Interface Conventions

I’m still a beginner level UI/UX designing learner.So I would like to share what I have learnt about interface designing and interface conventions. There may be many other best practice lists for a good user interface. But I think this article will be helpful for a beginner like me.

Real world knowledge is based on analog models. For example, as we have experienced the analog buttons in the real world, we can easily understand the functionality of a digital button on a screen. -on calculators,remote controls, elevators and so on…

Learned Behavior For instance, swiping left or right is a digital convention that is now commonly used in plenty of apps, but it has no corollary in the real world. It is an action that the user has picked up from using the smartphones and the apps on them.

Cause and effect is about action and the reaction. Let’s say a user presses a button and something happens ; pressing “send” to send a message or “submit” to submit a form. So the user quickly understands the functionality of the button.

Consistency is about applying a systematic logic to the way interfaces look and function so they remain familiar to the user. If we take a telephone keypad as an example , all the buttons look the same. So a user can anticipate that pressing any two numbers will have more or less the same function.

Seamlessness is about ensuring the action and the reaction are closely linked. The interaction should be easy with as few steps as possible and results should be immediate.

Immediate intuition We have been conditioned that in order to interact with an interface we need to touch it in some way. While the system may not be immediately obvious, the solution is usually quickly discovered.

Undo/redo gives the user the feel that their actions are reversible. A good UI will allow a user to change their mind after they have made an action.

So basically these are the interface conventions a UI designer should be familiar with.