The primary goal of every design project is to facilitate customers to make the best use of products. Among the various considerations, user interfaces deserve the most attention, as they represent the primary touchpoints for customer interaction. UI is evidently the most significant characteristic that distinguishes outstanding products. When customers are delighted with the usability, the product’s appeal grows.Forward-looking businesses must invest time and resources to create persuasive, engaging UI designs.
The rapid expansion of the digital ecosystem has inspired user interface design agencies to perfect their craft. Their success is underpinned by a few techniques.They benefit from rational, scientific thinking, cleverly applied to create the required effect. They are the keys to building functional, popular, contemporary products. In this article, we’ll list a few powerful ideas that designers must incorporateinto their projects.
- Let the important elements stand outWhen you want to draw the customer’s attention to a specific element, you need to make it prominent. This applies not just to CTA sections but also to headings, images, and seemingly mundane items such as the menu bar.For example, you can make headings appear sharper with drop shadows. Images or columns look more defined with box shadows or borders. When you have multiple elements in close proximity (such as a heading and subtitle), you may want to direct the user’s attention to the relatively more important one. This can easily be achieved by increasing its contrast value. Darker colors are known to catch the viewer’s eye.
The utility of colors in adding value to an object is invaluable. Each color signifies an emotion. When users see an element in a specific color, they intuitively relate it to a particularfunction. Choosing the right palette for the background and the objects reinforces the message the product seeks to convey. Depending on the UI object’s type, purpose, and order of importance, choose warm, naturally bright colors such as red, orange, and yellow or cooler tones of blue and green to create the optimal visual effect. The colors must sync with the style of the content and respect the target audience’s sensitivities. Brighter shades convey energy and enthusiasm, while softer ones represent more subtle feelings.
- Get typography rightTypography has an immense impact on the product’s usability and attractiveness. Studies prove that the choice of fonts significantly contributes to the user experience. Every font family evokes a specific sentiment. Their relative sizing, spacing, and placement in the visual space reinforce the content with powerful cues.It makes good sense to limit the number of fonts in a product. A consistent appearance adds emphasis, and the design appears much more pleasant. The rule of thumb is one or two fonts – anything more confuses and overwhelms users. It’s also common to find modern user interface design agencies using a single font, skillfully applying weight and color variants to represent different elements. If you need two fonts, ensure your selection has typefaces that complement or enhance each other – not all fonts combine well.
Choosing a font is just half the story. Readability is affected by the font size, usage of bold or italic variants, color, and space between letters, lines, and paragraphs. Keep accessibility needs in mind, and ensure the design can be used by people with visual impairments.
- Enthuse users with the best possible first impressionCustomers who have a memorable onboarding experience are more likely to stay with you. Do you offer signposts to direct them? Are quick and hassle-free set-up options such as configuration wizards available?Most apps and websites display a pop-up screen that presents an overview, gently guiding users on the features and possibly the key UI controls. While this can aid first-time and inexperienced users, you still need to provide a “Skip” option for people who don’t have the time, patience, or need for an introduction.Keep diverse expectations in mind while designing a product. Some customers may need a little handholding, some don’t, and some may be indifferent. You must attempt to satisfy them all.
- Ensure uniformity of images and iconsConsistency does not just improveaesthetics; it also boosts usability. Designs that look uniform across all their interfaces are more likely to win customers’ acceptance.While choosing, creating, or customizing images, they must follow a product-wide (or sometimes a company-wide) design guideline. Some key parameters are the color tone, detail, and dimensions. This is particularly critical when stock images are used – they shouldn’t appear to be froma random selection from the Internet.
Icons are even more critical as they are abstractions of a concept, a message, or an action. All icons should be of the same kind and color to reduce the cognitive load on the user – you can’t have a line icon in one part and a filled one in another.
In the same vein, consistency is of vital importance when you’re adding buttons to the design. All buttons must ideally be of the same shape. If they’re animated, the effect must be similar. The colors must align with the purpose and the palette used.
- Text must be readable – and understandableWherever text is present, it must be legible and engaging for users. Readability improves when the placement and styling are optimized.
Here are some tips:- When overlaid on images, the text must have adequate contrast to be visible. In some cases, a gradient overlay helps. Depending on the need, you may need to tweak the colors of the image, copy, or both.
