CX vs UX in the Era of Experience

mins to read

We all know that we should not confuse user experience with customer experience but… What is the real difference?

There's nothing as tricky as specific terms that sound "obvious" and make us feel like we know exactly what they mean since everyone knows what is user and what is experience, right?

To put it simply, UX (user experience) is about all the interaction that end-user has with a website or app. CX (customer experience) is the interaction with all the facets of business: sales manager, customer service assistance, website, and so on. Here is a visual representation of CX and UX:

Another abbreviation that might add to the confusion is UI, which stands for user interface. User interface is all that’s in between human and computer: menus, icons, sounds, animation, and so on. UI goes hand in hand with UX. To learn more about the difference between them, read our article “UI vs UX. Ketchup, Chicken, and Egg”.

UI, UX, and CX are all part of the same pie. For now, let's focus on CX and UX differences.

Marketing vs design

However close these terms might seem, UX and CX specialists belong to different departments. Customer experience is the responsibility of the marketing team, while user experience is the object of product design.

For both departments, experience is one of the key focuses. Nowadays businesses know that people are willing to pay 4,5 times more for a good customer experience. The vast majority of people check reviews before making buying decisions and trust them more than any other marketing message. The feedback economy is taking over the business world.

As a design agency, we deal mostly with user experience, but communication with the marketing team in order to better understand customers’ needs and problems is a must for our work.

User vs Customer

One of the simplest ways to explain the difference between customer experience and user experience is to understand what is the difference between customer and user. These terms are easier than CX and UX, but still, some people think that they are interchangeable. Especially those who work with digital products often call customers users and vice versa.

For them, the word user is quite clear: these are the people who use your websites, apps, and whatever other things you produce.

What about customers? This is a much older term. Each business has customers: banks, shops, medical institutions, and so on. In digital products, there are customers, too. They are the people who buy the product.

An example: if you are creating a B2B solution, and your sales manager is working with one person on the client’s side. This person is the customer. The rest of the client’s team are the product users. In this case, there can be one customer and 50 users.

Of course, the customer and the end user can be the same person. However, their experience can be different, as we have explained above. Users may find the website great but be disappointed by the price change or slow tech support. On the other hand, a customer can suffer from a badly designed website, while still loving the product (though bad UX would surely affect CX).

Objectives. WHAT are they doing?

What are the ultimate goals of user experience design and customer experience management, except for “improve the experience”? Let’s see one by one.

UX

All the main objectives of UX professionals are related to human/ digital product interactions. Here are some of them:

Improve app usability. Usability means that the navigation is understandable, people can find what they are looking for, and they enjoy the process of interaction. It is called human-centered design.
Analyze the process of user interaction, find weak points and the ways to improve them. This process starts with UX research and goes through various iterations of the design process and user testing.
Decrease bounce rate (a number that shows how often users give up on a task, such as registering on the website). This is an example of a more concrete goal. We’ll talk more about UX metrics later.

CX

While UX objectives are laid in the product design field, CX objectives are closer to business goals.

Build brand loyalty of the customers by providing them with a superior experience. Knowing that the brand provides a much better experience than the competitors, customers will be coming back again and again, sticking with the brand even when others provide similar products at a cheaper price.
Turn customers into brand ambassadors. Loyal customers bring value not just by buying products, but also by recommending the product to others. In an environment oversaturated with ads, word of mouth is one of the cheapest and most efficient means of marketing.
Increase ARPU (Average revenue per user). This is the ultimate business objective that every product hopes to achieve with the help of customer experience. The principle is simple: happy customers are likely to buy again and more.

Tools and methods. HOW do they do it?

The most important thing in both customer and user experience is the research. To improve the experience, we have to know what the customers/users’ needs and problems are. We can't assume what are the problems of the customers if there was no research conducted.

Both CX and UX research rely heavily on interviews. Some other common tools include field research, questionnaires, and competitor analysis.

