What is UX design?
Here is an explanation of what UX design is and 10 tips for UX design that you can find further down the page.
UI - User Interface
When you talk about UX, you usually also mention UI. UI stands for User Interface and is basically the user interface. UI is the graphic layout that the user sees when entering, for example, a website or an application.
UX - User Experience
UX is a broader concept and consists of many parts, of which UI is a major part. UX is User experience and means user experience. It includes the entire user interaction with the product. The parts of UX are usually divided into visual design, interaction design, usability, user-friendliness, ergonomics, accessibility and information architecture. In UX, research is incredibly important to find out what works for the user and make the experience as pleasant and smooth as possible.
What does a UI designer?
One could say that UI designers are graphic designers where aesthetics are the focus. They are responsible for making the interface attractive and visually stimulating for the user, while designing for the purpose and personality of the product.
What does a UX designer do?
The UX designer also works on the user interface just like the UI designer but with the difference that the UX designer focuses on the functionality instead of the appearance. In order for the user to have the best possible experience with the application or website, the UX designer is responsible for the entire user experience. They decide how the application or website is organised and how the different parts relate to each other. In short, they design how the interface works. If the UX designer has done a good job and everything works well and feels smooth, then the user will also have a good experience with the website or app.
UX Measurement Methods
An important part of UX is to measure how the application or website works and then adapt the UX work accordingly. This is done with various KPIs (key performance indicators), here are some of the most important in UX.
KPI - Key performance indicators
- Task Success Rate - TSR
TSR measures the number of tasks performed correctly and is widely used. You can measure, for example, how well a user fills in a form or buys a product correctly.
- Time-on-task - ToT
ToT measures the time it takes for the user to perform a particular task. The faster the better the User Experience.
- Search vs navigation - SvN
SvN measures how the user gets to a particular page via the menu or search function. If a user fails to reach their destination via menu navigation, the search function is usually the next step. The less the search function is used, the better the UX in most cases. But take a case-by-case decision. A clear menu with fewer options can be a better experience for the user.
- User error rate - UER
The UER measures the number of times a user makes an error when entering data in a form, for example. For example, the format in which dates and telephone numbers should be entered. Easy problems to fix but very important for the user experience.
- System Usability Scale - SUS
SUS is a tool from the inventor John Brooke that consists of a 10-point questionnaire where you can test the usability of a product. It consists of 10 questions with 5 possible answers from "fully agreed" to "strongly disagree". Read more about SUS here.
There are, of course, many other ways to measure how good the user experience is, but these KPIs are very useful for UX work.
10 tips for UX design
- Get to know the user - Who is the beneficiary?
- Think like a user - How does the user behave?
- KISS - Keep it simple, stupid! - Don't make it complicated.
- Research and inspiration - What are the latest trends?
- Graphic profile - Plan the project
- Mobile first - Build for the mobile user
- Customising content - Customise for the recipient
- Scrolling - Avoid long scrolling
- Guide the user - Show the way
- Test and measure - Test and measure the user experience
1. get to know the user and the product
To do good UX work, you need to get to know the user. The goal of UX is to make the user experience as pleasant and effective as possible. Find out who your target audience is and what you want to say. This is a good starting point when working on the graphical user interface. Also identify where the user will look when they first enter your website or open your application. This is the most important place on your site or app, so make sure to adapt your content accordingly.
2. think like a user
Get to know your users and how they use your application or website. Make the exploration of it smooth, easy to manoeuvre and easy to understand. It should be easy for the user to find what they are looking for but also lead them to even more relevant content.
3 KISS - keep it simple, stupid!
Keep it simple, stupid! is a term often used by designers, don't complicate things. Strive for simplicity and clarity in your design so that the user can absorb the content at a glance. Minimalist designs with simple patterns are easy for the user to understand and provide clarity. To make your design visually interesting to the user, add relevant images, icons and colour. A simple design is often clearer and more elegant than a more complex one with a lot of different content and colours.
4. Research and inspiration
An important part of UX work is research. As developments are moving at a rapid pace, there is always something new to learn. Check out the latest UX trends and try to find something that fits your project. Also, look at your competitors and analyse what their apps and websites look like and adapt your work accordingly. There is probably something from competitors' apps and websites that you like. Take advantage of that and take the best bits and put them together into something amazing.
5. Graphic profile
Develop a graphic profile that includes colours, logos, typography, etc. Choose colours that fit with the project and with each other but try not to have more than 4. Create several variations of the logo and decide how and when to use it. Choosing the right typography is more important than many people realise. Different fonts say different things and you want the font to fit the project's profile and be easy and pleasant to read for the user. Don't use more than 2-3 different fonts in a project and make sure they fit together. Using one font for headings and one for body text is usually a good basic rule. Another part of typography is the size, line height and spacing of the text. A rule of thumb is that the size of the body text should be 50% of the headline and the line height 1.5x. As far as character spacing is concerned, the advice is to test it out.
6. mobile first
There are many reasons to design according to the "mobile first" principle. Here I list some of them:
- Clarity - In mobile first design, space is limited so you as a designer need to think about how to use the space in a much more conservative way. Designing mobile first helps to keep the core values you want to present to users at the forefront without flooding the page with extraneous padding. Then, as you gradually build for larger screens, it's easier to keep the focus on the core values of the project and then add other content.
- Mobile phone use - More and more people visiting a website today do so with a mobile phone. In statistics from statista.com In 2018, 52.2% of users used a mobile phone when visiting a website. The trend in the statistics is clear, mobile phone use is increasing every year.
- Google ranking - Since 1 July 2019, mobile-first indexing is enabled by default for all new websites. Mobile-first indexing means that Google uses the mobile version of the website for indexing and ranking. This means that mobile-first pages that provide a relevant answer to the search are ranked higher.
- Conversions and leads - Because a mobile-first design is faster and clearer, where the user finds what they're looking for sooner, the conversion and lead rates on a mobile-first website also increase.
7. Customise the content
Adapt your language to the target audience and avoid long paragraphs. Divide the text into paragraphs with subheadings, this makes it easier for the user to scan the text and find what they are looking for. Create headings that describe the text and answer questions the user might have about it.
8. Scrolling
Try to avoid long scrolling for the user, make sure the most important thing for the user comes first. The user will scroll further down the page if they know there is more relevant content further down, show it to the user.
9. Guide the user
Always make sure that users have the possibility to move on a page. By adding links, buttons, menus and suggestions for similar content.
10. test and measure
Before going live with an app or website, test it thoroughly to make sure everything works as it should. Bugs ruin the user experience and undermine the credibility of the project and you as a designer. Then it is important to measure how the user experiences the app or website and adapt the design according to the results.
We at Digitalpartner would like to thank you for reading the post and wish you good luck with your UX work!
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