If I make a functional app is it easy and hopefully not expensive to have a UX designer make it beautiful? Or is that more the job of a graphic designer? Thanks!
UX is about user experience. My interpretation of that is it is up to the person building the app to understand how to make it work properly for the user to have a good experience while using the app. There may be considerations of whether to use a popup or not, to have the user navigate to another page or use multiple groups on the same page and just hide/show them.
I believe most people now should understand well enough what they expect from an app as a user and be capable of translating that into half way decent UX design.
With that being said, my pain point personally is the design itself, like colors, font styles and positioning of elements.
So in terms of making it beautiful, I say that implies a graphic designer.
I’ve toyed with the idea of hiring a non-bubble graphic designer and just opted to spend some time learning basic design principles and applying them myself.
You can find a lot of resources online about font combinations that work well, plus loads of sites to help choose color schemes and of course there is the google material design principles to understand sizing of elements.
One thing to keep in mind is the need for margins and the consistency of them.
If you think your artistic abilities are not up to snuff, I’d suggest hiring a graphic designer who would create the color scheme, font combinations as well as the elements needed like buttons and repeating groups etc.
From that, if you think your capable to utilize bubbles responsive editor, could just use the design basics created by a graphic designer and implement them as you build your functional app.
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Hey, thanks for your really helpful response! Great thoughts and explanation. Appreciate your input. 
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Speaking as a UX designer myself (and more broadly, I’m actually a product designer), a UX designer is going to be much better at understanding the medium of screens, states, and behaviors than a graphic designer. I went to school to be a graphic designer and a tradition graphic designer will generally have no experience with digital experiences and how to shape them.
My advice would be to seek out a UX designer. You’ll be amazed at how they’re not only able to offer guidance on style (which is often called a “visual designer” if it’s being done for a webapp) but offer dramatic improvements to usability based on their UX expertise.
If you can find a UX designer that understands Bubble well, that’s even better, because Bubble makes some choices that may be hard for a normal UX designer to understand. For instance, how a Floating Group is really just a fixed position element, etc.
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Thanks for the info from the perspective of a UX/Graphic Designer (as well as a Bubbler, I presume), Chris! Down the road if I build something I decide to market, are you available for freelance consulting? Thanks, Bob
+1 to everything @boston85719 and @chris10 already mentioned.
I just shared a bit of my own experience with design on another thread: Bubble Designer.
Further, I would say design choices - with capital D - are difficult. In my day job, I train and coach product owners. After years observing them struggle, there are 2 pieces of advice that really seem to resonate with them:
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go back to the core of the problem.
Your app is trying to solve someone’s problem, really dive in to who is having the problem, figure out what’s the context of that user. That will help narrow the amount of options. -
there are lots of choices, just choose one.
Not every choice needs to have solid reasoning.
One tool that I’ve been enjoying a lot is Basecamp’s Breadboarding technique (from the book Shape Up, chapter 4). It quickly lets me get to the core decisions of the app. In 2 minutes you might get the gist of it and start using it.
Another great resource, is Strategyzer’s Value Proposition Design. It’s a great framework; see everything as a hypothesis and think how to prove / disprove it.
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Just to add my own two cents, I agree with most of what @chris10 has said. You want a UI/UX designer (user interface & user experience) over a graphic designer. The former has a skillset more geared towards designing applications, whereas, the latter has a strong prowess in design which can be leveraged in a broad range of things unspecific to applications (i.e. logos, social media covers, brochures etc).
However, I’d consider using both. Use the UI/UX designer to construct the general aesthetics of your application, but also use a graphic designer to design assets and accessories such as isometric illustrations to really bring your site to life.
Hope that helps!
Rico, thanks for the simple ideas and links! The Breadboard concept just clicked for me, esp. with that graphic. Make a working circuit first, then get them into a box that organizes them clearly for the user. The value proposition free 100 pages looks great as well - Seeing the way they illustrate each concept pulled me right in, making me realize what a visual learner I am. Thanks again for sharing!
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Getting into this Refactoring UI (https://refactoringui.com/) and it is fascinating! Really great resource. Thanks again for sharing, Rico! Just downloaded the 143-page book here: https://basecamp.com/shapeup/shape-up.pdf
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Great another resource that is going to make me rethink my designs and spend time changing them 
That resource looks awesome just at a glance and the clear explanations of what to do and why is great.
Thanks @rico.trevisan
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Such excellent advice on this thread. I’ll add my experience here…
During my very early stages I found a UI/UX designer on upwork. He doesn’t know bubble, but he was an excellent thought partner for the UX design and strong designer for the UI aspects which I really struggle with. He was extremely valuable in helping me shape some key aspects of how the app works and looks. A key component of this relationship is trust. I have had some very dodgy partners / freelancers in the past, but this guy is totally trustworthy and reliable which is key.
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