I Build Solo

From Prototype to Polish: Using 99Designs to Level Up My App's Design

I believe it’s almost always better to focus on what I’m good at and delegate the rest. As someone specializing in product and engineering, I’m always exploring new ways to hire design work for my apps. This time, I decided to try 99Designs—a platform that’s been around for a while that works like this:

99Designs is an online marketplace that connects businesses and individuals needing design work with freelance graphic designers around the world. The platform primarily operates through design contests where clients post project briefs, multiple designers submit their concepts, and the client selects and pays for their preferred winning design.

I just completed my first design project on 99Designs and want to document my experience, including how I plan to integrate this into my app development workflow.

My Process for Getting the Final Design

First, I wrote a design brief covering:

App Description

Minimalistic Habit Tracking iOS App A clean, minimalistic habit tracking app for iOS that helps users build and maintain positive habits by focusing on up to 3 essential habits.

Visual Style

  • Minimalistic overall, but showing colors during celebrations (e.g., when the user completes all daily tasks)
  • Inspiration: Notion app—great at keeping aesthetics minimalistic while remaining beautiful. The design doesn’t interfere with core functionality.

Main App Workflows

  • Onboarding flow to help users understand the app and get started by adding habits
  • Tasks screen with easy check-off functionality
  • Add/edit habit item page
  • Calendar view for reviewing past completions and tracking streaks
  • Profile page displaying progress highlights and achievement summaries

I chose the 9-screen design option ($999) with Bronze level competition, which allows designers from entry-level to top-level to submit. I chose Bronze over Gold since this was my first trial and I just wanted to get an MVP done instead of a perfectly polished version.

After submitting the brief, I started receiving submissions. It took about 7 days to review initial designs, reject poor submissions, give feedback on promising ones, and decide on finalists. I applied these criteria:

  • Aesthetic sense - Most important since I lack the skill to create aesthetically pleasing designs
  • Ability to incorporate feedback - Critical for future collaboration on enhancements and additional screens
  • Good ideas for relevant features/UI elements - Some designers intuited and suggested thoughtful UI elements that enhanced features based on my rough screenshots

During evaluation, I narrowed down to 6 designers and tested them further by requesting specific enhancements that were missing from initial submissions:

Tasks Page

  • Could you add a progress bar in each task cell based on current week progress

Add/Edit Page

  • Could you add an emoji selector functionality

Profile Page

  • Could you add “Achievements” section showing earned badges?

Based on how well designers handled these changes and maintained design coherence, I narrowed down to four finalists.

With my top two candidates, I provided thorough reviews and requested fine-tuning changes like:

  • Applying iOS design standards to the main tab bar
  • Moving the Settings tab to the top right corner of the Profile screen
  • Making positive messages more readable and noticeable
  • Making achievement texts more concise

How to Maximize Value Going Forward

This process offered unique benefits: 1) Different designers provided varied approaches, giving me new ideas I hadn’t considered, and 2) I could “test drive” working with multiple designers through iterations without major commitment, building confidence before paying.

To maximize platform value, I should:

  • Continue iterating with candidate designers before choosing a winner
  • Carefully evaluate new ideas in design submissions

Optimized Timing:

  • Start competitions on weekends so designers can submit during weekdays
  • Spend 30 minutes several times during weekdays to narrow down and provide feedback
  • Choose finalists the following weekend and conduct thorough reviews
  • Choose a winner
  • Summary: Complete 5-screen projects within 10 days, then spend another week on additional screens if needed

Final Thoughts

Getting app design done through 99Designs was straightforward and offered important unique benefits. Even using the Bronze tier (affordable option), I found a few designers I liked. I expect the total project cost to be ~$2000 including about 5 additional screens or 10 screens in total.

Providing screenshots from a functional prototype likely made the process easier by minimizing ambiguity in my brief and allowing designers to focus on showcasing skills rather than clarifying product details. My development process going forward should be:

  1. Develop a working prototype with basic app design
  2. Get proper design done via 99Designs
  3. Improve the prototype by applying the new design and make it release-ready