how do you design a viral app my name is Blake Anderson in one year I built three viral apps that have each generated millions in profit Riz GPT umax and CI I'm going to be sharing my exact process with you guys during this five-part series which is brought to you by Apex our mission is to produce highquality tools and content designed to improve your health success and purpose in life now onto designing a vir app let's first Define the objective of viral app design and explain why it's important viral app design seeks to minimize the friction from design to millions of users we're going to focus on single player utility apps apps that solve a problem in a straightforward Manner and don't require complex social interaction the design is important because it builds off of your idea and sets the stage for building and marketing your app the majority of the success from umax came from the design of one sing sing Le screen the first half of this video is going to be about principles which should shape how you think about design our Three core principles are number one minimize cognitive load number two do not reinvent the wheel and number three think like your customer the second half of the video is about methods which help how you actually design your app our Three core methods are number one learn figma number two create an idea board and number three study the content principle number one minimize cognitive load every tap every decision and every moment of confusion will hinder your app's growth the less your users have to think the more likely they are to get value out of your product Riz GPT contained two buttons upload a screenshot and get pickup lines umax contained one button scan your face Cal also contained one button analyze your food your app does doesn't need every feature imaginable it just needs to get the core action done well if it's too complicated for a 5-year-old to use it you're headed in the wrong direction over time you can improve and add new functionality but when you first launch Keep It lean apply the pedo principle 80% of your apps functionality is going to come from 20% of the possible feature set launch with the 20% the most viral apps in history launch with one core action that users really like for Tinder it's swipe right to match for Tik Tok swipe up to get a new video minimize cognitive load and keep it simple principle number two do not reinvent the wheel the hardest part of the app design process is figuring out your initial layout the process of iteration can be absolutely grueling but it's good that successful apps have already figured it out for you you don't have to figure out a novel place to put the settings button everybody has already decided for you that it belongs in the top right your users have learned dozens of apps they've built muscle memory for where things should be and how they should work fighting against these expectations just creates friction for UMX when we came up with the six Factor rating system we drew on inspiration from football player ratings in games like FIFA and Madden if your app is differentiated enough in functionality you don't need to seriously differentiate yourself in design save your Innovation for solving the core problem for everything else follow standard practice principle number three think like your customer the biggest mistake I see Founders making is designing for Imaginary users with Cal I had used my fitness pal and other calorie trackers in the past I knew what sort of functionality people wanted instead on the other hand when I was building umax I really had no idea what looks maxing was so I joined the Discord servers I watched the content and I read the forums turned out it was mostly just about about skin care hair care and being healthy this isn't just about market research this is about becoming your customer you'll start seeing your own app through their eyes you stop thinking about cool features and you start thinking about the features that actually solve the problems once again for calii this meant making calorie tracking simpler and faster than ever before for umax this meant simple numeric ratings and recommendations on how to improve ABS that go viral aren't designed in a vacuum they're designed by people that understand their users on a deep almost obsessive level either build for who you are today or become the person that you're building for method number one learn figma I often hear people talking about new design tools and AI design and canva I cannot emphasize this enough stop learn to use figma every single successful app I've seen began in figma if you're already familiar become better the active designing is the most important act in transferring your ideas into something tangible personally I prioritize user experience or ux over user interface or UI what this means is that I'm not overly focused on what the corner radius is or what the gradient overlay looks like I'm more concerned with what the key components do and how they help the user my co-founder design R GPT so the first time I ever designed was when I was building umax I taught myself how to design a functional MVP in just a number of days here's how I would recommend learning First Watch a 1hour basic figma tutorial on YouTube to understand how to use the platform second try redesigning an actual apps interface in figma the goal here isn't to become a professional designer it's to turn your ideas into something tangible as quickly as possible the faster you can test ideas and see what they actually look like the faster you'll be able to iterate to a final product that you're happy with method number two create an idea board this doesn't have to be some fancy mood board this can just be a collection of screenshots from apps with similar functionality for UMX once again this was the Madden and FIFA style rating systems this meant the upload image flow from AI Avatar generators for Cal this was the homepage of every other calorie tracker this is done to look for patterns what works what doesn't what do you like and dislike the key here is to be systematic drawn inspiration from onboarding from settings from homepages from different flows from everything that you can find and everything that you're going to have in your app this will become your reference library anytime you get stuck on a design for an individual component you can reference this one website that I like to use for this is mob.com instead of actually having to download the app and take screenshots you can just copy and paste from mobin and no I am not sponsored I personally still have these idea boards saved and I'll reference them on occasion just to remember what it was like when I was designing the individual app there's a classic saying that great artist steal well here it's that great designer's screenshot method number three study the content as I had mentioned with umax the majority of our success was attributable to our design the design of one screen the Madden or FIFA style rating screen I studied content that went viral on social media and I worked backwards from there with Riz GPT we did something similar we found the style of Riz slideshows that went most viral then we designed screens that would seamlessly integrate into this already existing content when you spent tens or even hundreds of hours studying the content you'll understand what sort of designs are going to do best you'll understand what people want to see and how it can seamlessly integrate into social media content I've referenced this a few times throughout this series but it is of Paramount importance if you don't understand what you're building and who you're building it for it will be extremely difficult to make it go viral you should have social media accounts specifically dedicated to consuming content only in your apps Niche this content will then inform you how to actually design your product and how to design the most viral screens in it hopefully the content in this video will help you design your viral app I'm making many more videos in the future so make sure to subscribe and check out our website at apex.nc to see what we're building if you have any questions leave comments below