Lists are fundamental components of user interfaces, helping to organize information in a way that’s easy to scan and digest. Whether it’s a simple to-do list or a complex product display, well-designed lists enhance usability and improve the overall user experience. By understanding the principles of list design, designers can create intuitive layouts that streamline navigation and engagement. In this guide, we’ll explore best practices, key principles, and hands-on tips to create visually appealing, functional lists for any UI project.

Optimize your list design process with UXPin Merge. Bring code-backed components to a design editor and create interfaces that are production-ready from the start. Design prototypes that feel like a real product with UI elements that can be shared between design and development. Request access today.

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What is a List in UI Design?

In UI design, a list is a method of organizing information vertically, allowing users to scan and process data quickly. Lists can display a variety of content, from simple text items to more complex layouts that include images, descriptions, and interactive elements.

They improve usability by breaking down information into manageable chunks, ensuring users can navigate effortlessly. Lists are versatile and appear in many forms—such as single-line lists, multi-line lists, and image lists—each tailored to specific content types and design needs.

What is the Difference Between a List and a Data Table?

Designers use data tables to display a dataset to users. Tables have a specific structure, including a header, rows, and columns with sorting and filters to find and manipulate data.

Read this: How to Design a Table UX

Lists don’t have a fixed structure. Each list item is independent rather than part of a structured dataset with rows and columns. The list item could feature a single line of text in a menu dropdown or a complex card component with lots of data.

In summary, the most significant difference between lists and tables is the data structure. Tables have a specific design, while lists can exist in many formats.

Types of List Designs

There are three types of list designs:

• Text lists
• Image lists
• Card lists

Text List Design

There are three types of text lists. These lists typically include text and an image, icon, and other UI elements like a checkbox or radio. 

• Single-line lists: These are the simplest form of lists, displaying only one line of content per item. They work best for short, easily digestible information, like settings or contact lists.
• Two-line lists: These lists include a second line, often used for supplementary information, like subtitles or descriptions. They balance brevity and context, making them ideal for emails or notifications.
• Three-line lists: These lists display more detailed information, such as titles, descriptions, and additional metadata. They’re useful for content-heavy items, like product listings or media files.

Image Lists

Designers use image lists when visuals are the primary content–like an image or video gallery. Sometimes a single line of text will accompany the image to provide detail or context.

Where image lists don’t include text, designers must ensure to use descriptive alt attributes so screen readers can navigate the content accordingly.

Card Lists

Card lists typically include visual content and text and may also include a CTA. We often see these card lists in eCommerce store product lists that feature an image, title, short description, category tags, price, and “Add to cart” button.

How to Design a List UI

Step 1: Think Content First

Designers must decide on the best list item design based on the content they want to display. 

UX designers have three primary ways to structure content lists: horizontally, vertically, and grid layouts.

List Example: Instagram

An excellent example of these lists in action is Instagram:

• Main feed – vertical list
• Story feed – horizontal list
• Search feed – masonry grid list

UX designers have seemingly endless options and variations within these three list structures.

Step 2: Follow Atomic Design Principles

There are three components to a list design:

• The list: All list items together
• List item: An individual item in the list
• List content: The content that makes a list item–image, text, metadata, title, subtitles, and other user interface elements

It’s helpful to use an atomic design approach when deciding how to put these pieces together. 

• Atoms: The content within each list item–individual images and text
• Molecules: The components within each item–a profile image component
• Organisms: Each list item
• Templates: The entire list with a search field, filters, etc.

Step 3: Design with Consistency in Mind

Consistency is key in list UI design. Ensure that list items follow the same layout, including the placement of text, icons, and actions. This not only enhances the visual flow but also improves usability, as users learn to anticipate where to find the information they need. A consistent structure reduces cognitive load, making the interface more intuitive.

Step 4: Optimize for Responsiveness

Always consider how your list will appear across different screen sizes. On mobile devices, a vertical list may work best, while on desktops, a grid layout could be more effective. Adjust font sizes, spacing, and layout to maintain readability and usability regardless of device.

Step 5: Test for Accessibility

Lists must be accessible to all users, including those relying on screen readers. Use proper HTML elements like ordered or unordered lists, and avoid nested lists when possible. Additionally, ensure proper color contrast for readability and include alternative text for images.

Best Practices of List UI Design

1. Prioritize User Needs

Good list UI design follows design thinking and user-centered design principles. The list design must match user needs while providing appropriate fields for the content. UX designers must pay attention to responsiveness and how the list will look across multiple devices and screen sizes.

2. Follow Material Design Principles

Google’s Material Design UI defines three principles for designing lists – lists must be logical, actionable, and consistent. This means that:

• Logical: Organize lists in meaningful ways (alphabetical, numerical, etc.).
• Actionable: Ensure items are easy to identify and act upon.
• Consistent: Use uniform layouts for icons, text, and actions.

3. Make Lists Scannable

One of the keys to designing a great list UI is making it easy for users to scan content to find what they need. The quicker someone can find what they need, the better the user experience and the more likely they are to use and recommend your product.

4. Leverage Visual Hierarchy

Hierarchy plays a vital role in making lists scannable and easier to read. UX designers have several ways to create this visual hierarchy, including typography, color, spacing, images, etc.

List UI Example: eCommerce

For example, this eCommerce list uses color, size, and typography to separate content and create a visual hierarchy:

• Product name: bold black and white typography top center
• Product description: smaller grey text
• Price: Large dark text
• Reviews: Small text with bright star icons
• Image: Large circular product image

This product list is an excellent example of a visual hierarchy that makes it easy for customers to scan products by the content that matters most to them–i.e., by product name, description, price, etc.

List UI Example: Spotify

In a more simplified example, Spotify uses font size and color to create a visual hierarchy between the song title and the artist. The different size and color make it easy for users to scan a playlist accordingly.

5. Ensure Accessibility

Lists can cause problems for screen readers, creating a poor user experience for visually impaired users. For example, screen readers can’t decipher nested lists correctly. So, designers should use a heading with an unordered or ordered list instead.

Further reading on list accessibility:

• Lists in HTML from Penn State
• Lists from NC State
• Lists Accessibility from Oregon State University

List UI Design Patterns and Interactions

Here are some common list design patterns and interactions that you can apply to website and mobile app design projects.

Checkboxes & Radiobuttons

Checkboxes and radiobuttons are essential UI elements to allow users to make selections and actions on list items. As a general rule, designers use checkboxes for selecting multiple list items and radios for a single selection.

Scrolling & Swiping

Scrolling and swiping allow users to perform multiple actions. For example, many apps allow users to swipe list items left or right–one way to delete the other to archive.

Designers must also create scrolling interactions and lazy loading to optimize performance.

Select Lists

Select lists or dropdown menus allow users to select from several options–like choosing which shipping method they want at checkout. UX designers might also include a search feature for long dropdown menus, a feature we often see for state/province or country lists.

Collapsing & Expanding

Designers can use collapsable lists to hide and show details. Reducing the amount of content that’s always visible is crucial for usability and minimizing cognitive load. Collapsable interactions are also useful for nested lists or submenus.

Reordering & Sorting

Reordering list items gives users control over how they prioritize and experience data. Depending on their preference, they can move items manually up or down the list, usually by dragging and dropping. This customization creates a positive user experience because users can arrange content to suit their needs. 

Sorting works similar to reordering, except users choose from predefined categories rather than reorder list items manually. For example, Spotify allows users to sort a playlist by title, artist, album, or recently added.

Filtering

Filtering helps users find what they need much faster. Accommodation booking platforms like Airbnb and Booking.com allow users to apply multiple filters to list properties that suit their needs and preferences.

Dividers

Dividers help create separation between content; however, they can add unnecessary “visual noise.” If your lists get too busy, try testing white space as an alternative content separator. 

List UI Design in UXPin

With UXPin’s code-based design tool, UX designers can build list prototypes that accurately resemble the final product. Our Multilevel Dropdown Navigation example demonstrates how designers can use States and Interactions to build a functioning dropdown list–using only a single frame.

Designing a List with MUI Components in UXPin Merge

With UXPin Merge, you can sync code components like MUI (Material-UI) into UXPin for fully interactive prototyping. Follow this tutorial to create a list using MUI components.

Step 1: Import MUI Components

Ensure you have your MUI components integrated into UXPin using Merge. This will allow you to drag and drop pre-coded components directly into your design.

Step 2: Add a List Component

1. In UXPin, navigate to your MUI component library.
2. Drag the MUI List component into your canvas. This is the container for your list items.

Step 3: Configure List Items

1. Next, drag in ListItem components within the list container. These components will represent individual list items.
2. Use ListItemText to add the main content, such as the title or description for each list item.

Step 4: Customize with MUI Properties

With Merge, you can modify component properties like styling, layout, and behavior. For example:

• Typography: Adjust fonts, colors, and sizes within the ListItemText to create a visual hierarchy.
• Icons: Use ListItemIcon to include interactive icons, such as checkmarks or navigation arrows.

Step 5: Add Interactions

Use UXPin’s interaction panel to add click actions, hover states, or dynamic behaviors. For example, configure the list item to navigate to another page or trigger a modal when clicked.

Step 6: Preview and Test

Use UXPin’s Preview mode to test the list in a fully functional prototype. Check responsiveness and usability across different devices to ensure an optimal experience.

Step 7: Hand-off to Developers

With UXPin Merge, your list UI is code-ready. Developers can directly access the code, ensuring a seamless design-to-development process without discrepancies.

Increase Fidelity and Functionality with UXPin Merge

Take your prototypes to the next level using UXPin’s proprietary Merge technology. Sync your product’s design system or an open-source component library from a repository to UXPin’s editor so designers can build prototypes using fully functioning code components.

You can see Merge in action with our MUI library integration. Using MUI’s React library, designers can build fully functioning list prototypes. MUI’s React components come complete with states and interactions, so designers only have to focus on product design rather than building everything from scratch. Everything you see in MUI’s documentation, designers can replicate in UXPin without writing a single line of code. Request access to UXPin Merge.

The post List Design 101 – A Short Guide for Beginners appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

User interface design plays a crucial role in shaping how users interact with digital products. A well-designed UI not only enhances usability but also creates a seamless experience that keeps users engaged. Whether you’re working on a SaaS platform, an eCommerce site, or a mobile app, understanding the best UI practices can elevate your design process.

In this article, we’ll explore UI examples from top brands like Slack, Airbnb, and Spotify. These examples will highlight key design elements, interactive features, and responsive layouts to inspire your next project.

With UXPin Merge, you can design using real, code-based components to ensure that your UI matches development from the start, creating a consistent, production-ready user experience across your projects. Request access to UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

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UI Examples by Industry

Different industries have unique challenges and requirements when it comes to UI design. A well-executed user interface must not only look good but also align with the specific needs of users in that sector.

In this section, we’ll explore UI examples from key industries like SaaS platforms, eCommerce, and marketplaces. By analyzing successful interfaces from each, we can uncover design principles that can be applied across projects, helping designers create more intuitive, engaging experiences tailored to each industry’s unique demands.

SaaS UI Examples

Slack: Excellent Navigation and Intuitive Messaging System

Slack is a great example of UI design in the SaaS industry, particularly for its clear navigation and intuitive messaging interface. The platform excels at organizing a large amount of content into manageable, easy-to-access sections. Its left-hand navigation provides quick access to channels, direct messages, and threads, allowing users to efficiently manage their communications.

Icons in Slack are clear and minimalistic, reducing cognitive load while enhancing navigation. The use of subtle animations and microinteractions, such as hover states and status indicators, improve usability without overwhelming the user. Slack’s messaging system integrates clean, responsive layouts that adapt smoothly across devices, offering a consistent experience.

Slack’s emphasis on simplicity, functionality, and visual clarity makes it a strong UI example for SaaS platforms, especially when dealing with complex communication systems.

Notion: A Flexible Workspace with Customizable UI Components

Notion stands out in the SaaS industry for its flexible, modular workspace design that adapts to different user needs. Its clean and minimalistic UI ensures a clutter-free experience while allowing users to organize information in various ways. With drag-and-drop functionality, users can easily customize pages by adding blocks for text, images, databases, and more.

The UI is designed to be highly adaptable, offering a customizable structure that makes it easy for users to create dashboards, wikis, or task managers based on their preferences. This flexibility makes Notion a versatile tool for individuals and teams, offering a streamlined interface without sacrificing functionality.

Dropbox: Easy-to-Use File Management with Minimalistic UI

Dropbox exemplifies simplicity in its file management system, offering a clean, minimalistic UI that prioritizes ease of use. The interface is intuitively designed, allowing users to quickly navigate through folders, upload files, and manage documents with minimal distractions. The straightforward navigation, combined with recognizable icons and well-structured menus, creates a frictionless experience for users managing files across devices.

The UI’s minimalism, combined with responsive design, ensures that Dropbox delivers a consistent, user-friendly experience across web, mobile, and desktop platforms.

eCommerce UI Examples

Amazon: Well-Organized Product Pages and Seamless Checkout Flow

Amazon’s UI exemplifies efficiency and clarity in the eCommerce world. Its product pages are highly structured, with key information—like pricing, reviews, and delivery options—presented upfront, making decision-making easy for users. The use of clear calls to action, such as “Add to Cart” and “Buy Now,” simplifies the purchasing process.

The checkout flow is designed to be frictionless, guiding users through a quick, intuitive sequence that reduces cart abandonment. Amazon’s seamless UI ensures that users can move from product discovery to purchase with minimal effort, enhancing user experience and increasing conversion rates.

Apple: A Visually Stunning Product Showcase with Responsive, Interactive Elements

Apple’s UI is a masterclass in visual storytelling, offering users an immersive product showcase. Each product page features high-quality images and videos that respond to user interactions, allowing users to explore every detail of the product. With its signature clean, minimalist design, Apple’s interface focuses on elevating the product by keeping distractions to a minimum.

Additionally, the UI is fully responsive, ensuring a seamless experience across devices. Interactive elements like smooth scrolling and animations further engage users, creating an intuitive and visually striking journey from product discovery to purchase.

Marketplace UI Examples

Airbnb: User-Friendly Navigation and Intuitive Search Filters

Airbnb offers one of the most intuitive UIs in the marketplace industry, making it easy for users to browse and book accommodations. The clean navigation allows users to search and filter results with minimal effort, thanks to visually prominent filters and well-organized layouts.

Each listing is presented with high-quality images, clear pricing, and reviews, helping users make informed decisions. The UI remains responsive and easy to navigate, whether users are browsing on desktop or mobile, enhancing the overall booking experience.

Booking.com: Data-Driven Design for Optimized User Choices

Booking.com’s UI stands out because of its data-driven design approach. Unlike many other marketplaces, Booking.com prioritizes visual clarity, but the UI is heavily optimized to influence user behavior. The use of urgency cues, such as “Only 2 rooms left” or “Booked 5 times today,” creates a sense of immediacy, driving users to make decisions quickly.

The interface is clean and functional but focuses on leveraging data to increase conversions, from its prominent filters to its organized listing layouts, designed to help users compare options efficiently.

UI Examples by Platform

Different platforms present unique challenges and opportunities for UI design. Whether you’re designing for the web, mobile, or creating cross-platform experiences, it’s essential to adapt to the specific needs of each medium.

In this section, we’ll explore web-based UI examples from websites that prioritize innovation and usability, highlight mobile UIs that excel in user engagement, and showcase cross-platform UIs that maintain consistency across web and mobile interfaces, providing a seamless experience for users on any device.

Mobile UI Examples

Google Maps: Intuitive Interaction and Real-Time Feedback

Google Maps is a prime example of a mobile UI that excels in user engagement and ease of use. The app’s clean and minimalistic interface ensures users can focus on navigating and finding locations without unnecessary distractions. Its responsive map UI allows for smooth zooming and panning, and real-time updates enhance usability.

Google Maps integrates intuitive gestures for mobile, such as pinch-to-zoom and swipe actions, while offering detailed information layers (e.g., traffic, terrain). Its combination of real-time data and smooth interactions ensures a highly engaging, user-friendly experience across devices.

Duolingo: Clean and Engaging UI for Gamified Learning

Duolingo’s mobile UI is designed to provide a fun and visually appealing learning experience. The interface leverages a clean layout with simple, colorful icons and minimal text, ensuring that users can navigate through lessons easily. The progress indicators are clear and visually engaging, with bars and icons that motivate users to keep advancing.

The use of whitespace and clear sections ensures that users aren’t overwhelmed by too much information at once, creating a structured and easy-to-follow experience.

Desktop UI Examples

BBC: An Accessibility-First UI Approach

BBC’s desktop UI exemplifies an accessibility-first approach, ensuring a wide range of users can easily navigate and interact with the website. The UI includes a high-contrast mode for users with visual impairments, enhancing readability and reducing strain.

Additionally, the interface supports full keyboard navigation, making it accessible to users who cannot use a mouse, and is screen reader compatible, ensuring visually impaired users can navigate content effectively.

Asana: Clear Hierarchical Layout for Efficient Task Management

Asana’s desktop UI is designed for efficiency and clarity, offering a clean, hierarchical layout that allows users to easily navigate between projects, tasks, and subtasks. The interface uses clear, visually distinct sections to help users prioritize their tasks and stay organized.

The minimalist design avoids clutter, while icons and color coding are strategically used to highlight important actions and deadlines.

Cross-Platform UI Examples

Gmail: Consistent and Intuitive UI Across Platforms

Gmail provides a consistent user interface across web, mobile, and desktop platforms, offering users a seamless experience when managing emails. The design maintains familiar navigation with its sidebar, action buttons, and labels, ensuring users can switch between devices without any disruption.

The responsive layout adapts efficiently to various screen sizes, ensuring email management remains intuitive on both mobile and desktop devices. Gmail’s clear use of icons, colors, and spacing keeps the interface simple yet powerful for both personal and professional use.

Trello: Unified UI for Task Management

Trello’s UI is designed for simplicity and consistency across web, desktop, and mobile platforms. The drag-and-drop interface allows users to easily organize tasks, cards, and boards with intuitive controls, making task management effortless. Trello’s UI uses a clean, visual structure, with boards and lists that are flexible and easy to customize.

Whether on a desktop or mobile device, Trello ensures a seamless user experience, maintaining the same functionality, layout, and interaction model, enabling users to work fluidly across multiple devices.

UI Design Best Practices from the UI Examples Above

• Use clear, intuitive navigation UI to enhance usability.
• Offer flexible, customizable UI components for personalized experiences.
• Prioritize minimalism and easy navigation across platforms.
• Structure product pages for fast decision-making with clear CTAs.
• Utilize responsive, interactive elements to create engaging visual experiences.
• Implement intuitive filtering systems for better user journeys.
• Use urgency cues to influence user decisions.
• Integrate real-time feedback for interactive elements.
• Keep layouts clean and progress indicators prominent.
• Ensure accessibility with features like high-contrast modes and keyboard navigation.
• Organize content with clear hierarchies and visual cues.
• Maintain consistent design across platforms for seamless user experience.

Tools for UI Design

Creating impactful UIs requires the right tools that support design, prototyping, and development workflows. Here are some essential UI design tools:

• UXPin: A powerful tool for designing with real, code-based components, ensuring seamless collaboration between designers and developers.
• Figma: A collaborative design platform for real-time interface design, wireframing, and prototyping, perfect for team collaboration.
• Sketch: A popular vector-based design tool used for UI design, offering a wide array of plugins for enhanced functionality.
• Framer: A prototyping tool that blends design and code to create highly interactive UIs and animations.

These tools enhance efficiency and collaboration, helping teams create polished, user-friendly interfaces.

Summary

Effective UI design is crucial for usability and engagement across digital products. Whether for SaaS platforms, eCommerce, or marketplaces, understanding industry-specific UI principles can elevate your design process.

This article explores UI examples from top brands like Slack, Notion, Airbnb, and Trello, highlighting how clear navigation, customization, and responsiveness improve user experience across web, mobile, and desktop platforms. With UXPin Merge, designers can create consistent, production-ready UIs using real, code-based components. Request access to UXPin Merge.

The post 13 UI Examples to Get Inspired by in 2024 appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

npm is a package manager for JavaScript that helps developers install, share, and manage libraries or pieces of code that are commonly used in applications. These packages can range from small utility functions to full-fledged UI components like buttons, form elements, or even complex layouts.

npm is also a key enabler of the design-development collaboration that UXPin Merge facilitates. By packaging React components through npm, developers can hand off real, functioning UI components to designers, who can then integrate them into their designs effortlessly. This results in a more consistent and efficient workflow, ensuring that your design system and the final product are perfectly aligned.. Discover UXPin Merge.

Design UI with code-backed components.

Use the same components in design as in development. Keep UI consistency at scale.

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What is NPM (Node Package Manager)?

npm or Node Package Manager is an open-source repository of tools engineers use to develop applications and websites.

npm is two things:

1. A repository for publishing open-source projects.
   Simplified version: a digital storage and retrieval facility.
2. A command-line interface (CLI) for interacting with the repository.
   Simplified version: a tool to communicate with the storage facility.

What is a Package Manager?

Before we can explain what npm package is, it’s essential to understand the idea of a package manager. Think of a package manager as a toolkit for developers.

Let’s say you’re building an application that uses Stripe for payments. A package manager installs all the code your product will need to communicate with Stripe and process payments.

Instead of writing all that code or copy/pasting it from Stripe’s docs, engineers simply enter a command, and the package manager installs the code dependencies they need from Stripe.

There are millions of these packages for everything you can think of to develop an application–like different types of search functionality, APIs, payments, authentication tools, maps, icons, hosting, and more.

You get public open-source repositories (like npm) where anyone can upload and install packages, as well as private package repositories with restricted access.

What is a Command Line Interface?

A command-line interface (CLI) is a text interface developers use to interact with computer programs. This CLI allows you to execute commands to run background operations necessary for software development.

In the case of npm, the CLI allows you to interact with the package registry. For example, engineers can use commands like npm install followed by the package name to install a specific package.

The npm Registry

The npm website is where engineers can search and learn about packages. This website is just a registry and doesn’t host the packages. Instead, engineers use platforms like GitHub, Packagecloud, AWS CodeArtifact, and others to host and distribute packages.

