5 things to think about before designing a UI

Most people believe that design is a creative discipline. But like all creation, order is required to make any design coherent and intuitive. Here is a list of concepts I think about whenever I begin to build user interfaces:

Purpose is what defines the building blocks of any interface. Why am I building this? With the assumption that you are building with a goal in mind, and a utilitarian perspective, your design should have exactly what it needs and nothing more. Anything more is a distraction.

Taxonomy refers to classifications or ways of classification. By building an interface with the appropriate taxonomy, the user can easily find what they’re looking for through association. What are the relationships between different objects and information on the page? Taxonomy builds context, which simplifies design and reduces redundancy. Each paragraph in this article is a group of sentences that describe a specific idea, which reduces the need for additional writing to contextualize each sentence.

Hierarchy is one of the larger considerations in any good design. Is there an inherent order or ranking of objects in an interface? In this article, each paragraph that describes a specific idea begins with the idea in bold text. This text is the overarching idea of the paragraph, and is hierarchically more important than the rest of the paragraph. Your eyes are drawn to the bolded word, which allows you to decide whether or not the text that follows is worth your time.

Convention is a tool that allows designers to build on the user’s past experiences. What are users familiar with? Why do most websites put a sign-in button on the top right? What does it mean when you see underlined text? These are all things you’re familiar with, because you’ve encountered them many times before, and for designers, familiarity means ease of use.

Interaction is a concept that refers to the behavior of the interface, and its implications on user behavior. How much feedback do the users need in order to make meaningful decisions? Look on the top right of your screen (unless you’re reading this on a phone) and hover your mouse over the buttons. The small changes in color reassure you that those objects are interactive. How can we simplify complex situations, and how can we reduce the pain of waiting? These are all problems that are solved through interaction design.

Reading this list will by no means make you a good designer. But hopefully, but thinking about these five concepts, the logic behind good design will be a larger part of whatever you make.