The creation of a UI mockup is an important aspect of the design process. Before going on to high-fidelity prototyping and user testing, designers must bring low-fidelity wireframes to life. This article will give you insights into the definition of UI mockups and introduce you to the top 5 websites to get free UI mockup templates for designers.
What is a UI mockup?
A UI mockup is a visual representation of the final product’s screen. UI mockups are aesthetic elements with no functionality or interactive elements. They’re basically mockups with no movement. To develop a finished product or website UI mockup, UI designers combine color, typography, materials, and genuine content.
In addition, color schemes, layouts, typography, iconography, navigation visualizations, and the general feel of the product are all reflected in UI mockups.
3 Benefits of UI Mockups
UI mockups have various advantages in addition to allowing you to set aside time to address the crucial visual questions:
Visualization of Design Concepts:
UI mockups provide a tangible representation of design concepts, allowing designers and stakeholders to comprehend the interface’s look and feel visually. This aids in aligning expectations and ensuring everyone envisions the final product similarly.
Early Identification of Issues:
By creating UI mockups early in the design phase, teams can identify potential issues and challenges. This proactive approach facilitates timely adjustments, preventing complications during the later stages of development and reducing the need for extensive revisions.
Effective Communication and Collaboration:
UI mockups serve as a common ground for designers, developers, and clients to communicate effectively. The visual representation enhances collaboration by offering a clear reference point, fostering constructive discussions, and minimizing misunderstandings.
6 tips for faster UI mockups
The speed of UI mockups has a huge impact on users’ experience. But the question is, how to improve UI mockups’ speed?
1. Make a rough sketch of your ideas first.
Sketching is a quick, simple, and risk-free way to express yourself.
Before getting into pixels and grid measurements, prepare a first draft and organize your ideas on the page by sketching your ideas. To get your creative juices flowing, spend time thinking and experimenting with different possibilities.
Paper is inexpensive, and you may scribble ideas wherever you feel most creative and relaxed–like in your garden hammock! Sketch several compositions and set up the various templates side by side to determine which approach appeals the most–exploring ideas, this way simply takes a little time and paper.
2. Begin with mobile devices.
One important thing you should keep in mind in order to improve the speed of UI mockups is that you need to always start with the smallest screen and scale up to the largest viewport when creating mockups, wireframes, or prototypes. When you scale in the other direction, you frequently wind up with needless pieces or intricate layouts that don’t transition well to smaller devices, forcing you to start over!
Using a mobile-first design methodology guarantees that the most important content and UI elements are prioritized first. For responsive web design, mobile-first design is also a must-have strategy.
3. Remove Any Elements That Aren’t Necessary
When it comes to UI design, less is more. Users are overwhelmed by cluttered user interfaces, which increase cognitive strain and result in a bad user experience.
Designers must create UI elements, patterns, and components based on user research and only include the elements, patterns, and components that users require to complete a task.
4. Make Use of Free User Interface Elements and Icons
Taking advantage of UI elements and icons is also useful to enhance the UI mockups’ speed. Gradually styling each button, icon, and image will frequently take longer than the mockup itself. Use UI kits and icon sets to create mockups more quickly.
5. Using UI Patterns to Enhance the User Experience
For UI mockup web/mobile apps or website design, UI patterns are essential. These tried-and-true patterns address typical usability concerns and familiarize customers with the new product, allowing them to pick it up quickly.
Designers must exercise caution when using these patterns and only use them to solve a specific usability issue. Unnecessary UI patterns take up space and can clog up a user interface, leading to further usability concerns.
6. Using Vectors
Vector graphics scale quickly, allowing them to adapt to high-definition, retina-ready screens at two or three times their original size. To ensure that assets are always visually appealing across many devices and screen sizes, designers should use vector files, such as SVG format, for logos, icons, and other images.
Websites to Get UI Mockup Templates
It’s no surprise that ready-made UI mockups are excellent for enhancing and displaying design work. To help you find those design tools easier, we’ve compiled a list of the top 5 websites featuring free mockups for designers.
1. Iconfinder
Website: https://www.iconfinder.com/
Iconfinder is a massive library of icons and UI mockups that millions of designers can use. It was founded in 2007 by Martin LeBlanc Elgtved. It eliminates the need for additional time and effort to obtain vector icons. It’s a powerful search engine and marketplace for web developers, and it’s a little different from other websites.
2. Futuramo
Website: https://futuramo.com/
Futuramo features a lot of visually compatible icon sets on the web as a team collaboration tool. It provides 45,000 UI mockups & icons (3,000 icons in 16 styles) that may be mixed and matched in dedicated sets. All of the icons are outstanding and meticulously made to suit the most stringent design criteria.
3. FreePik
Website: http://www.freepik.com/
There are over a million free vectors, images, and PSDs available. Meanwhile, you can download those vector graphics and icons for free to use in presentations, websites, banners, and publications, among other things.
4. Pixeden
Website: http://www.pixeden.com/
Pixeden offers free backdrop graphics, text effects graphics, web graphics, and much more after working hard to provide high-quality graphic templates. This is possibly one of the best sources for free PSD UI mockup templates.
5. Mockplus
Website: https://www.mockplus.com/
With a library of ready-made UI components and free icons, Mockplus allows you to create mockups for mobile, web, and desktop apps. It also adds functionality to your layout, allowing you to create interactive prototypes for better display and presentations.
Visily – Easy Mockup Tools
Visily is a comprehensive SaaS option for non-designers to add to their repertoire of simple mockup tools. At first sight, its modern UI provides consumers with an enticing visual experience.
Visily distinguishes itself by offering a diverse collection of ways to create app themes. You may enter some keywords and let the algorithm handle the rest, or you can choose an existing theme. Mockup themes may be constructed from hand-drawn drawings, screencaps, or URLs.
Its vast collection of high-level components and widgets, including navigation bars, form controls, headers, and so on, might help you save time. When combined with an AI design assistant, you will have everything you need to create a functioning and dynamic website or mobile app, even if you have no design experience.
It includes a team workspace for simple administration, CSS creation, image export capabilities, and real-time multi-device communication. Possess entirely interactive builder interfaces and artificial intelligence-powered features to help you realize your varied app concepts, regardless of your programming or design talents.
However, the platform is currently free to all users, with all of its features enabled. Furthermore, because you are not required to register with your payment information, you should be free to experiment without fear of being held accountable.
Final Words
When making UI mockups, keep in mind that you’re attempting to solve a human problem, not win a design competition! When it comes to color, typography, iconography, assets, and other content, consistency and cohesion are also important considerations for designers. Please find useful information related to UI mockups via this article.
