Top Emerging Trends In App UI Design (2025 OUTLOOK)

Top 10 Design Tools For UX And UI (2025 GUIDE)

Selecting software for UX and UI design is never easy. You want to get something that enables you to flex the full extent of your creative muscle, but you also need a tool that will open your mind to new ideas and approaches you'd have missed. And then there's the issue of how well the tool coalesces with a team's administrative procedures, its integration capabilities, and the returns on investment for each pricing plan, among other factors. But don’t worry, we will list the top ten UX and UI design tools to consider using in 2025 and highlight their standout attributes. Sketch Sketch is impressive because, thanks to custom grids, it allows you to easily adapt your UI designs to different target device screens and their respective dimensions. It will also let you easily reuse various components to maintain consistency in your designs, which is very important for branding. Besides the presets and artboards, Sketch offers pixel-level accuracy with a snapping mode and smart guides, so your work has no blemishes. You’ll also benefit from its Boolean editable operations when introducing changes at different stages. Unfortunately, Sketch is only available on macOS, which complicates collaboration. Source: Sketch Adobe XD One standout feature of Adobe XD is the 3D Transforms, which allows you to represent different elements from specific perspectives (angles) and varying depths. This makes it ideal for designs intended for augmented and virtual reality systems. Additionally, Adobe XD offers expansive prototyping capabilities, enabling designers to publish and share interactive designs. With multiple animation options for the smallest components and voice prototyping, you can quickly realize a lively design. You'll have a prototype you can speak to, one that speaks back and makes every action feel like an event of its own but still part of a family. Thanks to Adobe XD's assortment of UI kits, this applies to Google Material Design, Apple Design, Amazon Alexa, and many others. Source: Toptal Figma Figma’s browser-based wireframing capabilities make it a go-to tool for designers who want to quickly create the skeleton for their designs and share them with colleagues. It also enhances collaboration by allowing users to place comments in their wireframes and receive real-time feedback. While Figma may seem like a tool best suited for presentations and brainstorming thanks to extensions like FigJam and its drag-and-drop approach, it allows you to convert wireframes into clickable prototypes to get a taste of the intended experience. Source: Digidop Balsamiq This tool offers a much leaner take on wireframing, going easy on the add-ons and keeping users focused on channeling their whiteboard or notepad workflow. However, it has numerous built-in components to drag and drop into your project's workspace with minimal learning time. Lastly, Balsamiq works on both PC and Mac. Source: Balsamiq >>> Related articles: Differences In UX Demands Of A Desktop And Mobile App For A SaaS ProductAtomic Design In Software Development Overflow Overflow helps you combine designs made in various tools, such as Adobe XD, Sketch, and Figma, to create coherent user flows when envisioning the journey through your app. You can also add device skins. You can use different shapes and colors to lay out a process's logic as you draw your user flow diagrams. Those viewing the diagram can easily follow it and see what happens when a particular condition is met and what the screen looks like. Overflow can also convert your prototype links into connectors in the diagram, so you don't have to redo that work. Source: Overflow FlowMapp FlowMapp offers a more stripped-down approach to creating user flow diagrams. This makes it perfect for designers still in the strategizing phase who don't have many complete screens to include in the diagram. While it may seem rudimentary, FlowMapp can help you make important discoveries. For instance, some screens may need to be split, with one accessed using a button on another, while others need to be condensed into one because the functionality is highly related. FlowMapp gives a more comprehensive view, so other stakeholders like copywriters and sales executives can contribute to the UX plan with a greater understanding of the opportunities and boundaries present in the journey. It’s great for choosing where to insert CTAs and additional messages, like warnings at checkout, to combat fraud or collect user feedback. Framer Framer’s code approach, origins, and compatibility with React suit designers focused on the latest web design technologies. Nonetheless, it offers more user-friendly UI design tools and usability testing features. More importantly, Framer has several plugins that designers can use to embed media players, grids, and other elements into designs to capture content from services like Twitter, Snapchat, Spotify, Soundcloud, and Vimeo. It also has a variety of template categories, ranging from landing pages to startups, splash pages, photography, agency pages, etc. Source: Goodgrad Proto.io Thousands of templates and digital assets and hundreds of UI components. That is one of the starting points Proto gives you to make your designs come alive within your web browser. Secondly, you can start your prototyping journey by importing files from Adobe XD, Figma, Photoshop, and Sketch. You'll also be able to explore different results for touch events, play with many screen transitions, and utilize gestures, sound, video, and dynamic icons. Proto.io comes with mobile, web, and offline modes. Source: Proto.io Axure Axure helps you make prototypes easier to follow by inserting conditional logic. This tool also encourages documenting as you work on high-fidelity prototypes rich in detail. Coupled with the ability to test functions and generate code for handoff to developers, Axure enables team members to comb through work swiftly with minimal oversight, having ready releases much faster. Source: Axure InVision InVision incorporates digital whiteboarding into the journey to a working prototype, which makes it great for projects where a team wants to keep ideation running concurrently with actual design work for as long as possible. It comes with a decent list of integration capabilities, ranging from project management tools like Jira and Trello to communication tools like Zoom and Slack. You can even hook up Spotify to provide a soundtrack for members doing freehand brainstorming. Source: Invisionapp Wrapping Up Every tool has pros and cons, so always consider what phase of the project a specific tool fits into, how well it brings everyone together, and how much creativity it supports. While we've focused on Atomic Design In Software Development top ten picks, many other tools could dominate top UI design trends in 2025, such as Marvel, Origami Studio, Webflow, and more. For professional help in selecting the right UX and UI design tools, contact us for a free consultation.

