Explanation of design principles and what is in the design principle
What are Design Principle?
Design principles are guidelines, biases and design considerations that designers apply with discretion. Professionals from many disciplines — e.g., behavioral science, sociology, physics and ergonomics — provided the foundation for design principles via their accumulated knowledge and experience.
Universal Design Principle
The goal of Universal Design is to maximize usability by individuals with a wide variety of characteristics. Whether we are talking about learning strategies or physical space, Universal Design operates by a set of principles designed to maximize access by everyone.
The seven principles of universal design :
- Equitable Use, The design is useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities. For example, a counter space or desk surface may be raised or lowered to accommodate users of varying height, or an individual who uses a wheelchair.
- Flexibility in Use, The design accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities. A museum that allows a visitor to choose to read or listen to a description of the contents of a display case employs this principle.
- Simple and Intuitive, Use of the design is easy to understand, regardless of the user’s experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level.
- Perceptible Information, The design communicates necessary information effectively to the user, regardless of ambient conditions or the user’s sensory abilities. For example, a video includes a voiceover for individuals with visual impairments.
- Tolerance for Eror, The design minimizes hazards and the adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions. For example, a hallway is free of protruding objects at a height where they would not be detectable by someone with a visual impairment who uses a cane.
- Low Physical Effort, The design can be used efficiently, comfortably, and with a minimum of fatigue. For example, an automatic door opener can facilitate access to an office space or classroom.
- Appropriate Size and Space for Approach and Use, Appropriate size and space is allotted for approach, reach and manipulation regardless of physical characteristics such as size or mobility. For example, a classroom includes a range of seating options, including a table for someone who uses a wheelchair or wider chairs for individuals who are taller and/or larger.
Law of UX
These are 7 Law of UX
- Fitts’s Law
The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target. Pastikan target tindakan selalu mudah diakses oleh pengguna — baik dari segi jarak yang harus ditempuh pengguna maupun ukuran target.
- Aesthetic-usability Effect
Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more usable.
In fact, scientists analyzed the impact of visual appeal on site usability and learned that the visual appeal of a design influences first impressions the most. Test participants gave high interest and usability ratings to websites that looked visually stunning and low interest and ratings to sites with low visual appeal.
- Jakob’s Law
Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.
- Miller’s Law
The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory.
Since people can hold seven items in their working memory at most, aim to reduce their cognitive load or the mental effort it takes to remember everything to make a decision.
- Hick’s Law
The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices. Too many and too complicated choices reduces the odds of the user actually making a choice.
Essentially, too many choices lead to choice or analysis paralysis, i.e., information overload preventing users from taking any action at all. So limit available options.
- Law of Proximity
Objects that are near, or proximate to each other, tend to be grouped together.
Proximity helps to establish a relationship with nearby objects. Elements in close proximity are perceived to share similar functionality or traits. Proximity helps users understand and organize information faster and more efficiently.
- Law of Common Region
Elements tend to be perceived into groups if they are sharing an area with a clearly defined boundary. Users group together elements that share an area with a defined boundary. When users visit a design, they make quick judgments based on grouped elements in a target area to understand which UI areas to interact with.
Don Normans Principle of Design
Don Norman is co-founder and Principal of Nielsen Norman Group. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, has been awarded three honorary degrees, and is the founder and director of the Design Lab at the University of California, San Diego. The six principles that revolve around this idea are:
- Visibility
Users should know, just by looking at an interface, what their options are and how to access them. The more visible functions are, the more likely users will be able to know what to do next. In contrast, when functions are out of sight, it makes them more difficult to find and know how to use.
- Feedback
The user must receive feedback after every action they perform to let them know whether or not their action was successful. For example, changing the icon on the tab to a spinner to indicate that a webpage is loading.
- Affordance
Affordance is the link between how things look and how they’re used. For example, a coffee mug has high affordance because you instantly know how to hold it just by looking at it. The same is true for digital applications the design should be intuitive enough that the users know how to access their desired information just by looking at the interface.
- Mapping
Mapping is the idea that, in a good design, the controls for something will closely resemble their effect. This is best understood with the vertical scroll bar; it tells you where you currently are, and the page moves down at the same pace and sensitivity as the vertical bar.
- Constraints
Constraints restrict a particular form of user interaction with an interface. This is essential because the user could become overwhelmed with the range of possibilities available through an interface. An example of a constraint is an online form that does not allow users to enter letters into a phone number field.
- Consistency
This refers to designing interfaces to have similar operations and use similar elements for achieving similar tasks. In particular, a consistent interface is one that follows rules, such as using the same operation to select all objects. For example, if a website’s buttons are protruding boxes with labels on them, then all of the website’s buttons should look like that.
20 Fundamental UX Design Principles a Designer Has to Live By
- Keep yor Focus on the User
The user comes first (always). This is one of the most common fundamentals of UX design. It’s important for UX designers to put themselves in the users’ shoes and design for their needs. The best UX designs keep the users in sharp focus, meaning as a designer, you’ll need to leave aside your own preferences. Instead, put more effort into understanding users’ pain points, preferences, and opinions.
- Usability Testing
Regardless of how aesthetically pleasing your work might be, it won’t resonate with users unless it’s safe and easy to use.
