Design Principals for Creating a great User Interface
Most of the successful products that have achieved exponential growth relied heavily on a good solid User Interface. Article covers essential User Interface principals needed for a Great Mobile App and/or product launch.
According to Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler the Authors of Bold: How to Go Big, Make Bank, and Better the World. The key factor for a technology explosion and exponential growth is User Interface. As stated on Page 28 “The creation of a simple and elegant interface gives entrepreneurs the ability to harness this new technology (tool) to solve problems, start businesses and most importantly experiment. ”
Bold book list several examples of exponential user adoption through a User Interface. The most powerful example to me is the Launch of the iPhone from Steve Jobs. iPhone was not the first smart phone released, actually there was dozens of Smartphones already on the market. The key was Steve Jobs and Apple combined better technology with a User Interface that was so intuitive and elegant to use that it made mass user adoption the most successful product launch in the world. More important it was released with user interface that empowered developers to extend, expand and create apps that complimented the user interface. Need some inspiration watch the original keynote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN4U5FqrOdQ
Design Principals required for a Great User Interface:
User Interface — Use UI Elements Consistently. In launch of the iPhone the core user interface was used universally in the iPhone both for Utility purposes as well as in the core apps. Most importantly these core features where giving to developers to use with guidelines on proper use and function. Best part of iPhone launch, it used more than design but hardware to help with User Interface.
Function — Focus on the Primary Task. When designing a mobile app interface or product interface keeping to the primary function is essential. A prime example Books. The core function should be to read a book. Functionality is the highest priority.
Form — Elevate the Content that People Care About! Newspapers along time ago had to figure out how to elevate and present content that sales news papers and gets readers engaged. Form is a primary focus to any app or site that is committed to customer engagement. Look no further than Google and how it has evolved with its search results. Facebook is rolling out new ways to elevate content and keep the user engaged to it’s platform. Twitter went from 140 character platform that introduced Vine a 6 second video app to having multimedia in tweets. What all of these do well at? Giving you the core content with a link to engage into more!
Intuitive — Make Usage Easy and Obvious. Great interface requires little instructions and for most people should be second nature or intuitive. Apple the king of Intuitive interfaces did product releases of Mac computers, iPods and iPhones that came with a “easy to understand” manual usually 10 pages of less. The point here is: Put less time into writing a manual and more time into creating an easy to use interface.
Navigation — Give People a Logical Path to Follow. Getting to and From content should be very easy. Your design should not require more than 1-2 Actions to get to the content. If it does you need to rethink your navigation strategy.
Use Of Screen Space — Think Top Down. Use of screen space is critical part of Mobile Design as well as Responsive Design. In a non-software approach it is just as critical. If creating a car the use of windshield and dash becomes very important elements in creating a user interface. Now days most popular apps includes menu navigation and options from the top down. Why? We are trained to look at headlines and cues and navigate from there.
Directions and Terminology — Use User-Centric Terminology. The easiest example to use is a book. Book has evolved over time and most of the common features we see today in books come from the advent of the Printing Press. Book has easy to understand terminology e.g. Bookmark, Table of Contents, Chapter, Page, Verse. Think of how you are going to identify and help users engage into your content. A great modern example of this is FaceBook. They did not invent the word “Like”. But they sure did make it a verb that took off. Facebook did not stop at “Like”, they added “Share”, “Comment”, “Reply”, “Photo/Video”. Words are powerful in their instruction and use and using them needs to be done with in mind.
Fingertips — Make Targets Fingertip-Size. For Mobile Design the key would be to make design around Fingertips. If creating a non-software product the interface needs to be designed around the user. For example in a Car the driver can steer the care with a steering wheel, apply the gas or brakes, change the radio, signal and change gears while sitting and driving the car. Focus on the User Interface to make sure it can easily be done with barley lifting a finger (No pun intended)
Conclusion: In a technology launch as well as in Mobile Application Development User Interface is a key process for a successful launch.
Please like and Share this article. Feedback is welcome. Any grammar/spelling changes please put in comments and I will edit into article if appropriate.