For example, if we look at the UXPin Merge CLI on NPM, it has displays GitHub as the repository and relevant link. Above that is the command to install the UXPin Merge CLI and its dependencies: npm i @uxpin/merge-cli. The “i” after npm is an abbreviation for “install.” So, typing npm install @uxpin/merge-cli would render the same result.

What are Dependencies?

Packages consist of other packages that engineers call dependencies–we know, confusing, right! These dependencies are packages of code that perform different tasks within the project.

For example, the UXPin Merge CLI uses Typescript and therefore requires the typescript package as a dependency. Typescript is just one of the 41 dependencies UXPin Merge CLI requires. 

What are Devdependencies?

Looking at the UXPin Merge CLI’s dependencies, you’ll notice 41 Dependencies and 41 Dev Dependencies (also referred to as devDependencies–one word).

• Dependencies: The packages required to run a piece of software
• Dev Dependencies: The packages needed during the development phase only

Dependencies and devDependencies reside in a separate folder called node_modules, so your packages.json file and project code know where to find them.

What is the package.json File?

There’s a package.json file that provides its metadata and dependencies. When installing the project on your computer, npm will reference the package.json file to install the dependencies and devDependencies.

Instead of installing each dependency individually, you simply type npm install in the command line.

Hosting providers also use the package.json file to install the dependencies (excluding devDependencies) needed to run the project on its servers.

What is package-lock.json?

The package-lock.json specifies the exact version of the package used to build the project. This file locks the dependencies so that when the project is installed, it references the versions used during development rather than the latest release.

Engineers update packages regularly, often changing the way the package works. So, locking your dependencies ensures the project operates as intended.

How to use npm

Here are some common npm commands and what they do:

• npm init: Creates a package.json file for your project. If you’re building an application from scratch, npm init will be one of the first commands you use to include key project information. NPM will automatically update your package.json file whenever you install or remove packages.
• npm install: Installs all of the project dependencies in a package.json file.
• npm install <package-name>: Installs a specific package from the NPM registry and saves it to your node_modules folder. For example, npm install @uxpin/merge-cli will install the Merge CLI.
• npm install <package-name> –save: Installs an NPM package and adds it to the dependencies in your package.json file.
• npm install <package-name> –save-dev: installs an NPM package and adds it to the devDependencies 
• npm uninstall <package-name>: Uninstalls a specific package from your project.
• npm doctor: Runs diagnostics on your npm installation to check if it has everything it needs to manage your packages.
• npm update <package-name>: Updates a specific package to the latest version.

These are just a few of the most common npm commands. You can find the complete list in the npm documentation.

Understanding npm as a Designer

npm is simply a toolkit comparable to plugins or app extensions for design tools. You don’t need to know the ins-and-outs of how packages are created, but it may be useful to know a thing or two about it.

First of all, some of code component libraries are shared as npm packages, such as MUI, Ant Design, etc.

How to find component libraries that are distributed as npm packages? Let’s say you search through Adele, UXPin’s library of publicly available Design Systems, for a component library that you can bring in to UXPin. You pick Shopify’s Polaris and notice that it is distributed via npm.

So, you go to the NPM site, look for Shopify’s Polaris, and find it.

UXPin with Merge technology allows you to import UI elements from component libraries via NPM packages. Then, you can use those elements to put together fully-functional prototypes.

UXPin Merge is usually being set up by a developer. But if you lack the development support, you can use our new tool – Merge Component Manager and manage UI components by yourself.

However, if you want to enhance your programming knowledge to collaborate with devs better, then learning about basic code principles (HTML, CSS, Javascript) and component libraries is far more valuable for designers.

What Can You Do with npm Integration?

Even though npm is typically a tool developers use, it plays a crucial role in enabling powerful design workflows—like bringing React components into UXPin for seamless drag-and-drop UI building.

Here’s why npm is important for technical designers working with tools like UXPin Merge:

1. Access to React Components: If your design system is built using React, npm allows you to package these components and make them accessible for use in other applications or tools—like UXPin Merge. React components that are available as npm packages can be directly imported into UXPin, giving designers the ability to drag and drop real code components into their designs without writing code.
2. Easily Manage Updates: npm simplifies version control. When a developer updates a package (such as a new version of a button component), npm can automatically manage this update in UXPin Merge, ensuring that designers always work with the latest components from the development team. This ensures consistency between design and development without the need for manual updates.
3. Collaborate Seamlessly with Developers: npm helps technical designers and developers work from the same source of truth. Developers use npm to publish the components they create, while designers can easily import those components into UXPin using Merge. This ensures that the components designers use for prototyping are exactly the same as the ones developers will implement in the final product.

Improve Collaboration With UXPin Merge

Merge enhances collaboration between design and development because designers and engineers work with the same component library. 

Instead of having a UI kit for designers and code for devs, Merge syncs a repository to UXPin’s editor so design teams can build fully functioning prototypes using code components.

You can sync your company’s design system or a component library like MUI so that you only have to drag and drop UI elements to build interfaces. Request access to Merge.

The post What is npm? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Modern websites and apps rely on front-end frameworks to develop, maintain, and scale user interfaces. React’s Javascript library is arguably the most popular front-end framework with many component libraries to build digital products.

We’re going to explore the top React UI libraries and how to choose the right one for your next project.

With UXPin Merge, you can sync any React component library and assemble production-ready layouts super fast. Check out the build-in MUI, Ant design, and React Bootstrap components that are available for free in UXPin’s editor. Drag and drop them on the canvas and simplify React UI design. Try UXPin Merge.

Design UI with code-backed components.

Use the same components in design as in development. Keep UI consistency at scale.

Try UXPin Merge

What is React Component library?

A React component library is a collection of pre-built UI components specifically designed for use with React applications. These libraries contain reusable components that cover a wide range of UI elements, such as buttons, forms, modals, navigation bars, cards, and more.

React component libraries aim to streamline the development process by providing ready-made components that adhere to best practices in terms of design, accessibility, and functionality.

What to consider when choosing a React component library

Below are six things to consider when choosing a React library for your next project. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and some of these factors may not apply to the product you’re building. 

1. Popularity

GitHub’s star rating allows you to quickly compare each React UI library’s popularity. The weekly downloads on npm also show how many people use the component library. Generally speaking, a React library’s popularity means it’s well established and serves its purpose.

2. Issues

Like star rating, a library’s GitHub issues can tell you a lot about its popularity and how well it’s maintained. Even if the library has minimal issues, do any of these affect the product you’re trying to build? 

3. Documentation & Support

Documentation is an important consideration when choosing a React UI library. You want to avoid running to Stack Overflow every time you run into trouble or want to know how to use specific components. Good documentation is updated regularly and gives you a comprehensive understanding of the library.

You also want to know if the React library has support directly from the creators or via a dedicated community forum. There are times when you need expert advice to overcome challenges. The ability to reach out for help (even if that means paying) is crucial to get issues sorted quickly and keep the project moving.

4. Customization

One of the downsides to using a component library is its constraints and lack of customization. For some projects, customization isn’t a factor, but if you’re looking to develop a unique UI, the ability to build your own design system is vital.

Explore the library’s documentation to see if they offer instructions for customizing the components and how easily you can achieve your desired results.

5. Browser or Device Compatibility

Depending on the app you’re designing, you’ll want to know the component library’s browser and mobile compatibility. The quickest way to research browser/device compatibility is by searching GitHub’s issues or Stack Overflow.

6. Accessibility

Accessibility is a time-consuming but necessary consideration for digital product design. If a React library hasn’t considered accessibility when designing components, then it’s something you’re going to have to do yourself, which takes us back to points 3 and 4–documentation and customization.

Which is the best React component library?

The best React component library for your project depends on your specific needs and preferences. It’s recommended to evaluate each library based on factors such as documentation quality, community support, active development, and alignment with your project requirements before making a decision.

Comparing the libraries involves assessing various aspects such as design philosophy, component offerings, theming capabilities, documentation, community support, and ecosystem. Take Material-UI (MUI) and Ant Design as examples.

Material-UI provides a comprehensive set of React components following the Material Design system. It includes components like buttons, cards, forms, navigation, and more, with a wide range of customization options.

Ant Design offers a rich collection of components tailored for enterprise applications, including layouts, forms, navigation, data display, and more. It provides components specific to data visualization and business logic.

5 React Component Libraries

These are our five best React UI libraries for 2024.

Note: Information regarding GitHub stars and NPM downloads are accurate as of March 2024.

MUI (Material-UI)

• GitHub Stars: 91.3k
• Weekly NPM Downloads: 3.4M
• Official website: mui.com

MUI is one of the most comprehensive and widely used React component libraries. The library is built on Google’s Material Design UI, one of the most extensive UI kits in the world.

MUI – Components

MUI has a massive component library for designers to build everything from mobile and web applications, websites, and even wearable apps. 

MUI Core features fundamental UI components you see in everyday digital products, while MUI X offers a list of advanced React components for building complex user interfaces, like data tables, data pickers, charts, and more.

For those of you who would like to try design with MUI code components, sign up for a UXPin trial and get 14-day access to UXPin. Read more about MUI 5 Kit in UXPin.

MUI – Theming & Customization

One of MUI’s biggest appeals is the ability to theme and customize components. Designers can use MUI as a foundation to scale designs fast but also adapt the library to build a custom design system for their product or organization.

Designers can also take advantage of Material Design and MUI’s comprehensive guidelines to avoid usability issues when customizing components.

MUI also has a template marketplace to purchase React theme templates for dashboards, eCommerce websites, landing pages, and more.

MUI – Documentation

MUI’s documentation is as detailed and comprehensive as its component library. Its curators have taken great care to provide designers and developers with step-by-step instructions and guidelines for installation, usage, customization, accessibility, and more.

There are also tons of videos on YouTube from MUI’s large community of users and contributors offering best practices, tutorials, tips and tricks, how-to guides, and more.

React-Bootstrap

• GitHub Stars: 22.2k
• Weekly NPM Downloads: 1.3M
• Official website: react-bootstrap.github.io

Founded in 2011, Bootstrap is one of the oldest and most popular open-source CSS frameworks for websites and web applications. Bootstrap was one of the first CSS frameworks to prioritize mobile-first web development, allowing designers to build and scale responsive websites quickly.

React-Bootstrap replaced Bootstrap Javascript while ditching resource-heavy dependencies like JQuery to build a comprehensive but simplistic React component library.

React-Bootstrap – Components

If you’re familiar with Bootstrap, then you’ll instantly recognize React-Bootstrap’s generic-looking component library. Like its CSS predecessor, React-Bootstrap features UI components that favor web design rather than mobile applications.

React-Bootstrap – Theming & Customization

React-Bootstrap is very generic with minimal styling, making it easy for designers to tweak and customize. Bootstrap’s defined classes and variants make it easy to select and customize components using CSS.

Due to Bootstrap’s long history and wide usage, you can find tons of free and premium React-Bootstrap themes and templates for everything from admin dashboards to multiple purpose websites, eCommerce, landing pages, and more.

React-Bootstrap – Documentation

React-Bootstrap has excellent documentation, albeit not as detailed and comprehensive as MUI. React-Bootstrap’s simplicity and naming convention make it one of the easiest React libraries to understand, use, and customize.

Bootstrap is also featured extensively on Stack Overflow, so you’ll likely find answers to most issues. There are also loads of blogs and YouTube videos offering advice, tutorials, design projects, and more.

Semantic UI React

• GitHub Stars: 13.2k
• Weekly NPM Downloads: 253k
• Official website: react.semantic-ui.com

Semantic UI React is a popular alternative to React-Bootstrap. Like React-Bootstrap, Semantic UI started as an open-source CSS framework that its contributors used to build React components.

Semantic UI React – Components

Semantic UI React offers an extensive range of UI components for websites and web applications. The components provide cleaner, more modern styling than Bootstrap while remaining minimalist and simplistic.

Semantic UI React uses the FontAwesome icon set, including over 1,600 free icons and 7,864 Pro (paid).

Semantic UI React – Theming & Customization

Semantic UI uses an intuitive, straightforward naming convention that makes it easy to customize components. The documentation also provides a step-by-step guide for theming with Semantic UI React. Unlike MUI and React-Bootstrap, Semantic has very few template options. 

Semantic UI React – Documentation

Semantic UI React’s interactive documentation provides you with CodeSandbox examples to inspect the code and play around with components. 

The docs also allow you to switch between an example, code, and props to visualize the component from multiple angles.

Ant Design (AntD)

• GitHub Stars: 89.9k
• Weekly NPM Downloads: 1.2M
• Official website: ant.design/docs/react/introduce

Ant Design (AntD) is another popular, widely used React component library developed by Ant Group–parent company to Alibaba, China’s biggest online marketplace. Like MUI, AntD offers a vast component library for both web and mobile applications.

AntD is the only React library featured in this article that uses TypeScript – a form of Javascript.

Ant Design – Components

AntD has a massive component library for desktop and mobile, including UI patterns like infinite scroll and pull-to-refresh for mobile devices. Ant Design ProComponents offers a range of advanced React UI elements ( similar to MUI X) for building complex interfaces.

You can also find a vast library of pre-made templates and scaffolds to kick start your project and build UIs much faster.

Ant Design – Theming & Customization

AntD uses design tokens or variables for devs to customize and theme components. The UI library uses Less and provides a complete list of all AntD variables in GitHub.

Ant Design – Documentation

AntD’s comprehensive documentation provides step-by-step instructions for using and customizing. You can also inspect each component in CodeSandBox, CodePen, or StackBlitz.

Chakra UI

• GitHub Stars: 36.4k
• Weekly NPM Downloads: 523K
• Official website: chakra-ui.com

Chakra UI is a Nigerian-based React component library founded by Segun Adebayo. You can choose between Chakra’s free component library or Chakra UI Pro, which offers pre-made complex UI components to build interfaces faster.

Chakra UI – Components

Chakra UI’s component library caters to web-based applications and websites. The library offers the choice between TypeScript or Javascript React components, depending on your preference. Chakra’s designers follow WAI-ARIA standards, so every element is accessible.

The stylish UI components look similar to Semantic UI, with dark and light options available.

Chakra UI – Theming & Customization

Chakra’s designers created the UI library to be fully customized using variables to meet product and brand requirements. Charka also integrates with Create React App, Framer Motion, React Hook Form, and React Table to extend the library’s usage and customization.

Chakra UI – Documentation

Chakra UI has excellent documentation with guides, video tutorials, examples, FAQs, links to connect with core team members, and an active Discord community. 

Chakra’s users are extremely passionate and enthusiastic about the React library, and there’s always someone to connect with to ask questions.

Design Using React Components With UXPin Merge

One of the challenges of using a React library is that only few tools allow you to design UIs with real components. UXPin Merge allows you to assemble layouts with React components from Git repo, Storybook, or npm. See how it works. Discover UXPin Merge.

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Interaction design is one of the most critical facets of user experience design. It makes the product’s interface respond to user’s action, aiding in human-to-computer interaction.

Key takeaways:

• Interaction design is a multidisciplinary design field that focuses on the interaction between users and digital products, systems, or interfaces.
• It involves designing how users engage with and experience a product, with the goal of making that interaction intuitive and efficient.
• It’s often abbreviated as IxD.

It’s one of the most challenging stages of UX design process. UXPin’s code-based design tool reduces those challenges by allowing designers to build functional prototypes with extreme fidelity and interactivity. Deliver better customer experiences today. Sign up for a free trial.

Build advanced prototypes

Design better products with States, Variables, Auto Layout and more.

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What is Interaction Design?

Interaction design is a process of making human-to-computer interfaces (HCI) feel human-like. Interactive digital products create this “human” connection by giving feedback to the end-users. The feedback can be through a scroll-provoked animation, clicked state of a button or transition to another page.

Often shortened to IxD, interaction design uses appropriate interactive elements, such as transitions, microinteractions, animation, but also text, color, visuals, and layout impact users’ feeling and behavior–allowing them to design interactions strategically to elicit the appropriate response.

A good use of interaction design successfully leads to positive user experiences, including:

• Greater product satisfaction
• Deeper usability comprehension
• Faster learnability
• A deeper personal connection
• Increased likelihood of repeated use

Interaction Design in HCI

Interaction design in HCI, which stands for Human-Computer Interaction, is designing the interactive elements of a product, such as buttons, menus, and other interface components, to ensure they are intuitive, user-friendly, and responsive to user actions, and facilitate good communication between the user and the system.

The goal of interaction design is to create an engaging user experience that facilitates seamless interaction with the technology. It encompasses understanding user needs, behaviors, and expectations to design interfaces that are not only functional but also enjoyable to use.

By focusing on how users interact with technology, interaction design in HCI aims to enhance usability, accessibility, and overall satisfaction.

Interaction Design vs UI Design

Interaction design focuses on human-computer interaction, including animations, microinteractions, transitions, search, and other motion-based designs. They decide, for example, what happens when a user taps an element.

User interface design focuses on visual design and aesthetics, including color, fonts, iconography, layouts, etc. They decide what a user interface must look like.

To summarize:

• Interaction design is about Interactions and movement
• UI design is about visual design and aesthetics

In smaller companies and startups, a UI designer is often responsible for both tasks, while the roles are separate in larger organizations. Like anything in digital product design, the roles and responsibilities can synergize. It all depends on the company, product, and organizational structure.

Interaction Design vs UX Design

Interaction design is a specialized discipline within UX design. Where UX looks at the entire user experience and how everything ties together, interaction designers focus on user interactions and motion.

User experience designers apply UX fundamentals like design thinking, human-centered design, and user research to make decisions. They’re specifically concerned with a user’s tasks, actions, and environment, while interaction designers focus on making the digital product respond to user actions in an appropriate way. They tend to think about what happens when a user clicks a button, types a phrase into a search bar or hovers over an image.

Interaction Design Principles

We’ve chosen our favorite IxD principles from Don Norman’s (co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group) book, The Design of Everyday Things.

Visibility

With many features and limited space, prioritizing visibility is a significant design challenge. Don Norman’s theory is that the more visible something is, the more likely a user sees and interacts with it. Interaction designers must balance visibility prioritization based on user needs and business goals.

A typical example of visibility is prioritizing navigation links on mobile devices. What links are visible via the app bar, and what do designers place in the navigation drawer behind a hamburger menu?

Feedback

Feedback is how a digital product or system communicates with users. Interaction designers have several ways to express this feedback, including motion or animation, tactile, audio, copy, etc.

They must also consider accessibility and how products relay feedback to all types of users and assistive technologies.

Constraints

Cluttered UIs with too many possibilities confuse users and create usability issues. Good interaction design limits (or constrains) user actions to guide them through the product more efficiently.

We see these constraints most commonly with landing pages. Designers strip away navigation, links, and anything else that might tempt users to leave the page, leaving only a prominent button CTA or form. Constraining users to a single action allows them to focus on the content that leads to a conversion.

Mapping

Interaction designers must create a clear relationship between controls and their effect on a digital product. The idea is to map these relationships to feel natural to users.

For example, the top button on an iPhone increases the volume while the lower one decreases. This intuitive layout means users don’t have to think about which button performs which action.

The more intuitive and obvious a product is to use, the easier and more enjoyable the experience.

Consistency

Consistency is vital for interaction and UI design. Inconsistency can confuse users and create usability issues. Designers not only have to design consistent UIs and interactions but also consider consistency across multiple screen sizes and devices.

Many organizations build a design system or adopt an open-source component library to increase consistency with approved UI patterns and interactions. When designers don’t have to think about these choices, they can focus on the user experience and apply the appropriate pattern to help users achieve the desired result.

Affordance

Affordance tells users how to use something or perform an action. It’s an interaction designer’s job to ensure that it’s obvious to users how to complete tasks using UI elements.

For example, a submit button’s disabled state tells users to complete a form’s required fields before submitting. Using a different color and underline for links tells users which text they can click.

Cognition

Interaction designers must have a basic understanding of cognitive psychology in UX design–attention and perception, memory, problem-solving, and creative thinking. The aim is to design products and experiences that don’t overload these mental processes.

Cognition deals with several design psychology principles, including:

• Gestalt principles: how the human brain perceives visuals to create familiar structures.
• Von Restorff effect: predicts that in a group of objects, the one that differs stands out or is most likely to be remembered.
• Hick’s Law: the more choices you give someone, the longer it’ll take them to make a decision.
• The Principle of Least Effort: users will make choices or take action requiring the least amount of energy.
• The Serial Positioning Effect: humans are most likely to remember the first (primacy effect) and last (recency effect) items in a list, sentence, or piece of content.
• The Principle of Perpetual Habit: people rely on familiar routines and habits–which is why it’s crucial to use universal design patterns.
• The Principle of Emotional Contagion: humans will mimic or empathize with the emotions and behaviors of others, including animals and animations–which is why designers use faces (even emojis) to emphasize feeling and emotion.
• Fitts’s Law: the time required to move to a target area is a function between the distance and the target’s size.

Dive deeper into cognition in this article: UX Design Psychology Tricks for Design Excellence and this one: A UX Designer’s Guide to Improving Speed of Use. These principles apply to all UX disciplines.

Interaction Design Checklist

We found this helpful interaction design checklist from the US Government’s Technology Transformation Services website, usability.gov. The checklist includes several questions to consider when designing interactions.

• Define how users interact with the interface – click/tap, push, swipe, drag & drop, keyboard controls, etc.
• Give users clues about behavior before they take action – correct labeling, different colors for links, using consistency for clickable UI elements, etc.
• Anticipate and mitigate errors – how do you prevent errors while providing helpful messages to correct problems?
• Consider system feedback and response time – what happens after users complete an action, and how soon does that feedback appear?
• Strategically think about each element – have you chosen the appropriate element/pattern? Is there enough space between clickable elements to avoid errors? Have you followed design psychology principles (mentioned above)? Scrutinize every decision from a user’s perspective.
• Simplify for learnability – make user interfaces and tasks as simple as possible, use familiar patterns, and minimize cognitive-draining tasks and features to simplify the user experience.

Also, check out the IxD Checklist from Aaron Legaspi and Amit Jakhu.

Interaction Design Resources

• Interaction Design Association
• Interaction Design Foundation
• 50 Best Interaction Design Programs

UXPin–The Ultimate Interaction Design Tool

A lack of fidelity and functionality is a significant problem for interaction designers when prototyping and testing using traditional image-based design tools.

