its designs and develop them. For example, organizations use developing languages where both front-end and back-end developers work together to create a responsive and fully functional platform. For example, they may use JavaScript, CSS, Python to create these. during this phase, we often see a collaboration of most of the stakeholders because we are constantly testing our designs and taking feedback for minimum scop of error. So even if you are very new to coding, you can explore these few tools to start your journey.
- Flutter is one of the best and fastest ways to see your app come alive without getting into any tedious app development process.
- AppWrite — once you have sorted your front end, it becomes necessary to map it to your back-end and AppWrite steps in just then.
- W3School — did you always want to code but do not know how to start without going for a full-stack development course, then this website is the one-stop solution for you.
- GitHub — millions of people have hosted their college projects to industrial software on GitHub. Even after being one of the biggest server spaces for millions of software, it provides students with a special free plan.
- BootStrap is a one-stop solution for sourcing all your front-end features and creating responsive, smart, and fully functional websites and apps.
- Google Cloud — get a starter free space to host your app on google cloud worth $300
- Bubble.io — work on apps for free without knowing any codes and launch them on the App store.
5. Deliver
A UX process is hence a complete guideline to solve a design problem. By the time you come to the design and development phase, you have already created your product and have verified the same with different stakeholders, users, and experts. After the Develop stage comes to the Delivery stage, which allows you to launch your product in the market and let users interact with the same; once your product is established, you can continue collecting statistical data and insights from real users by using these tools -
- Google Analytics — a great analytical data tool that gives you insights about the users while they interact with your product.
- Firebase — Continue A/B testing, user testing, and help make your machines smarter by getting detailed insights about user interactions.
These insights play a crucial role in fixing bugs, working on new features, and creating an engaging platform.
To sum up, there are way too many paid and free tools for everyone who wants to start their journey in UX/UI. These are some of the top free tools that I have been using as a Lead UX/UI professional. However, I still believe that having a diary and a pen with sticky notes will help you document ideas on the go. I have been using Excel, word, and even notes to compile my observations from the field. Speak with your friends and people you encounter while working on any product. I have got some of the best insights from users and some mind-blowing ideas making their way to the project.
About the author :
Naina Jain is working as the Lead UX/UI researcher and has been associated with academics and design. She has taught over 1000+ students and professionals and helped them start their journey in UX/UI.