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.

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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.

Where does the empathy map come in?

UX designers know better than anyone — it’s what’s inside that counts. As in, the user’s thoughts and feelings, and how those affect what they say and do.

When created correctly, empathy maps serve as the perfect lean user persona:

• They quickly visualize user needs (especially to non-designers)
• They fit perfectly into a Lean UX workflow as a starting point for user knowledge (you’ll build more as you prototype and test)
• Because they’re quick to create, they’re easy to iterate as you revise assumptions based on real data
• They prime stakeholders for your design ideas since they’ve thought beyond their own experiences

Photo credit: “How to Use Persona Empathy Mapping.” Nikki Knox (UX Magazine).

That’s what this article is about: a clear-cut, all-inclusive guide on empathy maps, answering why, when, and how to use them.

Let’s get started.

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What Are Empathy Maps?

An empathy map in UX design is a collaborative tool that helps teams better understand and visualize the user’s perspective. It typically consists of four quadrants that explore what a user thinks, feels, says, and does. By filling out these sections, designers can develop a deeper understanding of user motivations, pain points, and behaviors, which helps guide more user-centered product decisions.

Empathy maps are especially useful during the early stages of the design process to align teams on user insights and drive empathetic design solutions.

When to Use Empathy Maps

Empathy maps are most useful at the beginning of the design process.

Try to complete empathy maps before the product requirements, but after the initial user research. Product strategy is about solving problems, and empathy maps shed light on which problems to solve, and how. This also makes them a great tool for redesigns as well.

When done well, empathy maps create a “UX domino effect” that affects the entire project. Empathy maps affect the product requirements, which affect the product strategy, which affects the wireframes, mockups, prototypes, etc.

However, empathy maps work better if they’re drawn from real data, so they should be made after user research like user interviews. But in a pinch, empathy maps can still be built on your existing knowledge and stakeholder feedback. Quick basic empathy maps offer valuable insight in any meeting — hence the “10-minute persona” nickname.

Empathy Map Format

A common UX empathy map is divided into four quadrants, outlining notes on four different aspects of the user’s internal experience. The quadrants can vary based on needs and preferences, but almost always contain:

• Thoughts — Quotes of what the user is thinking, i.e., “I wonder if there’s an example?” or “I hope this doesn’t take long.”
• Feelings — The user’s emotional state, i.e. “is confused by the navigation and blames themselves.”
• Actions — The user’s behaviors, whether in general or in response to a specific instigator, i.e., “returns to the home page every time they don’t know where to go.”

Photo credit: “Adapting empathy maps for UX design.” Paul Boag (boagworld).

Some common variants include:

• Sights — Where the user’s eyes go, i.e., “loves the colorful mascot.”
• Quotes — Things the user says, similar to thoughts. Can be pulled word-for-word from user interviews, or based on existing knowledge.
• Influences — What the user has heard from third parties that might influence how they act, i.e., “They say this is easier to use than Photoshop.”

In addition, at the bottom in some empty space, it’s always a good idea to include:

• Problems (“Pains”) — Any obstacles worth considering, i.e., an unfamiliarity with technology, or a short attention span.
• Goals (“Gains”) — What the user hopes to accomplish, i.e., complete the task within 5 minutes.  

Alternatively, you can summarize the above two areas by filling in the simple statement, “The user needs a way to ________________ because ________________.” Pay attention to the second blank, since user motivation is the real raw material for feature ideas.

Last, you may want to leave a space for general notes, such as the type of device the user is accessing your product from.

Optionally, it may help to include a picture of the user to make the document feel more real.

Empathy Map – The Creation Process 

It’s important to note that empathy maps can be created for a general understanding, or for specific tasks and situations. Broad empathy maps are more useful as quick user personas because they are not based on a single user scenario. If you can spare the time, you could create several task-based empathy maps to feed into more detailed personas.

For example, if you’re working on a web app redesign and notice users having difficulty logging in, you can center around the user’s mind as they complete (or ignore) this task. But this information is most relevant to this particular context (logging in). You won’t understand why a user would want to use your web app in the first place.

Let’s examine how to create a broad empathy map as a 10-minute user persona. Before you start the exercise, you will need at least basic understanding of your user segments (e.g. Sally the College Student, Sean the Young Professional).   

1. Find a whiteboard, a large flip chart, or print out this free template.

2. Set aside 30 minutes to 1 hour for the session.

3. Invite the core product team members: product manager, developers, marketers, and of course other designers.

4. Ask a broad question to help unpack everyone’s thoughts and assumptions, e.g. “Why would somebody buy a new iPhone?”

5. Set aside sheets of paper or space on the whiteboard according to the user segments (e.g. one for Sally, one for Sean).

6. Hand out sticky notes and encourage everyone to write down their thoughts regarding each of the empathy map’s four quadrants.

7. Review the completed empathy map and discuss any patterns and outliers.

As you might expect, sometimes it’s difficult to get the creative juices flowing and/or really pinpoint the issues at hand. If your team is stuck, Demian Farnworth of the Copyblogger recommends a moderator posing questions like these to help team members better visualize their users:

• What environment are the users in when using your product?
• Are they having fun, or do they want to get it over with?
• What’s their life like outside of using the product?
• What kind of day are they having?

If all else fails, try a bit of role-playing, where one person “plays” the user, and ask them questions or play the role of the product, eliciting responses.

At the end of the session, wrap up what was learned. Did anyone’s opinions change? Is there a better direction to go with the product design? Were any of the responses based on data, or pure assumption? These answers are partly why you made an empathy map in the first place.

Remember that the benefit of empathy maps are their convenience. They’re designed to be a quick collaborative exercise rather than exhaustively thorough. You’ll gather more important insights once you’ve started prototyping and testing your designs with at least 5 users.

What to Do With Finished Empathy Maps

While a large part of empathy maps’ utility are the process of making them, they are still quite useful as documentation.