UX

Usability testing implies having a group of people using the product while the researcher observes their interaction and asks them to complete tasks. Analyzing the usability of the product is the basis of the UX research.
Empathy mapping is the process of listing all the insights that researchers gained during user interviews. Here is an example of a map that we made during our work with Gridle, a CRM platform.

Digital tools for eye tracking, mouse tracking, or similar stuff to help you find specific things in the app that need improvement. Check out the list of top UX research tools that our designers use.

To better understand the UX research process, read our article about UX research methods.

CX

Customer journey map (CJM) is a visualization of all the interactions that a customer has with a product/business from discovery to the moment when they tell their friends about the great experience they’ve had. Check out some examples of CJM to grasp the idea.

Customer journey map of a university. Image credit: Chris Becker

Reputation Experience Management (RXM) systems monitoring is one of the most efficient ways to keep track of basic CX metrics, watch trends, and gather feedback. For smaller companies that don’t have a whole CX department, CRM systems can also be used as a tool for customer experience management.
Social media monitoring. Watching reviews on the App store is essential, but a look at brand mentions in social media can give more insights about personal relations with the product.

Key metrics. How do they MEASURE success?

One of the biggest achievements of the CX and UX profession is finding a way of measuring such an intangible thing as experience. And these experiences are measured in different ways when we talk about customer and user experience.

UX

Time per task, TPT. How much time does it take for an average user to complete a task? Some examples of user tasks: buy a pair of sunglasses, register for an online event, find information about pricing. This metric is based on the results of user testing with many participants.

Time per Task = (user1+user2+user3)/the total number of respondents

Error rate. How often do users enter incorrect information? The error rate is measured in percentages, based on the results of user testing. The number is calculated as the average of the number of errors divided by the number of attempts.

Error rate=the number of errors/number of task attempts

System usability scale, SUS. The scale consists of ten standard questions that users ask as a part of the questionnaire. Adding more questions and customizing the questionnaire is recommended, but the standard scale is useful for comparing your product with the competitors.

10 questions about the system usability. 1) I think I would like to use this system frequently --- etc

These are just a few of the UX metrics. To learn more, read our article on measuring user experience.

CX

UX metrics have an impact on customer experience, so CX professionals usually keep track of them as well. In addition, there are exclusively CX KPIs, such as:

Customer satisfaction (CSAT). This metric requires no complicated formulas: it is basically the 5-star ranking that you can leave as feedback on different platforms such as the App store, Facebook, Clutch. As simple as this, CSAT is arguably the most popular customer experience metric.
Churn rate shows the percentage of users who stop using your services and is typically measured yearly. Although there might be different reasons for customers to leave, making them stay is one of the principal responsibilities of the CX professionals.
Net promoter score (NPS) is a way of measuring customer loyalty and clients’ willingness to recommend the product to others. It is calculated based on the questionnaire, defining the number of fans (promoters) and detractors (unsatisfied customers). Customers are asked a single question:

On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this company's product or service to a friend or a colleague? 0-6=detractors. 7-8=passives 9-10=promoters NPS= # of promoters - # of detractors

Conclusion

Hopefully, after reading this, you'll never confuse customer and user experience again. To sum up, the principal differences between CX and UX are the following :

CX is about marketing, UX is about product design.
UX is about the interaction of end users with digital products, CX is about the interaction of customers (buyers) with business in all aspects: sales, customer service, offline store.
CX includes UX but has a larger scope.

As product designers, we take into account customer experience specifics, metrics, and objectives, but focus on the user experience. If you want to learn more about UX design, read our article on the UX design process.

Masha Panchenko

Author

Table of contents

The importance of customer feedback for business

We all know that putting positive users’ feedback on your product/service website makes your company look more trustworthy. Many businesses do so.

the use of testimonials on companies' websites — *The use of testimonials on companies’ websites*

But is it the only benefit you can get from collecting customers’ reviews? Of course not. Here are 4 more reasons why feedback from customers is beneficial for your business’s prosperity.

