Famous Designer Dieter Rams of the Braun company once said that Good Design is making something intelligible while a great design is making something meaningful.
What is a User Interface?
User Interface or UI is, in essence, designing visual interfaces for machines and software, which Mr. Rams puts eloquently as 'Memorable and Meaningful.
UI design provides solutions through its interfaces by anticipating what the users might want and facilitate those actions—in short, Maximizing serviceability while maintaining and disclosing radical information.
What is UX, and how is it related to UI?
We may have come across the terms User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) simultaneously quite a few times. UX and UI are both design disciplines, and they are both related to each other but are very different. UX design is a little bit analytical, whereas UI design is a bit more visual.
Still confused? This analogy would clear your doubts :
- A UI without a UX is like a painter throwing his paints randomly on the canvas with the hope that it would look good but in reality, it doesn't.
- A UX designer will pass off the skeleton, and the UI designer will put up the skin to complete the body and some clothes to enhance it up more!
As we now know what UI and UX design are, let us know more about what constructs as a better designing of the User interface.
Why do we need a good UI design?
Primarily, the user would want his work to be facilitated easily and be enhanced too. While designing the User Interface, a designer would consider the user's needs and motives to provide comfort and better action utility.
Setting your destination
- A clear call to action is one of the most important things. In general terms, it means that the user must take on an activity and achieve it.
- A good user experience leads the user through the channel and takes them exactly where they need to go. It thereby makes things accessible, really easy and not hiding your primary action or secondary activities.
- Before you start your project, you need to define your path or design for the project.
Reducing the visual clutter
People only have so much mental energy to devote to your project, and so the more you strip away that clutter, the more you're helping your users be focused and hone in their desired actions.
E.g., I love options, and I think everybody loves options. Still, you know what it feels like to walk into that Italian restaurant with a hundred and fifty things on the menu you stare at forever versus walking into a niche restaurant that has five items on the menu. It is always easier to look at condensed, understandable, yet easier to decide options than focussing on clutter and getting disorganized in your head.
Reduce the number of text
- It is a fact that people don't read; they scan through. Please don't make your users scroll forever to find their desired information.
- Avoid using complicated words and use layman's term to make it user friendly
- Indeed, a picture's worth a thousand words, but while designing the user interface, try not to obstruct your user visuals with all the picture clusters.
Avoid too many blank spaces
- White space gives the visual that the work was done in a hurry and disorganized manner.
- Let your designs breathe and avoid boxing things in. Open things up, remove the borders and the lines. Let things have a little room to operate and thereby allow users to navigate effortlessly.
Load time of the project
This is vital when designing the user interface.
- No user wants to wait inevitably for the application to load. This can be achieved with less clutter of images and text but make sure you include what is necessary.
- Consider making the picture to load first than the text as this would retain the users with interest and would be waiting curiously.
Minimalistic yet effective
- You would not want your users to feel clustered with a lot of tabs and buttons.
- While designing the user interface, a simple interface yet eye-pleasing key features like colour, contrast, optimum white space could make the users connect to your design more efficiently.
Conclusion
Many companies create an excellent application, but they lack focus on designing, which leads to the downfall of the application. UI and UX design are always paired together as they are complementary to each other. In short, you need good brains to create an excellent app, but you need great design skills to make the application successful.