Share the results of the empathy map with anyone on the product team who wasn’t able to join the exercise. Executive stakeholders, too, might be interested in the more actionable takeaways from the exercise — although you should explain the bottom line upfront, and the reasoning afterward.

If you happen to be using UXPin, you can also upload a picture of the empathy map into your UX project so that others can comment on it as needed.

Next Steps

While broad empathy maps aren’t the most thorough personas, they certainly help everyone think more like a user while checking their own assumptions. Certainly not a bad result for a single 30-60 minute workshop.

If you’re looking for a way to integrate empathy maps into your UX design process seamlessly, consider using UXPin. It offers powerful collaboration tools that allow teams to work together in real-time, making it easier to incorporate user insights into your designs. With UXPin’s interactive prototyping and design system features, you can bring empathy-driven design to life while maintaining consistency and functionality. Try UXPin for free.

The post The Practical Guide to Empathy Maps: 10-Minute User Personas appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

A prototype is an early model or simulation of a product used to test and validate ideas before full-scale production. Prototypes vary in fidelity from simple sketches of a user interface to fully interactive digital models that resemble the final product. They serve to gather user feedback, identify usability issues, and refine design concepts, helping ensure that the final product meets user needs effectively.

Prototyping is one of the most critical steps in the design process, yet prototypes still confuse some designers and project teams.

Key takeaways:

• A prototype is a representation of the end-product that is used in order to see if the product teams are building the right solution for their desired users.
• There are several types of prototypes: a paper prototype that’s basically a sketch of a product, digital wireframe, functional prototype, and more.
• Prototypes differ in terms of their fidelity to the final product. Low fidelity means prototype doesn’t include many details while high-fidelity prototype can be fully functional and behave like a real product.
• There are a couple of ways of creating a prototype depending on the level of fidelity you want to achieve. You can start with a paper or build a prototype in code. Let’s discuss what that means.

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What is a Prototype?

A prototype is a simulation of a final product which design teams use for testing before committing resources to building the actual thing.

The goal of a prototype is to test and validate ideas before sharing them with stakeholders and eventually passing the final designs to engineering teams for the development process.

Prototypes are essential for identifying and solving user pain points with participants during usability testing. Testing prototypes with end-users enables UX teams to visualize and optimize the user experience during the design process.

Engineering is expensive, and making changes to a final product is often not as straightforward as teams may anticipate. So, finding and fixing errors during the design process is critical.

Another common misconception about prototyping is that it only needs to be done once or twice at the end of the design process— it’s not true. 

One of our mottos that we believe at UXPin is “test early and test often.”

According to Elementor’s Director of UX, the website building platform’s designer – there should be an average of four to five prototyping sessions, depending on the complexity of a given UI design.

Teams should create a prototype of every possible iteration of the design—even your early basic ideas for solving a user need. Prototyping shouldn’t be reserved only for beta tests of the final version; you should test basic and more complex versions of the end-product.

If testing a prototype produces new insights about how users interact with your product, then it’s worth taking the time to gather user feedback and iterate—whether that’s paper, low-fidelity or high-fidelity.

Prototyping Tools

A variety of tools and methods are available for creating prototypes in UX design, each offering different features and capabilities. Tools like UXPin, Figma, Sketch, and Adobe XD are popular for creating both low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes. These tools allow designers to build interactive prototypes with dynamic elements, transitions, and animations, enhancing the ability to test and refine designs.

Read about top prototyping tools for designers and developers.

Prototype in UX Design

In UX design, a prototype serves as a preliminary version of a product, allowing designers, developers, and stakeholders to explore and validate design concepts before full-scale development. Prototyping is a critical step in the UX design process because it bridges the gap between a concept and its final execution, ensuring that the end product meets user needs and expectations.

Qualities of Effective Prototypes in UX Design

Prototypes are crucial tools in the UX design process, embodying several key qualities that make them indispensable for creating successful, user-centered designs:

1. Visualizing and Testing Ideas

Prototypes allow designers to bring their ideas to life in a tangible format, making it easier to explore and test different concepts. This hands-on approach provides a clearer picture of how a design will function in real-world scenarios, enabling designers to make more informed decisions and iterate quickly based on what works best.

2. Enhancing User Experience

An effective prototype goes beyond static visuals by simulating interactive user experiences. This enables designers to identify usability issues early on, ensuring the design is intuitive and user-friendly. By testing these interactions in a prototype, designers can refine the user journey and enhance the overall quality of the final product.

3. Facilitating Feedback and Collaboration

Prototypes serve as a concrete representation of design ideas, making them an excellent tool for gathering feedback and fostering collaboration among team members and stakeholders. By providing a visual and interactive reference, prototypes ensure that everyone involved in the project can review, discuss, and align on the design direction, fostering a more collaborative and consensus-driven development process.

4. Reducing Development Costs

One of the most valuable qualities of prototypes is their ability to catch design flaws and usability issues early. By identifying and resolving these problems before full-scale development begins, teams can avoid costly changes later in the process. This proactive approach reduces the risk of expensive rework and helps maintain project timelines and budgets.

5. Enabling Rapid Iteration

Prototypes are inherently flexible, allowing for quick changes and adjustments based on feedback, testing, and analysis. This quality is vital for refining the design to meet user needs and achieve project goals. The ability to iterate rapidly ensures that the design evolves in response to real user insights, making it more effective and aligned with the intended user experience.

Types of Prototypes

We’re going to explore prototypes in three types of prototypes: paper, digital, and HTML.

Paper Prototypes

A paper prototype is a prototype that is drawn on a paper or a digital whitebaord. Such a prototype is used during the early design stages, like a design thinking workshop while designers still brainstorm ideas.

Paper prototyping works best during early design stages where design teams collaborate to explore many concepts fast. Team members sketch ideas by hand using simple lines, shapes, and text. The emphasis is on lots of ideas and speed, not aesthetics.

UX Teams lay paper screens on the floor, table, or pinned to a board to simulate user flows. A common practice for testing these prototypes is to have one person play “the product,” switching the sketches according to how the real user behaves.

