Voices of UX
UX spring cleaning: Decluttering your UI
The birds are singing, the flowers are blooming, and it’s time to take a cold, hard look at the stuff that’s taking up space in your home… and your UI. Revitalize your UI with these 3 KonMari-inspired tips.
Spring is here and, for many of us, the seasonal cleaning has begun. Unfortunately, it can be hard to polish and reorganize when your humble abode is jam-packed to the brim with stuff. Where did all of this stuff come from? Did I do this?
We may never know, and luckily, we aren’t tackling that beast of a topic today. We’re simply talking about how to pare down our dragon’s hoard of doo-dads and trinkets. And, lucky for us UXers, this is also a great time to sort through the junk tucked away in your UI.
Let’s take a look at 3 categories that are tricky to declutter, and learn how to tackle them.
Duplicates
Duplicate items can appear in your house for a number of reasons. Maybe you lost the first one, so you bought another, rinse and repeat. Or maybe, you didn’t like the first and thought a second one would do the job better. Or, you just really, really like shoes, or mugs, or whatever’s taking up all of your storage space.
For me, it’s houseplants. Why do I get whacked in the head by vines every time I enter my kitchen? Because I love plants enough that I probably accumulated a few too many than my little house can handle. Now, they’ve grown, and I’ve distributed them throughout the house in an attempt to give them the room they deserve. It’s become a hassle, and my favorites blend into the cluttered sea of green.
Surprise! The same thing goes for microcopy and other UI elements. Even if a piece of information is super important, or a graphic is really unique and fun, including it in 5 different areas of your UI actually decreases its effectiveness.
A great example of this is sales promotion.
Woo! This cool online shop is having a sale! Exciting! But when you’re shopping online and every item has a “SALE!!!” tag tacked onto it, and the sale banner at the top of the page is flashing, and the sale countdown in the corner is ticking down…
It starts to feel less exciting, and more like a bomb waiting to go off. Maybe that has more to do with my hatred of those panic-inducing sales countdowns…
Letting users know about a good or important thing once or twice is plenty. Put your energy into crafting one awesome, clear, and concise message, rather than 5 sub-par ones.
I’m paring down my own duplicates by rehoming some plants. You bet I’m going to be able to make my favorites the stars of the show when I have the time and energy to devote myself to my little green friends.
Moral of the story? Too much of a good thing does exist.
Long-haulers
Ahh, yes. The sweater that you’ve had forever, the hand-me-down car you’ve had since you got your license, the couch you bought for your first apartment. Perhaps it was a big purchase, or you were super excited about it when you first received it.
Whatever it is, it’s stuck around through thick and thin. Now, it’s tired. It might be breaking down more and more frequently, or be falling apart at the seams. But you keep it, not because it’s very useful anymore, but because it’s sentimental and constant. It’s always been there — and maybe replacing it has never crossed your mind.
Well, this is a sign to give it a well-deserved rest, and to give yourself a well-deserved update.
Sometimes, your product outgrows your UX design and content choices. What may have been revolutionary when you implemented it is now an outdated remnant of what it once was.
It’s okay to remove stuff. It’s okay to completely rewrite stuff, too. Your users found plenty of value in it, and your team has gotten their time investment’s worth.
But how do you know when it’s time?
A good time to consider retiring a UI element is when you’re considering moving it. The first time you move something to a more inconspicuous place, it might be for the best. But if it’s danced from page to page, inching its way towards obscurity… It might be time.
Holding on to outdated parts of your UI is like using the beater car you’ve had forever to drive for Uber. You might still see the car’s sentiment and charm, but your passengers only notice that it’s musty and bordering on unsafe.
The moral of the story here is to cater to your users’ preferences, leaving your sentimental feelings out of the equation. There are all sorts of UX quotes out there along the lines of “we underestimate the lack of common sense in the average user” (which, by the way, rude), but if you can’t take your users’ advice, whose are you supposed to take? Those of us creating user interfaces can get too close to our own products to be able to see them from a practical and honest point of view. Users are the only ones who know your product so well, so take their opinions seriously, and give them plenty of opportunities to give you that sweet, sweet feedback.
Speaking of…
Before you ditch something for good, it’s a good idea to get — you guessed it! — user feedback. Their insights can tell you for sure what’s working, and what isn’t.
Further, for technical products, it can be prudent to give your users a way to find information that’s been removed. Documenting site updates could be a great way to declutter your UI stress-free. If users are always able to access previous versions of your UI, you’ll never have to wonder if you’re removing something that might be imperative to a handful of users.
Sentimentals
So your mom gave you a vase. It was your great-great-grandmothers. Your mom handed it off to you with the disclaimer that this family heirloom is very valuable, and is worth a lot of money.
But it’s super ugly. Like, the ugliest vase in the world. It doesn’t match anything else in your house, and you keep moving it from room to room, trying to find a place where it “works”.
I have a secret to share with you: I know where the vase will work. Not in your home! It may be time to consider that the vase’s correct place is literally anywhere else.
Before you say “but you can’t get rid of it! It’s expensive and the whole family would be crushed”… consider this. Your mom gave it away. If it was really that expensive and sentimental, I’m guessing she would have kept it for herself. Or, if she really did give it to you out of the goodness of her heart, you can always pull the “no, no, I really want you to have it” card.
Alternatively, hide it the next time she comes to visit and see if she even notices. If not, bye-bye, ugly vase! Someone might even pay you a pretty penny for it.
Just like the super-ugly vase, you can also veto “time tested” or persistent UX decisions and UI elements.
It doesn’t matter if something has been there forever. if it doesn’t work, your product will be better off without it.
Sometimes, it can be hard to throw out something that your team worked hard to implement. Say you spent a lot of time and manpower reformatting and rewriting product descriptions… but customers don’t like it. Or, your team ground out a component that worked really well for a similar company, but has grown outdated as your product evolved.
In these cases, it may not be possible to completely scrap that work. Instead, consider moving it, rewording text within it, or simply tweaking parts of it while you wait for user feedback and testing results to roll in. In the worst-case scenario, consider moving it to “storage”, where it can wait until it’s (inevitably) needed again.
The joy of decluttering
If you’ve gotten this far, you may be wondering if you need to rethink your entire user interface and start from scratch.
This is the pitfall of many spring cleaners and declutterers, myself included. You declutter one drawer or one closet, and suddenly you’re looking around your home thinking “when did I accumulate all of this stuff, and when am I going to find the time to go through it all?”
Once you catch the bug, it’s hard to shake. It can induce some serious anxiety.
Never fear, fellow declutterer. You have time.
One key part of the ever-increasingly popular KonMari Method centers around the idea of your belongings either serving a practical purpose or sparking joy. It’s great when all of your items and UI elements do that, but decluttering shouldn’t be a joyless activity. That’s the polar opposite of the intended effect.
When you’ve reached the point where you’re anxious, throwing out perfectly good things and ideas, and generally searching for problems, it’s a good time to take a break.
There is always work to be done, and rest easy knowing that some of it can be done later. Take a breather, and tackle problems as they arise — because they will.
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