Why Design?

The most obvious benefit of design is to make the user interface look better. Designers use color and fonts carefully, align things on the screen a certain way, and generally make everything more beautiful.

Designers make the user interface more usable. For example, if people need to select one or more items from a list the designer knows to use checkboxes, not radio buttons.

Design can help decide on the structure of the user interface. For example, if you have a long form that users have trouble filling out a designer could create different ways to present the form. Maybe the one long form is divided into smaller forms. Or perhaps each screen has only one question at each step to create a “wizard”. A designer can narrow down which structure is appropriate to their users and run tests to find which version performs the best.

Design can bring emotion to the product. The writing might include clever or fun language. The way icons animate could be playful. The choice of a photograph can grab your attention and shock you.

Design can help decide what to make. For example, let’s say you’re considering building a mobile app that lets people check when trains are running late. A designer could research potential users and might find out they would rarely check an app before arriving at the train station. The designer tests other ways to communicate this information and finds that a text message is what users prefer, and also has the advantage of being less expensive to build and maintain than an app.