It shows areas for improvement

Sheer guessing or the feeling of your heart is not a reliable basis for making any business decisions while gathering user feedback can go a long way in deciding which product area to optimize.

Capturing users’ thoughts about your company’s product helps you track overall customer satisfaction and provide a clear understanding of what customers want in particular. Use the collected information to identify problem areas and efficiently solve the issues users face. When users have a positive experience, they will not only come back again and again for your product or service, but also will recommend it to their friends and family.

For example, to resolve the onboarding issue (high customer churn after the free trial version), Groove, a SaaS customer service software, decided to add one question to their welcome email: “Why did you sign up for Groove?”

Numerous answers from their potential customers not only guided the company on how to set a better onboarding experience but also helped them find out what product features customers expect to see in their software.

welcome email Groove example — *Groove’s welcome email. Image credit: groovehq.com*

It promotes customer loyalty

In the age of smartphones, customers conduct more research than ever before. According to a study by marketing agency Fan & Fuel (2016), 90% of online customers read reviews before making a purchase decision. 84% of people trust online opinions and reviews as much as personal recommendations, and 74% of consumers say positive reviews make them trust local businesses more.

Customers look to testimonials to better understand the product. The more positive reviews you have, the better. Regardless of your industry, positive feedback will increase your company's credibility and help build your reputation as a market leader.

It helps you develop a better customer experience

A satisfied customer is the one who quickly and easily solved their problem with the help of your product/service. A well-thought-out customer experience (CX) at each touchpoint is a factor that provides successful achievement of the user's goal. Consequently, the better customer experience you provide, the happier your users are, the more successful your business is.

To make CX better, you need to know what areas work bad, and what needs to be improved first. The easiest and most effective way to find this out is to ask those who use the product and experience all issues in real life.

For instance, as a part of our user-centered design process at Textmagic, we turned to users’ feedback each time we created a prototype. It allowed us to come up with new ideas and improvements that eventually helped us create an intuitive and consistent user experience for a complex client experience platform.

It makes users feel valuable

By taking the time to review your product, users are more likely to feel loyal to you and keep coming back. By leaving feedback and thus establishing a relationship with the company, customers feel they are part of the organization and you value their opinions.

Customers kind of fulfill their public duty to other clients by giving them reliable information about their experience with your service, and at the same time giving the business a motivation to become better for their clients.

In 2018, Mozilla decided to rebrand Firefox. For that purpose, they created two variants of design systems and asked their users to choose which they liked more. This way, by involving customers in the Firefox growth, Mozilla increased users’ loyalty and gave a sense of familiarity to a new design.

Firefox rebrand 2018 — *Two variants of Firefox’s design systems. Image credit: blog.mozilla.org*

How to collect user feedback

After we’ve discussed why collecting feedback from customers is important, it’s time to move to more practical knowledge and learn some effective methods that promote users to cooperate with you.

Surveys

A survey is one of the most commonly used methods for collecting feedback. You need to create a list of questions and send it to customers via email, put it in-app, or ask through your UX customer support team. Moreover, there are a lot of survey tools that simplify this process, like Surveymonkey, SurveyKing, Google Forms, and others.

However, designing a survey that is informative is quite challenging. After all, you need to:

make the person want to answer. For example, Slack shows you a small intro before the survey that makes you feel valuable and states the exact amount of time the user has to spend.

*Long survey example by Slack. Image credit: blog.hubspot.com*

don’t get your users bored or frightened with questions. For instance, Uber keeps their in-app polls short and straight to the point to keep users engaged.

in-app survey Uber example — *An in-app survey by Uber. Image credit: blog.hubspot.com*

in case you want to get user feedback on a website/app make sure it appears on a relevant screen that a user is viewing at that moment. Google Meet asks about audio and video quality right after you left the meeting.

