10 Things Every UI Designer Should Know About User Experience
Hello, I am a UX/UI designer at Vintage Web Production. Designing interfaces, conducting tests and analyzing user experiences are my everyday duties. I know that you’re an experienced UI designer and your projects are beautiful, bright, and mind-blowing, probably getting numerous likes on Behance and Dribbble.
But the reality is little different: an average user is not as creative as you, they are just human beings doing ordinary things day by day. And one of your spectacular projects they just saw is probably way out of their everyday web experiences. This is where the differences emerge and problems begin to rear their heads.
That’s why I want to share a few pieces of advice on how to improve user experience of your website:
Keep a picture of your user in mind. The people you are designing for are probably very different from you and go through a lot of other websites every day. You should get to know their habits and experiences, that’s how you can make whatever you are designing closer to what they need. This is not really a tip but an obvious rule.
While playing with fonts, don’t forget to outline the links! They should look differently. You can use a hover effect to make it easier for users to understand where they need to click.
Call to Action. Don’t just expect that beautiful UI blocks will help a user understand where they should click on. Enough amount of Call to Action buttons means higher conversion rates.
Visual hierarchy is important. Valuable blocks should always be bigger and placed higher.
To the right and down. Remember, users start to read from the upper left-hand side, so it’s best to place the most important elements there.
Same elements should look the same way! The interface is not a quest, and if you had already forced a user to learn how the button looks like, please, keep up with the same pattern.
- Users should always understand where they are within the website’s structure. If you are not sure that your users navigate by themselves, it’s better to guide them and make things clear from the beginning.
Check out how your design looks on an ordinary monitor screen. Designers often use high-quality monitors which have higher resolution and better color rendition than an average user does. Pmostly eople use standard monitors and their colors may vary (especially the gray gradients).
Make your content a bit more... human. There’s a huge possibility your texts will move to the beta version and even will become a part of a final project. That’s why you should keep it simple and throw off any complex wording.
Show your work to someone. One of the differences between UI and UX designers is that the latter are focused more on testing and solving problems. Your design could be tested on someone from the target audience or even on your coworking neighbor if that’s the only option. Moreover, there are plenty of programs that will help you to create a clickable prototype from your designs (like Axure and InVision).
I hope these tips will help you, who designs products and interfaces, to make the world a little better place. Or, at least, to ease someone's web experience.
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