Interaction designers must create multiple frames to replicate basic code functionality, which takes considerable time and effort. With UXPin’s code-based design tool, designers can achieve significantly better results with less effort. Here’s how:

States

UXPin enables designers to create multiple States for a single component. For example, you can build a button with default, hover, active and disabled states, each with separate properties and triggers.

UXPin’s States also allows designers to create more complex UI patterns like carousels, accordions, dropdown menus, and more using a single frame. These UI patterns behave like code, giving interaction designers accurate results and feedback during testing.

Interactions

With UXPin Interactions, designers can build immersive, code-like experiences far beyond the capabilities of image-based design tools. UXPin offers a wide range of triggers, actions, and animations to create fully functional, animated prototypes.

Conditional Interactions allow designers to take prototypes a step further with Javascript-like “if-then” and “if-else” conditions to create dynamic user experiences. 

Variables

In UXPin, form fields look and function like the final product. Variables allow designers to capture user inputs and use that data elsewhere in the prototype–like a personalized welcome message after completing an onboarding form.

Expressions

UXPin Expressions take prototyping to another level with code-like functionality, including form validation and computational components (updating a shopping cart). When combined with States, Interactions, and Variables, Expressions allow designers to build prototypes that function like the final product.

These powerful features mean interaction designers don’t have to learn code or rely on engineers to build fully functioning prototypes for accurate testing. With UXPin, designers can build, test, and iterate faster and achieve significantly better results.

Tired of asking usability participants and stakeholders to “imagine” something happening? Switch to UXPin and start prototyping with the world’s most advanced code-based design tool. Sign up for a free trial today.

The post What is Interaction Design? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Designing an effective product page is essential for any eCommerce site or online store. It’s where customers make their purchasing decisions, so every element needs to be thoughtfully crafted to ensure a seamless user experience. A well-designed product page can significantly impact conversion rates, helping turn casual browsers into loyal buyers.

In this quick tutorial, we’ll guide you through the process of designing a compelling product page using UXPin’s built-in MUIv5 library components. With the power of UXPin and the versatility of MUIv5, you can create intuitive and visually appealing product pages that provide all the necessary information while maintaining a clean, user-friendly layout. Discover UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

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What is a Product Page?

A product page is a specific webpage on an eCommerce or company website dedicated to a single product. Its primary purpose is to provide detailed information about the product to help potential customers make an informed purchasing decision. Product pages are a crucial step in the online shopping customer journey, as they aim to convert visitors into buyers by highlighting the benefits and features of the product.

Key Elements of a Product Page

1. Product Title: Clearly states the name of the product, often including key attributes like brand, model, or size.
2. Product Images and Videos: High-quality images from various angles, sometimes accompanied by videos, to give a clear visual representation of the product.
3. Product Description: Detailed text that provides information about the product’s features, specifications, usage, benefits, and any other relevant details.
4. Pricing Information: Displays the price of the product, including any discounts, sales, or promotional offers.
5. Call to Action: A prominent button or link, such as “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now,” that encourages the customer to take the next step towards purchasing the product.
6. Customer Reviews and Ratings: User-generated reviews and ratings that provide social proof and help potential buyers understand others’ experiences with the product.
7. Availability and Stock Information: Indicates whether the product is in stock or if there are any shipping delays or limitations.
8. Additional Details: This may include information about shipping, returns, warranties, and customer support.
9. Related Products or Recommendations: Suggests other products that might be of interest to the customer based on the product they are viewing.

What is the Purpose of a Product Page?

The main goal of a product page is to provide all the necessary information a customer might need to decide whether or not to purchase the product.

It serves as a virtual salesperson, guiding the customer through the features, benefits, and purchasing process. Effective product pages are designed to be user-friendly, informative, and persuasive, aiming to convert site visitors into paying customers.

How to Design a Product Page in UXPin

In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through the process of designing a product page using UXPin’s built-in MUIv5 library components. With these powerful design elements, you’ll be able to create a professional and conversion-focused product page in under 15 minutes.

Step 1: Start a New Project in UXPin

Begin by logging into your UXPin account and starting a new project. Once you’re in the editor, select a Page 1 and name it “Product Page.”

Step 2: Set Up Your Layout

To establish a strong visual hierarchy and ensure your product page is user-friendly, start by setting up a grid layout. You can easily do this by selecting the “Layout” tool from the top menu and choosing a grid that suits your design needs—typically, a 12-column grid is ideal for most eCommerce layouts.

Step 3: Add a Product Image Component

A high-quality product image is essential for any product page. To add an image component:

1. Go to the MUIv5 library in UXPin.
2. Drag and drop the ImageList component onto your canvas.
3. Adjust the size and placement to make the image a prominent feature of the page.

Make sure to use high-resolution images and include multiple angles or variations if available. You can customize the ImageList component to display a gallery of product images, allowing users to swipe through different views.

Step 4: Insert Product Details

Next, you’ll want to add the product title, description, and price. Here’s how you can do it:

1. Product Title: Drag a Typography component from the MUIv5 library. Set the variant to “h5” for a prominent headline, and type in your product name.
2. Product Description: Below the title, drag another Typography component and set the variant to “body1.” Here, you can provide a detailed description of the product, highlighting its features, benefits, and specifications.
3. Price: Finally, use another Typography component for the price. Set it to a slightly larger variant like “h6” to make it stand out. You can also use a different color to draw attention.

Step 5: Add a Call to Action

Your product page needs a clear and compelling call to action. For most e-commerce sites, this is the “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” button. To add this:

1. Drag the Button component from the MUIv5 library onto the canvas.
2. Place it below the product details and adjust its size and position.
3. Set the button’s variant to “contained” for a solid, noticeable look. You can customize the color to match your brand’s theme.

Make sure your CTA is prominent and easy to find—this is key to driving conversions.

Step 6: Include Customer Reviews and Ratings

Customer reviews and ratings build trust and provide social proof. To add a review section:

1. Use the Grid component from MUIv5 to create a structured layout.
2. Inside the grid, use the Rating component for displaying stars and Typography components for review text.
3. You can also add an IconButton with a “thumbs up” icon to allow users to like reviews, enhancing engagement.

Step 7: Add Related Products or Recommendations

To encourage cross-selling, add a section for related products or recommendations:

1. Use a Card component from the MUIv5 library.
2. Add an image, title, and price to each card, mimicking your primary product layout but on a smaller scale.
3. Arrange these cards horizontally or in a grid layout below the main product information.

Step 8: Finalize and Preview

Once all components are in place, fine-tune the alignment, spacing, and visual hierarchy to ensure a cohesive and polished design. Use UXPin’s Preview Mode to test your design and make any necessary adjustments.

Check out UXPin’s example page to see how Preview mode works at UXPin.

Step 9: Share and Collaborate

After finalizing your product page design, share it with your team or stakeholders for feedback. UXPin allows for easy collaboration, so you can quickly iterate on the design based on their input.

Create Your Own Product Page Design in UXPin

And there you have it—a fully functional and visually appealing product page designed in under 15 minutes using MUI components. With these steps, you’ve created a user-friendly product page that not only looks great but is also optimized for conversions.

Give it a try and see how quickly you can design a product page that will impress your customers and drive sales. Discover UXPin Merge.

The post How to Design a Product Page – A Quick Tutorial appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Interactions are vital for prototyping because they provide usability participants and stakeholders with a realistic user experience. The problem many designers have is building interactive components is time-consuming, and the results are underwhelming in most design tools.

Discover component-driven prototyping with UXPin Merge and how you can use interactive components to create fully functional prototypes to enhance cross-functional collaboration and user testing. Visit our Merge page for more details and how to request access to this revolutionary UX design technology.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

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What are Interactive Components?

Interactive components (or interactive elements) are reusable UI elements from a design system and include interactivity by default. This interactivity is a game-changer for designers who usually work with UI kits and have to add interactions for every project.

Design teams can set interactions, states, and other animations to create immersive prototypes that accurately represent the final product.

Interactive Components Benefits

Here are several benefits of interactive components.

1. Fewer Artboards

Traditionally, creating interactions using a design tool required multiple artboards to achieve basic functionality. Designers can achieve the same results with a single artboard using interactive components.

2. Faster Time to Market

Creating fewer artboards means less design work for designers, and interactive components are reusable, so designers only have to set interactions once–saving significant time during the design process.

Once engineers are familiar with the approved components, the design handoff process is much easier, saving further time on project delivery.

The result of all these time savings?–faster time to market.

3. Increased Consistency

UI kits increase design consistency, but they still leave some ambiguity regarding interactions. Designers must set these interactions themselves, leading to errors and inconsistencies–especially if the project doesn’t specify interactivity guidelines!

Interactive components have interactivity “baked in,” so everyone has the same states, microinteractions, and animations. These baked-in interactions increase consistency while enhancing efficiency because designers have fewer setup tasks and errors to fix.

4. Better Testing and Feedback

User and stakeholder feedback is crucial for design projects. This feedback drives decision-making to deliver user-centered products that align with business goals.

Most design tools lack the fidelity and functionality to perform simple interactions engineers achieve with a few lines of code. Interactive components make it easier to replicate code functionality, resulting in immersive, realistic prototypes for usability testing and stakeholders.

5. Increase Design System Adoption

One of the DS team’s jobs is evangelizing the design system to increase adoption. Interactive components are a powerful tool in design system evangelism because they create efficient workflows for product development teams, thus increasing the likelihood of adoption.

6. Scaling Design

At UXPin, we’ve seen how component-driven prototyping and interactive components help scale design. Our favorite example is how PayPal used UXPin Merge to scale its design process without hiring new staff.

Connecting Merge to interactive components hosted in a repository allowed PayPal’s product teams (with little or no UX/design tool experience) to complete 90% of design projects 8X faster than skilled UX designers previously could.

Interactive components made the design process more accessible to non-designers because they reduced the learning curve significantly.

PayPal’s UX team built an interactive component library, including layouts and templates, and used React props to set design system constraints. Product teams simply drag and drop to build prototypes for usability testing and design handoffs.

Interactive components allow orgs to give more UX responsibilities to non-designers, like product teams (or engineers in the case of another UXPin Merge user, TeamPassword), thus scaling design with growing the UX team.

You can create interactions depending on the conditions like click, hover etc. on the ready components!

How to Incorporate Interactive Components in UXPin Prototypes?

To incorporate interactive components into your product prototypes, there are many steps you can take. Make sure that forms can actually be filled out; boxes can be checked; and links can be clicked on.

Make as many components of your design actually workable as you can; this allows users to have the experience of trying to use the product, and it can give you some insight into how your product works and how people will (or want to) use it.

Using Interactive Components in UXPin

Since the first release of UXPin more than a decade ago, interactive components have been core to our design tool, providing designers with a solution to build prototypes that accurately replicate the final product experience.

UXPin has four powerful features to create interactive components:

• States: Create multiple state variants, each with different properties and interactions for a single component.
• Variables: Capture user input data and use it to create personalized, dynamic user experiences.
• Expressions: Javascript-like functions to create complex components and advanced functionality–no code required!
• Conditional Interactions: Set if-then and if-else conditions based on user interactions to create dynamic prototypes with multiple outcomes to accurately replicate the final product experience.

One helpful strategy is including pre-built components (called “forms” at UXPin)  that you can easily drag and drop in our platform. (No need to design these from scratch!) 

Advanced Component Customization with UXPin

In UXPin, components are not just static design elements; they offer advanced customization capabilities that enable designers to create dynamic, interactive prototypes.

Unlike traditional static components, UXPin components can be enhanced with multiple states, conditional logic, and even real data integration. This flexibility allows designers to create high-fidelity prototypes that closely mimic the functionality of the final product.

• Multiple States: Each component in UXPin can have multiple states (e.g., default, hover, active), which can be easily switched within the prototype. This feature allows designers to showcase different interactions and user flows without needing to create separate screens for each variation.
• Conditional Logic: UXPin allows components to change dynamically based on user actions or predefined conditions. For example, a form component can display error messages or success notifications based on the user’s input, providing a realistic preview of the user experience.
• Data Integration: Components in UXPin can integrate with live data, making them highly functional for testing and development. By connecting components to real data sources, designers can create prototypes that behave like real applications, enhancing the accuracy and effectiveness of usability testing.

4 Examples of Interactive Components in UXPin

Here are some interactive component examples from our examples page to see how you can start. For now, let’s see what you can do with states, variables, expressions, and conditional logic.

Example 1: Button

Example 2: Input and text area 

Example 3: Radio button 

Example 4: An interactive sign-up form

→ Download a ready .uxp file to import into your UXPin account. 

Want to create one by yourself? Here’s a tutorial. 

Interactive Components in UXPin Merge

Merge takes component-driven prototyping and interactive components to another level. Instead of designers building components in UXPin, Merge imports a design system library from a repository.

These Merge UI elements are truly interactive components because behind them is code from a front-end framework like React, Vue, Angular, etc. You can import your organization’s design system or use an open-source library.

Designers don’t ever have to see or write code to use Merge components; they only work with the visual elements to build fully functioning prototypes. They also have access to component properties via UXPin’s Properties Panel to make changes within the design system’s constraints.

Learn more about Merge and how to request access.

Designing with Merge Interactive Components

Step 1: Grab Components From the Design System

There are three ways to import interactive components into UXPin using Merge:

• Git Integration: Connect a React component library directly to UXPin
• Storybook: Sync front-end frameworks like Vue, Angular, HTML, Ember, Web Components, and more (see the complete list here)
• npm Integration: Import open-source libraries from the Node Package Manager (npm)–a fantastic DIY option for designers. Read more about the npm Integration and how it works.

Imported Merge components appear in UXPin’s Design System Libraries in the left sidebar. Designers click or drag the UI elements they need from the sidebar to appear on the canvas. They can also use multiple design systems and UXPin elements and even combine them to create new components which they can save as Patterns.

Step 2: Make Changes

When designers click on a Merge component, its properties appear in the righthand Properties Panel. Those with technical skills can switch to JSX and adjust the code directly–a flexible workspace to match your preferred workflow.

Step 3: Share and Test

Designers can use Preview and Share for usability testing or when sharing prototypes with stakeholders. UXPin’s Comments feature allows teams and stakeholders to collaborate on prototypes and assign comments for team members to action.

Step 4: Design Handoff

Preview and Share also features Spec Mode, where engineers can inspect elements and click on Merge components to view and copy JSX changes. Designers can also include prototype documentation with annotations explaining each element and user interface.

Check out Design Handoff: What it Looks Like with UXPin Merge for a short tutorial.

Interactive Components UXPin Merge vs. Figma

Here’s a quick overview of how Figma’s interactive components feature compares to UXPin Merge components.

Single Source of Truth

Figma’s interactive components allow designers to replicate some fundamental interactions. However, organizations must still manage two design systems–one UI kit for designers in Figma and a separate component library hosted in a repository.

The problem with this workflow is it requires additional resources to manage and update two systems while increasing the likelihood of errors.

With Merge, design teams and engineers pull components from the same repository. Designers see visual elements, and engineers use the code behind them. Any changes to the repository automatically sync to UXPin and notify all teams of the update. Designers can also use Version Control to switch between different design system versions.

Fully Interactive

Figma’s interactive components aim to mimic code, whereas code powers Merge, giving design teams fully interactive UI elements.

With Figma’s interactive components, you’re essentially creating states. With Merge, you get complex functionality like real date pickers, data tables, graphs, inputs, responsive design, and much more!

Smoother Design Handoffs and Cross-Functional Collaboration

Design handoffs are seamless, almost non-existent when using Merge because designers and engineers use the same component library. Design teams can’t make changes outside of properties set by the design system, so there are no surprises for engineers.

Merge significantly reduces development time because engineers can copy/paste production-ready code from the repository and grab component props from UXPin to begin front-end development.

Figma’s components are vector-based artboards. Although many plugins convert Figma design files to code, it’s rarely usable, and engineers must still re-program it to meet their product’s format and structure.

In summary, Merge is a code-based technology that syncs design and development to form a single source of truth. Figma’s interactive components offer basic functionality (mostly state variants) that reduces the number of artboards designers use to create interactions.

Use our Figma plugin to copy Figma designs into UXPin. Reach higher interactivity of prototyping.

Bridging Design and Development with UXPin Merge

One of the standout features of UXPin is its Merge technology, which bridges the gap between design and development by allowing designers to use actual code components within their prototypes. This feature ensures that the components in UXPin are the same as those in production, maintaining consistency and reducing the risk of discrepancies between the design and the final product.

• Code-Based Components: With UXPin Merge, designers can import coded components from a repository (like GitHub) and use them directly in their design projects. These components are not just visual representations; they are the actual components that will be used in the final product, complete with all the functionality and interactivity defined by the development team.
• Single Source of Truth: By using code-based components, UXPin ensures that there is a single source of truth for both designers and developers. This approach eliminates the need for redundant handoffs and rework, as any changes made in the design are immediately reflected in the code, and vice versa. This seamless integration fosters better collaboration and streamlines the product development process.

How to Get Started Prototyping With UXPin Merge

Ready to get started with component-driven prototyping in UXPin using Merge? You have two options:

• Open-source libraries: Open-source libraries are best for teams who lack an active dev support or they just want to get some basic understanding of how they can work with components before comitting to them.
• Private design systems: If you’d like to sync your product’s private design system to UXPin, visit our Merge page to request access, and one of UXPin’s technical staff will contact you to help with onboarding.

The post What are Interactive Components? Bring your Prototypes to Life in UXPin appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Figma is a powerful web-based design tool that has become designer’s favorite as it allows to create, collaborate on, and share user interface designs in real-time. Founded in 2012 by Dylan Field and Evan Wallace, Figma has grown to become one of the leading tools in the design industry due to its unique features and capabilities.

Although it offers a great collaborative design experience, Figma is not the best when it comes to interactive prototyping, design handoff, and code-based design. Let’s analyze Figma competitors and analyze what makes this design tool so popular.

Design fully functional prototypes with UXPin Merge. Use the same components in design as you do in development, and create prototypes that can be interacted with and tested with real users. See how. Try UXPin Merge for free.

Design UI with code-backed components.

Use the same components in design as in development. Keep UI consistency at scale.

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What is Figma?

Figma is a web-based design tool that simplifies teamwork and UI design.

Figma’s focus on accessibility, powerful features, and collaborative capabilities has made it a preferred choice for designers and teams worldwide, transforming how digital products are designed and developed.

What is Figma used for?

Figma is best suited for designers with UI and UX design projects that require detailed, UI designs and robust collaboration features.

It is used for:

• Brainstorming — Figma is a great tool for idea generation; it released a complimentary tool FigJam, where team members can create artboards and flowcharts during brainstorming sessions. An alternative to Figma for brainstorming is Miro.
• Prototyping — Figma Figma enables designers to create high-fidelity, interactive prototypes with various transitions and animations​. Figma’s alternative for prototyping are UXPin or Axure.
• UI design — Figma is praised for its design capabilities and it’s used to design the graphical user interfaces of websites, mobile apps, and other digital products. It provides design functionalities to create detailed, high-fidelity mockups. An alternative to Figma in UI design was InVision or Adobe XD. Now, it’s the tools that we will cover in this article.
• Design system — Figma supports the creation and management of design systems, which are collections of design elements and guidelines that ensure consistency across a UI design. It also helps with version control. Figma’s alternative for design systems is Sketch or UXPin.
• Graphic design — Figma provides robust vector editing tools that allow designers to create intricate illustrations and detailed vector graphics. Figma’s alternative for graphic design is Canva.
• Wireframing — Figma is also used for creating wireframes, which are low-fidelity representations of a design’s structure and layout. Wireframes help designers plan the basic structure and flow of a user interface. An alternative for Figma for wireframing is UXPin, Balsamiq, and Axure.

How Figma came to be?

Figma’s backstory is rooted in the vision of its founders, Dylan Field and Evan Wallace, who sought to transform the design industry by creating a more collaborative and accessible tool. Founded in 2012, the idea for Figma emerged from their desire to overcome the limitations of traditional design software, which was often platform-specific and lacked real-time collaboration features. Field’s Thiel Fellowship provided the initial funding and mentorship necessary to bring their idea to life.

The official launch of Figma in 2016 marked a significant shift in the design landscape. As a browser-based tool, it allowed designers to work on any device with internet access, facilitating seamless collaboration akin to Google Docs. This innovation quickly garnered attention, leading to substantial venture capital investments and a growing user base. By 2021, Figma had reached a valuation of $10 billion, reflecting its widespread adoption and impact on the design community.

Figma’s success is also attributed to its focus on community and extensibility. The platform introduced features like plugins, FigJam for whiteboarding, and a vibrant community for sharing resources and ideas. Despite an attempted acquisition by Adobe in 2023, which was ultimately abandoned, Figma has remained independent and continues to innovate, aiming to democratize design and make powerful tools accessible to all designers​.

Figma in numbers

Here are the key numbers associated with Figma.

• User Base: As of March 2024, Figma has over 4 million users, including designers from major companies like Microsoft, Google, and Uber.
• Market Share: The number of designers using Figma as their primary tool rose from 20% in 2018 to 77% in 2021, highlighting its rapid adoption and popularity in the design community​.
• Valuation: Figma’s valuation grew significantly over the years. It reached $2 billion by April 2020 and $10 billion by mid-2021. Despite an acquisition attempt by Adobe that valued Figma at $20 billion falling through, the company remains highly valued at approximately $8.3-9 billion as of late 2023.
• Funding: Figma has raised substantial funding across several rounds, including $25 million in Series B (2018), $40 million in Series C (2019), $50 million in Series D (2020), and $200 million in Series E (2021)​.
• Collaborative Files: Over 3 million Figma files are shared within teams every month, underscoring its collaborative nature and widespread use among design teams​.

Why is Figma so popular?

Figma is a user-friendly design platforms that designers love because of at least 5 features.

• Real-Time Collaboration: Multiple users can work on a single design file simultaneously, providing live feedback and making collaborative design seamless​. All it requires to work is an internet connection, as Figma is a web app.
• Design Systems and Reusable Components: It supports the creation and management of design systems, ensuring consistency and efficiency in large-scale projects​​.
• Comprehensive Toolset: Figma offers a wide array of design tools, from vector graphics and typography to layout and composition, all within an intuitive interface.
• Community: Figma boasts a vibrant community where users can share templates, tips and plugins for streamlining the design process and reducing the learning curve.
• Plugin Ecosystem: Figma has an extensive plugin ecosystem for integrating Figma with other tools, simplifying workflow and enhancing its functionality.