Differences In UX Demands Of A Desktop And Mobile App For A SaaS Product

While it was more common for individuals and institutions to buy software in the earlier days, the concept of software as a service isn’t that new either. And as smartphones get smarter and more accessible, many product companies are shifting their focus to this ballooning market to sustain and increase profit. But even though many have increased revenue by enhancing their mobile apps, some companies are excelling thanks to a good desktop app UX. Mobile apps often shine when it comes to daily life products for the individual end user while desktop apps encapsulate stunning collaboration and productivity solutions. A recent StatCounter study put desktop traffic at 56.51%, with mobile traffic at 50.48%. Many other reports show that there’s still a roughly 60-40 split in mobile and desktop traffic. Both market segments are here to stay, so let’s examine the differences between UX design for desktop and UX design for mobile: UI Details One of the significant differences is that desktop users are more comfortable having plenty of items fixed on a single UI screen/window. In contrast, mobile users have limited screen space and may use their thumbs more than any other finger, so you can hardly get away with a cluttered UI. Not only does it look overwhelming, but it also increases the chances of a user tapping the wrong button/option. Unfortunately, there are no straightforward solutions to this challenge. You're likely to tuck a feature/function two or more screens away, which users won't be so happy about. Luckily, some designs enable you to have retractable menus that slide into place and then slide away. You also have the option to create circular icon menus that appear when you hold down a button for a while. Ultimately, you should have a navigation option that makes it easy to go to the previous page or return to the general menu. Source: Freepik You’ll also need to include a button for the most important action a user can take at that stage in their journey. If it's the opening page, this could be a signup button; if it's a category page, it could be an "add to cart" button or a "buy" button if it's the checkout page. Whatever the CTA is, it should be visible. The user shouldn't have to first scroll down the page. It should also be within the thumb zone, so ensure it's wide enough. UX design for mobile should also consider the unique gestures like swiping, tilting and shaking that can make a mobile app more fun to use, not forgetting the use of haptic feedback to respond to a user’s command. >>> Explore more articles about UI and UX design: Top 10 Design Tools For UX And UI (2025 GUIDE)Top Emerging Trends In App UI Design (2025 OUTLOOK)Atomic Design In Software Development Performance Ideally, both desktop and mobile app versions should be as smooth and fast as possible. However, when you consider the context in which they operate and the behind-the-scenes work involved in making apps faster, you realize that you might need to put more emphasis on one of them. Mobile apps are more likely to be run on devices with limited RAM, storage space and processing power. Additionally, users are more likely to travel with mobile devices to remote areas where internet connectivity may be poorer. This is why it is essential to optimize mobile apps so they can still work fine when low on resources. From memory allocation to caching, reliance on CDNs and compression for lighter media file versions, offline modes, variable streaming bitrates and data template reuse, there are various techniques you can use to achieve higher mobile app performance. Additionally, don’t forget to test on as many devices and OS versions as possible. Personalization Many software users want to feel like the product was made just for them and it deeply understands them. In the past, personalization came in the form of changeable skins, fonts and colors. Later, it advanced to more important features like changing languages, currencies and measurement systems. However, personalization has to evolve even further. For instance, if the user has enabled your mobile app to access their location, can it suggest the perfect playlist when it detects that they are by the beach or at a riverside campsite or safari lodge. Can your shopping app switch to suggestions for sweaters and cold-weather clothes when the user is in a cold region? Will your food app point them to the places with the best hot beverages and confectioneries? Personalization covers several areas, including the way a person types and uses emojis, the order in which they browse pages, how they use search bars and more. Unlike desktop apps that run on devices like work computers that stay in the same place and are shared, or laptops that usually move between work and home, a mobile app often runs on a device that spends most of its time with one person, going everywhere. This is why making mobile app versions as adaptable to the user as possible is crucial. Security and Customer Support On the security front, mobility creates more headaches since it increases the chances of a user losing a device or connecting to an unsecured public network, among other scenarios. This means you should augment mobile apps with more security options, such as fingerprint locks, face ID and other approaches that a mobile device's native hardware can allow. On a deeper level, developers can look into code obfuscation, "root," and "jailbreak detection " to further protect against attack techniques that take advantage of the mobile app-specific architectural and operational characteristics. When it comes to customer support, mobile app UX designers can look into things like the ability to screenshot an error message page and quickly submit it via live chat or tap a call button to speak to an agent. Another vital customer support area is self-help. Remember, desktop app versions have the advantage since there's more space to display a help article column alongside the actual screen/dashboard where the user is working. They can also properly display video demos and offer an Info view where you see what a button or other element does by hovering the cursor over it. That said, mobile app UX designers need to find ways to condense knowledge bases and other self-help materials within the app to simplify the journey from learning to applying. They can also use GIFs to strike a middle-ground between heavy videos and static images when delivering demos. Wrapping Up Overall, it's prudent not to consider the desktop outdated. Instead, focus more on what it easily accommodates, then figure out how to emulate that on mobile devices. As always, it helps to work with a team of professionals conversant with the nuances of developing and delivering desktop and mobile SaaS apps. You can start this journey by contacting the SupremeTech team for a free consultation on how we bring software ideas to life for our clients.

