A viewer may see a website as pages and pages with products and services information but anyone with UI design skills may think differently. Your website & app is much more than just pages filled with tons of information. Your website is a trip of experience for a user, a trip of connection between company and user. A website is a way to communicate with brands easily. And as a designer, it is your responsibility to ensure that experience level users are having to the maximum.
The main key to advice, that you can always get to hear in relative fields as that think about your user prior and always. However, web design is a quite new ground to pursue and it is obligated to HCI, the human-computer interaction study. Even though these guidelines that we will be discussing today are from this study’s research.
To save you from making a mess brand design is here to save you because these designs will help you in better understanding of UI design for both, website & app. The organisation of interface functions is a subset of user experience design, which focuses on the big picture: the complete experience, not just the interface.
Top 10 UI Design tips
Here are 10 fundamental UI design tips.
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Get to know the users first
Before getting on UI design for your website you have to understand the market that is going to be using that website & app. Getting to know your audience’s mind from the inside out will help you design better. That could include looking for all the demographical data from your analytic app. This will help you know what the demand is, and what you will be facing during the process.
Developing that level of empathy needs more than a rigorous examination of statistics. It is necessary to get to know the individuals that use your website. It entails talking to them face to face, observing them use your product and maybe others, and asking them questions that go beyond, “What do they think of the specific design?”
What are their objectives? What is preventing them from reaching their objectives? How can a website assist them in overcoming or working around these obstacles?
Really shouldn’t stop at understanding what your customers desire. Investigate more to determine what they require. After all, wants are only extensions of necessities. If you can meet a user’s deepest need, you will satisfy their demands while also meeting more fundamental criteria.
The ideas you will get from analyzing data and communicating with consumers will influence every decision you make, from how people use your interface to what sorts of information you’ll emphasize inside it.
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Define how users will interact with your interface
Before designing an interface you should define potential users about how to they are going to be using it. By increasing the number of touch sensor technology these days this has become a crucial concern more than it seems it is. Perhaps take an example of tinder, the user experience with these apps is defined as easy and imprudent because of that one swipe. Sometimes the interaction is way too easy that people make mistakes of swiping right, if you know, you know what am I talking about!
There is two way that can be used to interact with an app or website:
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Direct interactions:
In this people can interact directly with interface elements of any specific product like Tapping a button, card swiping, and dragging or dropping any item with a fingertip.
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Indirect interaction:
This involves Indirect interaction with external UI elements of the product. As in, Pointing and clicking with a mouse, using key commands or shortcuts, Typing into a form, and Drawing on a Wacom tablet.
Now it is your decision on which you want to inform your users about the using style of your website & app according to your UI design. If the design is for writers or coders they will want to use a keyboard so you can add shortcuts for keyboards that can save them using mouse and their time. But for the common people with limited usage, you do not have to add extra features like shortcuts or swiping and all.
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Let your users know what is ahead before
Not every user will be your old user. If someone is new to your website they would like to know what they are clicking and what will happen next.
Some points might help you understand properly and click more ideas:
- Use common symbols like ‘$’ to a better understanding of money, trash can symbolize delete button and magnifying glasses are for searching purposes. These are something we all know.
- Use common colors for indication, like green for positive and red for an alert.
- Highlight special buttons.
- Warning signals or alerts, disclaimers. (e.g., asking twice before deleting any item to get rid of mistaken actions)
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To err. Is human
The most common phrase we have read. Prevention is better than cure, yes, we know, but sometimes we have to let the accidents happen and take care of it after it is done.
Cut short to the example, if the user is deleting anything you can always provide a way where they can recover their data again. Or maybe if a user forgot to fill in their father’s name while submitting any form a note can be pop-up saying “father’s name is required to process further”.
After all, UI designing is all about enhancing user experience, so why not make things easy for them as well.
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Quick feedbacks!
Too frequently, digital interfaces fail to provide much information, leaving us to wonder if we should refresh the website, restart the laptop, or simply chuck it out the first open window.
So, please, give me that loading animation. When I tap it, make it pop and snapback—but not too much. And give me a virtual high-five when I do something that both you and I think is fantastic.
But always ensure everything occurs quickly. Any delay of moreover one second, according to Usability.gov, is considered an interruption. A disturbance lasting more than ten seconds. And the latter is generous: 3 seconds is enough to generate a bounce for around half of the US population.
If a website will load in less than 5 seconds, don’t show a progress bar because it will make the loading time appear longer. Instead, employ a non-progressive representation, such as Mac’s famed “pinwheel of doom.” But not like that. If you do utilize progress bars on your site, you could experiment with several aesthetic methods to make the load appear faster.
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Strategical Placement is something extra-important
We all know, as use as well that we are attracted or notice things way too easily when they are highlighted, big, or say prominent. Like we use heading in size 16 but normal words text in 12, why? Because we only want their attention on those few words first, however, the title is always the bigger and more noticeable. It’s all strategical placement but when it comes to website or app design we have to think a little different.
Like, make your buttons (that you want the user to click more) bigger and more noticeable. Like we all know search engines are on top so let them be there for user’s ease. Use specific color placement and sizes for your special features. But always keep the user’s perspective in mind while designing and ask your self “how being a user I would have felt?”
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Maintain your standards
Getting on trends and all, seems good, but it is not always. Designing your websites and app designs oftenly or updating to new inventions can create troubles for users. Users may not find it simple or accept it learning all the features they have learned before all over again.
Little changes and updates are encouraged only when it fixes the problem that was actually occurring. For instance, we see the new version of MS office every year. But the basic tools inside remain the same and I as a writer do not have to waste my time learning those features all over again.
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The interface should be easy to grab on
In simple words, make your interface design easy, that is simple to understand and easy to remember. Users can get irritated with extra and useless features and can easily move on to another.
The advice is to put the basic features or information on the first interface and advanced features on the second interface. It will help every kind of user on your website or app and their satisfaction level will help you.
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Ease of decision making
Much of the internet shout at each other: “banners” suddenly expand to become full-screen advertisements. Modals appear, pleading with us to subscribe to blogs we haven’t had a chance to read yet. We are halted in our tracks by video interstitials, which force us to watch precious seconds tick oh-so-slowly past. Don’t get me started on the widgets, flyouts, and text boxes.
The concept is as straightforward as the ultimate result: the more UI options you give a user, the more difficult it is for them to make a selection. This influences practically everything we build:
- General layouts
- Menus for navigating
- Pages dedicated to pricing
- Indexes of blogs
- Feeds of content
The list goes on and on. However, the bottom line is that the simpler our designs are, the faster and easier it is for consumers to make the decisions we want them to make. That is why landing pages and non-newsletter emails should contain only one call to action. You truly want consumers to take their time and ponder their alternatives. That’s why the tiled patterns found on Pinterest, Dribbble, and many blogs work so effectively. After all, the more alternatives you have to choose from, the more likely you are to discover one that works for you.
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Consider your data as well
Since we all wish that our designs were considered only on their artistic merit, the truth is that optimising your design to achieve its aim is just as important. Through user research and testing may be extremely beneficial in directing your design decisions toward the achievement of your site’s objective, data obtained after launch is priceless.
Certain sites are available like Google analytic and Mixpanel that can help you analyze the data based on the actions on your site. People’s behavior, visitors’ actions, the traffic, and so on.