How Google collets customer feedback — *Google Meet quality survey*

Live chats

Gathering feedback with the help of live chats is fast and easy, as you actually don’t have to ask or convince customers to do anything. Users start chatting with you when they need it: at the time they face some difficulty, have a question, notice some changes in the product’s work, and so on.

Keen live chat example — *Live chat example. Image credit: keen.io*

One more advantage of live chats is that in this short live conversation you can quickly ask an important question too. Such customer feedback is important to define a direction for improving small, ongoing issues.

User interviews

To learn details about user problems, it’s better to directly talk to users. These can be live conversations or in correspondence. Interviews allow you to receive higher-quality feedback. Open dialogue provides an opportunity to understand feelings underlying user decisions and the public's reaction to the brand or company decisions.

Follow these tips when conducting user interviews:

Use open-ended questions - how? why? what can you advise? Such questions provide a clear understanding of the picture and help to identify product weak points
Start the conversation with broader questions about the brand, and then about the product itself
Be an active listener. To get helpful ideas, it is important to be open and receptive. Reflect on the key points you hear from customers.

Usability testing

Customer feedback is essential for UX researchers as well. While surveys and live chats mostly help to identify minor issues that customers regularly face, conducting usability testing can help a UX researcher to reveal problems that you and your users even don’t know about, and this way to make the user experience better.

To understand how important feedback is in user research, let’s take the example of Shopify. With the help of usability testing, they wanted to find out how to make Expert Profiles on the Shopify Experts Marketplace more valuable for users.

Collecting user feedback through usability testing led them to the following result:

Shopify usability testing results — *Image credit: maze.co*

Social media and specialized platforms

Don’t neglect the importance of gathering feedback from different sources including social media and websites that focus on your specific industry.

On social networks, user activity is usually much higher than on corporate websites. People love expressing their feelings on various social platforms. There is also more trust in reviews there, since you can always go to the author's profile and make sure that this is not a bot, but a person.

For example, at Eleken, we not only lead our Instagram account to be able to communicate with our customers but also have profiles at various design-focused platforms, like Dribble, Behance, Clutch.

collecting user feedback with social media — *Eleken’s customer reviews on Clutch*

Phone calls

Phone calls are not that popular nowadays, as more and more people prefer to type rather than speak. Still, customer phone calls are a very personalized way to get feedback. The key point here is that the call must be sincere, and questions for feedback are not a mere formality.

To get the most out of this method, reach out to clients at the right time. Research has shown that people are more likely to respond from 10 to 11 am and from 4 to 5 pm, while from 7 to 10 am is the worst time to call.

The greatest advantage of this method is that you get first-hand feedback. What's more, by hearing voices and tone of your customers, you can feel their satisfaction level.

Use customers’ reviews effectively

Collecting user feedback alone has no use if you do nothing with it. To start benefiting, you should learn how to act upon this valuable data.

Here are five basic steps on your further actions:

Classify feedback. As soon as you have a number of insights from users, your task is to segment them into meaningful groups so that you can easily analyze and prioritize issues. For this purpose, you can order them in accordance with buyer personas as each customer type has its wants and needs or according to their problem area.
Add some analytical data. It’s often difficult to define what change to implement first, and you probably won’t be able to complete each user request. To put the right priorities, back up the feedback with analytical data. For example, you can support your ideas with usability metrics.
Incorporate user feedback into your product roadmap. Product roadmaps explain to different team members not only what you are developing, but also why you are building this or that feature. Your employees will regularly use a roadmap to align with the company strategy. That’s why supporting goals in a product roadmap by user feedback can help workers have a better understanding of what they are doing and why.
Share the insight. To successfully achieve your business goals, your whole team should understand in which direction you move and why. To have a strong understanding of common objectives, make sure everyone in your team has access to all documents that contain feedback (product roadmaps, buyer personas, and so on).
Bring in the changes. Final step is obvious, but the most important at the same time. The purpose of asking users for feedback is to turn it into action. The problem here is not to spend your time and budget on something that won’t bring value to your business and users. That’s why, follow the above steps to correctly choose which change to implement.