A low visual/low functional paper prototype.

Advantages of Paper Prototypes

• Fast — You can sketch a prototype in minutes, which is why paper works so well for testing lots of ideas. You can draw a prototype quickly (even during a brainstorming meeting), so you haven’t wasted more than a few minutes if an idea falls flat. 
• Inexpensive — You only need a maker pen and paper to create prototypes, making the process cheap and accessible.
• Team-building — Paper prototyping is a collaborative effort, and often teams have fun coming up with fresh ideas. It’s a fantastic team-building exercise, and these free-thinking sessions often inspire creativity.
• Documentation — Team members can keep physical copies of paper prototypes, notes, and todos for quick reference during future iterations. 

Disadvantages

• Unrealistic — No matter how skilled the art or craftsmanship, paper prototypes will never be more than hand-drawn representations of a digital product. So, while they’re quick to draw, paper prototypes produce little or no results when doing user testing.
• False positives — Sometimes, paper prototypes don’t validate ideas properly. What seems like a good idea on paper might not work effectively in a digital wireframe.
• No gut reactions — Paper prototypes rely on the user’s imagination, adding a break between seeing the stimulus and responding to it. That “gut” reaction is crucial for a successful UX.

Considering these advantages and disadvantages, we recommend paper prototyping only during early-stage design. Once you move from paper to digital, there shouldn’t be any reason to revisit hand-sketched prototypes for the same designs or user flows.

For more information on paper prototyping, check out these helpful resources:

• Paper Prototyping as a Usability Testing Technique by Justin Mifsud
• Better Use of Paper in UX Design by Marcin Treder
• iPhone User Interface Design, Paper Prototype Design (video)
• Printable Paper Prototyping Templates courtesy of Tripwire Magazine

Digital Prototyping

Digital prototyping is an exciting part of the design process. Prototypes start to resemble the final product allowing teams to test and validate ideas.

There are two types of digital prototypes:

• Low-fidelity prototypes: a user flow using wireframes
• High-fidelity prototypes: a user flow using mockups

Low-fidelity prototypes allow research teams to outline basic user flows and information architecture. High-fidelity prototypes go into more detail, testing user interfaces, interactions, and how usability participants interact with a product.

Designers build prototypes using design tools like Figma, Adobe XD, and others. Sometimes non-designers, from product teams use Powerpoint or Google Slides to simulate user flows.

UXPin is unique because it allows designers to create prototypes that look and function exactly like the final product—something you cannot achieve with other popular design tools!

Advantages of Digital Prototyping

• Realistic interactions — Testing with high-fidelity digital prototypes lets UX teams see how users interact with the final product, thus effectively iron out any usability issues.
• Flexibility — Test early and test often! You can start with lo-fi prototypes that become progressively more advanced as the product design process moves forward.
• Speed — While paper prototypes might be the fastest way to test ideas, digital prototypes are the quickest way to test usability issues. Once a product gets to the engineering stage, changes cost significantly more time and money.

Disadvantages

• Learning curve — Before you can build a prototype, you’ll need to learn and understand the software—which is why product teams often use Powerpoint instead of a specialized design tool. The good news is that most design software incorporates the same tools, so it’s relatively easy to switch between them.
• Cost — As you move from low-fidelity to high-fidelity prototyping, time and labor costs increase.

A prototype’s success depends on teams outlining clear objectives and KPIs for each usability study. Without a proper plan, designers can get side-tracked, adding unnecessary features and interactions!

Here are some helpful resources for creating digital prototypes:

• A 10-Minute Rapid Prototyping Lesson by Marek Bowers

HTML & JavaScript Prototyping

On rare occasions, teams might build HTML & JavaScript prototypes to get more accurate results. The downside to this approach is that coding comes with considerable time and technical costs.

But with UXPin Merge, that isn’t the case!

Product designers (and non-designers) can create code-based high-fidelity prototypes that look and function like the final product.

For example, with UXPin’s Merge technology, teams can use React components pulled from a Git repository or Storybook components to create fully functional high-fidelity prototypes. With UXPin Merge, participants never have to “imagine” what a button or dropdown will do because the prototype functions like the final product!

Low Visual/High Functional Prototype built-in HTML. (Image credit: Mike Hill)

Advantages

• Final product functionality — HTML prototypes provide participants with an accurate model of the final product.
• The technical foundation for the final product — Building an HTML prototype provides researchers with a valuable research tool and provides developers with the foundations for building the final product.
• Platform agnostic — You can test your prototype on virtually any operating system or device, and the user won’t need to run outside software.

Disadvantages

• Dependent on designer skill level — Your HTML prototype is only as good as your ability to code. Poorly coded prototypes could introduce usability issues that don’t have anything to do with UX design!
• Inhibits creativity — Coding takes time and focus to build a usable prototype. Designers might not achieve the same level of innovation or creativity as using a familiar design tool.

Here are some helpful resources on HTML prototyping:

• Designing with Code by Andy Fitzgerald
• The Advantage of Rapid Prototyping by ZURB
• UXPin Merge for interactive prototyping by Robert Kirkman

The Prototyping Process

There’s no single best process for prototyping; it all depends on the product and application. Below are the three most effective prototyping processes, each intended for different scenarios.

(Note: We advise that you ALWAYS test the prototype when going from lo-fi to hi-fi.)

Paper => Lo-fi Digital => Hi-fi Digital => Code

Most designers follow the paper => lo-fi digital => hi-fi digital => code process for prototyping—it’s how we designed UXPin :).

Teams collaborate to develop lots of ideas, sketching wireframes on paper and creating user flows before committing to digital. Here, UX teams will use common brainstorming methods like crazy eights or asking “how might we” questions to get into an end-user mindset.

A lo-fi digital prototype (wireframe) tests crucial elements like navigation and information architecture early in the design process. Teams can use feedback to make quick adjustments to wireframes before committing to mockups.

