Improving user experience with good User Interface Design Practice.

Improving user experience with good User Interface Design Practice.

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4 min read

Few weeks ago I got accepted to join the Ayagigs Web3 Fellowship, a learning programme held in collaboration with Coinbase. It really has been a humbling and an amazing experience so far ๐Ÿ˜๐Ÿ˜.

A very big thank you to my able tutor, Ajiri Omafokpe and our Program Associate, Folushola Esther for their unending love, support and guidance during the program and also for assuring we had fun during the weeks spent so far.

With the conclusion of the Foundational Phase of the Fellowship, we welcomed a test week which started on Monday, the 21st of November, 2022 to test us on what we've been taught the Foundational Phase of the Fellowship. We have gone through various test; MCQs, QA, Practical test (you can check for my submission here), with this article being the final task for the challenge week.

This is me writing out what I've learnt and sharing my thoughts on it. Thanking you as you read through.

The UX of a product works in tandem with the UI, so when next you're designing for a product, aside knowing about your users which entails understanding their goals, skills, preferences and tendencies, know that good UI attracts the users first to your product before they're retained by your product's UX.

Sometimes, just the user experience design of a product alone can make it do well among its competitors, but that's not to say that an addition of a better approach in the design of its interface, architecture, and motion can not add a definitive boost to the product user and customer experience. User Interface (UI) Design focuses on anticipating what users might need to do and ensuring that the interface has elements that are easy to access, understand, and use to facilitate those actions. Everything stems from knowing your users, once you know about your user, make sure to consider the following when designing your interface:

Keep the Interface simple.

The best interface design practice preaches that to ease the user experience while on an interface, avoid clamping unnecessary elements to the interface, and use clear user experience copy to relay information and unintended avoid delay and confusion.

Simple.png

Design consistency.

In designing for a better interface, and more so, for a better user experience, consistency in the use of various common UI components, interactions, icons, layout, grids, and spacing values would help getting things done more quickly. Consistency in design would fasten how users get used to your product and avoid unnecessary relearning of how to navigate some parts of your site. Using design systems, style guides, and patterns would not only hasten your design process but would help keep each page and UI component of your design in alignment.

Consider proximity while assigning spatial value to elements.

Being purposeful with spatial relationships between elements on your interface helps to declutter the overall design. Proximity can aid scanning and readability and can also ensure the layout is balanced which in turn helps user focus on what's of utmost importance thereby guiding their use of the product.

Proximity.png

Contrast matters a lot.

When we say contrast, it cuts across color, sizing values, font type and weight, elevation (shadows) and so on. With contrast, you're able to help nudge the user towards or away from elements.

Contrast.png

Hierarchy and clarity in typography choice.

Our choice for typography varies depending on the use cases but generally I'd advice considering legibility and readability while making decisions on typography. Carefully consider how you use typeface. Different sizes, fonts, and arrangement of the text to help increase scanability, legibility, and readability.

Hierarchy.png

Communicating active actions and seek approval.

For a better user experience, communicating with various UI states informs your users of location, actions, changes in state, or errors.

Finally, also think about empty/default states, errors, and other generic pages and various use case for UIs (wellโ€ฆnot finally finally though).

Armed with the knowledge of your users, you can make educative assumptions and anticipate their goals when they visit your site, you can create defaults that reduce the burden on the user. This becomes significantly important when your design contains fields pre-chosen or filled out or fields with varying design elements.

Thank you for reading, and have a great day!

References

If you'd like to engage my expertise or have a role for me you can send me a message at , smartofux on Twitter, Ekene Smart on LinkedIn, and my portfolio at behance.net/smartofux

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