For creating something beautiful as well as efficient, a designer needs to work with some basic tweaks. These 8 tips will help you in improving your design and overall outlook as a designer.
Aren’t you just tired of imitating techniques and not getting the desired outcome? Often, designers get busy with the ‘watch and learn’, neglecting the design’s basics and context. Being thorough with the standard rules of design, achieving the product aim, and staying updated simultaneously is challenging. To make it simple and easy, here are 8 tips that will help you measure the level of playing field and guide you in displaying distinct design and ideas in a correct and concise manner. Remember, as a designer, your prime aim should be to provide a pleasurable experience to your users through your product.
1. Stick to the conventional.
No, that does not mean being old-fashioned. As far as the UX design is concerned, adding new features to your product or website is cool if you implement them gradually. Drop a hint of something new but do not change the whole traditional way of user experience while working on something different as this may confuse your audience.
The psychological factor is the underlying reason here. When it comes to technology, users like to stick to familiar patterns and layouts. In simple words, they do not like much change as it can hamper their motive of using a particular platform.
For a designer, user engagement is utterly important; thus, stick to the conventional and familiar form of presentation for your design.
“Adapt some basic rules of designing that are lacking in designers these days. Major issues here are neglecting UX, which is the crux of the product design, along with appropriate input which a designer should add to deliver a good user experience.”
2. Keep it simple.
Distracting layouts and stuffed visuals can also annoy the users. Make sure you don’t make the users bounce from the platform while trying to bring something new to the table. Remember, the goal is to make the platform user-friendly.
To achieve the above-described idea, you can try some tweaks like-
making your web pages look more definitive with no extra or unnecessary information,
assembling the components to make them indicative and understandable,
keeping additional information at the end of the page, etc.
3. Do your research.
Working on a design that is not user-centered is difficult. For this, you must do your homework by capturing the goals of the product. Digging into internal data, brand motives, and buyer persona is important. Research for what works and what doesn’t, more user-friendly techniques and all the tactics you can use to gain more user engagement, etc.
It is also important to develop user-confidence in your product, but this can only be done when the designer is also confident enough to deliver the product as per the needs.
4. Know your audience.
You must have noticed that popular websites are now following the “know your customer” trend. This trend is becoming a standard procedure for knowing audience/user/customer demands. It includes FAQs, questionnaires, and surveys. Many designers tend to make the mistake of falling victim to false assumptions; accruing sound knowledge about your users will save you from that and will guide you towards the changes you must make in your product as per the user requirements. Listing the gender, age group, pain points, product preferences, etc., of the users are some of the basic information you must gather.
5. Consistency.
The flow or continuity is very dear and pleasing to a user as it delivers value to the product. Consistency also perpetuates usage by smoothly delivering users what they actually demand.
It is a step-by-step procedure to maintain the flow. Let’s take a website flow, for example. The user starts their journey at an entry point — usually the homepage. You need to think about where that entry point is going to lead. For example, it could lead to another blog post that expands or a page offering any service or a product page that responds to the user’s needs. Remember to avoid the dead-end-pages or points that do not lead anywhere.
The very purpose of maintaining the flow is to meet the needs of the website and users. For example, provide a subscription link for valuable content a user might be looking for.
6. Maintain visual distinction in your design.
The web pages of your UX design must have distinct layouts. By ‘distinct,’ we mean using multiple drop shadows, a little sharper elements, subtle borders, etc. Visual distinction also plays a key role in the smooth and engaging journey of the users. However, don’t confuse your users by adding new and unique features.
Never-seen-before features can confuse the users, so make sure your design has a flow to it so that a sense of connectivity is imbibed in the users. These tips may help you for creating slight distinction or variation in the design-
· Most valuable information must stand out on the website.
· Navigational tools of the website or application must be handy for users.
· Action icons should be recognizable with a clear description attached to them.
· The search bar must be distinct with the word “search” written on it.
7. Follow the trends.
You cannot become a trendsetter unless you know the running trends and how to outgrow them. Reading and applying current trends concerned with websites, brand elements, shape lifting logos, typography, etc., will help gain user engagement and let users remember why they landed on that particular page.
Driving your audience through trends also builds confidence regarding the website or app. It will assure them that you understand their pain points.
8. Evaluate visibility and take feedback.
Architecting a website using sketches and drawings is crucial as while doing that, you oversee the gaps and shortcomings of your design. A designer needs to pay attention carefully to these problems so that the user experience is not affected.
For this, you also need to brainstorm some features, test each element, and run them from your buyer persona’s perspective. Map your users’ page journey and the ideal order a user travels through your site and into your sales funnel. This evaluation of your website or app visibility is going to create an outstanding design!
For further evaluation, you can go for Heuristic evaluation, A/B split testing, etc. It will help you gain traffic, make constant improvisations in the design and enhance business.
To conclude, we will ask you to remember that no one becomes a pro designer in a single day, take tiny steps ahead and start with the aforementioned tips to paint a perfect UX picture for yourself! All the luck!