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The 10 Commandments of User Interface Design

23.09.2015
The 10 Commandments of User Interface Design
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Design is not just what it looks like or feels like, design is how it works.

Steve Jobs.

Being a design geek doesn’t mean stuffing your website user interface with all kinds of tricks and gimmicks. A good UI design is not about showing off your artistic skills and wowing your users, it’s about giving them a well functioning bug free system that is easy to use, meets their needs, and facilitates the whole website experience.

When creating a website, user interface design is one of the crucial criteria among other relevant factors. Color palette, font families, sliders, menu bars, icons or even simple buttons create positive or negative clients’ attitudes towards your company or product. Good web design is like a conversation. You have to provide a user not only with some great content, but also with perfect navigation, which should feel like icing on the cake.

With the help of web design, multiple elements might be implemented for displaying the information. However, the following rules of thumb should be taken into account.

Clarity

Clarity is vital, since users have to feel comfortable and confident when browsing your website. Keep things handy for users! Let them find information they need and don't litter the bars of your page with distractive material. Useless images or wearisome ads might produce a bad impression on your website visitors. You’re communicating with your clients via the page, so try to impress them and make them stay on your website longer.

Color

Color is quite a powerful tool in web design. You can either draw attention to something or redirect attention away using color, light, contrast, and texture. Choose the right color palette; you can decide on colors basing on the age category of your target audience. It is a good idea to stick to the three main colors and complement them with tints and shades and other hues. Very basic things like light, color and contrast are often ignored, and it misdirects users’ attention and diverts their focus from the things that do matter.

Font Families

Font is as important as color. Using appropriate font families will make a reading experience more convenient and enjoyable. Remember to combine fonts that match perfectly and use highlighters. If you are not sure which web font to use, and you want to impress people - use Claredon. This popular slab serif is widely used in many modern logos across the web, and it is not burdensome in use. In contrast to Claredon, Roboto is not so showy. This common typeface for Android is a very good example of a UI font. It might be a good idea to use Roboto, if you want to create a text of various sizes, big or small.

Navigation

An interface exists to make interaction between a computer and the human world, that’s why you should create convenient navigation components like buttons, breadcrumbs, sliders, drop-down menus, icons, checkboxes and plaginations. Quite often these elements can help you save some space, guide a user and make navigation pleasantly smooth.

Layout

Feel free to be creative and use various navigational cues, columns, fluid grid, and scales of any width in the way you want. Make no limits to your imagination and set big fronts and visuals. Ensure connections, Linking out makes your site a more valuable and scalable resource. When you link out, it encourages others to make some contribution or participation. Use link texts or alternative texts to convey the valued information in a picture.

Feedback

Communicate with website visitors by giving them a chance to leave a comment. Creation of various questionnaires will help you collect information about your customers. Knowing users preferences ensures better website traffic and as a result more orders and purchases.

Optimize images

Optimized images are way better! Resize and compress pictures so that they load as fast as possible on your website. You may pick a suitable image format or easily convert it online. Use alternative tags for all images and it will help search engines to identify the content better.

Content

Don’t forget about the content! Try to be authentic and unique in content generation. Make your page interactive by involving the social media. But note that users want to visit a meaningful, information-rich website.

Keep it simple

A well known quote by Martin LeBlank says “User interface is like a joke, if you have to explain, it’s not that good”. So, make it simple. Don’t overwhelm users with sophisticated forms or excessively vivid colors. Omit redundant pictures or anything that can be distractive. Use enough whitespace, and remember - less is more! So, you know you nailed it when people are satisfied with your brainchild. You can design an appealing and attractive interface, however if no one uses it, it’s like a beautiful chair uncomfortable to sit on.

All in all, you should try your best to launch a website that will be the whole package for users: unique, beautiful and user-friendly. Oh, and remember to fulfill the 10 commandments! Let them guide and instruct you all the way.

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