Top Figma competitors

1. UXPin
2. Moqups
3. Framer
4. Sketch
5. Marvel
6. Axure

UXPin

UXPin is a Figma alternative for advanced prototyping. While Figma is a vector-based design tool, UXPin is code-based, meaning that you can set up the most advanced interactions on the components level and then copy the code behind it to use in development. With UXPin, you can create clickable menus, data-rich tables, interactive forms, dynamic content, and more.

It’s an end-to-end design tool, so you don’t need plugins or extra seats to test or hand over the final prototype to development. The specs are available without extra seats. UXPin also helps teams set up code-based design system, keep version control, and collaborate by sharing the design with others for commenting or annotating.

UXPin is also known for its Merge technology. It’s a drag-and-drop technology for using fully coded React or Storybook components to design an interface. It’s perfect for teams with matured design systems (like Porsche) or engineer-driven companies who don’t have enough designers on their team.

Check out other articles that compare UXPin and Figma:

• Figma vs UXPin – Storybook integration
• Figma vs UXPin – Prototyping
• Figma vs UXPin – Design System
• Figma vs UXPin – Components
• Figma vs UXPin – React code export

Moqups

Moqups is a wireframing tool for designing basic wireframes that look like paper prototypes, user flows and basic mockups – three essential steps in the design process. This is a well-loved alternative to Figma’s FigJam, their whiteboarding solution with amazing integrations with Jira and Confluence.

It’s a great collaboration tool that makes project management easy. With enterprise clients on board, such as Microsoft, Sony, Amazon, Moqups seem to be a perfect choice for teams who need a common workspace for brainstorming sessions. The tool is also great for working with freelancers on app or web design.

The tool also allows you to create templates for reuse and share across the team. It has an affordable pricing and works offline.

Framer

Framer is a compelling Figma competitor for web design. It helps create and publish websites without having to write code. It works in a drag-and-drop for creating a layout of blogs, landing pages, forms, and more.

It’s a great Figma alternative if you want to create a website that needs to be live fast. Framer is more than just a design tool. It helps you with SEO, performance, localization, and any other thing that’s in a web master’s scope of expertise.

It’s recently added AI feature that works like this — write a prompt, telling AI what kind of a website you’re building, and in return, get a ready-to-go site. It works like magic!

Framer isn’t great at prototyping because it’s main job is creating websites. It makes collaboration between designers, engineers, and product managers easy, yet if you need to create a high-fidelity prototype for user testing, try a tool like UXPin, Axure or Marvel.

Sketch

Sketch is a Figma competitor for teams that work on Macs — it’s a Mac app. It’s recently revamped it’s product to support interactions, design token export, and more things that make designer-developer handoff frictionless.

Sketch has been around since 2010 when designers used Photoshop to create mockups or wireframes. It’s a real dinosaur but it doesn’t seem like it. It’s a user-friendly prototyping tool that speeds up product development and a great Figma alternative. It has a version control, design system management and history that makes design process easier.

Marvel

Marvel advertises itself as a design tool that even non-designers can use. This might be appealing to small startups who look for a wireframing and mockup solution that everyone on the team can use. It’s used in finance and consulting markets as well as by companies such as BlaBlaCar or Stripe.

The prototyping tool doesn’t compare itself to Figma, but from its Marvel vs Invision landing page, we can learn that it’s a tool for advanced prototyping and design handoff that allows teams to build and handover their designs to the engineering team.

Marvel is praised for having a small learning curve and easy user interface, but the users complain that it is too basic to create advanced prototypes.

Like Figma, it works in artboard mode and it has vector editing tools that help you mimic user interactions to an extent. We recommend you to try Marvel as it has a free version that you may enjoy for creating basic screens.

Axure

Axure is an old-school prototyping tool that’s a great competitor to Figma when it comes to advanced prototyping. It supports interactions, such as conditions, triggers, and actions for creating a prototype that tests user experience. Those interactions can be tricky to set up as the learing curve is rather steep, but it’s all worth it.

Axure works in the cloud now, but it also has a MacOS and Windows apps for those of you who prefer work offline. It’s well loved by user experience designers, product managers, and business analysts at enterprise corporations, and design teams who require robust user feedback before implementing the design.

Which Figma competitor do you want to try?

There are many more Figma competitors on the market, but we decided to outline six of them that you may consider when looking for a Figma alternative or another tool to speed up your design process.

Some of well-loved tools have been sunsetted or they stopped getting new clients, such as Adobe XD (which was a part of Creative Cloud) or InVision that was great for design systems.

Framer is best for web design, Sketch is great for Mac users, Moqups and Marvel come in handy for smaller teams, while Axure and UXPin are great for robust prototyping when you need to use live data. Pick the one that fits your purpose.

If you want to use a prototyping tool that connects design and development, try UXPin Merge. Design production-ready prototypes that don’t need translation from design to code, because you work with coded components from the start. Try UXPin Merge.

The post Top 6 Figma Competitors that Product Teams Use appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Little icons have a big job. With limited real estate, they must convey meaning to people who expect to be informed about function or status. Maybe that’s why thousands of icons sets exist, many for free. But there’s nothing quite like making your own.

Project-specific icons help the project to stand apart and convey meaning unique to its functions. For example, most apps or dashboards let you create new records. But fewer systems will let you assign one record to another. That may require a creative symbol that people will come to recognize as they learn your product.

Their role in design systems leaves little room for ambiguity: meaning must remain clear in a variety of surrounding contexts, while fitting into the system’s overall aesthetic.

Unify your design and development team with a single source of truth – coded components shared across UI design and engineering. Bring your design system to the final level of maturity and speed up the entire product development process. Try UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

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What are Icons in Design System?

Icons in a design system are visual symbols that represent ideas, objects, or actions. They are a fundamental element of user interface that helps products have a unique look and feel. Plus, they indicate that an element is clickable. They can provide visual cues where to click or tap to perform actions like saving, editing, sharing, or navigating within the interface.

Examples of icons in design system include:

• navigational icons – aid navigating through the interface, such as menus, home, arrows.
• action icons – help users perform some task like arrow for adding an item.
• media icons – indicate that users can manage media like play button or speed up button.
• utility icons – represent settings, configurations, and other customization mechanisms.
• status icons – show errors, loading, or approval.
• communication icons – such as chat bubble, phone or envelope.

Why Icons are Part of Design System?

Iconography is more than tiny pictures. Together they form an entire family, not unlike a set of typefaces, that reinforce a brand.

They also prevent extra work. When you need an icon, just grab one from the project’s style library, or use the library as inspiration. To that end writing (and drawing) guidelines for new icons is important.

• Make guidelines for icons. Part of your design system should include parameters on what your team can and can’t do with icons.
• Practice style. One of the best ways to develop a visual language is to apply it to new ideas. As you invent icons, make sure they fit the same look — but don’t be afraid to modify that look early in your work.
• Test each iteration. Do your icons make sense? Can people figure out what they mean? Getting stylish while retaining clear meaning requires showing your work to users.

Where to get ideas for icons

Where do icons come from? Your imagination is just the beginning. Seeking inspiration from outside sources can be critical to success.

• Look up synonyms for the word or concept you want to represent.
• Look for styles beyond the obvious. What inspiration might you find from, say, Polynesian symbols or Mandarin letterforms?
• Doodle shapes at random, avoiding backgrounds like circles or squares.
• Use the brand. Does your project’s logo have an eye-catching characteristic you can use? How about the project’s typography?
• Create negative space. How can the interactions of three or four regular geometric shapes overlap to create new and interesting forms?

Base complex forms on the same shapes

Recognizability is the most important aspect of an icon. If people don’t know it at a glance, they may waste precious time deciphering it — or look elsewhere for a shape they associate with the function at hand.

With that in mind we start by defining icons’ silhouettes. But don’t just start drawing lines.

• Use the same geometry. Here we make shapes based entirely on small circles and rectangles. When you base icons on the same general elements, they look like they belong to the same family
• Use the same angles, e.g. 90°, 45°, 30°. Doing so will make them more legible and more consistent.
• Same line weight throughout. Here, basing glyphs on the same few shapes will help keep your icons looking similar without looking derivative.
• Stick to symmetry — or the same asymmetry. Tilting your icons is a great way to make them stand out from other sets. But if you do so, tilt them all at the same angle to reinforce that they’re part of the same family. Otherwise stick to good ol’ right angles.

This example may stick to its base shapes a little too closely for practical design work, but demonstrates how simple geometry can create complex forms that look like they belong together.

Make a consistent color palette

Like using geometry to make icons look like a set, if you plan to use color, then you should use the same color palette. But which colors?

• Seek inspiration from your photos. If you have final art for your project, make the icons look harmonious by sampling colors from that art.
• Borrow from Google’s MDL palette. They’ve done a great job of selecting bright colors that stand out against a variety of backgrounds, yet rarely clash among themselves.
• Make sure the colors work well together. Speaking of clashes, test every combination of your preferred colors to keep them from looking awkward when adjacent to each other.
• Use one color per icon. The contemporary “flat” look works best without shading, shadows, gradients, or other details that detract from their silhouettes.
• Use values. If you must use multiple colors, try to use different shades of the same hues.
• Consider meaning. Should colors imply function? It’s up to you, but remember that many people associate color with actions, like red for “delete,” green for “create,” and faded (usually less opaque) for “disabled.”

How much color is too much? How much is too little? Determine your color palette based on one factor: attention. If your icons need to grab people’s eyes, then make ’em bright. Otherwise aim for consistency.

Remember that symbols have preconceived meanings

People often associate certain “universal” icons with certain functions. The trash can, for example, means “delete.” Hamburger icons, though, aren’t universally understood … yet.

Using microcopy with icons is a good idea. Rely on shapes for quick identification, and text for folks who don’t get it.

Designing a system

Icons must do a lot with a little. In spite of running small, people expect to “get it” at first glance. That’s why silhouettes, consistency, color, and meaning all work together for a great, on-brand icon set.

The post Design a System of Icons With These Techniques appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

UI design tools are apps used by designers to create, prototype, and refine user interface design for digital products such as websites, mobile apps, and web apps. These tools facilitate various aspects of the design process, from wireframing and prototyping to creating high-fidelity mockups and interactive designs.

These tools are essential for UI designers as they provide the capabilities needed to create user-friendly and visually appealing interfaces. The choice of tool often depends on the specific needs of the project, team preferences, and workflow integration. Let’s go over the most popular UI design tools.

Build interactive prototypes and streamline your design handoff with UXPin, an end-to-end UI design tool. Use drag-and-drop building blocks that come from your design system and streamline design operations. Try UXPin for free.

Build advanced prototypes

Design better products with States, Variables, Auto Layout and more.

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UXPin

UXPin is a comprehensive design tool known for its robust real-time collaboration capabilities, allowing multiple users to work simultaneously on the same project.

It excels in supporting design systems, enabling designers to create and manage reusable components and styles efficiently. UXPin’s advanced interactivity features allow for the creation of high-fidelity prototypes using conditional logic and variables.

Despite its powerful capabilities, UXPin has a steeper learning curve, though it provides extensive resources and templates to help users get started.

The tool also facilitates the design handoff process with detailed specifications with HTML and CSS code to copy, and includes functionalities for collecting user feedback through usability testing​ as well as integrations (like the one with testing tool – Fullstory.)

The tool has a Mac app, Windows app, but it also works in the cloud.

UXPin Merge

If you need a single source of truth, UXPin has also another solution — UXPin Merge.

UXPin Merge is a powerful extension of UXPin that allows designers and developers to work with the same components, ensuring consistency and accuracy throughout the design process. This feature is particularly beneficial for collaboration and responsive design.

UXPin Merge excels in supporting design systems by allowing teams to sync components directly from a Git repository, such as those using React. This ensures that the design components used in UXPin are the exact same ones used in the final product, maintaining consistency and reducing the risk of discrepancies.

Figma

Figma is a web-based product design tool, highly regarded for its exceptional collaboration features, allowing real-time multi-user editing and commenting.

It offers strong design system support with shared libraries, UI kits and design tokens that can be easily updated across projects.

While Figma’s interactivity features are sufficient for most UI/UX design needs, they are not as advanced as some other tools. The tool is intuitive and easy for beginners, offering a user-friendly interface and a variety of templates for layouts, user journeys, and more.

Figma supports design handoff through detailed specs and code snippets accessible to developers, and facilitates user feedback collection directly on designs. Although it has limited native support for real data, you can easily find various plugins for this.

Figma also offers a digital whiteboard tool called FigJam that’s perfect for brainstorming, uniting team members and stakeholders with a mutual vision of their design before project kickoff.

Axure

Axure is a powerful prototyping tool known for its advanced prototyping capabilities, supporting detailed interactions and conditional logic. It allows for collaborative work, though it may not be as seamless as tools like Figma.

Axure supports design systems with reusable widgets and styles, but its primary strength lies in its detailed prototyping features. The tool includes features for data-driven prototypes, using variables and datasets, and provides comprehensive design handoff documentation.

Axure has a steeper learning curve but offers robust capabilities for creating complex and interactive prototypes. It also supports user feedback collection through shared prototypes and annotations, making it a versatile UI/UX tool for highly interactive design work​.

Sketch

Sketch is a favorite UI design software among Mac users, offering a powerful set of vector editing tools tailored for UI/UX design. It supports real-time collaboration through Sketch for Teams, although it is limited to macOS users.

Sketch excels in design systems, providing reusable UI kits and shared libraries that can be easily updated. Its prototyping capabilities are basic but can be enhanced with plugins. Sketch integrates well with tools like Zeplin for detailed design handoff processes.

The tool is user-friendly and offers many templates and resources, making it easy to start designing quickly. Sketch supports adding real data through various plugins and facilitates user feedback collection using third-party tools.

Sketch is one of the most cost-effective choice, with prices starting from $10 per month​.

UIzard

UIzard is distinguished by its AI-driven design capabilities which streamlines the design process for low-fidelity and high-fidelity designs.

It provides collaborative features but might lack the depth found in more established tools like Figma. UIzard focuses on AI-driven design systems, which can be useful for quick prototyping but may not offer the same level of customization as the leaders on the market of UI design.

Its reusability features are primarily driven by AI, which can streamline the design process but may require further refinement for more complex UI/UX design projects.

UIzard offers basic feedback features and integrates AI to create interactive elements, although it may not provide the same level of manual control as other tools​ mentioned here.

Marvel

Marvel is known for its simplicity and ease of use, making it an ideal choice for quick design iterations. It offers real-time collaboration and commenting, allowing teams to work together seamlessly.

Marvel supports basic design systems with reusable components and style guides, making it suitable for straightforward projects. The tool provides interactive prototyping features that are good for simple interactions but may lack the depth required for more complex designs.

Marvel facilitates design handoff with specifications and integrates with development tools. It supports basic integration of real data and includes user testing and feedback collection capabilities, making it a well-rounded tool for rapid design and prototyping.​

Justinmind

Justinmind is a versatile prototyping tool that supports advanced interactivity with conditions and events. It allows for collaborative work with version control and commenting, making it suitable for app or web design projects. Justinmind offers design system capabilities with reusable UI elements and templates, enhancing the efficiency of the design process.

The tool provides detailed specifications for design handoff and integrates with tools like JIRA. Justinmind supports real data integration for dynamic interactions, allowing for more realistic user experience design.

It also facilitates user feedback collection through shared prototypes and annotations, making it a comprehensive tool for detailed and interactive design work​.

About InVision and AdobeXD

While both InVision and Adobe XD have been popular tools in the UI/UX design community, they faced significant competition from other tools that offer more advanced features and better integration with modern design workflows.

InVision has been a significant player in the design collaboration space, offering tools that were integral to many design workflows. However, as of 2024, InVision has announced the discontinuation of its design collaboration services, including prototyping and its Design System Manager (DSM), effective by the end of the year.

This decision marks a significant shift in the industry, as InVision was once a frontrunner in providing tools that bridged the gap between designers and developers. The shutdown is attributed to increased competition from other tools like Figma, which have surpassed InVision in terms of functionality and user adoption. As a result, InVision’s focus will shift away from these services, leading to its exclusion from the list of recommended tools for 2024.

Adobe XD, another major tool in the UI/UX design field, is also being discontinued in 2024. Adobe has decided to phase out Adobe XD in favor of focusing on other products within their Creative Cloud suite.

Despite its strong integration with other Adobe products and a comprehensive set of features, Adobe XD has struggled to keep pace with the innovative features and real-time collaboration capabilities offered by its competitors. Consequently, Adobe XD will no longer be available, prompting designers to migrate to other tools that continue to receive support and development.

Which UI design tool will you try?

Among the tools reviewed, Marvel and Sketch are the cheapest options for 2024, with Marvel being particularly accessible due to its free pricing tier. Sketch remains a strong contender for macOS users looking for an affordable, professional-grade tool. Adobe XD and InVision offer competitive pricing but face discontinuation, which may impact their adoption moving forward.

For enterprise teams, UXPin and Figma are the strongest contenders due to their robust collaboration, design system support, and ease of integration with real data and feedback mechanisms. Axure excels in advanced interactivity and detailed prototyping but may have a steeper learning curve and less seamless collaboration compared to the other two UI design tools.

Build UI design that not only look well, but they’re fully coded. Try UXPin, an end-to-end design tool that’s code-backed for easier designer-developer collaboration. Try UXPin for free.

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An art portfolio is a curated collection of an artist’s best work. It promotes the artist’s work and attracts potential employers, clients, galleries, or educational institutions. Most professional artists present their portfolio in form of an artist website and today we’re going to go through a couple of artist portfolios to help you build one.

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What is an art portfolio?

An art portfolio is a collection of an artist’s work that showcases their skills and style. It serves as a professional curation, often used for presenting their work to potential clients, applying for jobs or academic programs, and presenting at exhibitions or galleries.

An art portfolio can be physical or digital, but in the modern context, online art portfolios are more prevalent. Most artists have their own websites that they use to post their work, stay in touch with the art world or even run an online store where people can buy their work.

5 Art Portfolio Website Examples

Julia Plath

Julia Plath’s online art portfolio website effectively showcases her work with a minimalist design that emphasizes the artwork. The site excels in visual presentation and simplicity, making it easy for users to focus on the illustrations, admire the artist’s technical skills, and find contact information.

The website is visually appealing, using a minimalist and clean design. It focuses on the artwork with a white background that highlights the images without distraction. When it comes to typography, simple, sans-serif fonts are used, consistent with the minimalist approach. The text is legible and complements the visual elements without overshadowing the artwork.

A predominantly black-and-white color scheme ensures the artwork stands out. Colors used are minimal and primarily come from the art pieces themselves, drawing attention to them.

The website has intuitive navigation. The menu is clear and accessible at the top of the page, leading to sections like Home, Portfolio, About, and Contact.

While the design is visually appealing, the site could improve on accessibility aspects. For instance, adding more descriptive alt text for images and ensuring text contrast is high enough for readability.

The website has limited interactivity, focusing mainly on viewing the artwork. There is a subtle hover effect on images, enhancing the user interaction without overwhelming the design.

Bonnie White

Bonnie White’s portfolio site showcases a distinct approache to digital portfolio design and brings to mind traditional fine art websites. It’s well-made in terms of SEO, featuring a blog that adds dynamic content to the site, engaging visitors with updates and insights into the visual artist’s process and activities.

Her design portfolio embraces a warm, vibrant aesthetic with a soft color palette that complements her folk art, creating an inviting and personal atmosphere. Artwork is well-organized and displayed with ample spacing. Each piece is accompanied by titles and descriptions, offering context to viewers. The portfolio is accessible directly from the main menu, making it easy to browse.

Fonts are clean and readable, with a mix of serif and sans-serif. The titles use a decorative serif font that adds a personal touch, while body text is in a simple sans-serif, balancing readability with style.

The use of earthy and pastel colors aligns well with the folk art theme. The colors are not overwhelming and help create a cohesive look that reflects the artist’s personality.

The site is fairly accessible with reasonable text contrast and alt text for images. However, some improvements could be made, such as ensuring all text is large enough for readability and enhancing keyboard navigation.

Camille Walala

The art portfolio of Camille Walala has a dynamic and vibrant design that mirrors the artist distinctive graphic design-like style. It uses bold colors and geometric shapes throughout, effectively capturing the essence of her work.

The homepage features full-screen images of her most striking projects, giving a dramatic presentation that immerses the visitor in her world of art. This approach effectively showcases the scale and impact of her installations.

The top navigation menu is straightforward, with clear labels like Work, About, and Contact. This simplicity ensures that users can quickly find what they’re looking for without distraction.

The website design incorporates a vivid color palette, primarily consisting of bright blues, reds, yellows, and blacks. These colors are consistent with Walala’s artistic style and create a cohesive visual experience.

The typography is playful yet clean, featuring bold fonts for headings and simple, sans-serif fonts for body text. This balance maintains readability while adding to the site’s energetic feel.

High-quality images of Walala’s work are prominently displayed. The website effectively uses full-screen images and slideshows to showcase her projects in various settings, making her portfolio visually impactful.

While the site is well-optimized for performance and user experience, there are areas for potential improvement, particularly in accessibility and SEO, which could further enhance its effectiveness and reach.

Timothy Goodman

Timothy Goodman is another visual artists whose online art portfolio is a great example of good web design and a great presentation of visual arts. Based in New York City, Goodman is known for his distinctive graphic style and has created numerous public art installations, illustrations, and typographic works throughout New York and beyond.

Timothy Goodman’s own portfolio successfully captures the essence of his artistic style through its bold, vibrant, and playful design. The intuitive navigation, responsive layout, and engaging visual elements create a positive user experience. The site effectively showcases his diverse body of work while providing clear paths for exploration and interaction.

Hovering over project thumbnails in the Work section triggers visual feedback, such as color changes, zoom effects, or brief overlays with project titles. This interaction invites users to explore and signals that the images are clickable.

Navigation buttons and links change color or style upon hovering, providing a clear indication of their interactivity.

Each project thumbnail is clickable, leading to a dedicated page with detailed images, descriptions, and context for the project. This interaction makes it easy for users to delve deeper into specific works that interest them. Clicking on project links dynamically loads the new content without refreshing the entire page, ensuring a seamless user experience.