- In general, leftalignment is better for almost all situations. Our eyes expect sentences to start at the left (of course,it’s the other way aroundfor languages written right to left). Centered text may be used for special needs, such as headlines and brief descriptions.
- For body text, the spacing between letters is best left at the default value. You may use a different setting for headings to produce a unique look.
The effort spent on readability is futile unless the copy offers something of value to the user. The content must be simple, lucid, and of a suitable tone. This applies to all the text in the product – the main copy, dialog boxes, error messages, and helpsection.
- Whitespace is a lifesaver – never compromise on itAdding sufficient elbowroom between elements provides breathing space for the overall design. Whitespace is a critical component that makes the product attractive; it imparts refinement and elegance, besides enhancing usability.White space is created by fine-tuning the object’s margin and padding settings. Every element — from the menu, body text, images, headlines, and buttons, to panels, columns, and sections — needs adequate space around it for better visibility and interactivity. With white space, the visual representation of the hierarchy becomes much clearer; it distinctly establishes the relationship between adjacent elements or among a group of elements. For example, within a block, the headline and copy must stay close to each other to indicate their association. However, you need to add margins between two blocks of the same type to differentiate them. Such fine adjustments enable the user to focus on a specific object without distraction.
Professionals offering user interface design services suggest a trick to check for white space. Hold the design at a distance to see if the elements are still visible. Are the blocks clearly demarcated? Does the design appear uncluttered?
- Aim for impeccable alignmentsWe all have a natural affinity for orderliness, not just in digital products but also in everyday physical objects around us.Customers find it easy to relate to the UI elements that are aligned. Unstructured or inappropriate arrangement disorients them and negatively impacts their experience. Theunity of objects vastly improves the design’s effectiveness. It’s essential to consider both these facets:
- Visual unity, which relates to how well the UI elements combine by supporting one another and collectively enhancing the design.
- Conceptual unity, where the UI components are arranged in a specific logical order to highlight a particular topic or content
The Gestalt principles reveal the science behind the grouping of objects. They are immensely valuable to professionals offering user interface design services. While aligning elements, it’s also important to consider how they assist the user’s journey. Do they support a systematic exploration of the features?
- Maximize the clickability of links and buttons
Buttons and links are crucial as they are the principal means of imparting interactivity to the product. Making them easy to find is a fundamental design need.One of the elementary yet critical factors, often ignored by designers, is the label on buttons. Choose the appropriate font, size, color, and alignment to make this text readable. The label must also clearly convey what the button will do. Using “Click here” on every button is not just unimaginative; it also annoys users. What happens when they “Click there?” Adding an icon to the label is another effective option to signify the button’s purpose.It’s a bad idea to force users to aim for precision while they need to use a control. Expanding the clickable area of objects makes them easier to access. Sometimes, this may necessitate the conversion of the link into a block element with generous padding. - Always be eager to lend a friendly, earnest, helping handTo assure fulfilling customer experiences,user interface design agencies must infusewarmth and empathy in their approaches. There are several techniques to maximize user-friendliness. We’ll review a few here:
- Feedback: As users interact with a UI element, they must be assured that their action is registered. Examples are a mouseover effect when the cursor hovers over a button, a message, a loading spinner, or a progress bar. The feedback must be simple, immediate, and relevant.
- The language: When the product needs to display a message, it must be direct, concise, and coherent. The purpose may be to prompt an action, offer help, indicate an error, or confirm the status. In dialog boxes, instead of the listless “Ok” and “Cancel,” try spelling out the actual action, such as “Yes, update the record” and “No, don’t update the record.”
- Error handling: Prevention of errors is the ideal option – the idea is to stop the user from making a mistake. However, in practice, building an error-proof product is an unrealistic goal. Instead, it makes good sense to focus on how to manage errors when they occur. Designers must minimize the impact by helping users make corrections, undo their actions, or learn how to avoid issues in the future.
Looking for top-notch UI ideas that deliver? Talk to us. Ours is a young UI/UX design studio driven by a passion for excellence. We love building new-age designstrategies for businesses keen to benefit from futuristic thinking.With our customer-focused approach, agility, and positive attitude, we fulfill the exacting needs of global organizations. Our services span the entire UX spectrum, addressing the unique challenges and expectations of startups, mid-size companies, and enterprises.