The most obvious example can be website design. A website that’s cluttered and challenging to navigate around is doomed to lose visitors. The design has a direct and powerful impact on users, hence your conversions. As a UX designer, you need to ensure each button, text, snippet, and element has a purpose and ensure the user can easily achieve that purpose.
- Accessibility
UX designers might overlook accessibility when they put more weight on the usability of the product. The accessibility of digital products was considered an unnecessary workload. However, fortunately, that’s changed. The increasing demand for digital products and some new legislation contributed to the spread of product accessibility.
- Context Matters Both for Designers and User
It’s not only designers that need context; users need it too. In fact, often, design teams offer users some context to smooth out possible frictions in the user’s journey. Filling out forms is one of the common examples. Designers are typically more careful with form design because the questions can be open to misinterpretation.
- Consistency is Key
Being consistent with design means implementing the right UI components and repeating them to help users pick up the product much faster. If a product takes too much effort to get the hang of on behalf of the user, it’s more likely to fail. That’s why consistency in UX design is a crucial principle for the learnability of a product.
- Less is More
While intensely working on creativity and uniqueness, designers may unintentionally clutter the interface and even the product. The less is more approach focuses on simplicity as opposed to over-decoration of the interface.
- Keep Visual Hierarchy in Mind
Visual hierarchy is the designers’ way of transmitting the importance of elements within a product to the user. A good visual hierarchy helps users’ eyes move across the interface from the most crucial aspect to the least gradually. Some common examples can be font size difference in titles and normal text or the button color difference
- Understand The Power of Typography
Typography significantly impacts the way users interpret any written message. More than that, it can change the usability and accessibility level of a product. As a UX designer, considering typographical hierarchy makes a design more user-friendly. One of the best examples is the publishing platform Medium’s typography, which makes it easily and quickly readable.
- Provide the Right Amount of Control to The User
User control is another critical design principle for user experience. In fact, it’s Jakob Nielsen’s third usability heuristic for user interface design. According to this principle. Users select system functions by mistake and will need an obvious emergency exit to leave the unwanted action. In other words, support undo and redo.
- Identify The Mental Models of Users
The metal model concept refers to the theory that humans make meaning of how the world around them works. As a result of the mental model, a person will think and act in a certain way, which is very convenient for UX designers.
- Follow the UX Design Patterns
Design Patterns are repeatable solutions to commonly occurring problems in software design. These patterns have been tried and used a lot of times by designers over the years.
Design patterns can effectively speed up the UX design process by providing tested, proven paradigms. Consequently, they give answers to common problems UX designers encounter.
- Information Architecture (AI)
information architecture is the creation of a structure for a website, application, or other projects, that organizes everything for users. The goal of information architecture is to help people understand what they are looking at and where to find what they are searching for.
- Storytelling UX Design
In user experience design, you’re telling a story to the user throughout the design process to create an impression on users that will last. People love stories, and products with inspiring stories sell more. But in the UX world, narrative design is done in a visual way. Using imagery, videos, animation, and texts, design teams convey their narrative that evokes emotion.
- Understand The Function of UX Deliverables
Deliverables refer to the tangible record of materials needed to document different phases of the design process. Some of the common deliverables for a UX project include wireframes and prototypes, personas, sitemaps, usability test reports, mental models, and flowcharts.
- Use Familiarity Principle in UX Design
The familiarity UX principle is more common than you might imagine. Think about the concept of Instagram stories. When we trace it back, Instagram adopted it from Snapchat, and Facebook also started using it, along with other social platforms like YouTube. All these apps gave users what they are familiar with and provided a similar experience. As a result, they removed the learning curve.
- Understand User Testing in Theory and Practice
User testing is a vital part of any UX design process. It typically involves evaluating a digital product or service by researching it with a series of different methods. In order to see how users interact with the design, UX designers give it to real users and assess the outcome.
When designs transmit into tangible prototypes, designers can observe how real users interact with their designs. While there are many different ways to do that, one common method is A/B tests.
- Add Personality to The Design
One way to interest the user persona you’re designing for is by showcasing a personality in your design. Users often have difficulty connecting with a lifeless design. The character of your design, however, can effectively break the ice in between. It’s all about the human touch in digital products.
- Mind the Difference Between Web Base and Mobile Product
The difference between designing UX for a website and a mobile app is drastic. The main difference is the screen size, meaning all visual hierarchy and information architecture will alter from web to mobile. Small screen sizes cause users to get confused and lost in the design more efficiently. That’s why as a UX designer, you’ll need to streamline the design even more for mobile users. More than that, it’s not only screen sizes that make the changes necessary.
- Use The Right Tools For Efficiency
Using the right tools for efficiency is a UX design principle that shouldn’t be overlooked. It’s about having a professional prototyping tool and providing the design team with the necessary tools.
- Keep The First Stages of Your Prototype Simple
A high-fidelity prototype with lots of details is the ultimate end goal. But jumping straight into adding endless details on your prototyping tool right from the start may actually be a huge mistake.
Closure
Design principles help to keep important values front and center in the design process. When successfully composed and used, design principles ensure consistency in decision making across designers and teams, removing the need to debate simple tradeoffs and letting designers worry about complex problems.