5 Simple Secrets That Will Accelerate Your UX & UI Design

UX and UI design is not just a game of aesthetics (or functionality, depending on which side you are in). You will need to get the best of both worlds to create a great design for your users to use. In fact, UX designers nowadays are expected to have at least some basic background on UI design (and vice-versa, the same is true for UI designers).

Crafting a great UX and UI design largely depends on how well you performed on two factors:

• Functionality – how useful and easy-to-use your website, app or design is.
• Aesthetics – how visually pleasing your design is. After all, functionality without aesthetics is like a perfectly built home without any paint or decoration; try to imagine that, sounds like it’s worse than a haunted house!

To accelerate both your UX and UI design regardless where you specifically work with, we have identified and listed 5 simple “secrets” which you can use to just do that.

Without further ado, here are the 5 simple “secrets” that will accelerate your UX and UI design.

1) Know your audience well

“You cannot understand good design if you do not understand people; design is made for people.” – Dieter Rams

This is one of the most common advice – perhaps the most common advice – but, at the same time, it is so boring that some of us are tempted to just overlook and skip it.

But the advice “Know your audience” for UX and UI design is like warming up for sports or workout routine – both are boring, but they are very essential if you want to maximize the results of your work. At the same time, skipping them can even be very dangerous – skip warming up and you can potentially injure yourself; skip your audience homework, and you could be spending money and creating designs that nobody will use because you don’t exactly know what your users want.

In other words, take the time to perform your basic homework of knowing your users. Know their problems or wants, what they expect from the type of product you’re working on and find ways on how to meet that.

2) Your design should be clear right away

Prioritize your action system based on the type of product that you are working on.

For example, if you are running a social media platform, the best thing to put in front of your page is a login form because that’s how users will use your product. If you are running a blog, you put out your content on front. If you run an online store, show your products right away and optimally place that sweet Cart button on your page.

This sounds obvious, but there are websites or apps that makes you think, “What am I supposed to do here?” after you went to its home page. That’s certainly not a good reaction from users.

Prioritize your action system. Be clear on what you want your users to do. If they need to sign up, show them in the front page. If signing up is necessary, please don’t hide the signup form like how the Yamashita treasure is hidden!

3) Don’t overload the choices

If you constantly fight with your girlfriend (or boyfriend) when picking a food at a restaurant, it’s probably the restaurant’s fault – thanks to its abundance of options that you cannot even pick what to eat!

Okay, we are not fighting the restaurants, but you get the point – in UX and UI design, simplicity is very important. Keep the choices simple and don’t overload your customers with them.

If you want a good example of this, check out news websites – they might visually look overwhelming (which is not good), but they know how to set up choices for you (despite thousands of articles already published on their site). How? Simple: they put the latest news right in front of your screen, and if you want to find news depending on a certain category, you can just scroll down until you find the category of your choice.

But you don’t need to be overwhelmed with the articles: read the latest news! Then read whatever you want afterwards.

Simplify your choices. Don’t overload and overwhelm your users with seemingly abundant choices – otherwise, they might leave your website!

4) Make the action call easy

There is a reason why the “Delete” option is often color red. And why is a “Log in” button highlighted than “Cancel” ones? It’s all to call your attention and help you make the action easier.

If we reinvent the wheel, say change the “Delete” option’s color into yellow, it will take more cognitive effort on our part, which is a fault on the design’s usability.

Make the action call easy for your users.

5) Use visuals wisely

Don’t just put any photo here, choose a random background color and create a logo that may or may not make sense with your brand.

Your visuals should appeal to your users. It is one way of communicating with them.

And last but not the least, please be sure that your visuals don’t hurt the eyes!

Feeling inspired? Try out Adobe Spark’s logo maker! You can quickly and easily create a logo using your brand colors. Explore a wide range of templates, icons, text and colors to finalize your professional and powerfully designed logo.