Lily Clementine Orset

Lily Clementine Orset uses a unique and unconventional approach to present her art. The web design of this online art portfolio reflects an experimental and DIY aesthetic, aligning with her artistic vision and providing a different experience compared to traditional portfolio websites.

The interface allows users to click and drag elements, enhancing the interactive and hands-on feel of the site.

The use of textured backgrounds and layered images gives the site a tactile, handmade quality that complements the DIY ethos of her work.

The website employs a mix of hand-drawn and digital fonts, contributing to its quirky and artistic vibe. The variety in font styles adds to the visual interest but might affect readability in some areas. Font sizes vary across the site, which adds to the eclectic feel but can create challenges in maintaining a clear visual hierarchy and readability.

The site is designed primarily for desktop use, with the interactive elements best experienced on larger screens. On mobile devices, the navigation and interactions may be less effective or more cumbersome. Elements might not scale well on different screen sizes, potentially affecting the browsing experience on tablets and smaller screens. Having said that, the interactive design invites exploration and encourages users to spend more time on the site, though it may also create some usability challenges.

10 UX and UI tips based on those art portfolios

Effective UX and UI design is crucial for art portfolio websites to showcase the artist’s work, engage visitors, and create a memorable browsing experience. Here are some tips to follow when creating your art portfolio website:

1. Align with Art Style: Ensure the website’s design reflects the artist’s style. Use colors, fonts, and layouts that complement the artwork.
2. Showcase Artwork Effectively: Use high-resolution images that capture the details and colors of the artwork. Include full-screen images, close-ups, and various views to give a comprehensive presentation.
3. Use Neutral Backgrounds: Opt for neutral backgrounds to make artwork stand out. A simple color scheme (e.g., white, black, or gray) ensures the focus remains on the art.
4. Apply Readable Fonts: Use clean and readable fonts. Ensure font sizes and colors provide good readability against the background.
5. Clear Menu Structure: Provide a simple and intuitive navigation menu with clear labels such as Home, Gallery, About, Blog, and Contact. Make sure the menu is accessible from all pages.
6. Breadcrumbs: Use breadcrumbs or a similar mechanism to help users understand their location within the site and easily navigate back to previous pages.
7. Responsive Design: Ensure the website is fully responsive. Design layouts that adjust smoothly across different devices and screen sizes, including desktops, tablets, and smartphones.
8. Interactive Elements: Incorporate subtle hover effects and clickable images to enhance interactivity. Ensure that interactions are intuitive and provide visual feedback, such as highlighting clickable elements or changing colors on hover.
9. Categorize Work: Organize artwork into categories or series. This helps visitors find specific types of work quickly and provides a structured browsing experience.
10. Optimize Performance: Optimize images and code to reduce loading times. Fast performance is crucial for keeping visitors engaged and reducing bounce rates.

Design your own website today

We’ve seen five totally different art portfolios today and what would you say about creating your own with UXPin? Drag and drop interactive UI elements that have code behind them, arrange the perfect layout of your website and then, copy the code to build your own site. Try UXPin Merge for free.

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One of the key design principles, no matter if your designing a mobile app or a desktop one, is to keep your UI consistent. But what does it mean? How do you achieve consistent user interface? Which design decisions you need to make to achieve that? It’s time to explore that.

Good UX design doesn’t come from following UX design best practices. You need to test your product to tell if it offers great UX and fulfills user needs. That’s where prototyping tools come in. With a tool like UXPin, design teams can prototype their product, and then optimize their design through series of iterations and usability testing with real users.

Maintaining consistency between design and development can be challenging, especially in complex projects. UXPin Merge bridges this gap by allowing designers and developers to work with the exact same components. With Merge, your design team can create complex interfaces using the same elements your developers use in production, ensuring that what you design is exactly what gets built. Discover UXPin Merge.

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What Exactly is Design Consistency?

Design consistency is what ties UI elements together with distinguishable and predictable actions, which is key for great product experience and an important thing to consider for UX designers. A way to simplify things is to think of it as a commitment that you make to your users (“whenever you see the light grey button in the pop-up on a homepage, you can assume that it will cancel and the pop-up will close”) so that they can easily interact with your product.

As they become more acquainted and become regular users, they begin to trust the product more and more, which is a reflection of the consistent design. To provide users with a consistent UI, here are UI and UX best practices I’ve found useful for product design.

4 Types of Design Consistency

There are four types of design consistency that comprise visual, functional, internal, and external consistency.

1. Visual Consistency
   • Color Palette: Using a uniform set of colors across the entire design.
   • Typography: Keeping font choices consistent in terms of style, size, and weight.
   • Spacing and Layout: Maintaining uniform margins, padding, and grid systems.
2. Functional Consistency
   • Interactions: Ensuring that similar actions (like clicking buttons or navigating menus) yield similar outcomes.
   • Controls and Components: Using the same design for similar controls and UI components (e.g., buttons, forms) across different sections.
3. Internal Consistency
   • Within a Product: Ensuring all parts of a single product or system look and behave consistently, even across platforms.
4. External Consistency
   • Across Products: Aligning design elements and interactions with other products in the same ecosystem or brand family.

What are the Benefits of Design Consistency?

Design consistency enhances usability by making elements predictable, and it also shortens the learning curve, improves aesthetics, reduces user errors, and strengthens brand recognition by using uniform visual and functional elements.

• Improved Usability – users can predict how elements behave, leading to a smoother and more intuitive experience.
• Faster Learning Curve – users familiar with one part of the system can easily navigate others, reducing the need for extensive learning.
• Enhanced Aesthetics – a cohesive look enhances the visual appeal and professionalism of the design.
• Reduced Errors – predictable interactions minimize user errors and enhance reliability.
• Brand Recognition – consistent use of visual and functional elements strengthens brand identity.

How to Achieve Design Consistency

1. Design Systems and Style Guides – develop and adhere to comprehensive design systems or style guides that outline standards for visual and functional elements.
2. Component Libraries – use component libraries to maintain consistent design elements and interactions.
3. User Testing – Conduct regular user testing to ensure consistency meets user expectations and needs.
4. Documentation and Training – provide documentation and onboarding for new designers and developers to maintain consistency.

9 UI and UX Best Practices for Consistent Design

Start with research

Nothing is more important for a consistent experience than quality research.

This should not be underestimated or hurried. Time and budget are always a necessary consideration in product design. Without either of these, a product would never ship. Although they are important to the process, we can’t lose sight of who actually uses the product, what their customer journey looks like, whether they are desktop or mobile users.

Keep your users top of mind and don’t overlook UX research in the beginning stages of product design planning.

Define user goals

Get into the mindset of a new user. What do they want to accomplish? How will the application help them? List our goals and refer back to these throughout the UI or UX design process.

For example, let’s assume we’re building a travel app. This travel application allows users to select a vacation timeframe and find deals on flights and hotels within their budget. But it’s not just the standard travel site. It connects to your Facebook account, works its magic, and plans the top five vacations based on the content that you’ve shared. The user selects the vacation plan that they like best and all the details are taken care of.

Here are some of the user goals:

• View vacation options within a specified timeframe
• Compare different vacation options
• Select a vacation based on users interests
• Keep within vacation budget

Now that we know the breakdown of goals, we can design to meet user expectations.

Familiarize yourself with common UI patterns

Don’t reinvent the wheel when it comes to established UI patterns. Recurring patterns solve common UX and UI design problems.

Of course, UX designers shouldn’t just “copy” the entire layout of another similar web or mobile app. They need to filter and modify the patterns based on specific user goals.

 A typical pattern in eCommerce is a product grid. With this pattern users can easily browse and see product information.

It’s safe to say that patterns have been evolving and users become aware of standard locations for elements. Most users would agree that when they want to search for something, they look for the search bar in the upper center or right since this is a common placement.

Establish design patterns for product UI and UX design consistency

One of the keys to a successful — and consistent — UI is the user performing tasks with the minimum number of actions is. If a task that takes four steps can easily be completed in two, the UI should always be modified for the shorter task flow. UI patterns can help with this… after all, this efficiency is why they became patterns in the first place.

Design hierarchy

Along with design patterns, having an established visual hierarchy of UI design elements does wonders for UI consistency. Whether users are aware of it or not, they instinctively pay attention to the order and priority of the elements they interact with.

When it comes to visuals and the human eye, some elements take precedence over others (bigger sizes, bright colors, etc.), depending on how “noticeable” they are. Think about your screen visuals in terms of what people will see first, second, third, and so on.

This allows UX designers to ensure users find primary functions faster than others, but they can also present secondary and tertiary functions with the appropriate amount of attention.

UI elements

There is a multitude of design elements that go into an application’s UI, and each makes up the building blocks that form UI patterns. Keep an organized inventory and check that elements are used properly to maintain a consistent experience.

Branding elements

Stay consistent with the overall brand. Typography, logo, correct image styles, brand color schemes, etc. should be reflected in the application, just like the rest of the brand’s properties.

Is the correct logo used? Are branding colors consistent? Does the typeface match the others? Brand consistency helps new projects feel like part of the brand’s family, rather than a black sheep. Style guides usually provide all the information you’ll need.

Making sure colors and typography are on brand gives each of the company’s products a consistent look and feel.

Typography

Elements with the most visual impact like typography should always be “on brand.”

This visual element is especially important, not just for hierarchy, but for the entire UX as well. Changing the sizes, fonts, and arrangement of the text can improve scanability, legibility, readability, and even navigation.

UI components

During user research, become familiar with UI patterns and their components. Knowing how each component behaves, within the pattern and outside it, lets UX designers properly prioritize all elements on the screen without anything slipping through the cracks.

“Components” can refer to any number of elements that make up a pattern, such as:

• Buttons
• Cards
• Forms
• Lists
• Panels
• Progress bars

Let’s say you’re considering adding pagination to long lists so the user doesn’t have to scroll far with long lists.

As you examine the wireframes, you notice that one list has pagination with 20 or more items, while in another part of the application, a list only has pagination with 40 or more items. Which is correct? This example illustrates how making definitive decisions about guidelines is the backbone of UI and UX design consistency.

Templates

If you’re having difficulty standardizing your site or app, try using templates.

Most applications allow them, and because the layout and elements look the same, they streamline UI features across the products. Plus, you can reuse the same UI templates over and over, even years down the line.

Pattern library and design system

It may not be user-facing, but it is one of the keys to consistency. Today, many teams have a pattern library or design system as a point of reference to keep everyone on the same page.  Pattern libraries and design systems are the rulebooks that anyone on the team can reference at any time. For team-wide consistency, they are essential.

A pattern library may not be as robust as a design system since it’s limited to design patterns specifically. A design system has more information all around, including helpful documentation about all the UI patterns and various components. A pattern library can also be a subsection of a design system.

Make actions consistent

Everyone loves when an application is user-friendly. It saves time, avoids headaches, and helps users accomplish their goals by eliminating confusion — all requirements for creating satisfied customers.

Consistent actions remove the need for user discovery and therefore make their task flow run more smoothly. If a user knows how to use the functionality in one section, they know how to use it in all sections (as long as it’s consistent).

Users inherently transfer past knowledge to new contexts as they explore new parts of the application. Consistent actions become second nature and eventually, the user can use the application without even thinking. Furthermore, users bring these expectations into new features or aspects of the product that they haven’t explored yet, minimizing the learning curve.

 “View” placement is not consistent. On most of the cards, it’s toward the top, but on the collection card, it’s at the bottom. This inconsistency might cause the user to pause for a moment to search for the “View” option, not to mention it undermines their own natural habit-forming processes.  

So what, specifically, should you consider when designing your interface? Ask yourself these questions during the entire process:

• Do all parts of the application behave the same way?
• How do interactions work? Are they predictable and consistent?
• How much discovery is needed for a user to understand this interaction?

The example on the left has inconsistent sorting; not all columns have the option to sort. Users may want to sort data in other columns. The example on the right has consistent sorting on all columns.

Review your content

It’s not just about the visual elements, but also the text throughout the application.

Consistent copy — especially consistent terminology — in each place in the application is another key. Using two different words for the same function makes them seem like different functions, causing a momentary pause in the workflow while the user sorts out the discrepancy.

Consistent copy avoids this confusion.

Content structure

Content plays a crucial role in UI elements, whether something as simple as navigation listings or as complex as product documentation. It’s not just the words themselves, but how to copy text is presented visually, such as body copy, list items, table content, etc.

In particular, pay attention to how content is handled in these areas:

• Navigation
• Dropdowns
• Form fields
• Validation messages
• Tooltips
• Charts
• Image captions
• Error messages
• Loading screens
• Confirmation pages
• Product support documentation

Brand consistency in content

You know that feeling when a certain part of an application feels “off.” A lot of times the reason is an inconsistency in the content’s language, for example, if one button says “Logout” and another says “Sign out.”

Even less noticeable inconsistencies can create that “off” feeling.

For the Oxford comma fans out there, something as “minor” as comma usage is picked up subconsciously. After enough of these subconscious flags, the user’s conscious brain starts to notice.

Other writing guidelines such as title case and voice/tone also influence the user’s experience. While title typography is more empirical, voice and tone are a little harder to pin down.  The trouble escalates if most content uses a casual style that clashes with a more formal “brand language.”

Appropriate user defaults

By considering user goals upfront, you can set realistic defaults to reduce the burden on the user.

If the defaults are set to the most popular preferences, the user may not have to make any adjustments at all. Take the date picker on an airline or car rental site. Often the starting default date is sometime in the near future, the most likely choice according to past statistics.

Pay close attention to forms, too; they’re a great opportunity for defaults to reduce the amount of user effort.

Consistent communication

Search results, form submit messages, error windows — every interaction with your user is communication. For an app to be successful, it must speak to the user and keep them informed on what’s happening. And, as with everything else, the way you communicate should be consistent.

Changes in state and helpful information

Users appreciate feedback: a toggle that changes color to indicate “on” or “off,” for example, or a sound effect to verify a completed action.

Your user should never waste time wondering whether an action took place or not. Form field submissions are notorious for this, but it happens in other areas as well. In situations where it may not be clear, a quick success (or error) message is all you need.

Play it safe. Even when it’s apparent that the action was successful, a lot of users still prefer a quick confirmation.

Reduce user frustration

The most common cause of user frustration happens when it’s not clear what to do next. Some tasks are not so self-explanatory, but UI and UX designers are often too close to it to notice. Luckily, some instructional text — even just a line or two — can solve the problem.

For the same reason, error messages are useful too. While users may not like seeing them, they still need to know what happened and how it can be corrected.

Which Design Tools Help in Maintaining Consistency?

There are several tools on the market that help designers and developers keep consistency. We will discuss three of them. If you want to learn about more tools, you can see our article with Design System Management Tools.

UXPin Merge

UXPin with Merge technology allows design teams to build interfaces with production-ready UI components that can be further used to build the end-product. It ensures that the user interface that you design stays consistent and functional with the end-product that gets developed.

This means that design and development teams can be on the same page throughout the full product development process, from early-stage prototyping to creating fully interactive prototypes, eliminating discrepancies and reducing rework by maintaining a single source of truth.

Merge also allows designers to create fully functional prototypes using actual, interactive UI components, leading to more accurate user testing and a seamless handoff to development. Overall, it speeds up the design process by enabling real-time updates and feedback using the latest components, making it easier to maintain consistency and quickly adapt to changes.

Read about dotSource case of using UXPin Merge in their process.

Figma

Figma is a collaborative design tool that allows teams to create, share, and maintain consistent UI design and style guides in real-time. Designers use it to design interfaces of websites, apps, and other digital products that are consistent and easily shareable with other designers.

Read how Porsche uses Figma and UXPin together to create consistent interfaces at scale: Code or Design – Which is a Better Source of Truth?

Storybook

Storybook is a tool for developers that use it to create and maintain UI components, enabling designers and developers to ensure consistency and proper integration of design elements. UXPin integrates with Storybook, so designers and developers can share coded components as a single source of truth.

The integration works by allowing designers and developers to use real UI components from Storybook directly within UXPin. Here’s how:

1. Component Sync: UXPin imports Storybook’s components, enabling designers to drag and drop them into UXPin prototypes.
2. Live Preview: Design changes in UXPin reflect in real-time, using the actual code components from Storybook.
3. Shared Libraries: Both tools use the same source of truth, ensuring that design and development stay aligned and consistent with the latest UI components.

Read more about the integration: Storybook and UXPin integration.

Level up Design Consistency with UXPin

Consistency in UI is a huge undertaking, and it’s easy for some parts to slip through the cracks. The end goal is, of course, a perfectly consistent and in-sync interface, but that’s not always possible right out of the gate.

For startups, you can try an MVP (minimum viable product). Even if the product starts out with some inconsistencies, your team can iron them out one by one over time once you start receiving feedback.

If you’re making updates to an existing product, it can be more difficult to remain consistent. This is where the right prototyping software comes in handy. UXPin allows you to build interactive prototypes fast and keep them in line with your design system. Discover UXPin Merge.

The post Design Consistency Guide UI and UX Best Practices appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

The Double Diamond design process is a widely used methodology for identifying a problem and developing a solution. This outcomes-based framework encourages creativity and innovation while focusing on the core issue and its impact on end-users.

It was introduced by the British Council so that designers could follow a standardized design process and make that process super clear, with visual representation that outlines distinct phases: Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver.

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What is the Double Diamond?

The Double Diamond model is a framework for innovation and design developed by the British Design Council in 2005. The Design Council wanted a simple design process for delivering projects, no matter the methods and tools used.

The design framework features two diamonds:

• a diamond that represents the problem.
• a diamond that stands for the solution.

Designers work within these two diamonds. They help them to truly understand the problem and thoroughly test their solutions.

Once designers identify a core issue in the first diamond, they create a design brief as a foundation for the second. The second diamond focuses on prototyping and testing a solution until its ready for release. 

Why Are There Diamonds in this Process?

The Double Diamond design model was developed as a response to the need for a standardized design process description that could be universally applied across various design disciplines. Before its introduction, there was a lack of a cohesive framework that could describe the entire design process from start to finish, which led to inconsistencies and inefficiencies in design practices.

The Double Diamond we know as a design framework came from the British Design Council, but the inspiration for this process came from Hungarian-American linguist Béla H. Bánáthy’s divergence-convergence model.

Béla’s model looks very similar to the design framework where he used the first diamond to explore an issue widely and deeply (divergent thinking) and then took an appropriate focused action (convergent thinking.)

Diamond One – Discovering and Defining the Problem

The first diamond is about UX research and exploration, often referred to as the “problem space”–similar to the empathize and define stages of the design thinking process. 

Designers start by researching the problem and user needs. This phase might include reviewing analytics and UX artifacts, interviewing end-users, conducting a service safari, and other early-phase research methods.

In phase two, designers use discovery phase research to define the problem and how it impacts users. Design teams may iterate over phases one and two a few times until they get to the core issue. Next, they synthetize all the insights together.

At the end of phase two, designers create a design brief to guide the second half of the design process towards finding an appropriate solution.

Diamond Two – Developing and Delivering the Solution

The second diamond is about ideating, prototyping, and testing to find a suitable solution. 

The develop phase is a busy stage of the Double Diamond framework where teams use various tools and methods, including:

• Workshops and brainstorming: gathering as a team to ideate, hypothesize, conduct experiments, and discuss possible solutions. 
• Low-fidelity design: sketches, wireframes, paper prototypes, and other lo-fi methods designers use to develop and test many ideas quickly.
• Cross-functional collaboration: designers meet with engineers, product owners, and other stakeholders to discuss ideas for feedback on possible challenges and constraints.

The development phase is an iterable process of ideation, prototyping, and testing several ideas until designers identify a single solution with the most potential to:

• Solve the problem
• Align with user needs
• Meet budget and technical constraints

In some circumstances, designers choose a single solution or select their best two or three ideas for high-fidelity prototyping and testing in the deliver phase. The first goal is to eliminate those that don’t work until you arrive at a single solution.

Once designers arrive at a single solution, they conduct further testing to refine the final prototype. During this round of testing, designers focus on usability and user experience to ensure the final result satisfies the design brief and stakeholders.

If designers encounter a problem, they return to the develop phase to find a solution, iterating and testing until they find a solution.

Once prototyping and testing are complete, design teams prepare for the design handoff, including documentation, annotations, assets, and other instructions engineers will use to develop the final product for release.

Lastly, design teams must conduct a UX audit and quality assurance to ensure the final release meets the project’s requirements, business goals, and user needs.

Who follows Double Diamond Design Framework?

The Double Diamond design framework is widely adopted by various organizations and professionals across different industries.

1. IDEO: As a pioneer in design thinking, IDEO incorporates the Double Diamond framework to structure its innovation processes. Tim Brown, co-chair at IDEO, has often highlighted the framework’s value in understanding problems before jumping to solutions​.
2. Design Council: The British Design Council, which developed the Double Diamond model, extensively uses and promotes this framework as a standard for best practices in design​.
3. Google: Google’s design sprints and product development processes often reflect the principles of the Double Diamond, focusing on deep problem understanding and iterative solution development.
4. Microsoft: Microsoft integrates the Double Diamond framework in its user experience and product design processes, particularly in teams focused on user-centered design and innovation.
5. University Design Programs: Many university programs, such as those at Stanford’s d.school and the Royal College of Art, teach the Double Diamond framework as part of their design thinking and innovation curricula. It provides students with a structured approach to tackling complex design challenges.
6. Charities and NGOs: Organizations like the Red Cross and UNICEF use the Double Diamond framework to design and implement programs that effectively address the needs of the communities they serve, ensuring a deep understanding of problems.

4 Phases of the Double Diamond Design Process

The Double Diamond design process comprises two diamonds and four phases (also called the four Ds):

1. Discover
2. Define
3. Develop
4. Deliver

Discover

Objective: To understand the problem space thoroughly by gathering insights and exploring the broader context of the design challenge.

• Activities: This phase involves extensive research, both qualitative and quantitative. Techniques include desk research, field studies, user interviews, focus groups, and observations. The goal is to gather as much relevant information as possible about the problem, the users, and the context in which the problem exists​.
• Outcome: A deep understanding of the problem space, including user needs, pain points, and opportunities for innovation. This phase aims to challenge assumptions and uncover insights that will inform the next phase​.

Define

Objective: To synthesize the insights gathered during the Discover phase into a clear and actionable problem statement.