Once teams complete navigation and information architecture, designers build mockups resembling the final product—adding color, content, interactions, and animations.

When researchers have exhausted testing, UX teams hand over designs to engineers to develop the final product.

Paper => Lo-fi Digital => Code

Going from Lo-fi prototyping to code is an old approach that few teams ever use these days. While lo-fi prototyping is cheap, it doesn’t catch many of the usability issues high-fidelity prototypes expose.

Product developers without design skills might use the paper => lo-fi digital => code method because it’s quicker for them to code than learn how to use a design tool.

The process is exactly like the example above, except that teams will skip the hi-fi digital step.

Low fidelity prototype created during a Yelp redesign exercise. 

High fidelity prototype created during a Yelp redesign exercise.

HTML Prototyping => Code

Solo developers might skip any early prototyping methods and go straight to code. With no one to bounce ideas with, it can make sense for a developer to jump straight in.

Essentially, the prototype creates a foundation and evolves into the final product. This prototyping method is only effective for skilled product developers with efficient workflows.

Even designers with excellent design skills might want to avoid this method of prototyping. Low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototyping are significantly faster than building and editing code.

Paper =>UXPin Merge – Hi-fi Prototyping => Code

With UXPin Merge, you can accelerate the UX process through rapid prototyping. Create fully-functioning high-fidelity prototypes using UI code components to provide participants with a life-like model of the final product.

UX teams follow the standard paper prototyping processes as outlined above. Next, designers build high-fidelity prototypes using UXPin Merge just by dragging and dropping ready interactive UI blocks on the canvas.

The outcome: no more “imagining!” Your prototype will work just as the final product. Prototyping in a code-based design tool like UXPin Merge means engineers can build the final product significantly quicker than working with vector-based designs. Discover UXPin Merge.

The post What is a Prototype? A Guide to Functional UX appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

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.

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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.

User flows are integral to the UX design process. These valuable UX artifacts help product teams visualize flows and processes from users’ perspectives to reduce errors and enhance the user experience.

This article takes a deep dive into user flows, their importance, the principles that guide them, the visual representations, and the various types of flows.

Create user flows and design advanced prototypes with UXPin, an all-in-one design tool that covers every part of your design process, from ideation to design handoff. Build your first prototype today. Sign up for a free trial.

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What is User Flow in UX?

A user flow is a graphic visualization representing the sequence of steps, decisions, and actions users perform while navigating a digital product, app, or website.

Product teams typically focus on one task or goal at a time, such as an onboarding sequence or eCommerce checkout. Designers build prototypes of these user flows to test the user experience with usability participants and stakeholders, iterating on feedback until they have a product ready for development.

Importance of User Flows in UX Design

User flows help product teams visualize the paths users take through an application or website to complete a specific task or achieve a goal. This visualization enables teams to identify friction points and opportunities within user flows and design solutions to fix them. 

Additionally, designers can look at optimizing flows to create more efficient and satisfying user experiences.

Benefits of a well-designed UX flows

A well-designed user flow offers many important benefits for users and the organization:

• Improves usability: optimized user flows feel intuitive, simplifying decision-making while reducing cognitive load, resulting in a user-friendly experience where users don’t get lost or frustrated. 
• Better retention: when a digital product meets user needs, allowing them to complete tasks and achieve goals, they’re more likely to keep using it and share their positive experience.
• Higher conversions: streamlining user flows removes roadblocks and obstacles for tasks that generate revenue for the business, like signups, purchases, subscriptions, etc.
• Reduce costs: optimized user flows remove redundant screens and features, resulting in many cost-savings, including design, development, maintenance, server requests, API usage, etc.
• Improved accessibility: design teams can visualize and optimize user flows to meet accessibility requirements, making user interfaces more inclusive while increasing the product’s user base.
• Data-driven design decisions: analyzing user flows provides valuable insights into user behavior and preferences, allowing designers to make informed decisions based on actual data rather than assumptions. Data-driven design decisions deliver products and experiences that meet user needs, making them more intuitive, enjoyable, and user-friendly.

UX Principles of Effective User Flows

Successful user flows incorporate UX principles that guide design concepts and decision-making. Here are some fundamental UX principles to consider when designing user flows:

Clarity and simplicity

Your user flows must be easy to understand and navigate. Avoid complex designs or features that people must learn before using them. Navigation and interaction elements must be consistent, predictable, and straightforward. When you force people to overthink a process or interaction, they’ll abandon it for an easier option, even at a higher cost.

Consistency

Maintain a consistent design language, layout, patterns, and interaction design throughout your product and user flows. Design consistency increases familiarity resulting in a more intuitive, user-friendly experience.

Flexibility

Design flows that cater to different needs, preferences, and abilities by offering multiple ways to complete tasks–for example, providing alternate paths, shortcuts, or input methods.

Feedback and communication

UI feedback guides users and manages expectations as they navigate user flows–for example, progress indicators, visual cues, status information, messages (success, error, etc.), and alerts. This communication informs users of the system status, whether their action was successful, and what to do next.

Anticipate user needs

Designers can utilize user research to predict and address user needs to prevent obstacles and roadblocks. Adding helpful tips and error prevention features enables users to solve problems faster for more efficient and streamlined flows.

Minimize steps

Designers can streamline user flows by eliminating unnecessary steps, actions, and decision points. Minimizing these points of friction increases efficiency while reducing errors and drop-offs.

Focus on user goals

Would you rather use a product that helps you achieve your objectives efficiently or one inundating you with business value proposals and other irrelevant content? Design user flows that prioritize the user’s goals and desired outcomes with features that enhance efficiency and success.

Accessibility and inclusivity

Ensure that users with diverse abilities, preferences, and devices can use your products, navigate flows, and complete tasks. Designers must consider how factors like font size, color contrasts, keyboard navigation, language, and screen-reader compatibility impact user experiences. Read more about accessibility here: Web Design Accessibility Checklist.