Final recommendations

Instead of summing all the information we’ve learned in this post, we’d like to give you some brief, but actionable recommendations on how to improve your business with the feedback. Maybe such pieces of advice sound obvious, but companies often forget about them from time to time.

Always thank your user for the feedback.
Make sure you react to each review you receive and customers feel you care.
Track your competitors’ reviews.
Offer a reward to encourage users to express their opinion.
Never ignore negative feedback.
Let each of your team members access user feedback.
Let your users know about changes you’ve made based on their feedback.

At Eleken, we help our clients not only design their products, but go through every step of SaaS product design including collecting customer feedback surveys. Learn more about our product design process.

SaaS business

min read

Unlocking the Potential: An Overview of the Developer Tools Market

Today, software products have become the heartbeat of countless industries. As we witness a growing reliance on technology, the demand for cutting-edge developer tools has skyrocketed as well, resulting in a market loaded with diverse solutions. From ingenious code editors to cloud-based SaaS tools, this realm is all about innovation and competition.

At Eleken, we work closely with developers and startupers to ensure their vision is translated into a sleek product with a stellar UI/UX design. So when you're thinking of creating a startup catering to the needs of developers, you've come to the right place! In this article, we'll take you on a tour of the developer tools market, exploring its multifaceted nature and discussing how you could contribute.

One thing is certain, the developer tools market is growing rapidly

So, what is a developer tool? In a nutshell, it is a set of software applications, platforms, and programs designed to help software developers write code, as well as test, debug, and manage it. Their ultimate goal is to streamline the software development process.

Software development tools market size is increasing fast. The projected annual growth rate (CAGR), according to different estimations, is between 7% to 14% or even 17%, with expected market volume of US$234.70bn by 2028. One of the key drivers is the COVID-19 pandemic and shift to remote work, which made many investors rain money on promising startups.

The developer tools market is still piping hot, with customers eagerly seeking novel solutions to streamline their development processes, reduce time-to-market, and enhance the overall software quality. So if you're looking to join the competition with your idea, developer tools might be the thing to look into. But what exactly is in demand right now?

Popular categories of developer tools

The list of tools the market offers developers is quite huge, but they can be grouped into various categories, each catering to developers across different programming languages, platforms, and development methodologies. Here are some of them:

Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)

IDEs are among the most in-demand developer solutions. They offer comprehensive environments that consolidate various tools, code editors, and debugging capabilities in a single interface.

Key features of an IDE include:

Code editor with features like syntax highlighting, code completion, and code suggestion, making it easier for developers to write code with fewer errors.
Compiler/Interpreter for various programming languages. These tools help developers convert their code into executable programs.
Debugging tools within an IDE assist developers in identifying and fixing errors in their code. They allow for step-by-step execution, breakpoints, and variable inspection to understand how the code behaves during runtime.
Many IDEs integrate with version control systems like Git. This allows developers to manage their codebase, track changes, collaborate with the team, and revert to previous versions if needed.
IDEs provide project management features to organize code files, resources, and configurations. This helps developers keep track of various components of their software projects.
Graphical user interface (GUI) designer. For languages that involve graphical user interfaces, IDEs often include tools for designing and creating user interfaces through a visual interface.
Autocomplete and code generation. IDEs offer features that suggest code snippets, functions, and variables as developers type, enhancing productivity and reducing the need to remember every detail of a language's syntax.
Code analysis and metrics. IDEs can analyze code for potential issues, such as unused variables, code smells, or potential runtime errors. They may also provide metrics on code complexity, which can help developers write cleaner and more maintainable code.
Integration with external tools, such as testing frameworks, build tools, and documentation generators.
Many IDEs support extensions and plugins that allow developers to customize the environment to their specific needs, adding additional features or language support.

Popular IDEs include Eclipse, Visual Studio, IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, and Xcode.