• Activities: In this phase, designers analyze and organize the data collected. Techniques such as affinity diagrams, root-cause analysis, and the “5 Whys” method are used to identify the core issues and refine the problem definition. Design synthesis helps in distilling complex information into clear insights​.
• Outcome: A well-defined problem statement or design brief that provides a focused direction for developing solutions. This phase sets the stage for ideation and prototyping by clearly articulating what needs to be addressed​.

Develop

Objective: To ideate and prototype multiple potential solutions to the defined problem.

• Activities: This phase involves brainstorming, sketching, and creating prototypes. Tools like personas, wireframes, and Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) are used to visualize and test ideas. The development phase encourages divergent thinking, allowing for the exploration of various solutions and approaches​.
• Outcome: A range of prototypes or preliminary solutions that can be tested and iterated upon. The goal is to explore different ideas and refine them through feedback and testing, ensuring that the solutions are viable and effective​.

Deliver

Objective: To finalize and implement the best solution, and to evaluate its impact.

• Activities: In this phase, the most promising prototypes are refined and developed into final products or solutions. This involves extensive testing, validation, and iteration based on user feedback. Surveys, usability testing, and pilot programs are common methods used to gather final insights before launch.
• Outcome: A polished, user-validated product or solution that addresses the initial problem effectively. The Deliver phase also includes post-launch evaluation and gathering feedback to inform future improvements and iterations​.

How to use Double Diamond Design Process

Here’s a practical example of using a double diamon design process in your workflow.

Phase 1: Discover

1. User Research: Conduct interviews and surveys with target users.
2. Market Research: Study competitors and industry trends.
3. Stakeholder Interviews: Gather insights from stakeholders.
4. Empathy Mapping: Create empathy maps to understand user emotions and motivations.

Phase 2: Define

1. Synthesize Data: Use affinity diagrams to identify patterns.
2. Problem Statement: Develop a clear and concise problem statement.
3. User Journey Mapping: Map user journeys to pinpoint pain points.
4. Design Brief: Draft a brief outlining project goals and constraints.

Phase 3: Develop

1. Ideation: Brainstorm solutions through collaborative workshops.
2. Prototyping: Create wireframes and sketches.
3. User Testing: Test prototypes with real users.
4. Iteration: Refine designs based on feedback.

Phase 4: Deliver

1. High-Fidelity Prototypes: Finalize design details in high-fidelity mockups.
2. Development: Build the site with close collaboration between designers and developers.
3. Quality Assurance: Conduct extensive testing.
4. Launch and Monitor: Launch the site and continuously monitor performance for further improvements.

By following the double diamond design process, you ensure a thorough and user-centered approach to designing a new site, maximizing the chances of its success by deeply understanding user needs, exploring and refining solutions, and effectively implementing and launching the final product.

Try End-to-End UX Design With UXPin

Prototyping and testing are significant in the end-to-end design process, including the Double Diamond framework. Designers must use high-quality prototypes to thoroughly test potential solutions and achieve accurate results.

Unfortunately, high-fidelity prototyping can be slow with certain tools, which isn’t ideal when testing many ideas in the Double Diamond design process.

With fully interactive design from UXPin, designers don’t have to compromise on quality for speed. They can build high-fidelity prototypes that look and function like the final product. Better prototypes yield accurate results during testing, allowing designers to go beyond what’s possible with image-based design tools.

UXPin also comes standard with built-in design libraries, allowing design teams to drag and drop components to build high-fidelity mockups in minutes. In a few clicks, they can add Interactions to create prototypes with code-like functionality, including:

• States: create multiple states for any element, each with separate properties and interactions.
• Variables: capture user inputs and take action based on the data to create dynamic, personalized user experiences during testing.
• Conditional Interactions: create “if-then” and “if-else” rules to execute different reactions to user actions and inputs.
• Expressions: design functions to perform complex operations traditionally only available with code, including form validation, computational components, simulate password authentication, and more.

No matter the framework, UXPin can enhance your design process to create better user experiences for your customers. Sign up for a free trial and discover the possibilities of code-based design with UXPin.

The post Double Diamond Design Process – The Best Framework for a Successful Product Design appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI. It is part of the generative AI tools which utilize deep learning techniques to understand and generate text.

The model works like a chatbot for asking questions or giving prompts, and it generates contextually relevant responses. Designed to handle a variety of natural language understanding and generation tasks, this OpenAI tool is versatile for different applications, including generating UI components from open-source libraries based on prompts.

Try UXPin’s AI Component Creator and generate custom UI components with ChatGPT. Quickly save the components as patterns for future reuse. Explore this and other features that make design 8.6x faster than with other tools. Try UXPin Merge for free.

Design UI with code-backed components.

Use the same components in design as in development. Keep UI consistency at scale.

Try UXPin Merge

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI. It is designed to understand and generate text based on the input it receives. The model has been trained on a diverse range of Internet text, and it can perform various natural language processing tasks. This includes answering questions, engaging in conversations, summarizing text, translating languages, and more.

ChatGPT was created to provide a powerful, versatile, and user-friendly language model that’s capable of addressing various natural language processing challenges. Its broad applicability, combined with the scale of data it was trained on, makes it a significant advancement in the field of conversational AI and language understanding.

It’s one of the most powerful language models, but not the only one. There are also Google’s Bert, T5, Baidu’s ERNIE, Facebook’s Blender Bot or a model named XLNet. ChatGPT 3.5 was the one of the largest language models ever created at the time of its release, with a staggering 175 billion parameters. The training data gave it the power to generate more contextually relevant, coherent and versatile responses compared to smaller models.

Many users implemented ChatGPT into their workflow, built AI tools using its API key, and contributed to its success. An API provided by OpenAI allows developers to integrate the model into their applications, products or services. That’s what we did when we built our AI Component Creator.

How does ChatGPT work?

ChatGPT works by generating a human-like text in response to a prompt it receives from a user. It can generate all types of responses – from a block of text to real conversations and even visuals. Users come into interactions with ChatGPT by typing in what is known as “prompt” into ChatGPT UI.

Prompts are input queries or statements provided to the model to generate responses. The prompt is the command or question that the user gives to the model to elicit the desired output. How users phrase the prompt has an influence on the quality and relevance of what they get in return.

Here are examples of prompts for language models like ChatGPT:

• Conversation: “Tell me about your favorite programming language and why you like it.”
• Instruction: “Provide tips for improving website performance and speed.”
• Creative writing: “Write a short story about an unexpected adventure in a futuristic city.”
• Problem-solving: “I’m having trouble debugging my code. Can you help me identify the issue in this JavaScript function?”
• Education: “Explain the concept of machine learning in simple terms.”
• Opinion: “What’s your opinion on the latest advancements in AI?”
• Scenario for role-playing: “Imagine you are a travel assistant. Plan a weekend getaway itinerary for someone who loves outdoor activities.”
• Comparison: “Compare and contrast the pros and cons of using Python and JavaScript for web development.”
• Task: “Write a Python function to find the factorial of a given number.”
• Explanation: “Explain the functioning of blockchain technology and its applications.”

You can see that those prompts start with an action verb. They provide a cue of what the user wants from ChatGPT, be it an explanation, plan, comparison, answer or mistake spotting. ChatGPT comes up with the best answers to those. You can ask one prompt per conversation or continue a discussion until you are satisfied.

Learn how to write a good prompts for UI design here: Prompt Engineering for UX/UI Designers.

When using prompts, it’s helpful to be specific about the challenges you’re facing or the aspects you want to improve. Providing context and asking for practical advice will get you more tailored and actionable responses from ChatGPT.

The benefits of using ChatGPT in UI design

ChatGPT can increase your productivity, help you refine your skills, and provide answers to your questions. Of course, it’s just a language model, so take its recommendations with a grain of salt and if you’re not sure if the answer is correct, fine-tune it, and try again.

The benefits of using ChatGPT in UI design are as follows:

• No training required — unlike traditional machine learning models that require extensive training on specific datasets, ChatGPT comes pre-trained about various topics, including UI design. This eliminates the need for users to train the model themselves.
• Instant design assistance — ChatGPT provides rapid responses to a query, offering instant guidance, eliminating the need of looking for the answer on the Internet or asking peers.
• Efficient problem-solving — with ChatGPT’s quick and informative responses, designers can maintain a high level of productivity. This model’s efficiency enhances the overall productivity of the design process.

While UX designers use ChatGPT to help them with preliminary user research, building personas, perfecting user flows, UI designers ask ChatGPT to come up with layout, color schemes or typography combinations. When it comes to AI Component Creator, it helps you generate simple or complex UI components, so you can build MVPs or advanced apps faster. Let’s see what you can expect.

How to generate UI components with ChatGPT

Using ChatGPT to generate UI components involves providing clear and detailed prompts to receive the component that you need.

With UXPin Merge, you don’t need to go to OpenAI’s website to get help with UI design. The tool is built in UXPin’s editor. It’s available in the “Quick Tools” bar and it can be quickly launched whenever you need it. And what it does is it generates you UI components based on your prompt that appear directly on your design.

The UI component that’s generated with the ChatGPT integration is the Tailwind UI component. It’s one of a few built-in open-source component libraries available in UXPin Merge. Tailwind is a great resource for building content-first web designs, such as landing pages, documentation hubs, task management apps, employee portals, and more.

You can use the component that has been generated as any other UXPin Merge component in your project. You can resize it, change its position, and more.

How to use ChatGPT integration in UXPin

Do you have a UXPin Merge account? Now, it’s the right time to log in. And if you don’t have an account yet, try UXPin for free, so you can follow along with our tutorial.

The integration requires you to have an OpenAI API. Don’t have it? Write to our support and they will be happy to assist you. Read our help documentation, so you know how to contact our support.

#1: Write the prompt for components

You are in the midst of creating your user interface design and you can’t find a component to go with your design? Let’s generate it. Navigate to the ChatGPT plugin that’s in Quick Tools bar and click the icon labeled “AI” (look at the first screenshot above.)

Now, you will see a modal popping out that looks like this:

Here you can type in your prompt. What will it be? Going back to the section about “How does ChatGPT work?” we’ve seen examples of prompts. They had an action verb (write, provide, identify), some context for the chatbot to grasp what you want, and specific details, such as “responsive,” “gradient,” “customizable,” and more.

Additionally, make sure you specify any requirements and limitations that you have. The requirements may be about the color scheme, such as a specific HEX code for a background color, or accessibility limitations.

Tailwind UI is a great component resource AND component inspiration. So, head to their website to discover what kind of components you can generate. Some suggestions:

• Pricing table — “Generate a pricing table with 3 columns. Column 1: freelancer priced at $19, Column 2: startup and be priced at $39. Column 3: company and be priced $59. Company column should be highlighted and labeled as most popular.”
• Testimonial card — “Create a testimonial card with 5-star rating. The testimonial should be in quotes. Its copy should be “The best tool I’ve ever used” and 5 out of 5 stars should be active. Use #FFD700 for stars and #636363 for text. Add a label long-time customer.”
• CTA section — “Create a CTA section that’s split with an image. An image is on the column on the left and it has a person in front of a whiteboard. The other column is a CTA “Let’s work together” and it has a button “Contact us” that is orange.”

Look at the Tailwind UI site to learn what is possible.

#2: Generate UI components

The component prompt that we will use for the purpose of this tutorial is this:

Please create a contact form with a header “Leave your message”, an email field, a checkbox with text “I accept privacy policy” and a field where a user can type their message. Use color #0000FF for background.

We generated the following component (screenshot below).

It has a blue background, interactive input fields for email address and user input, submit button, and clickable checkbox. The result is pretty nice. There are some things that could be improved, so if you feel like it, write another, more specific prompt.

Check the component place in Pages & Layers Panel. Make sure it is a standalone component and not a part of any other Layer.

#3: Save your components for reuse

Now that you have a component you like, save it to your library in case you want to use it elsewhere or keep it as part of your design documentation. The component is backed with code, and you can export it to your dev’s environment with one click.

Read more about it in our documentation about AI Component Creator.

Resources for writing better prompts

Here are some resources that will help you write better prompts:

• Prompt Engineering Course by OpenAI — Prompting Guidelines by Andrea Valenzuela
• How To Write ChatGPT Prompts (150+ Awesome Prompts Inside) by Emily Gertenbach
• Writing Effective Prompts in ChatGPT by Uxcel

Design with ease with UXPin Merge

Ai Component Creator is a new addition to UXPin and it’s great for getting you a component that is backed with code and fully consistent with the Tailwind UI library. Think of it as an AI-design assistant that generates a UI element based on an instruction.

Get custom nav bars, persona cards, gallery of images, or sidebars that can be easily reused throughout your design. And if you can’t imagine what you can create with Tailwind UI components, go through their website for some inspiration.

UXPin Merge makes it extremely easy for non-designers to build interactive and beautiful UI without having design skills. It works in a drag-and-drop like fashion, so you can take a component from a library and build an interface with it. Aside from Tailwind UI, it has other open-source libraries, such as MUIv5, React Bootstrap, Ant Design which are based in React.

Give it a try. Pick one of the available templates and customize it or start a completely new design. Then, copy the code off your design and bring it straight to a development tool. Try UXPin Merge for free.

The post ChatGPT in UI Design – How UXPin Can Generate UI Components appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Unity in UI design is the cohesive arrangement of different elements within a user interface to create a visually harmonious and coherent experience for the end user. It involves organizing interface components such as buttons, icons, text, images, and other graphical elements in a way that they appear to belong together and form a unified whole.

This unity plays a crucial role in enhancing usability, aesthetics, and user satisfaction by creating a cohesive and well-integrated interface that communicates the intended message and facilitates user interactions.

In 2024, unity still remains to be an important principle of design. The evolution of design software and tools has given designers more flexibility and capabilities to achieve unity in innovative ways. For example, advanced software features allow for more precise control over layout, typography, and color palette, making it easier to maintain unity across various platforms.

Build a unified user interfaces and keep them so between design and development. UXPin is a prototyping tool that’s committed to making user interfaces unified. Use its functionalities to achieve a sense of unity that’s easy to replicate in code. Try UXPin for free.

Build advanced prototypes

Design better products with States, Variables, Auto Layout and more.

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What is unity principle of design ?

The unity principle of design is a fundamental concept in graphic and UI design as well as art. It refers to the idea of creating visual harmony and cohesion within the web design or app design. It involves organizing elements of design in a way that they appear to belong together and form a cohesive whole.

By applying the unity principle of design, designers can get a clear message across while keeping the design is visually appealing and easy to understand.

How does unity in design enhance user experience?

A unified interface enhances the overall user experience by making it easier for users to understand and navigate the interface. When elements are cohesive and consistent, users can more intuitively interact with the interface, leading to a smoother and more enjoyable experience.

Think of a webpage that doesn’t follow unity as the principle of design. Its header probably contains a mixture of different fonts, sizes, and colors for the logo, navigation menu, and contact information. The logo design clashes with the rest of the page. The navigation menu items are scattered randomly, with no consistent spacing or alignment. Text blocks vary in font size, color, and alignment, making it difficult for users to follow the content flow.

The website lacks a cohesive visual identity and appears haphazardly thrown together. It overwhelms users with conflicting visual elements, making it difficult to navigate and engage with the content. Users may feel disoriented and frustrated due to the lack of unity in design, ultimately leading to a negative user experience and high bounce rates.

Now, imagine a web design that that effectively follows the principle of unity. The heading features a clean and elegant logo that reflects the brand’s identity, using a simple and cohesive color scheme. A minimalist navigation menu is prominently displayed, with clear and consistent typography and use of white space.

The website embodies a sense of unity and coherence throughout its design, creating a tranquil and inviting user experience. The consistent use of color, typography, imagery, and layout reinforces the website’s theme and brand identity. Users feel immersed in a harmonious environment, enhancing their engagement and enjoyment of the website.

This kind of unity can be achieved through visual unity and conceptual unity. Let’s differentiate between the two.

Conceptual unity vs visual unity

Conceptual unity and visual unity are two aspects of design that play critical roles in creating cohesive and effective compositions, whether in art, graphic design, product design, or digital interfaces. Understanding the differences between these two types of unity can help designers better execute their projects according to the intended message or function.

Conceptual Unity

Conceptual unity refers to the coherence of the ideas behind a design. It focuses on the underlying theme or narrative that ties all elements of the work together. This type of unity is achieved when all parts of the design support a common message or concept, making the overall purpose of the design clear to the viewer.

Characteristics of Conceptual Unity:

• Theme Consistency: All elements support a central theme or idea.
• Message Cohesion: Every part of the design contributes to a unified message, enhancing the communication of a specific concept or story.
• Emotional or Psychological Impact: The design evokes a consistent emotional response or intellectual engagement from the audience, aligned with the intended concept.

For example, in a marketing campaign, conceptual unity might be achieved through consistent messaging that aligns with the brand’s values across different media and platforms, even if the visual presentation varies.

Visual Unity

Visual unity, on the other hand, refers to the visual cohesiveness of elements within a design. It involves arranging the visual components in a way that they all feel part of a whole, usually by using consistent colors, shapes, sizes, or repeating patterns. Visual unity is crucial in guiding the viewer’s eye across the design and creating a sense of harmony and balance.

Characteristics of Visual Unity:

• Repetition: Repeating visual elements like colors, shapes, or textures throughout the design.
• Alignment: Arranging elements in a way that lines up along common axes or follows a specific grid structure.
• Proximity: Grouping related items close together to emphasize their relationship.
• Continuation: Creating a visual flow that leads the viewer’s eye through the design in a deliberate path.

Visual unity can be achieved through the consistent use of color schemes, typography, and layout structures across different pages, ensuring the site feels cohesive and navigable.

How to create unified design

Creating a unified design involves a thoughtful process that combines both conceptual and visual elements to produce a cohesive result.

Step 1: Fill out a design brief.

Detail the purpose, goals, and target audience of your design project. Include any specific messages or emotions you want to convey. Then, specify any necessary elements or constraints, such as branding guidelines, budget limits, or timelines. Remember to address potential challenges upfront to streamline the design process.

Step 2: Conduct a design workshop.

Get all relevant stakeholders involved in a design workshop, a dedicated time to brainstorm ideas and ensure that the expectations are aligned. Use the workshop to generate creative ideas and explore different approaches to the design. The workshop should end with a clear, agreed-upon direction for the visual and conceptual development of the project.

Step 3: Establish a visual style.

Decide on colors, typography, imagery, and overall aesthetic that align with the design brief. This style should visually communicate the intended message and appeal to the target audience. Then, create a style guide that will document these choices to maintain consistency throughout the design process.

Step 4: Gather content.

Before designing a mockup, start with content. Content-first design will help you determine how to create visual hierarchy and visual interest on the webpage or app page. It will also help you decide which elements should have more visual weight than others.

Step 5: Create a mockup.

Create detailed mockups of your design, which may include digital sketches or prototypes. Refine these mockups by continuously applying design principles to enhance visual and conceptual unity. For example, use balance and alignment to create a structured, aesthetically pleasing layout, arrange content to guide the viewer’s attention effectively, using contrast to highlight key areas, and more.

Step 6: Get feedback.

Have team members and stakeholders review the mockups, focusing on how well they meet the design brief and convey the intended message. If possible, gather feedback from potential users or members of your target audience to get insights into the effectiveness and appeal of your design.

Step 7: Hand the design to development.

Share with devs a prototype that contains specifications such as dimensions, behavior, and interactions. Provide comprehensive documentation to support the developers, including style guides and interaction descriptions. Maintain communication throughout the implementation phase to address any issues that may arise and ensure the design integrity is maintained.

Practice using unity in design

Unity in UI design is about organizing interface elements such as buttons, icons, text, and images in a cohesive manner, ultimately leading to improved usability and user satisfaction.

In 2024, unity remains a vital aspect of design, with advancements in design software providing designers with more tools to achieve it creatively. For instance, advanced features in software like precise layout control and color palette management contribute to maintaining unity across various platforms.

Tools like UXPin facilitate the creation of unified user interfaces by offering functionalities that streamline the design-to-development process. By leveraging such tools, designers can ensure that the unity achieved in design translates seamlessly into the final product. Create user interface designs that have a sense of unity. Try UXPin for free.

The post Unity in Design – Basic Design Concepts Revisted appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Admin UI is a graphical user interface designed for administrators to manage and control a system, application, or website. This interface is distinct from the regular user interface and provides advanced features and controls necessary for overseeing and configuring various aspects of the system.

The Admin UI often includes functionalities such as user management, access control, system configuration, monitoring, and reporting tools. It is designed to be intuitive for administrators and typically requires authentication to access to ensure security.

The specific features and design of an Admin UI can vary depending on the context, such as whether it’s for a web application, server, database, or any other system that requires administrative oversight. Admin UIs are crucial for simplifying complex administrative tasks and ensuring that administrators can efficiently and securely manage the underlying system or application.

Build a React app Admin UI with UXPin Merge — a drag-and-drop UI builder that allows you to create interfaces with React components, and then, export their code with a single click. Try UXPin Merge for free.

Design UI with code-backed components.

Use the same components in design as in development. Keep UI consistency at scale.

Try UXPin Merge

What is Admin UI?

Admin UI (short for Administrative User Interface) is a graphical interface designed for administrators to manage and control system settings, user permissions, and other advanced configurations in a simplified and intuitive manner.

It’s an essential tool that empower app providers, website owners, and system administrators to effectively configure, manage, secure, and monitor their applications and systems, contributing to the smooth operation and success of the digital services they provide.

It provides security against unauthorized access to data, handling backend of an app, website or system, and other things that administrators are tasked with.

What are Admin UI examples?

WordPress Dashboard

Take WordPress. Its admin panel serves as a great example of a high-quality Admin UI design due to its user-friendly UX design, powerful features, and widespread adoption. It’s designed with a focus on user-friendly navigation. The menu structure is intuitive, making it easy for users, including those with limited technical expertise, to find and manage various functionalities.

The WordPress Admin dashboard design provides a comprehensive overview of the site’s key metrics, recent activity, and quick access to essential tasks. This summary allows administrators to grasp the site’s status at a glance.

