12 key UI/UX design principles to boost your designs

UI/UX Design is a field that requires creativity and is also dynamic. Despite these constant changes, there are fundamental principles that every designer should know and understand. These principles are concepts that guide the design of software products. You must align your work with these principles to ensure you create designs that are aesthetically pleasing, easy to understand and use.

Let’s walk through these 12 principles of UI/UX design and prepare you to create designs that stand the test of time.

Meet the User’s Need

UI/UX Design is user-centred, so first and foremost you have to ensure that the design meets the needs of the user. Your design should help the users achieve their desired outcome seamlessly.

Hierarchy

This refers to how the content or information is organized throughout the design. Which screen comes before the others? Which elements or information need more attention than others? Hierarchy controls the order in which information is consumed and processed. A design with clear hierarchy helps users easily scan for the information they need and go about their tasks smoothly.

Visibility of System Status

Users should be able to receive feedback on the actions they take. Your design should provide them with information on what is going on and show users their system status. If a user is downloading a file, a good design should show some sort of progress bar to show how much time is left for the download to complete instead of leaving the user in the dark.

Match between System and the Real World

Your design should speak the language of the user and use the same concept that people are already familiar with in the real world. Avoid the use of jargon or technical terms, simple language makes your design easier to understand. Likewise, elements used in a design should be similar to what they represent in the real world, for example, the trashcan icon in Gmail tells the user where to find deleted emails.

User Control and Freedom

The design should give users control in the process, allow them to redo, undo and cancel an action that they have already taken. A product that considers this principle is Google docs. You can undo changes you have made to a document and redo any change you reversed.

Accessibility

Your design should be usable for as many people as possible. It should be accessible by people with disabilities like visual impairments. Texts should have a clear contrast to the background, avoid using colours that can’t be seen by everyone.

Consistency and Standards

Your design should follow standards and use consistent concepts throughout the entire product. This allows users to become familiar with new products, so they know what actions to take without any extra learning. Take a look at products from Microsoft office, they have a general look and feel. So if you know how to use Microsoft Word, adopting Microsoft Powerpoint or Spreadsheet would be easier and faster.

Recognition Rather than Recall

It is easier to recognize things than to recall them. Your design should keep options, actions, etc visible to reduce the load on the users’ memory. Users should not have to remember information from one display to another. A website that keeps requesting for your username and password every time you use it can be frustrating. Try searching for a video on Youtube, notice how the several options are listed before you are done typing. Now, imagine if you had to remember the title of a video on Youtube before you can find it. Frustrating, right?

Flexibility and Efficiency of Use

The design of a product should be such that it can be used by new and expert users. It should be easy for new users to learn and have shortcuts for experts to do things fast. Let’s look at Figma, a tool for designing user interfaces. New Figma users might click on the shapes tools to pick out a shape to use in their design while an expert would press R on the keyboard for rectangle, O for an ellipse, e.t.c

Aesthetics and Minimalist Design

Less is more. Don’t overwhelm users with unnecessary or irrelevant information. A minimalist design helps users focus on their goals without getting distracted by the design. Information should not be competing with one another for the users’ attention. Each screen should contain only components relevant to the task being carried out and provide clear and visible means to navigate to other content.

Help Users Recognize, Diagnose and Recover from Errors

Error messages should be straightforward, actionable and in plain language. The design should tell the users what went wrong and offer solutions. Have you ever tried loading a website but got a page saying, “404 Not Found”? Not everyone knows what this error means. This is an example of an error message that isn’t useful. Now, try watching a video on Youtube without an internet connection. Youtube would not only tell you that you are offline but would also suggest that you retry connecting to the internet or go to your downloads to watch a video. Youtube gives an error message that is easy to understand as well as suggesting solutions.

Help and Documentation

Most times users might want to navigate a product without resorting to documentation but sometimes documentation is necessary. Such documentation should be easy to locate and focused on the users’ current task. Your design should provide help to users where they need it and when they actually need it.