UX and UI designers work closely with engineers throughout product development to build and implement design concepts and wireframes for functional user interfaces. Regular communication, feedback and testing are required for the collaboration to work smoothly and deliver a user experience that aligns with the intended design goals.
Nick Budden, a serial entrepreneur who used to work as a UI/UX designer, wanted designers to spend their days solely on design work rather than handoffs or meetings with engineers. To address a few inefficient steps in the design process, Budden founded Phase in 2017.
“Implementing 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 is also delayed until after that process is complete.”
The Taipei and Berlin-based startup is building a no-code platform that helps UI/UX designers create fully interactive prototypes, and it said on Thursday that it has raised $13 million in funding from Gobi Partners, New Economy Ventures, Palm Drive Capital, Shilling VC, SquareOne, WI Harper, 42CAP and 500 Global.
Today, the startup released its first product, a UI animation tool that will compete with Adobe After Effects and Figma. Phase says its software lets UI/UX and product designers create interactive website or app simulations “without manual coding or [using] error-prone AI plugins.” It can also export UI code that’s ready for production, speeding up the design process.
Budden said Phase’s product is much easier for a UI/UX designer to use than other tools like Adobe After Effects or Figma. “The key differentiator to Figma is the completeness of the prototype. So in Figma, you can build a prototype that does, maybe 20% or 30% of what the real website does, and then the other 70% or 80% that the prototype doesn’t do, you then have to communicate with the engineers, product managers, and people have to figure that out,” Budden mentioned. “Our product is being built to do 100% of what a real website or app does.”
This is supposedly the first in a series of launches, and there are plans to introduce three more UI design and code tools of its WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) platform this year and next year to streamline all the manual work required for UI/UX design, Budden told TechCrunch. The three new features will be: UI advanced prototyping, UI design and UI code export.
“We don’t see UI animation as a standalone market for long — it’s a go-to-market opportunity today, but that window will close once tools like Figma integrate animation as a built-in feature,” Phase’s CEO told TechCrunch. “Our strategy is to gain only initial traction in animation now, and move down our roadmap into larger markets before that shift happens.”
Phase first introduced its platform in South Korea in May after finding a reliable local partner to help with the launch.
Designers adopt new tools by observing their peers discussing and using them, leading to the widespread adoption of design tools, Budden explained, but he pointed out that this influence is often “hyper-local.” For example, designers in London are primarily influenced by others in their area.
“Because of this local dynamic, we launched region by region, allowing us to engage deeply with each design community and build momentum,” Budden told TechCrunch.
South Korea has about 100,000 designers, and Phase says that within a few weeks of launching its product, more than 10,000 had tested it. This hands-on approach successfully kickstarted community growth — at least in South Korea — but it hasn’t worked out as well as the company hoped in other regions.
“Larger markets had more dispersed design communities, making it harder to gain traction. After months of struggling to recreate Korea’s success, we shifted gears and opened a global beta,” Phase’s CEO said. “With adjustments to our go-to-market strategy, we saw rapid and sustained growth […] That momentum, combined with product stabilization, is why we’re moving out of beta now.”
Phase aims to enter the U.S. and European markets as its next priority.