Visual Studio Code screenshot — Visual Studio Code

Collaboration and project management tools

This type of tools grew in popularity after companies had to go remote. Such tools provide a structured framework for planning, tracking, and collaborating on tasks, ensuring that development teams can effectively manage their workloads and achieve project goals. Their functionality covers:

Task organization and tracking. Project management tools help break down complex projects into smaller, manageable tasks, making it easier for developers to understand what needs to be done. Developers can prioritize tasks, set deadlines, and allocate resources accordingly.
Project and task management tools facilitate communication and collaboration within development teams. This reduces the need for scattered communication channels and keeps all relevant discussions linked to the tasks they pertain to.
Many of these tools provide visual representations of workflows, such as Kanban boards or Gantt charts, to give an overview of task progress, identify bottlenecks, and allow for easy adjustments to timelines and priorities.
For teams following Agile methodologies, these tools are essential for managing sprints, user stories, and backlog items. They facilitate sprint planning, help estimate task complexity, and allow teams to adjust priorities based on feedback and changing requirements.
Project management tools enable managers to allocate tasks to team members based on their expertise and availability. This helps balance workloads and ensures that tasks are assigned to the most suitable team members.
Many tools offer reporting features that provide insights into project progress, task completion rates, and overall team performance. This data is valuable for evaluating the efficiency of development processes and making informed decisions.

Popular project and task management tools are Jira, Trello, Asana, Microsoft Planner.

Continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) tools

Continuous integration (CI) and Continuous deployment (CD) tools are essential components of modern software development practices. They help developers automate and streamline the process of integrating code changes, as well as testing and deploying them to production environments. This approach ensures that software remains functional, stable, and up-to-date, while reducing the risks associated with manual interventions and human error. Their major functionality includes:

Automation of integrating code changes into a shared repository. With each code commit, these tools trigger automated tests, ensuring that new changes do not break the existing functionality. This helps catch bugs early in the development cycle.
CI/CD tools enforce coding standards and quality checks. Code reviews, automated linting, and static code analysis are often part of the CI/CD pipeline, maintaining code consistency and reducing technical debt.
By integrating code frequently and running tests automatically, developers receive rapid feedback on the quality of their changes. This accelerates the development cycle and reduces the time taken to identify and fix issues.
CI/CD tools integrate with version control systems like Git, allowing developers to automate the process of building, testing, and deploying code changes as they are committed.
While CI focuses on code integration and testing, CD takes it a step further by automating the deployment of code changes to production environments. CD tools help ensure that code changes are not only tested but also deployed to production seamlessly, reducing the time between development and deployment.
CD tools often include strategies for rolling back or rolling forward changes in case of deployment failures. This minimizes the impact of issues and ensures a stable production environment.

Some notable tools include Jenkins, Travis CI, CircleCI, and GitLab CI/CD.

We discussed how tools can be classified by their purpose. Now let's take a brief look at how they function.

On-premise vs cloud-based developer solutions

If you're thinking about entering the dev tools market, the choice between the on-premise model and cloud is crucial. Here’s a brief overview of both models to help you make the right decision

On-premise solutions

On-premise solutions involve hosting and managing software and infrastructure within an organization's own physical premises, such as data centers or servers. This approach provides a high degree of control and customization but requires significant upfront investment, ongoing maintenance, and expertise in managing hardware and software. On-premise solutions are often used when security and data control are critical, or when specific regulatory requirements must be met.

While they have their merits, cloud-based solutions are not only already more popular than on-premise ones, but will continue to grow more actively as well, so let’s focus more on their types.

Software development trends graph — Source

Platform as a service (PaaS)

PaaS provides a platform and environment for developers to build, deploy, and manage applications without worrying about underlying infrastructure. PaaS offers tools, libraries, and services for application development, and it abstracts much of the infrastructure management.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

IaaS offers virtualized computing resources over the internet. It provides organizations with virtual machines, storage, networking, and other resources on a pay-as-you-go basis. Users can set up and manage their own operating systems, applications, and development environments. IaaS is suitable for developers who want more control over their infrastructure while still avoiding the physical hardware management.

