Design Your Own Mobile App

By Brent Ramirez
Blog Content Contributor

In our ever expanding world of technology, our generation has found itself to be at the forefront of the mobile era. We are living in a time where a good amount of people spend a majority of their day looking at the screen of their phone rather than the faces of other people. Today, we have access to many different resources, businesses, and amenities right in the palm of our hand. From social media to brick and mortar businesses, there happens to be a mobile app for anything, and for good reason; that’s all due to the growth and development of the internet.

Thanks to the internet, a majority of daily interactions occur electronically. Things like communication and business can now be conducted by simply opening an app on your phone. With this constantly growing digital market, it’s easy to see that having mobile apps can definitely benefit business. That’s why I believe people should try Adobe’s Xd Beta program.

Many people are familiar with Adobe’s creative tools like Photoshop and Premiere Pro, but not many people know what Adobe Xd is. Essentially, the program is a tool used to design mobile apps, or at least design prototypes for apps. Xd doesn’t intimidate users with all the code and programming typically involved with creating software, apps and websites. Instead, Xd focuses on the creation of an app’s visual aesthetic. Users will have the opportunity to create the user interface (U.I.) for a potential mobile or web application, which is something that we as students living the digital age should take advantage of. As online business grows, so does mobile business. Knowing the basics of app design could be a good trait for students entering the workforce and aspiring entrepreneurs.  

Even if design isn’t your strong suit, learning Adobe Xd is easy. With many tutorials provided by Xd, the Adobe team and the numerous videos constantly uploaded to YouTube, it’s become easier than ever to learn the basics. The program itself is still at the beta level, meaning it has yet to be officially released and is more than likely still being tested and tweaked. Because of this, Adobe has generously released the program for free on the creative cloud and people can download and use the software with no charge as of right now. The program itself does quite a good amount and gives you a great deal of creative possibilities, but it is limited due to its beta stage. Despite the limitations given to any beta software, Xd is an excellent tool for both inexperienced and experienced users alike.

With features like real-time previewing on your own mobile devices and link capabilities that allow users to work together from afar and receive feedback from each other, Xd is a pretty great design tool. It’s quick and easy to learn and just as quick and easy to create with. So if mobile design is something you’re interested in, or you just want to wet your feet a little with your digital abilities, I highly recommend trying Adobe Xd. Happy creating my friends!

Featured image by Brent Ramirez.