Behind every thumb-up or five-star rating from a user is a designer or team of designers who put a lot of hard work into the product. The regular way of creating the right product which fits the market converts highly, and is liked by all users is to do research and ask customers what they want.
But the regular way is too slippery in today’s age. Why? As Steve Jobs once said, “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t even know what they want until you show it to them.”
A UI UX designer’s prime responsibility is not to place those fancy colors inside small cute buttons with a drop shadow, but one of higher importance. It is to figure out what the user is going to require or need after they’ve taken an action interacting with your product.
To make sure that you keep getting those thumbs up and five stars, here are 5 Major UX principles you shouldn’t miss out on:
The user comes first (always)
It’s essential for a designer to put themselves into the users’ shoes and clothes to create products that solve their problems and cater to their needs. It’s pretty easy to lose sight of empathy while designing user experience if you focus on the look and feel of the thing.
Best designers always understand users’ pain points, and preferences and value their opinions. U in the UX does not start for ‘you’, it’s always going to be the ‘user’, so design for things they want rather than assuming the things that they would want.
Context is crucial
It’s easier to interact with a product when you’re comfortable at home, or inside an office. But the same easy interaction could go sideways when a person is walking on a sidewalk under the sun, trying to squint their eyes to find that one button on your app or web page that is going to solve their problem.
Such a situation can make your user impatient and you may end up losing their attention.
This is why contextual designing is fundamental when designing for your users since you cannot look at factors such as emotional condition, the device used, and the time available for your user.
Understanding consistency
Why does stuff that is consistent and familiar work really well? It’s because the users don’t have to wreck their brains around the learning curve as well as it’s lighter on their cognitive. More so, products that have consistent designs can be picked up by new users quickly.
Technically, being consistent means using and reusing UI components all around your projects. This not only means saved time for the designers but the users can use memory as guidance
Usability for the win
Imagine if there was a car out there in the market, but without any doors. Such a product has absolutely no use. This is why the usability principle is at the heart of UX design. Usability helps you ensure that your users can complete their objectives successfully and comfortably, as well as if there is any friction or missing functionality that you may need to work on.
Think. Make. Check.
Read more: 5 things you need to know about UX usability testing
Storytelling in Design
People love stories and marketers love to sell products through stories. While in the world of UX, storytelling has a more visual format. This is what design teams live for; graphics, animations, and funky yet easy-to-read texts.
To leave a lasting impression on your users through UX design, visual storytelling is the best way to elicit emotions.
Read more: 4 Key takeaways of storytelling in UX
Conclusion
UX design is a magical universe of its own. This world is fast, it’s exciting but can still be exhausting. User Experience is older than the digital age and has no expiration date to it. There could be a billion design principles but the only prime one is focusing on your user. If you don’t think about the user in user experience then it just becomes an experience and that’s ordinary. Think about it. Change the game.