Must-Have Tools for Business Analyst

In today’s fast-evolving tech world, working smart has become even more crucial than working hard. In IT environments — and in any modern business — managing a growing amount of complex work can’t rely solely on memory, scattered emails, or individual Excel sheets. One of the most effective ways to boost productivity intelligently is through the use of supporting tools.This isn’t just a trend anymore — it’s quickly becoming the standard in many companies. For Business Analysts (BAs), the right tools don’t just make you more efficient — they make you more professional. Let’s explore some essential tools every BA should have in their toolkit 👇 1. Draw.io A free, intuitive diagramming tool to visualize processes, systems, data, or ideas.It’s ideal for modeling workflows and mapping business logic. Key Features: Free and no registration required — just go to diagrams.net.Flexible storage — save files locally or to Google Drive, OneDrive, GitHub, GitLab.Rich icon library — supports UML, BPMN, flowcharts, network diagrams, and more.UML & BPMN ready — perfect for use cases, activity diagrams, and business flows.Easy collaboration when stored on shared drives.Cross-platform — available on web, desktop, and as a VS Code extension. Limitations: Real-time collaboration isn’t as strong as tools like Figma.Performance may drop with very large or complex diagrams. 2. Miro Miro is an online collaborative whiteboard designed for teams to brainstorm, plan, and visualize ideas in real-time. Key Features: Infinite canvas — visualize projects without space limits.Real-time collaboration — comment, vote, and co-edit instantly.Rich templates — includes user story maps, journey maps, mindmaps, Kanban boards, and wireframes.Integrations — connects with Jira, Confluence, Slack, Teams, Google Drive, and more.Great for mapping processes, use cases, roadmaps, or even UI mockups. Limitations: Free plan limits the number of boards.Large boards with many assets may slow down performance. 3. Trello Trello is a Kanban-based task management tool that helps teams visualize and track progress easily. Key Features: Simple drag-and-drop interface.Highly customizable boards, lists, and cards.Each card can include checklists, attachments, labels, due dates, and assignees.Seamless integration with Google Drive, Slack, Jira, GitHub, and others.Real-time updates across all team members.Works on web, desktop, and mobile. Limitations: Free plan limits the number of integrations (Power-Ups). 4. Jira Jira by Atlassian is the industry-standard project management tool for Agile teams. Key Features: Built for Scrum and Kanban teams.Highly customizable workflows, fields, and automation rules.Transparent tracking of tasks, blockers, and progress.Integrates with hundreds of DevOps, CI/CD, and testing tools.Scales from individual tasks to enterprise-level project portfolios. Limitations: Steep learning curve for beginners.Can be costly for large teams.Requires experienced admins for setup and maintenance.May run slower on large, complex projects. 5. Typescale A handy tool for generating consistent typography systems (font size, line height, spacing) for web or app design. Key Features: Automates type scale creation.Multiple presets and flexible customizations.Preview and export CSS directly.Ensures responsive and accessible typography. Limitations: Not suitable for all design systems or content types.Limited control over detailed responsive behavior. 6. Adobe Color An intuitive color palette generator to create harmonious and accessible color schemes. Key Features: Easy-to-use color wheel with real-time updates.Auto-generates color harmonies based on color theory.Supports HEX, RGB, and CMYK formats.Integrates seamlessly with Adobe tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, and XD.Community palette sharing and inspiration gallery. Limitations: Contrast still needs manual checking for accessibility.Some auto-generated palettes may need manual tweaking.Colors can look different on various screens. 7. Contrast Checker A simple but vital tool to ensure readability and accessibility by checking text and background contrast per WCAG standards. Key Features: Simple interface — input colors and get instant feedback.Ensures compliance with accessibility guidelines.Real-time updates as you adjust colors.Bridges design and development — everyone can validate contrast easily. Limitations: Doesn’t reflect results accurately for complex backgrounds.Doesn’t account for font size, spacing, or user testing conditions. Why Use These Tools? Transparency: Everything — from tasks to deadlines — is clearly tracked. For example, Trello helps answer questions like “Who’s doing what?” and “What’s the current status?”Visualization: Tools like Draw.io help transform abstract logic into clear, easy-to-understand diagrams.Collaboration: Integrating tools like Miro, Jira, or Slack ensures everyone stays aligned and reduces miscommunication. Tips for Getting Started Start small: You don’t need every tool at once. Begin with Jira or Trello, then expand.Build shared habits: Tools only work when the whole team uses them consistently.Learn by doing: Explore free trials and tutorials, then apply them directly in your current projects.Stay updated: Tools evolve fast — keeping up helps you stay ahead. Using tools isn’t just about having more software — it’s about changing the way we work.They make our processes more transparent, our teamwork more seamless, and our output more efficient. For Business Analysts, these tools are not just “nice-to-have” — they’re what turn you from a task executor into a strategic enabler for your team. Read more related articles from SupremeTech!

