Some apps just work. When you open them up, you know exactly where to go to find what you need, and what to click on to get things done. Others are frustrating to use and can feel like a guessing game—you’re not sure where you need to go, how to get there, and, once you finally find it, where the function you need is.
The difference often lies in their design.
Good design helps your apps do what they were built for. They also look more professional, which is especially important if you’re building customer-facing tools or you’re a Glide developer designing for clients. Having an app that works well and looks good can significantly increase its adoption rates because it makes it easier for users to solve their problems.
But what does “good app design” mean, and where do you start?
From user research to data to design, here’s a breakdown of how to design a Glide app that functions just as well as it looks.
1. Understand the business and its problems
To make a well-designed Glide app, you need to understand its purpose. If you’re building for your own business, talk to the app’s future users—your colleagues, your employees, or your customers. You want to understand the workflows, needs, and frustrations of the people your app is designed to help.
If you’re building apps for clients, your first step is to learn about the business you’re building the app for. “Our best Experts don’t ask their clients any questions about the app, the layout, or the colors,” says Tristan L’Abbé, Head of Design at Glide. “What they focus on, during multiple sessions with clients, is understanding the business and the business problems the app is meant to solve.”
Clarifying questions can help you get to the heart of the business and its challenges. Some questions to ask are:
Who are your target customers, and what challenges do you help them solve?
What business problem are you facing that you want to solve?
What workflows are not fluid, or feel like they could be better?
Can you describe a typical day or process within your team? What are the sticking points in your current situation that your team faces daily?
What size is your team? Where are they located, and how do they communicate?
2. Scope the app’s requirements
The scoping phase lays the groundwork for your app design. Be prepared to revisit and refine your scope as you gather more information and feedback.
Identify user roles
Every app will have different types of users who will interact with the app in different ways and need different features. Common roles in an internal business app built with Glide are:
Admins, who are typically decision-makers, project managers, or team leads
End users, who are the employees interacting with the app daily
Guests, such as customers or clients who may need limited access
Let’s say you’re building a work order management software for a property. Guests in your app could be tenants submitting service requests or tracking the status of repairs.
Two important things you need to know with respect to user roles are:
What tasks do users in each role need to perform? Each user role will have distinct tasks that influence how they interact with the app. Guests in your work order management app will need to submit service requests and check their status. End users or employees will need to receive notifications for service requests assigned to them, view maintenance history, and complete requests. Admins will need to assign service requests to employees and access maintenance records, among other things.
What data do users in each role need access to? Data that users can access may not be equal across the app. Admins may need access to analytics and reporting features, while end users might require only information related to their tasks.
Knowing what tasks users need to perform and what data they need to access to do so helps you to prioritize features and functionalities within the app.
Determine authentication
You can choose to make your Glide app either public or private. For an internal business app that contains sensitive or proprietary business data, you can create a private app that restricts access to authorized users only.
You have several options for how users can log in to your Glide app, each with its own benefits and considerations:
Email address and PIN or magic link: This method works well for most users and is useful if the app will have guests who need access since a company Google Workspace sign-in or SSO won’t work for guests.
Google sign-in: This option can make it easier for users who already have Google Workspace accounts to log in using Google’s secure sign in technology.
Single sign-on (SSO): If your organization uses SSO, choosing this login method makes it easy for users to securely access the app with their existing credentials.
Choose the option that works best for the business based on its security requirements and the user roles required.
Define data structure
You’re clear on the business problems and the solutions your app needs to provide—now it’s time to turn to the data that lays the groundwork for everything that follows in the design process.
What data does the business currently use, and where is it located? Look into existing databases, spreadsheets, and other software the business may already have in place. Think about the specific ways users in various roles will use the data. Mapping this out will help you decide what features the app will need so users can easily find their way around the app and perform their tasks.
Here are some questions to ask to define the data structure:
How is this data organized? Look for clear categories and relationships between data points.
Does the data need to be restructured? Look at whether the existing data requires cleanup or restructuring to create a more organized Data Editor, making it easier to scale or make changes to the app over time.
How will users interact with the data? Think about how different users will view, edit, or report on the data. Each role may have different interactions, while some roles may interact with the data in more than one way.
Are there any issues with the data? Identify any issues with the data that need to be fixed early on, such as bad taxonomy or inconsistent, duplicate, or incomplete information.
What tables should the app have? Each table should be thoughtfully structured with the necessary columns and types of data to support the app's functionalities and user roles.
Analyze workflows and processes
Many businesses will come to you because they already have a system in place that’s not working. Oscar Brooks, co-founder of V88 Agency, says the research phase helps you figure out their current systems and how you can build upon and improve them.
“There's always some kind of framework, some kind of existing system and process,” says Oscar. “But what we build is not a replica of that. It's an improvement. And that's really the key difference. That thing that exists it's quite often a spreadsheet, a bunch of sticky notes, an existing off-the-shelf product, or even a legacy custom piece of software. It's quite often just in someone's brain. Our role is to take the good, remove the bad, and add to it in immense ways.”
Look for problems users face in their current processes, or steps that are complicated, and think about:
how they can complete these tasks more easily in Glide
what features and data they need to access to make that happen
Once you have a handle on their existing processes and problems, and how your app can simplify things, you can design workflows using Glide’s components, actions, and integrations.