This admin UI panel is modular, allowing users to rearrange and customize widgets on the dashboard. This flexibility enables administrators to tailor the interface based on their specific needs and preferences. It also incorporates security features, including password strength indicators, user role management, and the ability to enforce two-factor authentication through plugins.

eCommerce Dashboard

Another example of Admin UI is a dashboard that we built to show our users how to use coded components in UXPin. This dashboard features different sales metrics that are essential for the business, a couple of charts, order history, and a quick employee FAQ to help with onboarding.

You can edit this admin dashboard example. See it up close here: Ant Design Dashboard Example.

What should be in an admin dashboard?

App providers, website owners, and system administrators build administrative user interfaces to handle following tasks:

1. System Configuration and Management: Admin UIs provide a dedicated space for configuring and managing various aspects of a system, application, or website. This includes settings related to functionality, user roles, permissions, and system preferences.
2. User Management: Admin UIs allow administrators to manage users efficiently. This includes tasks such as user registration, authentication, role assignment, and user profile management. Admins can also monitor user activity and take appropriate actions.
3. Content and Data Management: Admin UIs enable the management of content and data within an application or website. This involves tasks such as creating, editing, and deleting content, as well as organizing data in a structured manner.
4. Access Control and Security: Admin user interfaces play a crucial role in access control and security management. System administrators can define user roles, permissions, and restrictions to ensure that sensitive information is protected, and only authorized individuals have access to certain features or data.
5. Real-Time Monitoring and Analytics: Such user interfaces often include an admin dashboard for monitoring the performance and usage of the mobile or web app (or website.) This may involve tracking user activity, analyzing system logs, and generating reports to gain insights into how the system is being used.
6. Debugging and Troubleshooting: For system administrators, Admin UIs serve as a valuable tool for debugging and troubleshooting issues. They can view error logs, diagnose problems, and take corrective actions without delving into the technical details of the underlying infrastructure.
7. Updates and Maintenance: Admin UIs facilitate the process of updating and maintaining the application or website. This includes applying patches, installing updates, and managing version control to ensure that the system remains secure and up-to-date.
8. Customization and Configuration: Admin UIs often allow for customization and configuration of the user interface itself. This can include themes, layouts, and other visual elements that suit the preferences of the administrators.
9. Workflow Automation: Admin UIs may include features that enable administrators to automate certain workflows and tasks, streamlining repetitive processes and increasing overall efficiency.
10. Enhanced User Experience for Administrators: By providing a dedicated and user-friendly interface for administrators, an Admin UI ensures that those responsible for managing the system can do so efficiently and with minimal friction. This improves the overall user experience for administrators.

Your admin UI design will depend on the task that you need an admin panel for. For examples, CRM apps need real-time monitoring and analytics dashboard UI, while CMS need a wide range of customizations as well as content and data management.

How to design an Admin UI for a React app?

React Admin UI can be designed pretty fast once you use UI components that come from an open-source React library like the one created by Material Design or Bootstrap teams. Such components will be a foundation of your design system, ensuring that the Admin UI design is consistent and high-quality.

For the purpose of this tutorial, we will show you how to quickly assemble an interactive admin dashboard with MUI components. In our app, you may find an admin dashboard template. We have also UI kits that make React UI design super easy and fast.

Let’s start.

Step 1: Pick UI components.

Material Design offers a rich set of pre-designed components that serve as the foundation for your admin UI. From navigation bars to data tables, Material UI provides a comprehensive suite of components. Identify the components that align with your admin dashboard requirements, ensuring a consistent and professional appearance.

You can preview the components in MUI documentation or jump straight to UXPin to see which components we offer as part of our Merge library. To do that, start a new project, create a new prototype, and pick the Library and Design System icon from the bottom-left corner. Next, search for MUIv5 and preview all the components. If you want to group components together, you may use a responsive flexbox.

We recommend you following UI components for building admin user interface:

• Table – it’s a data display component for building a basic table, data table, dense table, and manage sorting and selecting; more about in official documentation.
• Bar Chart – one of MUI-X chart components for expressing quantities.
• Line Chart– a MUI-X chart component for showing trends.
• Pie Chart – the last MUI-X chart component that we want to highlight here.
• List – a data display component for different types of lists that can be fully interactive.
• Typography – one of the handy data display components for input.
• Select – an input component that allows users to pick an item from a drop-down list; more about how to style it in official docs.
• Menu – a complex navigation component.
• Breadcrumbs – a handy navigation component to add for user-friendly websites.

They all belong to our built-in Merge library, so you can easily find them in UXPin. We also have more input, navigation components, as well as the ones for theming.

Step 2: Arrange UI components and change their properties.

Assemble the chosen components to create the layout of your admin dashboard. MUI’s modular structure allows for easy arrangement and customization. Adjust properties such as colors, typography, and spacing to match your app’s branding and visual identity. This step ensures a cohesive design that resonates with your users.

If you want to learn more about using MUI components in UXPin, watch this part of our mini-course on using UXPin’s library.

Step 3: Set up interactions.

Enhance user experience by adding interactive elements. MUI components in UXPin come with built-in interactivity, but you can further customize or add event handlers to meet specific requirements. Consider incorporating features like collapsible panels, responsive navigation, and tooltips to make your admin UI intuitive and user-friendly.

UXPin’s editor is code-based, so you’re working with a fully coded components, but you also have an option of adding interactions, like clickable menu that leads you to another page, an alert popping up in front of the users or input validation. You can add such interactions with variables, interactions, and expressions. More about them in our docs.

Step 4: Share your admin dashboard with stakeholders for review.

Before moving forward, share your admin dashboard prototype with stakeholders for feedback. Material-UI’s components not only enhance design consistency but also facilitate a quicker review process. Collect input on the layout, usability, and overall aesthetics to ensure alignment with the project’s goals.

UXPin has a Preview mode that allows you to see design as if it was a real thing, and share it with your stakeholders for feedback. This is a great feature, because UXPin’s design’s are fully interactive, and you don’t need to leave a tool for other people to test them by themselves. It helps with stakeholder reviews.

The shortcut for accessing the preview is Command + P.

The preview also contains a sitemap, and for mobile designs, you can use our Mirror App and run an app on hand-held devices.

Step 5: Export React code to develop the app.

Once your admin dashboard design is approved, UXPin simplifies the process of exporting React code off your MUI-based design. This code can be seamlessly integrated into your React app, saving development time and ensuring a smooth transition from design to implementation.

Just go to the Preview mode we discussed earlier, navigate to Spec Mode and then, export the code. You can open the code directly in Stackblitz or just copy it to another dev environment that you’re using.

Design more than Admin UI in UXPin

Designing an Admin UI for a React app becomes a seamless process when utilizing powerful and well-designed UI components. MUI, with its extensive library and flexibility, allows developers to create a consistent, visually appealing, and interactive admin dashboard. By following these steps, you can efficiently design and implement an Admin UI that meets both user and stakeholder expectations.

Ready to explore design in UXPin? With our pre-built templates, trial kits, ready React components, you will become a design wizard instantly. Just drag and drop components on the canvas, adjust their props, and you’re ready for the product development phase. Try UXPin for free.

The post Admin UI — How to Design it Fast for a React App appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Tables are essential components for many enterprise UX projects. UX designers must find the best UX table design solution to visualize and sort data according to user needs.

This article explores table UX design best practices with examples to solve common content and usability issues. We also provide links to resources to help research specific topics further.

Key takeaways:

• Data table UX design involves organizing and presenting data in a way that allows users to easily find, understand, and interact with information.
• Effective data table design involves layout selection, data organization, legibility, and user task functionality.
• Data table designers should prioritize readability, create visual hierarchy, ensure responsiveness, order columns sensibly, and focus on accessibility for a better user experience.

Data table UX design and prototyping are challenging for designers using image-based design tools. These tools lack features to create basic table functionality like sorting, search, scrolling, actions, etc. 

With UXPin Merge, designers can sync a fully functioning data table or use a component library like MUI to design, prototype, and create their own table using live components. Try UXPin Merge for free.

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Use the same components in design as in development. Keep UI consistency at scale.

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Data Table UI Design

First, let’s break down the data table anatomy and how these elements fit together so users can visualize information.

• Table Header: The labels for each column in the data table
• Rows: Each entry from the database
• Toolbar: Tools to work with the data (search, edit, delete, settings, etc.)
• Pagination: A UI pattern for displaying multiple pages of data
• Row checkbox: Used to select one or more rows to complete tasks, i.e., delete, copy, process, etc.
• Sorting: Allows users to sort a specific column, i.e., ascending or descending
• Horizontal rule: A horizontal line (the <hr> HTML element) separating each row

What Makes a Good Data Table?

There are four primary ingredients to designing good data tables:

1. Use the correct data table UI for the content you want to display.
2. Prioritize table layout and content correctly.
3. Make content legible.
4. The data table provides users with the functionality to complete tasks.

First and foremost, your table must be sufficient to display all the data users need. UX designers must also prioritize data correctly, with the most crucial information starting from the left.

A good data table has a clear header and description, so users know what they’re viewing. Designers must also use legible typography and adequate spacing between columns and rows to make it easy for users to read and absorb content.

Lastly (and most importantly), your data table must be user-friendly. It must solve users’ needs and be intuitive to use. There should be little or no learning curve, so users can focus on analyzing data rather than learning how to use the data table. 

How to Design User-Friendly Data Tables?

Here are some best practices for designing user-friendly data tables. 

Data Table Readability

Readability is crucial for data table UX. Designers must assess several elements to make data tables readable, including:

• Reduce visual noise: Only display content and UI elements necessary for users to read and manipulate data.
• Use legible fonts: The data table’s typeface, sizing, white space, and letter spacing must be adequate for users to read content–even if this means using a different font from the rest of your application.
• Create separation: Padding, spacing, alignment, and lines can help create separation so users can differentiate and absorb data easily.
• Consistency: Using fonts, spacing, sizing, etc., creates consistency and familiarity so users can scan tables faster to find what they need.
• Fixed headers: Keeps headers visible even when users scroll so they always have context.

Create Visual Hierarchy

Linked to readability is creating a visual hierarchy–where designers use typography, sizing, spacing, and other elements to differentiate data and make tables scannable.

• Use bold and slightly larger font sizes for column and row headers.
• Use shading to differentiate between headers and table content.
• “Zebra stripes” help create divisions between rows, making them easier to read.
• Use a contrasting color for links, so users know what content is clickable.

Data Tables Must be Responsive

UX designers must understand how users use these tables while completing day-to-day tasks to create a consistent and cohesive user experience across the platforms and products.

Data tables must be responsive so users can analyze data anywhere in the business. The sales team might want to access the data from their mobile device on the go, while warehouse employees primarily use tablets.

Order Columns According to Data Relevance

An article from the NN Group recommends, “The default order of the columns should reflect the importance of the data to the user and related columns should be adjacent.”

UX designers must arrange and group columns according to their relevance. For example, location details like address, city, country, and zip code must be together. Placing these apart would create more work for users as they scroll or scan the table to compare columns.

Data Table Accessibility

WebAIM offers several tips for Creating Accessible Tables, including:

• Table Captions: An HTML element <caption> placed after the opening table element provides context for screen readers. While HTML falls on engineers, UX designers must provide the appropriate caption description based on user research and testing.
• Identify Row and Column Headers: UX designers must use appropriate row and column headers so screen readers can identify content correctly.
• Associate the Data Cells with the Appropriate Headers: The scope attribute tells screen readers whether a header belongs to a row or column. For example, <th scope=”col”>Name</th> and <th scope=”row”>Jackie</th>. The scope attribute makes it easy for screen readers to jump around the table like a user would scanning it visually.
• Use Proportional Sizing, Rather than Absolute Sizing: Using percentages rather than fixed pixel cell sizing allows tables to automatically adjust to a screen’s dimensions, making it easier to read for visually impaired users.

More resources for data table accessibility:

• Creating Accessible Tables by WebAIM
• Accessible Tables by the University of Minnesota
• Tables Tutorial by Web Accessibility Initiative

Atomic Design for Complex Data Tables

Smashing Magazine outlines an atomic design approach to designing complex data tables. Atomic design is a technique for designing from the smallest UI element and progressively building to create more complex components, patterns, and entire user interfaces.

Smashing Magazine breaks down data tables UX using this methodology as follows:

• Atoms: Fonts, colors, icons
• Molecules: Cells, headers, and accessories
• Organisms: Rows, columns, pagination, toolbar
• Templates: The entire table

6 Great Tables UX Best Practices in Examples

Here are six examples of tables UX best practices and why they work for users.

Horizontal Scrolling for Large Datasets

Large datasets require horizontal scrolling to accommodate many columns. UX designers must decide which content is most important to users to prioritize what is always visible and what users must scroll to view.

This preference may change across an organization, so allowing users to personalize what’s visible by rearranging the columns is crucial for creating a good user experience.

It’s advisable to place identifiers in the first column and fix it so users always have a reference as they scroll. Allowing users to fix multiple columns can help when comparing different data.

Expandable Rows and Columns

Expandable or resizable columns serve two purposes for users:

1. Allow users to view cells with exessive content
2. Allow users to minimize cell widths for the content they deem less important

UX designers might also consider making rows and columns “hideable” to reduce visual noise and make it easier to read the content that matters most for the task at hand.

Expandable rows allow UX designers to include detailed information only visible when users need it. This example from CodePen shows a series of job cards with a brief description and status. Users can open the accordion to display additional notes and job costs.

Row Focus Data Table

This hover effect allows users to focus on a single row at a time. If you have multiple columns and data points, this effect enables users to highlight a row, making it easier to read. 

Here’s a real-world example of this hover effect. We built a pricing table with React-Bootstrap components. To compare features between the plans, the user can hover over the feature and quickly see what feature they are comparing. Open the preview of this UXPin’s example: Bootstrap Pricing Example.

The same effect is used in our Ant Design table. The hover effect makes the user focus on the employee they want to check. See this effect live at: Ant Design Dashboard Example.

UX designers could also blur the other rows, making picking out a single row easier. 

In a similar example, this data table highlights a specific cell with a raised hover effect.

Infinite Scroll Data Table

Infinite scroll is helpful for tables with lots of data. It’s an excellent alternative to pagination, where instead of having to click, users only have to scroll to see more content.

Column Sorting

Column sorting is essential for users to reorder data according to their preferences. For example, a warehouse manager can sort orders from the earliest first to monitor progress and address issues early. They can also sort by shipping preference and ensure that same-day orders are on track to leave before the deadline.

Inline Filters

Data table filters help users narrow their preferences to only display relevant entries. This data table example allows users to apply multiple filters to find exactly what they need. These inline filters are especially helpful for large datasets where users can eliminate irrelevant content.

How to design a table in UXPin

UXPin is an advanced prototyping tool for building interactive, high-fidelity prototypes. Instead of creating multiple static artboards to simulate one interaction, UXPin enables designers to utilize States, Variables, and Conditions to design functional components using just one artboard (‘Page’).

To insert a table in UXPin, click on the “Search All Assets” search icon (command + F / Ctrl + F), type “table” into the input field, and then click on “Table” under the “Components” heading.

Importing data into a table component

To populate the Table Component with real data, connect it to an external data source such as a JSON file, CSV file, or Google Sheet. It’s best to do this before styling the table to get a better idea of the content that you’ll be designing for.

First, you’ll need to ensure that the Layer names match that of the JSON/CSV/Google Sheet table headers. See the image below to understand how this would work with a Google Sheet.

To sync the data, select the Layers that you’d like to populate, click on the “Fill with Data” icon in the horizontal toolbar, navigate to “JSON / CSV / Sheets”, and then either click on “Browse File…” (to import data from a local JSON or CSV file) or paste a URL to an external JSON, CSV, or published-as-CSV Google Sheets file into the “Import from URL” input field.

After that, the data will appear in the Table Component (if the structure matches up correctly).

Adding sorting functionality to a table component

It’s also possible to make the data sortable using States and Interactions.

First, select all of the Layers that would be different in the new State (which in this case would be all of the Text Layers from a specific column). After that, click on the “Add state” (command + shift + S / ctrl + shift + S) icon in the horizontal toolbar and then give the new State a name using the “Set state” input field.

Next, reorder the table cells (e.g. numerically, alphabetically, or however you want). The best way to do this is by creating an alternative external data source (Google Sheets would be best in this case) and then repeating the previous steps to pull in the new data.

After that, switch back to the original State (which should be called “Base” by default).

Finally, select the relevant table header, click on the “New Interaction” icon (“+”) in the “Properties” panel, choose “Set State”, choose the relevant element under “Element”, and then choose the State that you created under “Set state” (plus any additional settings that you’d like to specify).

Styling the table component

Next, you’ll want to style the Component. It’s already structured and styled in a way that commits to the UX design best practices outlined in this article, however, you can still use the Properties panel to adapt it to your design’s visual aesthetic.

If you’re using Design Systems in UXPin, you can speed up this step by reusing your Design System’s Color Styles and Text Styles. To do this, select the Layer that you’d like to style, navigate to your UXPin Design System Library by clicking on the “Design System Libraries” icon (⌥ + 2/ alt + 2), and then selecting the Style you’d like to apply.

Don’t design from scratch. Use open-source components.

A better way is: import an open-source React components to UXPin or use one of built-in libraries. In UXPin Merge, you can find MUI, Ant design, and Bootstrap data table components. Just take them out of the library and drop them on the canvas.

Then, just import your data, adjust component properties to match your needs, and you’re ready to show your design to stakeholders. It’s done! Since the table is backed with code, you can copy it directly to your development environment like StackBlitz.

Traditionally, UX designers would need programming skills or have to rely on engineers using HTML, CSS, and Javascript to build functioning data tables. Merge puts UX designers in control, and they don’t need to write a single line of code to use components. They can also make changes and iterate without input from engineering teams. Try UXPin Merge for free.

The post Table UX Best Practices – What Makes a Good Data Table? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Mobile-first design is an approach to designing UIs that prioritizes small-screen experience. Given that different devices need different layouts based on their screen size and orientation, it makes sense to design multiple arrangements for your users. This article will show you how to create a mobile-first prototype of a product and transform it into tablet and desktop screens.

Make your own responsive or adaptive variations right in UXPin. Create a mobile-first design and scale it up for tablet and desktop views in UXPin – an advanced prototyping tool. Go ahead and create a free trial and follow along below.

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What is Mobile-First Approach?

The mobile-first approach is designing for the smallest screen and working your way up. It is one of the best strategies to create either a responsive or adaptive design.

• The mobile-first approach is a tenet of progressive enhancement. It is the ideology that mobile design, as the hardest, should be done first. Once the mobile design questions are answered, designing for other devices will be easier. What it boils down to is that, the smallest of the designs will have only the essential features, so right away you have designed the heart of your UX.
• The opposite approach is graceful degradation. This incorporates all of the complexities right from the start, then strips them away later for smaller devices. The problem with graceful degradation is that when you build the all-inclusive design right from the start, the core and supplementary elements merge and become harder to distinguish and separate. The entire philosophy runs the risk of treating mobile design as more of an afterthought since you’re “cutting down” the experience.

We, along with others, strongly recommend progressive enhancement with a mobile-first approach. In this post, we’ll explain tips & techniques, then finish off with a hands-on lesson in which we build a hypothetical website with the mobile-first workflow.

Mobile-first design is also a response to the realities of modern user behavior and technological advancements, such as increasing mobile usage, future-proofing the design, and more. By prioritizing mobile, designers can ensure a more effective and efficient design process that meets the needs of the majority of users.

Who uses Mobile-First Design?

Mobile-first design has been adopted by numerous organizations across various industries. Here are some notable examples and case studies of companies that successfully implemented mobile-first design.

1. Google

• Context: As a leading technology company, Google recognized the shift toward mobile usage early on.
• Implementation: Google began encouraging a mobile-first approach through initiatives like AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) and mobile-first indexing.
• Outcome: Websites adopting Google’s mobile-first guidelines generally experienced improved mobile performance and search rankings. Google’s emphasis on mobile-friendly designs helped shape industry standards and practices .

2. Dropbox

• Context: Dropbox transitioned from a desktop-centric service to a mobile-friendly platform to meet user demands for accessibility on-the-go.
• Implementation: They adopted a mobile-first approach in redesigning their app, focusing on a simplified, intuitive interface for mobile users first and then scaling up for desktop users.
• Outcome: The redesign led to a more consistent user experience across devices and contributed to increased mobile engagement and user satisfaction .

3. BBC

• Context: The BBC needed to reach a global audience on various devices, particularly mobile phones, given the increasing consumption of news on the go.
• Implementation: They adopted a mobile-first strategy for their website and apps, ensuring content was accessible and optimized for mobile devices.
• Outcome: The BBC saw a significant improvement in mobile traffic and user engagement. Their responsive design approach also made it easier to manage content across multiple platforms .

4. Flipkart

• Context: Flipkart, a major e-commerce company in India, recognized the growing trend of mobile commerce in the region.
• Implementation: They adopted a mobile-first approach to design their app and website, focusing on fast load times, simplified navigation, and a user-friendly interface.
• Outcome: This approach contributed to a surge in mobile transactions, with Flipkart reporting that a large majority of their sales came from mobile devices .

5. Airbnb

• Context: Airbnb aimed to create a seamless experience for travelers and hosts who increasingly relied on mobile devices.
• Implementation: They redesigned their platform with a mobile-first mindset, prioritizing mobile usability and a responsive design that adapted to various screen sizes.
• Outcome: The mobile-first design contributed to higher user satisfaction, increased mobile bookings, and a more consistent user experience across devices .

6. Spotify

• Context: Spotify needed a mobile-friendly design to cater to users who accessed music primarily through mobile devices.
• Implementation: Spotify embraced mobile-first design principles to ensure a seamless, intuitive user interface on mobile devices before adapting it for desktop users.
• Outcome: This approach enhanced user engagement and satisfaction, with the majority of Spotify’s user base accessing the service via mobile devices .

Mobile-First means Content-First

If your site is good on a mobile device, it translates better to the rest of devices, be it tablet, desktop computer or laptop. More important, though, is that a mobile-first approach is also a content-first approach. Mobile has the most limitations, screen size, and bandwidth to name a few, and so designing within these parameters forces you to prioritize content ruthlessly.

The mobile-first approach organically leads to a design that’s more content-focused, and therefore user-focused. The heart of the site is content — that’s what the users are there for.

One caveat, though, is that mobile users sometimes require different content than desktop users. Device-specific content can be gauged by considering context — what, in a given situation and a given environment, will your user appreciate more. The best way to plan ahead for these is by creating user scenarios.

