Becoming a designer: What is UI/UX design?
To understand what User Experience (UX) and User Interface design (UI) is, think of a house. During its construction, the architect ensures that the house has structure, a proper layout, easy navigation and a good appearance. If the architect only considers the house’s appearance in her blueprint and ignores how potential buyers will navigate through the house, it becomes useless. On the other hand, if the architect considers the layout and navigation of the house and ignores its overall appearance, the buyers will deem the house unappealing.
Essentially, a potential buyer will search for a house that appeals to her visuals, is navigable and liveable.
This is what UX and UI design stand for. With the above analogy, UX design is the feeling or experience a user gets from living in a house: this includes its layout and functionality, like having doors, windows, kitchens and bathrooms in the right places. UI design is the overall appearance of the house, the look, feel and the part of the house that appeals to the visual senses.
UX and UI design are often mistaken as the same because both roles overlap. However, another way to define both is that UX design consists of making a system/product usable, while UI design consists of making it pretty. UX design is a generalist role that involves empathizing with users, brainstorming, visual design, prototyping and testing. UI design is a specialist role that involves visual design and prototyping. And although UI design limits itself to digital products, UX design’s application spans through digital and non-digital products.
Simply put, UX is a big umbrella that UI rests within. You need both to make a product successful. There is no UX without UI and vice versa.
Principles of UX and UI design
Principles guide the way UX and UI designers work. Like I said, before someone buys a house, they check if it has good UX and UI design. Hence, ensuring a product’s usability cuts across both roles.
Principles of UX Design
There are over 125 principles of UX design. However, since there are many, designers work best with the common principles. Therefore, here are five principles of UX design and what they entail.
Consistency
Consistency gives users a sense of organization and progress. In UX design, your products should follow the standard design trends. An example is having bottom navigation bars present in different applications. Or using the quill button across various platforms as seen in the screenshots below.
Hierarchy
Hierarchy helps users navigate through a product without roadblocks. The more organized a product is, the more fluid it feels to the user. An example is in the information architecture of a product. Information architecture is the way pages are arranged in a product.
User Control
Giving the users knowledge of where they are or what they are doing in a product improves its UX. This includes the ability to let users reverse actions, see progress and receive feedback. In the Microsoft Word desktop application, users can reverse their actions by clicking on the arrow facing left or pressing a computer shortcut.
Accessibility
A UX designer must be inclusive. She must learn to involve all kinds of users in her design process, including disabled people. Consider the image below. Some of the squares with the text written above do not contrast well. Colour blind and low vision users will find it difficult to see.
The accessible design considers the obstacles disabled people face while using a system. It also benefits everyone.
Confirmation
Feedback matters. As a designer, you must prioritize keeping users in the know. For example, if a user wishes to delete an item, a UX designer must include the confirmation message that asks the user to confirm their decision to delete the message/item in their product. Failure to do this causes errors.
Principles of UI Design
Ben Schneiderman, a university professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland gave 8 golden rules of user interface design. These rules have been used to teach and guide UI design and are somewhat similar to UX design.
Consistency
Just like UX design, consistency is relevant for UI design. It involves making sure the features of the interface like menus, fonts, navigation, icons, buttons, colour are consistent. Lack of consistency can confuse the users.
Universal Usability
A UI designer should be as diverse as possible to allow different users use the interface. This rule considers people with disabilities, international variations (people from different countries), experts and beginners.
Informative feedback
An interface without feedback confirming the user’s actions cause errors. UI designers must ensure that a user gets feedback for performing a task like purchasing a commodity, receiving error messages, etc. UI designers must also ensure that users understand the feedback message.
Design Dialogues
An interface must confirm the actions of users by telling them they have completed a task. Ben Schneiderman gives the example of a user receiving a confirmation message when she finishes purchasing an item from an e-commerce store.
Prevent Errors
The bulk of a UI designer’s job entails preventing errors as much as making an interface look pretty. There are two types of errors, slips and mistakes. Slips are errors that a user makes unintentionally, like when a user does something she did not intend to do. Mistakes are errors that a user makes because they do not know how to use the product. A UI designer should aim at preventing both kinds of errors.
Make sure actions are reversible
As seen with Microsoft Word’s undo option, ensuring that actions are reversible prevents errors from users.
Keep Users in Control
Good information architecture keeps users in control of a product. Users must have access to the information they want to access. They must perform tasks they wish to perform without hitches. The job of a UI designer is to ensure that they do not get lost in the product.
Reduce short-term memory load
Memory and ensuring users remember features in the interface is crucial. The short-term memory is also known as the working memory. It is temporary and only lasts from seconds to minutes. Psychologists say that recognition is better than recall. To reduce the cognitive load on users, UI designers should assist users to recognize elements that help them perform their tasks rather than recall them.
In Summary…
UX and UI design are not mutually exclusive. Although different, a product with poor UI and excellent UX is bound to make users abandon it. Same with if the product has poor UX and excellent UI. The significant thing, however, is that designers include UX and UI design in their design process. That way they can maximize the benefits of having a product with good UX and UI design.
