Maximize Your UI Design With UX Thinking
Designing a user-friendly website or application requires careful planning and consideration. One of the essential steps in the design process is creating wireframes and mockups. These visual representations help designers and developers visualize the layout and functionality of the product before building it.
If you are a UI/UX designer (or is aspiring to be), you must be familiar with design frameworks, such as design thinking. You often heard about this term everywhere, whether you learned it formally or you may come across it accidentally.
So what exactly is design thinking?
Design thinking is an iterative process that designers and non-designers alike can use to solve complex problems. At its core, design thinking is a human-centered approach that puts people and their needs at the center of the problem-solving process.
The design thinking process typically consists of five stages:
- Empathize: In this stage, designers seek to understand the people they are designing for by observing, engaging, and empathizing with them. This involves researching, observing, and interviewing people to gain insights into their needs and pain points.
- Define: In this stage, designers use the insights gained during the empathize stage to define the problem they are trying to solve. This involves synthesizing the information collected and identifying patterns and themes.
- Ideate: In this stage, designers generate a range of ideas and potential solutions to the defined problem. This involves brainstorming, sketching, and prototyping potential solutions.
- Prototype: In this stage, designers create a low-fidelity representation of their ideas in order to test and iterate on them. This involves creating rough mock-ups or prototypes that allow designers to test their ideas quickly and inexpensively.
- Test: In this stage, designers test their prototypes with users to get feedback on their ideas. This feedback is then used to refine and improve the design.
The Implementation
In the design thinking process, one of the most important step is Prototype. This includes wireframe and high-fidelity prototype that is ready to be presented to the client. It is important to focus on the solution we are going to solve, rather than making a design more pleasing to the eye. After all, we are designers, not artists.
There is many ways to keep on track as a UI/UX Designer to achieve solutions to our design, one of them is to apply Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics.
Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics
Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics are a set of guidelines for evaluating the user-friendliness of digital interfaces. They were developed by Jakob Nielsen, a usability expert, and have been widely adopted by designers and usability professionals.
It can be overwhelming to read all of Nielsen’s rules, so here is my easy implementation of the heuristics with explanation:
Visibility of system status
The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within a reasonable amount of time.
Match between system and the real world
The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases, and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.
User control and freedom
Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.
Consistency and standards
Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions. I will talk about this section deeply in the later part of this Medium.
Error prevention
Even better than good error messages is a careful design that prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.
Recognition rather than recall
Minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.
Flexibility and efficiency of use
Accelerators — unseen by the novice user — may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.
Aesthetic and minimalist design
Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.
Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.
Help and documentation
Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user’s task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.
The Consistency
Another essence to the UI/UX principle to keep on track the right track to achieve solutions to our design is you have to pay attention to consistency.
Consistency is a key principle in UI/UX design. It refers to the practice of ensuring that the design elements and patterns used throughout a digital interface are consistent in terms of their appearance and behavior.
In practical terms, this means that similar actions should be performed in the same way, using the same controls and the same design language. For example, buttons that perform the same function should look the same and be placed in the same location throughout the interface. Similarly, text should be formatted consistently throughout the interface, and icons should have the same meaning and be used in the same context.
Consistency in UI/UX design makes the interface easier to use and understand, as users can rely on their prior knowledge and experience with the interface to navigate it more effectively. It also helps to create a cohesive and professional-looking design that enhances the brand’s image.
Inconsistencies in design can lead to confusion and frustration among users, who may struggle to find what they are looking for or be unsure of how to perform a certain action. This can lead to a negative user experience and potentially result in users abandoning the interface altogether.
It is easy to make a rookie mistake like inconsistent design. But we all can learn from it. Here is a mistake I made personally:
This is a mistake we made an improvement on. We decided it is better to use the navigation bar design on the left, with no search field as it turned out our website do not necessarily provide search query, instead, we provide pre-defined events so user will not be able to search the event based on keyword.
To make sure this inconsistency will not happen in the near future, it is recommended to stick to Design Guidelines, or as we often know as Design System. I made an article about it so feel free to check it out.
The Alternatives
In terms of maximizing your UI design, there are some alternative designs in UI/UX refer to exploring different approaches, styles, and layouts to create unique and engaging user interfaces and experiences. Here are a few alternative design ideas you can consider:
Minimalistic Design
Embrace simplicity by using clean lines, ample whitespace, and a limited color palette. Focus on essential elements and remove any unnecessary distractions. This design approach can create a sleek and modern user interface.
Material Design
Inspired by Google’s Material Design principles, this approach utilizes realistic shadows, layers, and vibrant colors to create a visually appealing and interactive interface. It offers a tactile experience by mimicking the behavior of real-world objects.
Dark Mode
Dark mode interfaces have gained popularity in recent years. It involves using a dark color scheme for the UI elements, which can reduce eye strain and conserve battery life for devices with OLED screens. Experiment with different shades and contrasts to create a visually striking design.
Illustrations and Custom Graphics
Incorporating custom illustrations and graphics can add personality and visual interest to your UI. These visuals can help convey messages, guide users through the interface, or simply enhance the overall aesthetics.
Microinteractions
Add subtle animations and microinteractions to enhance the user experience. These small, interactive elements can provide feedback, guide users through processes, and create delightful moments. For example, a button that subtly changes color when hovered over or pressed.
Parallax Scrolling
Parallax scrolling creates a sense of depth by having different layers of the interface move at different speeds. This technique can be used to add visual interest and make scrolling more engaging, especially for long pages or storytelling experiences.
Here is my favorite example.
Remember, when exploring alternative designs, it’s essential to balance creativity with usability. User testing and feedback can help ensure that your alternative design choices are still effective in meeting users’ needs and expectations.
The Conclusion
Now that you have reached the end of this Medium, you must have familiarized yourself with how to improve your design with Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics and Design Guideline. Make sure you learn from every process and it takes time to maximize your skill. Take the most out of this article to realize your full potential in UI/UX and good luck!
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