How to Step Out of the “Forwarder” Shadow?

Have you ever, as a Comtor or Business Analyst (BA), felt like… a messenger? Every time the client asks something, you turn to the team, copy their answer, translate it, and send it back — just passing messages instead of actually owning the conversation. At SupremeTech, our BA team jokingly calls this role the “Professional Forwarder.” Through many “lost in translation” moments, we’ve learned valuable lessons on how to step out of that shadow — to become real connectors between the client and the team. Let’s hear from our BA team as they share practical tips to help you move beyond being a “forwarder” drawn directly from real project experience. Signs You Might Be Forwarding Too Much 1. The classic line: “Let me check with the team.”It’s not wrong — but if you’re saying it too often, it might mean you don’t fully understand the issue. 2. Lack of confidence in meetings: Many new BAs struggle with open-ended questions. When you don’t fully understand the product, you can’t confidently answer questions from both the client and your internal team. The PM asks about progress, you look at the Sprint Backlog full of numbers — and still don’t know where to start. 3. Avoiding technical talk: The moment you hear technical terms, you “pass the ball” to the PTL — without really understanding what’s being discussed. 3 Steps to Escape the “Forwarder Manager” Role So, how can you move from being a Forwarder to becoming a true communicator — someone who understands, connects, and leads discussions effectively? Here are three simple but powerful steps you can start practicing right away: 1. Before Forwarding, Ask Yourself: Do I understand at least 70% of this content?Have I tried to reproduce the bug, test the feature in the DEV environment, or explore the possible cause myself?If I were the dev/tester receiving this message, would I have enough context to understand it?Can I classify the issue — is it about UI/UX, logic, data, or business flow?Can I try to answer part of it first, then confirm later? 👉 This habit helps you learn something new every day, instead of just finishing tasks every day. 2. In Every Meeting – Observe and Lead What is the team really discussing? Do I understand the big picture?If the conversation is technical, how does it relate to the overall context?Is anyone confused? Can I help clarify? If you find yourself unsure about all three — take notes, take notes, and take notes.Meeting minutes and your own notes will help you retain details and follow up later for deeper understanding. 3. Build Strong Foundations Whether you’re a Comtor, BA, or PO, a solid foundation in product knowledge, business logic, and basic technical understanding helps you make better decisions — and lead your team effectively. Don’t get stuck thinking “that’s not my task.” Instead, learn actively by: Reading about technical keywords used in your project.Redrawing the business flow yourself to truly understand it.Asking devs, QCs, PTLs, and clients for their perspectives.Finding a technical advisor who can review your understanding and answer your tech-related questions. Every time you’re about to forward a message, pause for a minute — dig a little deeper.Each pause adds to your knowledge and analytical mindset. These small daily efforts will sharpen your skills and confidence — helping you grow not only as a professional BA, but also as a potential Project Leader who truly adds value to the team.