- App template
- A pre-built, reusable starting point for an application, with screens, navigation and styling already assembled, that developers customize instead of building from a blank project. Templates cut initial development time by removing repetitive boilerplate setup.
- UI component
- A self-contained, reusable piece of user interface, such as a button, card, input field or navigation bar, with its own markup, styling and behavior. Components are composed together to build screens consistently across an app.
- App flow
- The connected sequence of screens and interactions a user moves through to complete a task, such as signing up, checking out or resetting a password. Pre-built app flows package these multi-screen journeys so common paths do not have to be designed from scratch.
- UI kit
- A curated collection of ready-made UI components, screens and style rules that share a consistent visual language. A UI kit lets teams assemble interfaces quickly while keeping spacing, color and typography uniform.
- Boilerplate
- The repetitive setup code and configuration nearly every project needs before feature work can begin: routing, state management, theming and authentication scaffolding. Starter templates exist largely to eliminate rewriting boilerplate for each new app.
- Cross-platform development
- Building an application that runs on multiple platforms (typically iOS and Android, and sometimes web) from a single shared codebase. Frameworks such as Flutter and React Native are designed for this, reducing the cost of maintaining separate native apps.
- MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
- The simplest version of a product that delivers core value and can be released to real users to gather feedback. An MVP intentionally omits non-essential features so a team can validate an idea quickly and cheaply.
- Flutter
- An open-source UI framework created by Google for building natively compiled apps for mobile, web and desktop from one Dart codebase. Flutter renders its own widgets, giving pixel-level control over appearance across platforms.
- React Native
- An open-source framework from Meta for building mobile apps using React and JavaScript that render to native platform UI. It lets web-oriented teams reuse React skills to ship iOS and Android apps from shared code.
- SwiftUI
- Apple's declarative UI framework for building interfaces across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS with Swift. Developers describe what the UI should look like for a given state and the framework keeps the view in sync.
- Jetpack Compose (Kotlin)
- Android's modern declarative UI toolkit, written in Kotlin, for building native interfaces without XML layouts. UI is expressed as composable functions that update automatically when their underlying state changes.
- Design system
- A documented set of reusable components, patterns and standards (colors, typography, spacing and usage rules) that keeps a product visually and behaviorally consistent. Design systems help teams build faster and maintain coherence as an app grows.
- Design tokens
- Named, platform-agnostic values that store design decisions such as colors, spacing and font sizes (for example, a "primary" color token). Tokens let a single change propagate consistently everywhere it is referenced.
- Wireframe
- A low-fidelity, usually grayscale layout of a screen that shows structure and content placement without final visuals. Wireframes are used early to agree on flow and hierarchy before investing in detailed design.
- Prototype
- An interactive, clickable model of an app used to test and demonstrate how it will work before full development. Prototypes range from linked static screens to near-functional builds and are key to validating ideas with users.
- Navigation pattern
- A conventional structure for moving between an app’s screens, such as tab bars, stack navigation, drawers or bottom sheets. Consistent navigation patterns make apps feel familiar and predictable to users.
- Onboarding flow
- The first-run sequence that introduces new users to an app, often covering value, permissions and account setup. A well-designed onboarding flow improves activation by getting users to the app's core value quickly.
- Authentication flow
- The set of screens and logic that let users prove their identity: sign up, log in, social sign-in, password reset and verification. Authentication is a near-universal requirement, which is why it is a common pre-built app flow.