Low-code/No-code Platforms: A UX/UI Designer’s Guide
“Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master”
Technology, most obviously, must arise as an enabler, serving people and business, and not the other way around. However, as numerous businesses and brands embark on digital transformation journeys, they are slowly but surely exposed to the horrors of software development lifecycles. Identifying requirements, shortlisting and onboarding the right vendor, and finally, going through the tedious iterative process of finetuning solutions to these requirements – it all turns out to be a rabbit hole.
And this rabbit hole rarely leads to a wonderland.
These solutions rarely fit business requirements, and more often than not, teams and individuals are driven to adapt their work and objectives to available software capabilities. The most obvious impact is visible on UX and UI design. Unintuitive and inflexible, these solutions make it difficult, if not impossible for teams to adapt to. The software that was supposed to be an enabler, driving business goals and objectives, is now the tyrannical overlord.
Low/no-code becomes the bro-code
As businesses look beyond conventional solutions to mitigate these challenges, low-code/no-code applications emerge as a go-to for many. Almost as simple as a plug-and-play solution, these platforms eliminate the need for advanced technical skills. Now, even business users with little or no technical acumen can easily customize tools to their liking with simple drag-and-drop or point-and-click functions coming to their aid.
At the very outset, these applications enable faster deployment and time-to-market at a lower cost. They are capable of doing so by providing value along with speed. With a virtually inexhaustible repository of designs, modules and functionalities, businesses can easily hit the ground running, often in a matter of weeks or days.
While the advantages of low-code/no-code platforms are plenty, it’s still worth taking a look at some of the shortcomings that may render these platforms a double-edged sword.
The problem of plenty
A typical low-code/no-code solution is designed to offer a large variety of UX/UI related features and functionalities. This is done to cover every imaginable business requirement and objective. This, however, can also present designers with a unique challenge when funneling down these features to absolute requirements.
Frugality is one of the building blocks of good design. Designers must be able to look through the clutter and identify features that serve one sole purpose – to streamline user experience and give users exactly what they need. Every element should work towards this unified purpose; any other seemingly “cool” feature is dispensable.
Dealing with a brand identity crisis
A company’s brand identity is about more than its logo, font and color palette. Every interaction a user has with the brand, irrespective of the channel or platform, should be consistent and streamlined with the brand.
With low-code/no-code solutions, companies often mix up UX elements across platforms and devices. This results in an inconsistent user experience. A simple example: a brand’s login and checkout pages on laptops vs. the same on mobile. If there’s a disparity here, users won’t be wrong to assume a lack of brand identity.
This makes it crucial for businesses to maintain a detailed design handbook, not just for visual elements, but also UX and UI elements across platforms. The selected low-code/no-code solution should support scalability and replicability across applications developed for different platforms.
Driving adoption
While the benefits of low-code/no-code applications are out there from the tech point of view, adoption is not always a cakewalk. This holds true, especially from the UX/UI standpoint. These applications may have a world of options that designers can put together to perfect user experience, but lack of adoption usually stands in the way.
So, while tech teams are given precedence in familiarization with low-code/no-code tools, it is equally pertinent to give design teams the same training. They must understand the capabilities of these tools, and build design solutions around them.
The loading-speed conundrum
As mentioned above, the moment brands and designers are faced with multiple feature and functionality options, they’re like kids at a candy store. This doesn’t just lead to a diluted and inconsistent brand identity, but can also slow down an app tremendously. Try to fit in more features than the low-code/no-code tool can handle, and the desired application speed is bound to wean off.
This is yet another reason to keep applications lean and focused on sharpening the user experience. UX/UI designers must focus on this aspect, rather than trying to pack applications with a whole lot of magic tricks their customers will never use. Apart from the design itself, the right technology stack also goes a long way in maintaining acceptable loading speed.
Keeping it real, with data
Businesses are not built purely on gut, so why should the same apply to UI/UX design? Even as designers leverage the many superpowers of low-code/no-code platforms, often times the customer perspective is lost. This results in a flashy, yet barely functional app, that fails to answer customer questions and solve customer problems.
And this is what brings us to the quote we opened with: “Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master”. Letting a low-code/no-code platform dictate design decisions is as good as hitting the ‘self-destruct’ button as far as customer experience is concerned. Instead, designers must start by asking the right questions, and using the answers as a rudder to guide design decisions. The answers, more often than not, come in the form of data. A-B testing, analytics tools, AI-based platforms can all be used towards this end.
Staying future-proof and future-ready
Even as a low-code/no-code platform solves present-day design problems with ease, it may not do the same in the future. This makes it extremely critical to look at platform agility and flexibility from the UI/UX point of view. You may not always know how customers will interact with your brand in the future, but knowing that you have a platform that can support these changes is half the battle won.
The common thread running through the above-mentioned challenges and solutions is the ability of designers to synchronize and integrate with the right low-code/no-code platform. Just as technology is an ever-evolving discipline, the same can be said about design. And if this evolution goes hand in hand, the customer wins, and so does your brand.
