Having a website today is common as almost every other business has one to merely have an online presence. Designers often overlook the usefulness of the design and focus on achieving a design that is pleasant on the eyes.

Essential UI (user interface) design tips

To be able to target more customers, your design needs to be spectacular and purposeful at the same time. There are various aspects of a design that you need to pay close attention to, which if unchecked, might ruin the usability of the website. Some of those aspects are listed below:

1. Make your interfaces easy to learn

A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds.
— Ted Nelson

The design should be easy to use and must not require a lot of learning. By adopting a more simplistic interface, you can reduce the user’s efforts and only show detailed information when required, instead of bombarding the user with all information.

Designers can implement this by tucking advanced options away from users but not completely removing it. Doing this reduces clutter and keeps both your average joe and power users happy at the same time.

2. Define how people use your interface

There are various ways to interact with a design, they include, the use of touchscreen devices which is one of the most commonly used interaction media, along with the use of traditional inputs like a mouse, keyboard or other devices.

As a designer, you are in charge of defining how people can interact with your design by focussing on both aspects of the interaction appropriately. You can create an interaction with a design in two common ways:

● Direct interaction

Direct interaction includes interacting directly with the design elements similar to clicking on a menu button, tapping on a card, dragging elements across the screen.

● Indirect Interaction

This interaction approach involves dealing with design elements indirectly via keyboard shortcuts, typing in a form.

3. Voice interfaces

Voice User Interfaces (VUI) are the primary or supplementary visual, auditory, and tactile interfaces that enable voice interaction between people and devices.

For those new to this, voice interfaces are the interaction we have with the voice assistants like Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri and more. The goal should be to sound as human as possible. While designing voice interfaces, designers should consider a few key points:

● Users talk and type differently, to keep up, voice assistants are required to understand multiple communication styles.

● Show suitable visual indication before, during and after the interaction.

● Avoid asking embarrassing questions and presenting confusing replies by shaping the conversation interestingly.

● Don’t rush your conversations, have a comforting tone with a clear and slow pace.

● Plan accordingly for unexpected diversions and errors that may arise during the interaction.

Conversation with Voice assistant

Voice Assistant: Hello and thank you for contacting Franklin detail. How can I help you today?

User: I’d like to check availability for a flat-screen TV.

Voice Assistant: I can help you with that. Do you have a particular model and size in your mind?

User: Yes, but I need to head to work right now. Can we pick this up later?

Voice Assistant: Ok, no problem. I can send you a text or Facebook messenger and we can continue there. Which would you like?

User: Please send me a Facebook message.

4. Know your users

Every design is planned with an intention and is aimed towards a target demographic. A designer must be able to understand people, their interaction skill level, how they interact with the design, and what design element they find puzzling to work.

Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realized it themselves.

– Steve jobs

Having a clear idea about the people interacting with your design can help you make your design intuitive, allowing your design to create a connection with its audience. With that knowledge, you can plan your design elements in a manner that the user will enjoy interacting with.

5. Anticipate mistakes

While interacting with design, mistakes are bound to happen and, it is not wise to punish the users by not letting them know of their errors.

A designer must always be able to anticipate the tricky parts of the design where blunders could happen and ensure there are ways to implement a fix.

There are lots of ways you can identify any upcoming mistakes and fix already occurred blunders such as:

● Checking if the correct type of data is being filled in forms.

● All the mandatory information has been obtained before moving on to the next step.

6. Give feedback — fast

As critical it is for a design to present the right information to users, it is equally important to report back to the user if anything has gone wrong.

It is not advisable to keep your user guessing what went wrong by showing that spinning loading icon, instead, being straightforward and informing the user what happened and what options they have from thereon is the right way forward.

Feedback is the heart of interaction. If user interaction is a conversation between your user and the product, then your product better participate in a friendly, interesting and helpful manner
– UXPin team

Giving prompt feedback is crucial as it can make or break your design’s interaction with the user as it is one of the most common reasons for your users to drop their interaction and move on. There are many ways you can give your user feedback like using:

● Animations on elements corresponding to the user’s action.

● Progress bars to show that they need to wait a few seconds before clicking again.

● Toasts to alert users of any incorrect or unexpected input.

7. Think carefully about element placement and size

With innovations in modern devices, new and compatible design patterns are the need of the hour. As computer displays have switched their aspect ratios from 4:3 to 16:9, 16:10 and mobiles displays now come with various styles of cutouts, the canvas for your design has now upgraded, demanding precise placement of the elements of the right size to fully utilize the given area.

Various tools are available online to test your design virtually on a variety of devices, to give you an idea of how your design will look.

Designers can take advantage of this and emphasize critical actions by using the right elements at a suitable size, minimizing user confusion.

8. Customizable and personalized

While targeting multiple age groups, you should allow some level of personalization to the users, instead of forcing them to use your idea of design.

Providing customization options to users gives them a sense of control and ownership over the interaction. The personalization options given to users may allow them to control some if not all of the following, such as:

● Fonts

● Colour Themes

● Sounds

● Feedback

● Gestures

● Component library

●Widget templates

● Accessibility features like magnification, inverting colours and high contrast text

9. Make decision-making simple

How often have you stumbled upon a website that doesn’t feature loads of distractions in the form of multiple popups one, auto-playing videos and banners?

Interaction is the essence of all user experiences. It is the conversation between your product and your user, and if the conversation is boring, your user will leave and talk to someone more interesting.

– UXPin Team

Good design is a lot like clear thinking made visual.

But such type of distractions don’t just irritate users but can also push them away from your website or application. Elements like popups, banners, videos when overused, can knock down the effectiveness of your design.

Designers can keep this under control by using a cleaner and faster design that doesn’t stray your user away from his purpose.

10. Listen to the data

Creating a stunning design is only half the process, your design is incomplete if it fails to serve its intended purpose. Feedback on your design and the application starts flowing in once it goes live.

Setting up tools to measure your design’s performance can help you fix the shortcomings of your design. There are various free tools you can use to gather analytics, such as Google Analytics, Mixpanel. There are plenty of other options to critique your design, such as Awwwards, Dribble, Behance. User feedback can also highlight necessary changes in the design.

When users come to your site but without doing any interaction they left the website on the same page is called bounce rate.
The bad user interface is one of the most common reasons for users to drop their interaction and move on.

11. Evolving

Once you have received enough data about your design is being perceived, its time to get started on improving it. Transforming your design to match modern trends is the only way to survive in today’s ever-evolving time.

Also, it helps to use the latest tools to improve your current design with modern tools that can help save time. You can find tons of guidelines, blogs and tips online that can help you understand the trending design philosophy and how you can adapt it in your design.

Conclusion

Creating a design is not just picking up elements and putting it together, it is a thought process, requiring you to analyze and plan how you can represent your brand to make it stand out from others. A clean, smooth and purposeful design can help you maintain and improve your brand’s perception. The aspects mentioned above are pivotal to crafting design and the experience that make a lasting impression on the users, to which you must pay close attention.