The phase raises $13 million to speed up the UX design process on a no-code platform
UX and UI designers work closely with engineers throughout product development to build and implement functional user interface design concepts and wireframes. Regular communication, feedback and testing is required to ensure collaboration works smoothly and deliver a user experience that aligns with intended design goals.
Nick Budden, a serial entrepreneur who worked as a UI/UX designer, wanted the designers to spend solely on design work, not handoffs or meetings with engineers. Budden was founded to address some inefficient steps in the design process. step 2017.
“Implementing the UI is an expensive, time-consuming manual process involving designers, product managers and engineers,” Budden said in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch. “Comprehensive user testing will also be delayed until the process is complete.”
The Taipei and Berlin-based startup is building a no-code platform that will help UI/UX designers create fully interactive prototypes, with 13 million on Thursday from Gobi Partners, New Economy Ventures and Palm Drive Capital He said he raised dollar funding. Shilling VC, Squareone, Wi Harper, 42Cap, 500 Global.
Today, the startup has released a UI animation tool that competes with its first product, the UI animation tool. Adobe After effects and Figma. According to the phase, the software allows UI/UX and product designers to create interactive websites or app simulations. It also allows you to export UI code ready for production, speeding up the design process.
According to Budden, Phase’s products are much easier for UI/UX designers than other tools such as Adobe After Effects and Figma. “A key differentiator for Figma is the integrity of the prototype. Therefore, Figma allows you to create a prototype that runs 20% or 30% of the actual website. After that, the other 70% the prototype doesn’t run. Or 80% need to communicate with engineers., product managers, and people have to understand that,” Budden said. “Our products are built to do 100% of what a real website or app does.”
This is probably the first in a series of releases, and this year and next year, its three UI designs and code tools for wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) will have all the manual work you need this year and next year There are plans to streamline the UI/UX Design, Budden told TechCrunch. Three new features are UI Advanced Prototyping, UI Design, and UI Code Export.
“UI animation has not been seen as a standalone market for a long time. It’s an opportunity for today’s market, but when tools like Figma integrate animation as built-in features, that window will be closed,” says the CEO of Phase. I spoke to TechCrunch. “Our strategy is to only get initial traction for animation and move the roadmap to a larger market before that shift occurs.”
Soft launch in Korea
Phase first introduced the platform in Korea in May after finding a trusted local partner to help launch.
The designers adopted new tools by observing their discussion and use of them, leading to widespread adoption of design tools, noting that this influence is often “hyperlocal.” For example, designers in London are primarily influenced by others in the area.
“Because of the dynamics of this region, we can start each region and become deeply involved with each design community and build momentum,” Budden told TechCrunch.
There are around 100,000 designers in Korea, and the Phase says that over 10,000 people have tested it within weeks of launching the product. This practical approach has successfully launched community growth, at least in Korea, but not as well as the company had hoped for in other regions.
“The large market has a more distributed design community that makes it difficult to gain traction. After months of struggling to replicate Korea’s success, we have shifted gears and made global “We’ve opened a beta,” the Phase CEO said. “We’ve seen rapid and sustained growth (…) now come out of the beta, combining it with momentum combined with product stabilization through adjustments to the market.”
The Phase aims to enter the US and European markets as its next priority.