Design your way

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

A website-building tool may have the features necessary to create an excellent user interface and/or a user experience.

It’s still up to the web designer to understand what needs to be addressed to make it happen.

If, for example, you are in the habit or relying on the tools you have on hand to build a better website, without giving any thought to what goes in to UI and UX design, you’ll be a better designer if you take the time to find that out.

The short version is that the objective of UI design is to determine a website’s look and feel. What you are doing is defining the way it presents itself to the user.

The objective UX design on the other hand, focuses on how a website functions, and its usability.

UI design is digital in nature, UX design is customer and market oriented; and is not digital in nature.

InVision

Every decision you make when designing for UI and UX should be backed by research. Design collaboration platform InVision makes it easy to validate your decisions at every step of the product design process.

Whether you’re using commenting or whiteboarding features to create a shared vision within your team, creating a high-fidelity prototype for stakeholder buy-in, or testing your UI with real customers through user-testing integrations, InVision features save you time and guesswork.

InVision works the way modern digital product design teams work. From speeding up your feedback loop to streamlining your design-to-developer handoff, it’s designed to remove friction and inefficiency from your workflow, freeing your team to build the best products possible.

Companies like Airbnb, IBM, NASA, and Starbucks rely on InVision to create world-class digital user experiences and delight their customers. Sign up for a free trial and discover why.

Proto.io

Proto.io is a web-based prototyping platform that allows you to easily create fully interactive prototypes code-free. You can create your prototypes on the browser via drag-and-drop, and in addition, apply multiple touch and mouse events to any UI element.

You can choose between designing your prototypes directly within the Proto.io editor or import your designs directly from Sketch or Photoshop. Proto.io also carries one of the most realistic and useful interactive UI libraries you will find in any prototyping tool, plus its popular design patterns such as slide-in menus, drag to refresh and much more will make your design process much easier & faster.

With its integration with popular user testing platforms, such as Lookback, Validately and UserTesting, you can easily test your prototype on an actual device and discuss your design-related info with team members with its collaboration tool.

Sketch

Modern designers naturally gravitate toward using modern tools, such as the one the creators of Sketch placed on the market. With its vector-based workflow, this app enables you to create amazingly complex shapes without having to go through a lot of fuss and bother.

The shapes you create are editable and can be adapted to virtually any layout, or website interface you have in mind. Sketch is easy to learn, and easy to use.

Notism

With Notism, you can create interactive prototypes, and share and review them, along with other creative content and project documentation, in real-time and on video. Notism makes collaboration with co-workers easy. It allows you iterate design layouts faster, sign off on completed tasks, and even guerrilla test your creative work.

Notism transforms your static screen into interactive prototypes, whether the product is for the web, or for an iOS or Android mobile application. Project information that is shared is always under version control. Notism’s task management capabilities are designed to ensure project status tracked and visible.

Great Simple

If, in your search for top-of-the-line UI and wireframe kits, or core design elements, has come up a little short, or far more than a little short; stop right here. You don’t have to look any further than Great Simple.

The attention they put into every one of their products will satisfy even the most demanding designer. No designer’s tool box should be without their bestselling Great Simple’s iOS Design Kit and Material Design Kit. They also have some nice GUI kits for iOS and Android that you can have for free. These free kits have been downloaded into the hands of happy designers to the tune of 70,000+ times.

If you’re platform of choice is Sketch rather than Adobe Photoshop, it’s not a problem. Great Simple products are Sketch compatible, so check them out!

Tips for Making a Better User Interface

Internet users are more sophisticated, and choosier than they were a few years back.

Most of them are no longer willing to put up with substandard digital displays; at least not for long.

Businesses need to take note of this, and need to pay close attention to the quality of the experiences they deliver. But, what is it that makes a quality interface?

Keep it Simple

A quality user interface is minimalist to the point of being nearly invisible. That simply means it should contain the user-essential elements, and only those elements. Don’t add potential distractions, or require the user to think.

Make Everything Clear

Creating an effective user interface does not require special artistic skills on your part.

The purpose of a UI is to make it as easy as possible for users to interact with your system. Your messaging is kept simple, buttons are clearly marked, and actions are concisely explained.

A user that must pause to try to figure out how to get from here to there, is a user you’re in danger of losing. Keep things simple – that’s where your UI design skills really shine.

Make the Interactions Efficient

An efficiently performing interface is one that not only lets users complete their main task without problems, but actually helps them to do so.

A poorly designed interface can cause user confusion, and can even cause them to lose whatever they were able to accomplish up to a certain point. One way to avoid confusion is to hide options that aren’t absolutely necessary during basic operations.

Be Consistent in Your Design

A user doesn’t have visit a site for long before falling into a comfort zone, and developing a usage habit.

That assumes your UI design allows that to happen. If your design fails to maintain consistency throughout the user experience, users may opt out, and your chance of seeing the again as repeat visitors is virtually nil.

Use Familiar Design Patterns

There’s a saying that “familiarity breeds contempt”.

The exact opposite applies with respect to how users view the interfaces they must work with.

They like encountering UI design elements that are familiar and easy to grasp. Excessive artistic creativity can make an app memorable for all the wrong reasons. An app that is logical, straightforward, and intuitive will be memorable for the right reasons.

Understand How UI Plays into UX

The ideal UI should be both simple, and it should be intuitive. UI design however, is not without its challenges, including the need to gather interface-related information from the user’s perspective.

This UX-related information helps in determining the optimum user flow, and key product and hierarchical information. It should be gathered and assimilated before mockup or prototyping efforts are initiated

Implement a Visual Hierarchy

While every UI element should be important, some are always more important than others.

Implementing a visual hierarchy simply means that the most important UI elements tend to be bigger, brighter, and located where they are easy to find.

Conclusion

The tools featured here will enable you to build websites exemplified by exceptional UI and UX characteristics. To achieve this however, you need to understand what UI and UX design entails, and what the differences and objectives of the two entities are.

The UI should establish a website’s look and feel, and how it visually presents itself. The UX determines both its inherent usability and the ability to provide user satisfaction.



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