Types of User Flow Visualizations

Before we explore the user flow types, it’s important to explain the visualizations design teams use to map these journeys. 

Flowcharts

User flowcharts (user flow diagrams) are a diagramming technique used across many industries to represent the information flow, decision points, and user actions. These visualizations use symbols, arrows, and other shapes to depict elements, processes, decisions, and data input/output.

Wireflows

Wireflows combine wireframes and flowcharts to provide a detailed view of a user’s journey through an interface. These visualizations describe each screen’s layout as well as how users and information flow between them. 

Wireflows help visualize user interactions with specific elements and understand the context of these interactions. Designers and engineers can use these wireflows to visualize information architecture and navigation in greater detail.

Screen-flows

Screen-flows are annotated screenshots or mockups illustrating a user’s path through a product. These high-fidelity versions of wire-flows allow designers and stakeholders to visualize user flows in greater detail with screens that accurately represent the final product.

Storyboarding

Designers use storyboarding similarly to the film industry, using a series of illustrations, images, or screens to show a user’s journey. Storyboarding is helpful as it allows design teams to zoom out from the user flow and visualize a user’s environment and circumstances.

For example, if you’re designing an app for food delivery drivers, you’ll need to visualize the user flow from multiple perspectives:

• Walking
• Cycling
• Scooter/motorbike
• Car
• Van

Storyboard combined with user flows helps design teams empathize with users better to deliver more relevant solutions.

Types of User Flows

Here are seven common user flow categories. Design teams can use the techniques and mediums above to visualize these user flows.

Task flows

Task flows represent the steps users must follow to complete a specific task. These flows focus on sequential user actions and decision points, often visualized using a flowchart. Task flows are particularly helpful for identifying pain points and optimizing user journeys.

Onboarding flows

Onboarding flows allow product teams to visualize and design the product’s initial setup and introduction. These flows incorporate account creation, tutorials, feature highlights, and personalization options to familiarize users and get them started quickly.

Conversion flows

Conversion flows are crucial for generating revenue and growth. These flows represent the steps toward a desired action or outcome–for example, newsletter signups, purchases, plan upgrades, etc. Designers typically aim to minimize friction and distractions for these flows to maximize conversion rates, upsells, and other revenue-generating activities.

Navigation flows

Navigation flows outline the structure and architecture of a digital product. These visualizations help design teams understand how users move between screens, sections, and features. They can use these insights to prioritize features and content so users can find things faster and complete tasks more efficiently.

Account management flows

Users often need to update account information like addresses, passwords, billing details, app preferences, subscriptions, etc. Account management flows allow designers to simplify these administrative experiences so users can return to more important tasks.

Error flows

Error flows allow design teams to simulate issues and design solutions to fix them. They can use these insights to improve the user flow and eliminate errors from occurring or create appropriate feedback for users to correct problems.

Offboarding flows

Offboarding flows guide users through discontinuing a product or service, like canceling a subscription or deleting their account. These flows must be as efficient as onboarding to minimize frustration, increasing the chances of winning back customers.

How to Create a User Flow in 8 Steps

Here is a step-by-step framework for creating user flows.

Define the goal and entry points

Identify the task or goal you want to analyze–this could be one of the above user flows or something specific to your product. This goal will help determine the scope and focus of your user flow and which visualization is most appropriate.

If you are designing a website user experience, another good practice before creating your flows is to determine and map out where your users are coming from. Based on Morgan Brown’s advice in Stop Designing Pages and Start Designing Flows, we’d recommend you consider the following sources for your web or mobile prototype:

• Direct traffic
• Organic search
• Paid advertising
• Social media
• Referral sites
• Email

Identify personas

Your product may have many user personas. Determine which of these is most relevant to the user flow. You may assess the user flow for multiple personas to ensure it meets everyone’s needs and expectations.

For templates and helpful tips on creating personas, check out the chapter “Analyzing Users Before Diving Into Design” in the free ebook The Guide to UX Design Process & Documentation.

List user actions and decision points

Break down the user journey into a list of individual actions and decision points. Consider each step a user must take to achieve goals and their choices. For example, a signup screen might have several options, including email signup and multiple social logins. Each option will have a different path to completing the signup process.

Map the flow

Start by sketching your flows on paper or in a digital tool to iterate on many ideas fast. This should be a collaborative effort where team members share ideas and suggestions.

Once you have a basic outline, you can create your user flow in a design tool. UXPin offers five built-in design libraries, one of which is aptly named User Flows. UXPin’s User Flows library includes everything teams need to create and share user journeys, including:

• Flow lines for every conceivable direction
• Action blocks
• Icon blocks
• Labels
• Devices (mobile, tablet, desktop)
• Gestures

Here are a couple techniques for outlining your flow.

Writing-first Approach to Outlining a Flow

You can use the writing-first approach, which Jessica Downey writes about in her article Jumpstarting Your App Conception Without Sketching UI. This outlining method helps flesh out ideas and build a “common understanding” of each page of your app or site.

Let’s create one for, say, a banking app. The scenario: someone wants to turn on auto deposit. Note in the outline below, content in [brackets] represents action buttons/links.

Step 1: Would you like to set up auto deposit?

[Set auto-deposit]

Step 2: Select Deposit Frequency

[Once per month][Twice per month]

[Every other week][Every week]

Step 3: Deposit Once per Month

[Select calendar day]

Step 4: Set Amount

Display amount field

[Set auto-deposit]

Shorthand Approach to Outlining a Flow

You can also try  a shorthand approach used by Ryan Singer at Basecamp. Ryan’s approach treats flows as ongoing conversations.

For our banking app example above, we can create a shorthand for Steps 2 and 3 that looks something like this:

To see how Singer demonstrates shorthand for Basecamp and how he can illustrates complex flows with this outlining process, check out A Shorthand for Designing UI Flows.

Add screens

If you’re designing a wireflow or screen-flow, you can add relevant wireframes, mockups, and screenshots depending on the level of fidelity you need for your user flow.