Software as a service (SaaS)

Finally, SaaS delivers software applications over the internet, with providers hosting and maintaining the software on their own servers. Users access the software through web browsers without needing to install or manage it locally. SaaS solutions are cost-effective, as they eliminate the need for hardware setup and maintenance. They're ideal for collaborative tools, project management software, and other applications that can be accessed from any location.

SaaS solutions also excel in scalability, enabling developers to easily adapt their toolset to meet the needs of projects of varying sizes and complexities. As development teams grow, they can effortlessly upgrade their subscriptions to add newmembers, making SaaS tools an attractive choice for startups and enterprises alike. Additionally, SaaS tools typically come with regular updates and maintenance, ensuring that developers have access to the latest features, security patches, and improvements without the burden of manual updates.

Simply put, if you're looking to create an easily scalable, monetizable tool which will solve the specific pain points of developers, SaaS is likely to be a good choice for you.

Developer tools trends

As the software development market continues to evolve, new trends and innovations influence the development tool ecosystem. Two notable trends that have gained momentum are low-code/no code platforms and artificial intelligence, so let’s focus on them.

Low-code/no-code development platforms

These platforms are one of the key B2B SaaS design trends. They let non-developers create applications with minimal coding knowledge. They provide visual interfaces and drag-and-drop components to streamline the application development process. As the McKinsey review points out, low-code platforms influence the whole process of development, from start to finish.

Examples include platforms like OutSystems, Mendix, and Bubble. Website builder platforms, including Webflow which this website is built on, also belong to this category.

Integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI):

AI-driven tools are becoming increasingly prevalent, aiding developers in tasks such as code completion, bug detection, and automated testing. AI enhances code quality and accelerates the development process.

Tools like GitHub Copilot, Microsoft IntelliCode, and DeepCode are utilizing AI to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of developers' workflows.

Finally, a trend we need to discuss concerns UI/UX design. Considering the target audience, developer tools tended to focus less on usability and simplicity in comparison to the apps created for less tech-savvy audiences. However, the situation is changing. Smooth user experience and a clean interface are exactly the things that bring additional value to developer solutions and distinguishes an app from its numerous competitors.

Designing tools for developers

When it comes to designing tools for software developers, it's a whole different story that requires a unique approach. As a design agency specializing in SaaS, we at Eleken know that crafting effective developer tools demands a deep understanding of the software development process and the specific needs of developers, as well as smooth designer-developers collaboration.

Let’s consider one of our recent cases to better understand how it’s possible to achieve flawless design that every developer will find easy to use. One of our clients, PicaSaaS, offers ready-to-use modules of code their clients can choose via the platform and add in minutes to their own website or application, automating the product development process. So, our goal was to make the UX as simple as possible.

From the very first screen, we made the users' lives easier by adding login through integration with different services. This significantly saves the time for registration and allows quicker onboarding.

We made sure that the devs can create and customize one's workspace with drag and drop. It's a perfect balance between leaving the users with the ability to tailor their workspace for their needs while leaving the user flow as simple and intuitive as possible.

The dashboard is minimalistic and clean. Clear visual hierarchy, distinct fonts and buttons ensure the user can get all the necessary information at first glance without any confusion. No superficial elements distract the user, everything is to the point.

In the end, when you're designing for developers, everything should be straightforward and frictionless.

In our work, we rely on best practices and design systems examples from leading companies that allows us to ensure any dev tool we work on is perfect for their users. After all, developers are only humans, and, just like everyone else, they love solutions which are easy to use and look good.

So, if you think of entering the developer tools market, ensure from the very beginning that your product's UI/UX supports your vision and not hinders it. At Eleken, we have vast experience of creating interfaces that boost developers' work. So, if you're looking for a design partner, drop us a line!