Keep your workflows simple and focused on the features users need to complete the tasks at hand. When tenants submit a service request in your work order management app, an admin should receive an email or push notification with the details. If field technicians need to file before-and-after photos of the work, add form fields that let them upload photos to the data table.
3. Define information architecture
You’ve already done much of the legwork you need to build your app’s information architecture and structure it so that the most important steps in the user workflows are easily accessible when users open the app.
For more complex apps, creating a sitemap can be a helpful step. It will outline the app’s structure, highlighting the main screens users can access from any place in the app, and the additional screens they can navigate to from each screen.
If you need a refresher on how to define your app’s information architecture, you can learn more in our blog post on how to design an app.
4. Create a prototype
Traditional app development and other no code methods require you to wireframe designs for different breakpoints to adapt to multiple device sizes. With Glide, you can build directly in the WYSIWYG interface instead. “Glide specifically makes it so much simpler for people to just iterate and get something out quickly,” says Tristan. “It's the complete opposite of this classic UX/UI development waterfall loop.”
There are two benefits to this approach:
You can focus your design efforts on understanding user needs and solving business problems, which is the most valuable part of the design phase.
You get the advantage of a fully functional, adaptive mobile app right out of the box.
If you were designing an app with code, you would need to design for multiple breakpoints, creating functions and layouts for computers, tablets, and smartphones. Since Glide apps automatically have adaptive design, you only have to design once, and your app will automatically adjust across all devices. However, it’s never a bad idea to test your app out to get a feel for how it functions on different devices.
5. Keep the interface design simple
The number one rule for interface design? Think simple. “When you're building an app, you're usually solving a business problem or helping users improve their processes,” says Tristan. “The goal is to get them through this solution as quickly and smoothly as possible, and that comes down to simple screens with a primary action and less clutter.”
A recurring problem in app design is developers adding too much content, too many buttons, and too many actions to their screens. There are too many things competing for users’ attention, and they may not know where to click or which action is the most important.
Having too many components can also slow down your app when you should be aiming to make it fast. Simple screens with clear primary actions improve the user experience, both in terms of the interface design and the app’s performance.
Tristan shares some strategies to maintain simplicity:
Start with the primary representation of your app—its icon or logo. Design it to be centered and with enough spacing from the edges so that it looks clean and professional next to native apps on users' devices and helps them feel confident about using your app.
When creating the information architecture, limit primary navigation to a maximum of five tabs on a mobile app to make it easier to use. Glide helps with this by dividing navigation into six main tabs, moving any additional tabs to a side menu.
Keep your screens focused with one primary action—such as Edit, Add, Send, View instructions, or Take photo—per screen to reduce clutter and confusion. Use the ‘Show new screen’ action to group related content into nested screens, which keeps the main interface clean.
Limit the use of containers on a screen, and stick to one style per screen. If you absolutely need a container, consider this order: None → Card → Highlight → Dark → Accent. Use image containers sparingly, as they’re primarily for decorative purposes.
6. Iterate based on user feedback
Keep communicating with your users even after your initial research phase. They’re the best people to tell you what’s working—and what’s not—with the app, and you can quickly deploy changes in your Glide app based on user feedback. Don't be afraid to remove features or simplify things if that's what your users are telling you they need.
“The magic of Glide is that it lets you create functional prototypes in literally minutes,” says Tristan. This lets you iterate more freely—so take advantage of that ability. Real-life user testing and iteration are the best ways to develop a truly refined final product.
First, build function, but leave space for creativity
“That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex…” - Steve Jobs
In a lot of ways, great design is about refining things down into their simplest—and most effective—form. Creating an app that feels so intuitive that the user doesn’t even think about the tasks they perform. Building interfaces that are that clean and intuitive is actually incredibly hard work.
Once you’ve refined your app to be simple and effective, though, there’s no reason to completely squash your creative impulses. Your next step can be finding innovative ways to add fun, functionality, and curiosity into your app by adding new features.
Javier at CPF floors self-described the construction supply sales industry he works in as “boring”. So, he added badges to their app that sales associates can earn based on their app usage and sales numbers. Figuring out a workflow for badge assignment was hard, but worth it for the extra fun it brought to the team.
Mark at ITV built a monster of a financial app to monitor and control expenses. It uses very complex math behind the scenes, but the interface itself is pure function. To let off some creative steam, they built a sustainability game as a side project that the whole company could use to compete in how many environmental improvements they could make over the summer.
Even Glide’s own Andy Claremont tackled a fun and challenging project, building the Innovators at Work Quiz. In the process of “breaking Glide” to get it to do new and unusual things, he learned a ton of new tricks. That’s the best part about design creativity—you never know what you’ll discover.
Build your Glide development skills
If you’re just starting out with Glide, look at Glide University’s guided learning lessons on everything from different screen types to using AI in Glide. Come connect with other Glide developers in the Glide Community to get inspiration, help, and support as you learn.
If you’re already an experienced Glide developer—are you Glide Certified? Get your badge now, and keep an eye out for new, more advanced certifications in the coming months.
And finally, if you’re building professionally for others, make sure you’re in the Glide Experts program. You’ll get early access to new features, special events, and a community of Experts to support your growth as a Glide developer.