Include system feedback

Add system feedback and responses such as error messages, success notifications, or loading indicators. This detail will help designers and engineers create the appropriate UI components and content to guide users.

Review and iterate

Analyze the user flow for potential improvements, pain points, or friction. Share the visualizations with team members and stakeholders for feedback and iterate until you have a flow ready for prototyping.

Prototype and test

Create a prototype of your user flow in a design tool. UXPin’s built-in design libraries (iOS, Material Design, Bootstrap, and Foundation) provide designers with UI components and patterns for web and native applications. Drag and drop UI elements from the Design Libraries panel to create high-fidelity mockups you can test in the browser or use UXPin Mirror for mobile app testing.

Create fully interactive prototypes using advanced UXPin features to achieve results that accurately replicate the final product:

• States: allow designers to create multiple states for a single UI element and design complex interactive components like accordions, carousels, steppers, and more.
• Variables: capture data from user inputs and create personalized, dynamic user experiences–like a welcome message using data from the name field in a signup form.
• Expressions: Javascript-like functions to create complex components and advanced functionality–no code required!
• Conditional Interactions: create if-then and if-else conditions based on user interactions to create dynamic prototypes with multiple outcomes to accurately replicate the final product experience.

Enhance your user flows with high-quality prototyping and testing from UXPin. Start designing the user experiences your customers deserve with the world’s most advanced design tool. Sign up for a free trial.

The post User Flows – How to Create Perfect User Flows for Smooth UX appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

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.

Reach a new level of prototyping

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

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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.

Data-driven design is a method of making design decisions based on data collected by designers. It has a great potential of perfecting design in a way of fulfilling user needs and keeping them happy. Let’s learn all about it.

Discover how UXPin can enhance your data-driven design process with the world’s most advanced UX design tool. Unlock the full potential of your design decisions. Sign up for a free UXPin trial.

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What is Data-Driven Design?

Data-driven design uses quantitative and qualitative data to inform and shape design decisions in digital product development. Designers use actual user behavior and preferences from user research to drive decision-making, creating more effective and user-centric solutions.

This data-driven approach minimizes assumptions and guesswork, resulting in more targeted and relevant product design decisions. By incorporating data into the design process, designers can better understand user needs and enhance user satisfaction, allowing them to balance user and business goals successfully.

What Does it Mean to be Data-Driven?

Being data-driven means making decisions and taking actions based on empirical evidence and insights derived from data analysis, rather than relying solely on intuition, assumptions, or personal opinions.

In a data-driven approach, data serves as the foundation for understanding trends, identifying patterns, and informing strategies across various domains or product development phases.

In the context of UX design, being data-driven means utilizing empirical data and insights to inform the design process and improve the user experience of products.

Examples of Companies Who Use Data-Driven Approach to Design

Here are examples of companies known for their data-driven approach to design, relying heavily on research and user data to inform their design decisions:

1. Google

• Approach: Google extensively uses A/B testing, user research, and data analytics to inform product design and improvements. Their design decisions are heavily influenced by quantitative data collected from user interactions.
• Example: The evolution of Google Search’s interface and features is a prime example, where even minor design tweaks are tested for user engagement and effectiveness before full-scale implementation​​.

2. Facebook (Meta)

• Approach: Facebook employs a data-driven design process, utilizing vast amounts of user data to optimize user experience. They perform continuous A/B testing and leverage user feedback for iterative improvements.
• Example: Features like the News Feed and reaction buttons have been refined through rigorous user testing and data analysis to maximize user engagement and satisfaction.

3. Amazon

• Approach: Amazon relies on data-driven insights to enhance its website and app design, focusing on improving user experience and increasing conversion rates. They use extensive A/B testing and customer feedback to drive design decisions.
• Example: Amazon’s recommendation engine and one-click purchasing feature are results of data-driven design, aimed at improving the shopping experience based on user behavior and preferences​.​.

4. Netflix

• Approach: Netflix uses a data-driven approach to personalize user experiences. They employ A/B testing, user surveys, and detailed analytics to refine their interface and content recommendations.
• Example: The personalized recommendation system and the interface design changes, such as the introduction of profiles and autoplay previews, are based on user data and testing​ (HubSpot Blog)​.

5. Airbnb

• Approach: Airbnb uses data-driven design to improve user experience on its platform. They gather extensive user data through testing and feedback to make informed design decisions.
• Example: The redesign of Airbnb’s search and booking interface, aimed at simplifying the user journey and improving accessibility, is driven by insights gathered from user data and feedback .

6. Spotify

• Approach: Spotify uses data analytics and user research to refine its user interface and feature set. They focus on understanding user listening habits and preferences to enhance the user experience.
• Example: The Discover Weekly and Daily Mix playlists are examples of features designed based on user data analysis to create personalized music experiences .

7. Microsoft

• Approach: Microsoft adopts a data-driven design approach across its products, including Office and Windows. They collect user feedback and usage data to drive design improvements.
• Example: The Fluent Design System, used in Windows and Office, was developed through extensive user research and feedback to create a more intuitive and consistent user experience .

These companies exemplify how leveraging user data and research can lead to better design decisions, ultimately enhancing user experience and achieving business goals.

What’s a difference between UX design and data analytics?

UX design and Data Analytics are two distinct fields. UX design primarily focuses on creating intuitive and user-friendly experiences for digital products or services. It involves understanding user behavior, conducting user research, and designing interfaces that meet user needs.

Data analytics, on the other hand, focuses on analyzing data to derive insights and make informed decisions. It involves collecting, processing, and interpreting data to uncover patterns, trends, and correlations that can be used for strategic planning, optimization, and problem-solving.

They are both crucial for creating successful products. Integrating insights from data analytics into UX design processes can lead to more informed design decisions, while prioritizing user experience can ensure that data-driven insights are effectively communicated and implemented to meet user needs.

