UI design pattern-driven rapid prototyping for agile development of mobile applications

Abstract

In agile development, lean UX designers perform rapid prototyping and quick evaluation of prototypes to ensure fast releases. To understand designers' workflow during rapid prototyping, we interviewed 15 lean UX designers. We identified the following pain points in the workflow: 1) Compromise on quality of UI design due to time constraint 2) UI design knowledge being scattered among numerous sources such as websites and books 3) Inability of developers to reproduce the same quality of UI design due to lack of UI design knowledge. To address these issues, we propose a UI design pattern-driven approach for rapid prototyping. To realize this approach, we introduce Kiwi, a library for UI design patterns and guidelines that aims to consolidate UI design knowledge for mobile applications. Each UI design pattern consists of a problem statement, context, rationale, and a proposed solution. Additionally, Kiwi provides downloadable and customizable GUI examples, layout blueprints and front-end code for each pattern. Usability evaluation (SUS) of Kiwi with 21 lean UX designers depict good usability and high learnability.