Another advantage to the mobile-first approach is that the small-screen breakpoints can better fit around the content. Again, the alternative is worse: having to squeeze an already plump design into a tiny framework. But with the mobile-first approach, the breakpoints develop naturally around content, so you don’t need any awkward edits.

What is mobile-first design framework?

We’ll describe a process that helps our designers at UXPin.

As usual, wireframing is a recommended early step to most efficiently structure your layout. When wireframing or prototyping, we use the responsive breakpoint menu to streamline the process of moving to different screen sizes, starting with the smallest.

These presets layout the proper screen size for you, so you can wireframe keeping only the content in mind.

Our procedure follows these steps:
1. Content Inventory — This is a spreadsheet or equivalent document containing all the elements you want to include. Learn more about doing an inventory of content.

Source: Maadmob

2. Visual Hierarchy — Prioritize the elements in the content inventory and determine how to display the most important elements prominently. Learn more about visual hierarchy.

3. Design with the smallest breakpoints and then scale up — Build the mobile wireframe first, then use that as the model for larger breakpoints. Expand the screen until there’s too much negative space.

4. Enlarge touch targets — Fingers are much wider than pixel-precise mouse cursors, and so need larger elements on which to tap. At the time of this writing, Apple recommends 44 pixels square for touch targets (read about mobile design for iOS and Android). Give hyperlinks plenty of space, and slightly enlarge buttons, and make sure that there’s enough space around all the interactive elements.

5. Don’t count on hovers — It almost goes without saying, but designers often rely on hover and mouseover effects in their interactive work. If you’re thinking mobile-friendly, don’t do that.

6. Think “app” — Mobile users are accustomed to the motion and a modicum of control in their experience. Think about off-canvas navigation, expandible widgets, AJAX calls, or other elements on the screen with which users can interact without refreshing the page.

7. Avoid large graphics — Landscape photos and complex graphics don’t display well when your screen is only a few inches across. Cater to mobile users with images that are readable on handheld screens.

8. Test it in a real device — Nothing beats discovering for yourself how usable a website is (or isn’t). Step away from your desktop or laptop computer and load up your product on a real phone or tablet. Tap through pages. Is the site easy to navigate? Does it load in a timely fashion? Are the text and graphics easy to read?

This is just a basic outline. For the complete guide to our process, download the free Content Wireframing for Responsive Design.

How to Create Mobile-First Design

We prepared for you a tutorial that will explain how to create a mobile-first design. Our mobile-first design tutorial has four steps.

• Step 1: Set your content priorities.
• Step 2: Design smartphone view.
• Step 3: Work on tablet view.
• Step 4: Create desktop view.

Step 1: Set your content priorities

A “mobile-first approach” differs from “desktop-first” in that we add information to each progressively larger layout rather than cut away as we design smaller. Thinking mobile doesn’t mean eliminating information. It means sorting information into primary, secondary, and tertiary content.

In this example, we know that the home page should have certain elements, like the company’s name and links to products. A blog post wouldn’t hurt either. But like we said, not everything will fit into a smartphone view, so we set priorities based on what will achieve the site’s goal: selling bikes.

1. The newest model bike

2. The best-selling bike

3. “Find your perfect ride” CTA

4. Company name and hero image

5. Navigation

6. Search

7. The second-best-selling bike

8. Gift certificates

9. A testimonial

10. The latest blog post

Based on that ordered list, we can create with the confidence that our work will solve a design problem of getting sales.

Step 2: Design smartphone view

How much do users need?

Thinking mobile-first forces us to think about what’s really important. In this smartphone view, the top-selling bike and newest model will lead directly to sales, so can we leave other items — such as gift certificates, a less-popular model, the latest news — for inside pages. The final call to action is especially prominent and easy to hit with a single tap of the finger.

Step 3: Work on tablet view

As we design for a tablet-sized view, we’re better able to add secondary information like additional products (e.g. “The Capacitor”). We can also expand the navigation at the top of the page and add content that encourages sales without actually leading to them — namely, the testimonial.

Because more options are available, this can be surprisingly more difficult than deciding what to include in a smartphone UI. The difference between secondary and tertiary elements is a blurry line, and temptation is strong to include everything.

Resist the urge. Use the ordered content list. Like smartphones, space is still limited.

Step 4: Create desktop view

Finally, the desktop view can support as much information as you decide is important. This is where the home page can accommodate all of the information you see fit, whether or not it fits. Notice some of the additional content we’ve included:

• Gift certificates
• Customer testimonials
• Blog post exploring the newest Lightning Bolt bike

Design device-appropriate layouts yourself

If you’re using UXPin, it’s fairly easy to create different layouts for these views.

1. Open a UXPin prototype.
2. Tap “Add new adaptive version” at the bottom right of the UXPin editor
3. Choose a preset size or enter your own dimensions.
   
4. You don’t have to recreate everything from scratch. Choose a size from which to copy your design’s elements.
   

And that’s it. Switch between breakpoints by tapping the different sizes above your canvas, and adjust each to suit your needs. If you’d like to try prototyping mobile-first yourself, go ahead. Start a free trial in UXPin.

The post A Hands-On Guide to Mobile-First Responsive Design appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

AI in design, animated icons, cross platform UX are some of the most exciting 2024 UX and UI design trends. Our research has also noticed an interesting UX UI trend toward larger screens, with Instagram improving its desktop experience to accommodate the growing demand.

Create high-quality, fully functioning prototypes to test your UI design ideas with UXPin. Sign up for a free trial to explore UXPin’s advanced features today!

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Top UX UI Trends in 2024

Trend #1: AI-integrated Design

From brainstorming design solutions, constructing research plan to complex UX design decisions, artificial intelligence is becoming integrated into the design process. ChatGPT took most industries by the storm and design is no different.

In 2023, designers shared prompts left and right and design tools like Framer and other integrated AI processes to help users come up with initial UI to iterate on. We believe that AI-integrated design will be a thing that will help put most repetitive tasks on autopilot. Let’s put our energy into solving complex problems, right?

UXPin is another tool that added AI to its arsenal. Our Merge technology for code-first design has an AI Component Creator built into it. The creator generates a fully-coded Tailwind UI component based on the prompt you write. Check out this to see how it works: ChatGPT in UI design.

Trend #2: Cross-Platform UX

While cross-platform UX isn’t new to most of you, it will be taken to another level in 2024. Last year we reported that apps like Instagram have upgraded their desktop versions to take advantage of large-screen monitors. YouTube, on the other hand, embraced TikTok-like stories format, making it better suited for hand-held devices.

An approaching trend is personalization within cross-platform experience. Apps want to stay relevant and give the users content that they may enjoy to make them stay longer.

Trend #3: Location-Based UX

The buzz around location-based experiences is growing. The apps that offer it will be the epitome of user-centric design next year, as users are starting to value experiences that are both personalized and effortlessly convenient. Picture this: having public transport recommendations more suitable to your lifestyle.

AI takes center stage in shaping the future of location-based experiences. It helps predict user movements and behaviors. Product teams may use AI to anticipate user preferences, intuitively suggesting relevant places, events, or services—often before users actively seek them out.

Trend #4: Animated Icons

Animated icons have officially made their grand entrance into iOS17, injecting life into your Apple apps. Whether you prefer solid icons or lean towards the elegance of outline icons, now is the time to infuse movement into your visual elements.

Get ready to breathe new life into your interface with animated icons that resonate seamlessly with the dynamic spirit of iOS17.

Trend #5: 3D Visual Elements

Are you trying to visualize complex data, building a UX of a VR app or trying to enhance brand recognition? Include 3D elements in your work! Such interfaces are going to be big in 2024.

3D elements help designers draw the user’s eye and add depth and realism that draws users in. We can’t say what originated the trend but some of the designs look like something that was created using Midjourney – another AI tool.

Trend #6: Emotionally Intelligent Design

Emotionally Intelligent Design means creating products, services, or experiences that take into account users’ emotions. It acknowledges and addresses the emotional aspects of human interaction with technology. Examples of emotionally intelligent design might include features like empathetic error messages or interfaces that adapt to users’ moods.

Key aspects of emotionally intelligent design include:

1. Empathy: Understanding and empathizing with users’ needs, desires, and emotions. This involves considering the user’s perspective, emotions, and potential pain points throughout the design process.
2. Anticipation: Predicting and responding to users’ emotions and needs before they explicitly express them. This can involve using data, user research, and intuitive design to anticipate user reactions and proactively address potential issues.
3. Feedback and Communication: Providing clear and supportive feedback to users, acknowledging their actions, and communicating effectively. This includes using language, visuals, and interactions that resonate emotionally with the user.
4. Adaptability: Designing interfaces that can adapt to users’ emotional states or changing needs. This might involve customization options, personalization features, or dynamic content that responds to user behavior.
5. Inclusivity: Recognizing and accommodating a diverse range of users with different emotional responses, cultural backgrounds, and preferences. Inclusive design ensures that products and experiences are emotionally resonant for a broad audience.
6. Ethical Considerations: Ensuring that design decisions consider the ethical implications of the product or service, including potential emotional impact. This involves avoiding manipulative practices and prioritizing the well-being of users.

Trend #7: Focus on Typography

The latest trend in typography for 2024 can be summarized in three words: big, bold, and capitalized. It’s fantastic strategy for UI designers looking to grab users’ attention. Even the global web trends website, Awwwards, uses capitalized bold typography for its homepage H1 and header callout.

UI designers also mix typefaces and styles to emphasize words or draw users’ attention. For example, this hero from Lacoste’s Draw it Yourself campaign uses bold capital styling combined with solid and outlined text for its H1.

Tennis star Venus Williams also uses big, bold, capitalized typography throughout her website design. The font helps reinforce Venus’ status as a strong, dominant world number one.

If you want to stand out and position your brand as a dominant market leader, big, bold, capital typography can help achieve that in 2024! For a softer, calmer approach, you can use thin, condensed, and capitalized lettering–like this example from the Aussi-based creative initiative Hip Opera.

Take your UI design to the next level with UXPin–the world’s most advanced design and prototyping tool. 

Improve user testing and get meaningful stakeholder feedback with fully interactive prototypes that look and feel like the final product. Sign up for a free trial to explore UXPin’s advanced prototyping features.

The post 10 UX UI Design Trends that Dominate 2024 appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

One of the best things about being a part of the design community is that most designers love to exchange ideas, spread knowledge, and share their experiences regardless of their seniority level. You can be a starting designer or an established thought leader, and it’s almost a given that you find a design conference that may teach you something new.

What’s also great about UX conferences is that not all of them target the UX/UI community, but the people who work with them on a daily basis. Product managers, developers and other professionals who work closely with design can find an event for themselves.

Increase design maturity with UXPin Merge. Build a more collaborative design process and bridge the gap between designers and devs by using a single source of truth in your prototypes: interactive components. Discover more about UXPin Merge.

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January 2024 Conferences

 QRCA 2024 Annual Conference

QRCA stands for Qualitative Research Consultants Association. The conference covers research methods, tools, and lessons that will prepare designers for the next era of qualitative research.

• Date: Jan 22-25, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual & Denver
• Audience: UX researchers, marketing researchers
• Common topics: qualitative research, research methods, research tools

UX360 Research Summit 2024

We will welcome the third edition of a conference dedicated entirely to research. The line up includes UX researchers from top companies: Google, Meta, Dropbox, Delivery Hero, and more.

• Date: Jan 30-31, 2023
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual
• Audience: UX researchers, UI designers, UX designers
• Common topics: research, design strategy, human-centered design

Design Matters Mexico

Join Design Matters and listen to Mexican designers telling you about local design and the intersection between technology and humanity.

• Date: Jan 31-Feb 1, 2023
• Free: No
• Where: Mexico City
• Audience: UX researchers, UI designers, UX designers
• Common topics: inclusivity, design future, technology

February 2024 Conferences

What about the second month of the year? We’ve found a couple of conferences that may catch your eye. Let’s see them.

AXE CON 2024

Sign up to attend a virtual accessibility conference focused on building, testing, and maintaining accessible digital experiences.

• Date: Feb 20-22, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual
• Audience: designers
• Common topics: accessibility, UX

Product World [Hybrid]

Product conference that concerns itself with sharing the product success stories from tech product professionals at Silicon Valley’s top tech companies.

• Date: Feb 21-29, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual and San Francisco Bay Area
• Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
• Common topics: collaboration, leadership, growth

ConveyUX 2024 [Hybrid]

Learn about what is going on in the world of user experience in this AI-driven era. 

• Date: Feb 27-29, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual and Seattle, US
• Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
• Common topics: design process, design future, AI

HUCCAP 2024

At the same time as ConveyUX, there’s a Human-Computer Interaction Conference hosted in Rome, Italy. Join to discuss HCI matters in an interdisciplinary environment.

• Date: Feb 27-29, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual and Seattle, US
• Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
• Common topics: human-computer interaction.

March 2024 Conferences

DDX Dubai

A great meeting place for people interested in discussing the impact technology has on our daily lives and UX meaning.

• Date: March 2, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Dubai
• Audience: UX designers and product managers
• Common topics: artificial innovation, innovation, design process

Leading Design New York

One of the design conferences by Clearleft will be hosted in New York.

• Date: Mar 20-21, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: New York, US
• Audience: UX designers
• Common topics: career, leadership, future of design

UX Copenhagen [Hybrid]

It’s the 10th edition of annual “Human Experience” conference. This year it will examine overconsumption and tackle de-growth.

• Date: Mar 20-21, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual & Copenhagen, Denmark
• Audience: UX designers, UX researchers
• Common topics: UX design, leadership, future

ACM IUI 2024

Interested in AI for design? If so, you can’t miss out on this conference! It focuses on the advances at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).

• Date: Mar 18-21, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Sydney, Australia 
• Audience: product designers, researchers
• Common topics: information architecture, artificial intelligence

April 2024 Conferences

AI in Web Design Conference’24

Join other professionals who design websites and web apps and learn about weaving artificial intelligence into the process beyond using ChatGPT in UI design.

• Date: Apr 2-3, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual 
• Audience: product designers, researchers, product managers
• Common topics: design process, artificial intelligence

Web Con

Who said university conferences are for students only? Join an online 2-day event organized by University of Illinois.

• Date: Apr 4-5, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual 
• Audience: UX designers, UI designers, product managers
• Common topics: design process, artificial intelligence

Information Architecture Conference

It’s one of the leading conferences for information architects, designers, and others who create and manage UI and information environments. This year theme is to examine the impact of AI on information architecture.

• Date: Apr 9-13, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual 
• Audience: product designers, researchers, product managers
• Common topics: information architecture, artificial intelligence

UX Research Festival [Hybrid]

Being a brainchild of UXInsights, the largest UX research communities in Europe, UX Research Festival invites you to Breda (in the Netherlands) to hear out amazing talks about UX research.

• Date: Apr 15-17, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual and Breda, Netherlands
• Audience: researchers, designers
• Common topics: UX research, artificial intelligence

Prompt UX

April is full of AI conferences and Prompt UX is one of it! Travel to Berlin and discuss the impact of artifical intelligence yet again this month.

• Date: Apr 17-18, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Berlin, Germany
• Audience: UX designers
• Common topics: design process, artificial intelligence

May 2024 Conferences

DDX Conference Munich

If you’re interested in subjects such as sustainability, future-oriented design, ethical design, this conference will be your cup of tea. Discuss innovative ideas and solutions during 1-day stay in Munich.

• Date: May 11, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Munich
• Audience: UX designers and product managers
• Common topics: artificial innovation, innovation, design process

CHI 2024 [Hybrid]

This year’s annual ACM Computer Human Interaction conference is hosted in beautiful Hawaii. It embraces the theme of Surfing the World – which means reflecting the focus on pushing forth the wave of cutting-edge technology and riding the tide of new developments in human-computer interaction. 

• Date: May 11-16, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual & Honolulu, Hawaii
• Audience: researchers
• Common topics: research tools, research methods

UXDX Community USA [Hybrid]

UXDX is a popular conference for UX designers, developers and product people around the world, sharing with them collaboration ideas.

• Date: May 15-17, 2024
• Free: Yes
• Where: Virtual and on site
• Audience: UX designers, UX researchers, developers and product managers
• Common topics: leadership, collaboration, design system

UXLx

Join fellow designers in sunny Lisbon. Soak up UX knowledge, network with like-minded individual, and hone your design skills.

• Date: May 21-24, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Lisbon, Portugal
• Audience: designers
• Common topics: UX, design process

UXistanbul

Organized by UXServices, this conference is a place for gathering Web3 enthusiasts and designers interested in the field. Come and join them online on Discord.

• Date: May 21-23, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual 
• Audience: product designers, researchers, product managers
• Common topics: NFT, metaverse

From Business to Buttons 2024

Spend one day in Stockholm to discuss user experience and customer expaerience. Great conference for business-savvy designers.

• Date: May 24, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Stockholm, Sweden
• Audience: designers, product managers
• Common topics: design process, design impact, leadership

WebExpo

Travel to Prague, an extraordinary European city, to join fellow web designers, developers, marketers, and more discussing innovations in web design and development.

• Date: May 29-31, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Prague, Czechia
• Audience: designers, developers, product managers
• Common topics: web design, front-end design, UX

June 2024 Conferences

UX Sofia

Travel to sunny Bulgaria to discuss topics connected to strategy, career growth and more.

• Date: Jun 5-7, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Sofia, Bulgaria
• Audience: product designers, researchers
• Common topics: strategy, UX design, UX research

ACE!

This Polish conference has two tracks: Agile Software Development and Product Design & Management. Yet, there will be a lot of content for product designers, too.

• Date: Jun 13-14, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Kraków, Poland
• Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
• Common topics: leadership, product strategy, product growth

Pixel Pioneers

It may be just a day-long, but the Pixel Pioneers is fully-packed with inspirational presentations from leading UX/UI designers and front-end developers.

• Date: Jun 14, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Bristol, UK
• Audience: product designers, developers, researchers
• Common topics: human-centered design, inclusive design, future of design

DRS 2024 BOSTON

Hosted by Design Research Society, this conference is about 4 Rs: resistance, recovery, reflection, and reimagination, which we’re sure are relevant to the state of design in 2024.

• Date: Jun 24-28, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Boston, US
• Audience: design research
• Common topics: research, leadership, future of design

UXPA 2024

At the same time, visit sunny San Diego and join the UXPA conference may be your cup of tea. It is a design conference in the USA.

• Date: Jun 24-27, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: San Diego, US
• Audience: product designers, researchers
• Common topics: human-centered design, leadership, research

HCI INTERNATIONAL 2024

That international conference on human-computer interaction that is usually held in Gothenburg, Sweden, but this year it will be hosted in the USA. We highly recommend to attend. It’s a great treat for the interaction designers.

• Date: Jun 29-July 4, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Washington, DC, USA
• Audience: product designers, researchers
• Common topics: human-centered design, research, leadership

August 2024 Conferences

UXDX APAC 2024

It’s yet another UXDX event, but this one is an Audio-Pacific version. It’s dedicated to Product, UX, Design and Development teams that want to find a way of working together.

• Date: Aug 13-15, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: San Diego, USA
• Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
• Common topics: product direction, scaling design, validation, product growth

UX Nordic [Hybrid]

Sharpen your skills and nurture your growth as a UX researcher, designer or writer. Meet other design professionals and explore your interests.

• Date: Aug 28-29, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual & Aarhus, Norway
• Audience: UX researchers, UX designers, UX writers
• Common topics: design process, leadership

UX Australia [Hybrid]

It’s the 16th edition of UX Australia. The conference focuses on UX, product and service design, and the surrounding disciplines of research, content, operations, management, and more.

• Date: Aug 27-30, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Virtual & Melbourne, Australia
• Audience: UX researchers, product managers, product designers
• Common topics: research operations, leadership, research methods, research tools

September 2024 Conferences

SmashingConf Freiburg 2024

Are you a UX Architect, UI Developer, or a Product Designer that needs to work a lot with engineers? You can’t miss this UX design conference that oh-so-smoothly merges development and design.

• Date: Sep 9-11, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Freiburg, Germany
• Audience: product designers, developers
• Common topics: accessibility, web development, design process

October 2024 Conferences

World Usability Conference

Let’s meet in Austria and discuss usability with other UX professionals and participate in talks and masterclasses where handpicked speakers share meaningful hands-on insights.

• Date: Oct 15-17, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Graz, Austria
• Audience: product designers, UX researchers
• Common topics: design process, usability, sustainability

Design Matters Copenhagen [Hybrid]

This well-known design conference advertises itself as, “Made for designers, by designers.” And it truly is so! We highly recommend you attend it.

• Date: Oct 23-25, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Copenhagen, Denmark
• Audience: product designers, UX researchers
• Common topics: tutorials, design process, leadership

November 2024 Conferences

Leading Design London

Let’s meet in London to discuss design.

• Date: Nov 6-7, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: London, UK
• Audience: UX designers
• Common topics: career, leadership, future of design

Push UX 2024

From Lisbon travel to a lovely Munich to meet like-minded UX professionals that will discuss design research, presentation, and other aspects of daily UX designer’s activities.

• Date: Nov 7-8, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Munich, Germany
• Audience: product designers, UX researchers
• Common topics: design process, design leadership, product growth

Web Summit Lisbon

Come to a sunny Lisbon to participate in lively discussions on web design and development.

• Date: Nov 11-14, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Lisbon, Portugal
• Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
• Common topics: web design, web development

Wey Wey Web

Creating UI for the web? Then, you must show up at this conference. Located in a beatiful Spanish city of Malaga, the conference blends the topics of accessibility, UI, UX, and front-end development.

• Date: Nov 27-29, 2024
• Free: No
• Where: Malaga, Spain
• Audience: developers, product designers
• Common topics: web design, web development

December 2024 Conferences

TBD

Which Design Conferences Are You Attending in 2024?

It seems as if 2024 is going to be full of inspiring and educational content coming from the best speakers in design and product management. Have you found a conference for you? We will definitely keep you posted if any new event comes our way.

Use the knowledge that you acquired from design conferences in practice. Instead of working in siloed environment, unite your team with a single source of truth: interactive components that can be used across design and product. Discover more about it. Check out UXPin Merge.

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