Types of Data for Design

There are two types of data UX designers and stakeholders rely on for decisions:

• Quantitative data–what, when, and how it happens
• Qualitative data–why it happens

Quantitative data

Quantitative data is numerical and measurable, giving designers objective insights into user behavior and interactions. This quantifiable data type is valuable for identifying trends and patterns, allowing designers to make informed decisions based on hard evidence.

For example, a designer might analyze website analytics to determine which pages receive the most traffic or where users tend to drop off, guiding layout and content improvement decisions.

Qualitative data

Qualitative data is non-numerical and focuses on subjective user opinions, feelings, and motivations. This qualitative data helps designers understand the “why” behind user behavior, offering a deeper insight into user needs and preferences.

For instance, conducting user interviews or analyzing feedback from usability testing can reveal user pain points or preferences that inform the design process, leading to more user-centric solutions.

Important Data Sources for Designers

Here are six domains where design teams typically source data:

• Analytics tools
• User surveys & interviews
• A/B testing
• Usability testing
• Heatmaps & click tracking
• Multivariate testing

Analytics tools

Analytics tools (Google Analytics, product metrics, social media analytics, email analytics, etc.) provide designers with valuable quantitative data on user behavior, demographics, and engagement.

These tools offer quantifiable insights into how users interact with a digital product, helping designers identify areas of improvement and optimize the user experience.

For example, a design team might analyze the bounce rate of a specific page to identify issues and make adjustments to retain users and encourage further interaction. Learn about design team goals.

User surveys & interviews

User surveys and interviews are essential for collecting qualitative data, offering insights into user opinions, preferences, and motivations. Designers engage with users directly to better understand their needs and pain points, leading to more informed design decisions.

For example, a design team may conduct user interviews to uncover the reasons behind low adoption rates for a specific feature, guiding necessary improvements or adjustments.

A/B testing

A/B testing (split testing) is a valuable method for comparing two or more design variants to determine which performs better with users. Designers use A/B testing to make informed decisions about the most effective and intuitive design layouts or elements.

For example, a design team might test two different call-to-action button styles to determine which one leads to higher conversion rates, ultimately choosing the version with the best performance.

Usability testing

Usability testing is a crucial step in the design process, allowing designers to observe users as they interact with a product and identify any usability issues.

For instance, a design team might conduct a usability test on a new checkout process and discover that users struggle to find the “Continue” button, prompting a redesign to improve visibility and user flow.

Heatmaps & click tracking

Heatmaps and click-tracking tools, such as Hotjar or Crazy Egg, visually represent user interactions on a website or app, offering insights into user behavior and preferences. Designers can use this data to identify popular elements or areas where users may struggle, leading to more informed design decisions.

For example, a design team might analyze a heatmap of their homepage and notice that users frequently click on an unlinked image, prompting the team to add a link to improve the user experience.

Multivariate testing

Multivariate testing is an advanced technique that allows designers to test multiple variables simultaneously within a single test, providing a more comprehensive understanding of how different design elements interact and impact user behavior. 

Multivariate testing is beneficial when optimizing complex layouts or features, as it helps identify the most effective combination of design elements.

For example, a design team might conduct a multivariate test on a landing page, simultaneously comparing different headlines, images, and call-to-action button colors.

Challenges and Limitations of Data-Driven Design

Data collection and privacy concerns

Data collection and privacy concerns are significant challenges for UX designers. They must balance gathering valuable user data, respecting user privacy, and complying with data protection regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA.

Design teams can address these concerns by adopting privacy-by-design principles, collecting only necessary data, and obtaining explicit user consent. Additionally, designers should anonymize data whenever possible and use secure data storage and transmission methods to maintain user trust and adhere to legal requirements.

Potential data biases

Data biases can arise from various sources, such as sampling errors or the influence of pre-existing beliefs. These biases may lead to incorrect conclusions and negatively impact design decisions.

To mitigate potential biases, design teams should:

• Strive for diverse and representative samples
• Cross-validate data with multiple sources
• Continuously question their assumptions

To mitigate potential biases, design teams should strive for diverse and representative samples, cross-validate data with multiple sources, and continuously question their assumptions.

It’s also beneficial to involve a multidisciplinary team in data analysis, as different perspectives can help identify potential biases and improve decision-making.

Misinterpreting data and making incorrect assumptions

Misinterpreting data, poor data, or incorrect assumptions can lead to flawed design decisions and a suboptimal user experience. To prevent this, design teams should approach data analysis with a clear understanding of the context and limitations of the data.

They should verify their findings by triangulating data from various sources and employing rigorous statistical methods when analyzing quantitative data.

It’s vital to involve domain experts and users in the design process. Their input can help validate assumptions and interpretations, ensuring design decisions are expert-vetted and user-centric.

Implementing Data-Driven Decisions in the Design Process

Step 1 – Setting goals and objectives

Designers must establish clear goals and objectives before collecting and analyzing data. This goal-setting process involves identifying the key performance indicators (KPIs) aligning with user needs and business objectives. Setting specific, measurable goals enables designers to ensure their efforts and focus on the most impactful areas of the product or user experience.

Step 2 – Collecting and analyzing data

Once goals and objectives are in place, design teams must collect relevant quantitative and qualitative data from various sources, such as analytics tools, user surveys, and usability testing. Designers must employ rigorous methods to analyze this data, ensuring their conclusions are accurate and free from potential biases.

Step 3 – Identifying patterns and insights

Designers look for patterns and insights in collected data to inform their design decisions. This analysis may involve identifying user pain points, preferences, or behavior trends. By recognizing these patterns, designers can better understand user needs and make informed decisions throughout the design process.

Step 4 – Making data-informed design decisions

With valuable insights, designers can make data-driven decisions to address user needs and meet business objectives. This process involves iterating on the design, incorporating user feedback, and refining the product based on data. Designers often have to adjust or change direction as new data emerge, ensuring solutions remain relevant and practical.

Design teams build prototypes to test ideas and assumptions throughout the design process–from paper prototyping in the early stages to fully functional interactive prototypes later.

