Design your way

While UX designers are trying to come up with the most amusing micro-interaction or the most striking CTA-animation, what users value most, is a design that is easy to use and saves their time.

That is why it is a good idea to nail the basics before you delve into advanced stuff. There are some features that are so basic, you might accidentally overlook them.

But if you don’t, these are the features that will delight your users and make them stick. Features that make your app easy to use, let your users find their way around the app easily and not have to learn too much just to use the app.

Here are 7 very basic looking details that sound like no-brainers and seem to not warrant too much attention from the designer, but really, are the central prerequisites of good user experience.

Big Buttons for the Win

Sure there are folks who have fingers as thin as a stylus. But for the rest of us, make sure buttons are big enough for fat fingers.

There are few things in the world more annoying than tiny buttons that are impossible to isolate. If a button is too small for the pad of an average finger, or if the buttons are packed in too tightly, you end up with a seriously flustered user who will click ‘uninstall’ once and be done with your app.

Keeping your buttons fairly sizable and spaced apart can put an end to these frustrations and make clicking buttons a delight.

Apple recommends a size of 44 points by 44 points so that is a good reference point to begin with. Also, be sure to have some buffer area around the visible button to accommodate minor deviations.

Keep Forms Short And Sweet

From the days of hating paperwork at their boring desk job to the times of renewing their insurance online, one thing that really tests people’s patience is long, never ending forms to fill.

Long forms are confusing, time-taking and intimidating. Be sure to keep your forms short and efficient. Here are a few ways to do that –

• Ask only the information that is absolutely essential
• Avoid using separate fields for first and last names
• Auto-detect city and state from the zip-code, when asking for address
• In case of errors, clearly mark the field that needs correction. Use polite, un-intimidating and friendly messaging to denote errors
• Divide into two or more different pages in case of unavoidably long forms, instead of having an infinitely scrolling form

Load Up Quickly

Yes, you want that edge-to-edge immersive background photo of a calming lake to greet your users, but the damn thing takes forever to load! And nothing kills an app experience like long load times.

The good news is, there are ways to bring down load times.

• Play a fine balancing act between rich graphics and bandwidth consumption. Also, use image slicing to load parts of an image to maintain continuity.
• Use interesting animation to distract the user during the wait time. This keeps them from ‘feeling’ like they’ve been waiting too long.
• Use caching to reduce server requests.
• Use lightweight frameworks like CSS3 and HTML5.
• Eliminate unnecessary characters from your code by minifying JavaScript and Style Sheets.

Make Sure Your Slider Menus… Well, Slide

Sliding menus are a tad debatable in UX circles. If you wish to use one, do make sure they slide smoothly.

Unresponsive, sometimes choppy movements are a put-off. While slider menus do help save screen real estate and let you keep less important but sometimes useful navigation links.

However, when tucked in out of sight, they can sometimes be overlooked, leaving users searching for that link. Design your slider menus to be easily accessible and smoothly sliding.

Let Them Just Use the App First

By asking a user to create an account and sign in, you can greatly improve and personalize their experience no doubt.

However, a user who has just downloaded your app may not be very keen on giving you an email id yet. Let users get straight to the best features and get comfortable first.

They downloaded your app for a specific purpose, like buying something or viewing some information. Make sure they get what they want first. They can always sign in later.

Simple, Conventional Navigation Patterns Are Comfortable

As a designer, your creative pursuit makes you want to create new, innovative and surprising experiences that will make users go wow.

In most cases though, they only make your designer mind go wow. The users would rather have a simple, easy interface that they are familiar with.

There are certain patterns that users are simply more comfortable with. Restrain your urge to reinvent the wheel and just keep the user’s comfort in mind when designing navigation.

Be There To Help

Users need help. Not all your users are digitally fluent. There will be those who like to have someone assist them through complicated steps. Make sure your users can ask for help easily, and receive it promptly.

You can integrate chat support to answer immediate questions, or have your email address easily visible on the app, so users can reach out easily.

Be sure to display your phone number prominently too, so that it’s easier to call customer service. Include functionalities like search, auto-suggest, FAQs section, guides, and tutorials so that there are plenty of resources to help users.

Wrapping Up

Even though UX design is continually evolving and innovative elements are raising the bar every passing minute, there are some basic elements of UX design that have deep roots in the human psyche and work best when designed keeping the human senses in mind.

The above 7 pointers will help you keep your UX design rooted, relevant and more human, so that all your users can enjoy your app comfortably and delightfully.

The post 7 UX Quick-Fixes that Will Delight Your Users Every Time appeared first on Design your way.

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