UI UX Principles and Best Practices

6 UI UX Principles and Best Practices to Build into Your Plan

The user experience is the ultimate measure of any application. Can end-users get the information they need quickly and perform tasks effortlessly? If the answer is no, they stop using the application, which will no longer deliver the required business value.

To ensure your application user-interfaces deliver superior user experiences, you need a solid UI/UX plan. This includes dedicating a design team to develop your application UI/UX look and workflow. You also need to rely on a combination of responsive web design and native mobile techniques so applications will render correctly on a range of devices and screen sizes.

Perhaps most important, you need to implement a process for UI/UX validation that involves both potential and current end-users.

To help your software development team build an effective UI/UX plan, here are six attributes to strive for when designing user interfaces that help produce positive user experiences:

UI UX Best Practices

1. Simple: The best interfaces are almost invisible. They avoid unnecessary elements and use clear language on labels and in messaging.
2. Consistent: Common UI elements across applications make users feel comfortable and allow them to get things done more quickly. It’s also important to create patterns in language, layout and design throughout applications to facilitate efficiency.
3. Spatial: Consider the spatial relationships between items in each view and structure views based on importance. Careful placement of items draws attention to the most important pieces of information and aids users while scanning and reading.
4. Appealing: Direct attention toward items by using color and contrast. Varying font sizes and the arrangement of text creates hierarchy and clarity, which in turn increases scanability and readability.
5. Informational: Inform users of their location within applications and websites, the actions they take, changes in state, and any input errors they make. By communicating the status of completing processes, you reduce user frustration.
6. Predictive: By anticipating what users need to do when interacting with your application and your website, you can create defaults that reduce their effort. In form designs, consider pre-filling certain fields that users can change if necessary.

“As part of your UI/UX plan, invest time talking to end-users and defining how they think and what they want when interacting with your application or website. Also, conduct online surveys and later shadow users as they interact with similar solutions. These activities will help you develop a clear vision of what the final solution should look like. And as you learn new things and discover what users do or do not like about your software, it’s critical to embrace change and adjust—so you can continue to speak to the minds and hearts of the users.”
Jorge Gaona – Architect

The Best UI UX Approach Begins With Your Users

Everything about user experiences stems from knowing your users. This includes understanding their goals, skills, preferences, and tendencies and remembering that users scan more often than they read intently. Check to make sure your applications and websites provide content that is original, credible, and fulfills user needs. That way, you will be sure to generate an appreciative audience.

Read more about UX from 3Pillar Global.