Top UI/UX Design Works for Inspiration — #137
UI & UX Design Inspiration
Here are some tips for UI design inspiration:
1. Lean Off the Sidewalk
There are people who think that UI design is the only thing you can do for the user. But UX design and research are the back bone of the industry, and should not be left out when considering how your product should run and how it will affect the user. Product development is a big deal. You are ultimately building a company, just for your product. That being said, you don’t have to go full UI.
2. Talk to the Users
Design is about getting empathy in order to truly understand the user. You shouldn’t focus only on understanding the text input and the functionality of the application. Although those aspects are important, you need to satisfy and help users solve their day-to-day problems. To do this, ask them in person what their problems are. Try to learn as much as you can — your users might surprise you.
3. Iterate, Iterate, Iterate and Iterate Again
Without knowing who your user is, it’s hard to design something that will have a big impact. In the beginning, you might think you understand the user, but it’s not until you’ve done research and gained empathy that you’re able to iterate the product to meet the needs of your user. Do not get stuck in the early stages, try to learn as much as possible by asking questions and iterating the UI.
4. Interactions Have Consequences
Users always prefer to not have to learn a new way of doing things if there is a way to do it in the way they are used to. This is why being familiar is so important. Users will react well to something familiar because it is like a security blanket. When they have an interaction with an element on the page, the user will do something the way they’ve always done it. For example, if your app recognises when there’s a drop and then allows the user to draw it’s a very familiar interaction and it is easy to pick up, whereas if the app does not give the user any feedback it can be confusing.
5. Touch and Feel
The options and settings provided to the user should be utilised and not ignored. When a user encounters an option they should know what will happen. Think of the destruction the Minions cause in the Despicable Me movies when the user interacts with them. How does it feel when you’re handed an unexpected option and you really don’t know what to do with it?
6. Emotion Driven Design
As the title says, this is about appealing to the user’s emotions. This is not so much about the authoring of the interface, but how an interaction can be crafted to evoke emotion in the user. A user should be enough of an animal so that they will immediately check their emotions when you put them in front of an interface with a delightful design. Every interaction with a user should be beneficial and something that makes you feel something.
7. Simplify Through Design
Simplification is a thorny subject. It’s one thing to talk about making an app more user friendly, but designing for simplicity can prove to be tricky. If you think about it, designing for simplicity is to focus on the minimum number of features and interactions that need to be implemented to fully understand the user. Think of the old table placement techniques that didn’t allow the user to move a table top by pressing on the table edge. Even though the idea was good, the interaction was unnecessary. Successful interfaces by UI/UX designers are those that are simple but sufficiently elegant and functional in their implementation.
8. Make It Easier, Not Harder
It’s true that in the beginning it can be tempting to add too many options that the user needs to do and interact with to move forward. But the solution here is not to make things unnecessarily more complex but in fact to make the interactions simpler. Think of the days before smartphones where you didn’t need to access your contacts list or your camera quickly on the go. For every interaction you have to decrease the number of choices or button presses that the user has to make in order to complete it.
9. Make the Most of the Space
When I first started out with design, I used to say that whenever you have a little space, you should make it count. Make it count as much as possible and do not try to fill up every single tiny space. Don’t do this and you will see that the final result will be something that you can be proud of.
Conclusion
You should never give up when it comes to UI design, but remember that you have to be determined and determined continuously in order to succeed. Learn from the past mistakes of others and learn from the mistakes that you are currently making. By trial and error, you will be able to find your style of UI design and you will also be able to fully understand the user’s needs. But remember, if you are not determined enough and you give up without properly understanding the user, your result can be a total flop.
