UI/UX Awareness

source: https://www.rocket55.com/lab-note/the-importance-of-user-experience/

When selling an app for customers, one of the important feature aside from the app’s functionality is the user interface and the user experience in an app, we want the customers to use our app without any problem and dissatisfaction thus they importance of UI design and UX.

Before we know why is it important we should know what it is. UI design refers to the design of the user interface for software, websites or applications,it’s about programming the look of things with regards to usability and to improve the user experience. User experience is how a person feels when interfacing with a system, including apps and websites.

Both are important because a good UI can turn potential visitors to buyers as it facilitates interactions between the user and your website or web application while a good UX can provide positive experiences that keep users loyal to the product or brand.

UI Design Guidelines

When designing UI there are some heuristics that are recommended to follow called Nielsen and Molich’s 10 User Interface Design Guidelines, these guidelines are:

• Visibility of Status: Users should always be informed of system operations that are easy to understand and displayed on the screen within a reasonable amount of time.
• Match between system and the real world: Designers should try to mirror the language and concepts users would find in the real world based on who their target users are.
• User control and freedom: Offer users a digital space where backward steps are possible, including undoing and redoing previous actions.
• Consistency and standards: Interface designers should ensure that both the graphic elements and terminology are maintained across similar platforms.
• Error prevention: Design systems so that potential errors are kept to a minimum because users do not like being called upon to detect and remedy problems, which may on occasion be beyond their level of expertise.
• Recognition rather than recall: Minimize cognitive load by maintaining task-relevant information within the display while users explore the interface. Designers should ensure users can simply employ recognition instead of recalling information across parts of the dialogue.
• Flexibility and efficiency of use: Users will demand less interactions that allow faster navigation within each use and so users should be able to customize or tailor the interface to suit their needs.
• Aesthetic and minimalist design: Keep clutter to a minimum. All unnecessary information competes for the user’s limited attentional resources, which could inhibit user’s memory retrieval of relevant information.
• Help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors: Designers should assume users are unable to understand technical terminology, therefore, error messages should almost always be expressed in plain language to ensure nothing gets lost in translation.
• Help and documentation: Ideally, we want users to navigate the system without having to resort to documentation. However, depending on the type of solution, documentation may be necessary when users require more help.

Creating Better UX

Improving UX is different from UI because UX is more to how the user uses the product. There are steps to create a better UX:

• Knowing User Profile and Persona: By getting to know your customers, this allows you to develop experiences that relate to the voice and emotions of the users.
• Usability Testing: After building the user interface,try testing on participants that resembles customer’s persona because by you can conduct a study to compare the effectiveness and quality of experience between different user interfaces, including your current site that matches the customer’s needs.
• Wireframes and Prototypes: The visuals on each page matter just as much as the site structure, so invest time into creating wireframes. With a wireframe, you can eliminate usability issues before any page hits a computer screen. This can save development time for necessary adjustments down the line.
• Design Patterns: Patterns provide consistency and a way of finding the most effective design for the job. With user interface design patterns for certain tasks based on their effectiveness leads to better and more familiar experiences.

Conclusion

Do not procastinate on designing UI and UX as these 2 are important factors when selling a product to customers as developers.A good user interface can turn potential visitors to buyers as it facilitates interactions between the user and your website or web application while a good UX can provide positive experiences that keep users loyal to the product or brand.

References:

• https://f5-studio.com/articles/what-is-user-interface-design-and-why-is-it-important/#:~:text=Simply%20put%2C%20a%20good%20User,your%20website%20or%20web%20application.&text=The%20UI%20not%20only%20focuses,and%20accessibility%20of%20a%20website.
• https://www.rocket55.com/lab-note/the-importance-of-user-experience/#:~:text=To%20put%20it%20simply%2C%20UX,most%20conducive%20to%20business%20success.
• https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/user-interface-design-guidelines-10-rules-of-thumb