User experience design is critical to app adoption and successful business outcomes, but many IT organizations lack sufficient resources to deliver great UX across their app portfolios. According to a Gartner survey, “On average there is one UX designer for every 17 developers, with 35 percent of respondents indicating that they have no UX design competency at all.” With limited UX resources and the shift towards smaller, autonomous development teams, consistency of user experience can become an even greater challenge.
The Mendix Atlas release aims to close this UX gap by combining a layered, componentized UI framework, designed to capture and leverage UI design patterns and best practices, with a new what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) Web-based modeling tool. This combination allows developers without UI design skills to quickly assemble and deliver great user interfaces leveraging ready-to-use UI elements that incorporate design best practices.
UIs are constructed through a combination of navigation layouts, page templates, building blocks (preconfigured assemblies of UI components) and widgets. Atlas templates and building blocks not only accelerate UI creation; they assemble widgets in pre-configured layouts with optimal proportions, spacing and individual design properties.