Step 5 – Using data to iterate and refine

Throughout the design process, it’s essential to measure the impact of design changes and iterate accordingly continually. Design teams monitor KPIs and gather ongoing user and stakeholder feedback, refining the design to optimize the user experience and achieve the desired results.

By embracing a data-driven approach, designers can ensure their work remains user-centric and aligned with user needs and business goals.

Balancing Data-Driven Design with Creativity and Intuition

While data-driven design is essential for creating user-centric solutions, designers must also remember the importance of creativity and intuition in the design process. Relying on data alone results in stale design decisions that lack originality and innovation.

The importance of intuition and creativity in design

Intuition and creativity play a crucial role in innovative design, allowing designers to think outside the box and generate novel solutions to user problems. These qualities enable designers to empathize with users, anticipate their needs, and craft engaging, memorable experiences that set products apart from competitors.

For example, designers might draw on their intuition and creativity to develop a unique, visually appealing layout that captures users’ attention, increasing engagement and better user satisfaction.

Striking the right balance between data and intuition

Balancing data-driven design with intuition and creativity is essential for producing truly effective, user-centric solutions. Designers should use data to inform and validate their decisions while trusting their instincts and expertise to guide the design process.

For example, a designer might notice a pattern in the data that suggests a specific feature is underutilized. While the data provides valuable insight, the designer’s intuition and creativity can help them identify and implement a more engaging design solution that resonates with users.

Avoiding over-reliance on data

While data is a powerful tool, over-reliance on data can stifle creativity and limit innovation. Designers should be mindful of this risk and ensure they don’t become overly constrained by data, which can lead to generic or unimaginative solutions.

For example, a design team might discover that a specific design pattern is popular among users. While it’s essential to consider this data, designers should also explore alternative solutions, as blindly following trends may result in a product that lacks distinction and fails to meet users’ unique needs.

Data-Driven UX Design With UXPin

Making data-driven design decisions relies on good data. Image-based design tools lack the fidelity and functionality to get accurate feedback during user testing, limiting the decision design teams can make.

UXPin is powered by code, enabling designers to build prototypes that look and feel like the final product. These interactive prototypes give designers actionable feedback to iterate and refine ideas while solving more problems and identifying better opportunities during the design process.

Want to see how interactive prototyping can enhance your decision-making ability? Build your first UXPin prototype. Sign up for a free trial.

The post What is Data-Driven Design and How to Use it? 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.

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Are you searching for the best UX tool? If so, then you might have noticed that the tools out there vary greatly in terms of the features they offer. Because of that, it can be hard to assess if the user experience software you’re considering genuinely has all you need. Or, even, if you’ll need to get multiple design tools just to create a prototype from start to finish.

Luckily, all hope is not lost, as there is a way to find the perfect design software for your upcoming project. We’ll show you what key features you should be looking for and why they are necessary for the design process that makes product development fast and easy.

Looking for a tool that will support your development and design collaboration? Try UXPin for free.

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How should your UX tool help you in the design process?

There are seven key features that you should check off your list while searching for the right UX design platform. You’ll want to look for design software that: 

It has real-time collaboration

Real-time collaboration will allow you to work together with your team on the same project whether team members are in the same room or not. This increases productivity and enables those who are working remotely to interact with other team members in real time. UXPin, for example, features advanced collaboration abilities that allow you to get feedback on projects, leave comments, and even share prototypes.

You can also save your project and flip through previously saved versions on command. For an enhanced collaboration environment, you can also integrate Slack and Jira. You can also see any edits made by team members, which helps keep everyone on the same page. 

It has convenient design handoffs

As you know, once the prototype process is complete, the next step is to hand the prototype off to developers so that they can create the finished product. Unfortunately, this process isn’t as simple as it seems. Most high-end tools like Adobe XD allow the user to share design documents with other team members. While this is a simple process, the problem is that your designs are typically going to be rendered in vectors. On the other hand, UXPin will render your designs in code.

Since the design documents will be rendered in code instead of vectors, developers will have a clear understanding of each component in your design. On top of that, when creating the final product, developers can refer to your coded designs, which results in a faster and more convenient development process. When it comes down to it, coded designs help ensure that there is no misunderstanding or complications while the team works on bringing the product to life.

It’s equipped with interactive prototyping

Interactive prototyping is becoming more and more popular because it allows you to explore different design ideas by creating an interactive environment that lets you put your idea to the test. It is also great when you want to explain a design or pitch an idea, as others will be able to better understand the value that your design offers. UXPin is equipped with interactive prototyping features, and with it, you can:

• Give engineers or stakeholders an interactive experience of your design so that they can fully understand and experience what your product will look like.
• Test your products with real-life users to gather more accurate feedback and data on how users will go about using your design.
• Design prototypes that function like the finished product by using features such as states, variables, advanced interactions, and more.
• Add details to make your prototypes look closer to the finished product by using the “auto-generate” feature that will add names, images, and more to your design.
• Create interactive components such as button hovers and conditional navigation flows so as to best show off your design. 

With UXPin, your prototypes don’t have to be static and non-clickable designs. Instead, you can create dynamic prototypes that accurately reflect the look, user experience, and functionality of the finished product. 

It helps stakeholders understand your design 

As you know, when it comes to designing a product, it is critical to make sure that stakeholders and other interested parties are on the same page. That is why it is important to keep them involved throughout the design process, from brainstorming new ideas to testing out your design.

So, you’ll want to make sure you have a UX tool that:

• Allows stakeholders to experience and test out prototypes and design components via an interactive experience. This will help them understand your design and how it will play out when it is finished.
• Gives stakeholders the ability to leave feedback on your designs throughout the design process. Tools like UXPin allow others to add comments and questions on designs. You can then easily reply to their feedback all without ever having to be in the same room as them.

It helps designers communicate with developers

Designers are not only responsible for creating the design, but also for showing developers how to create the finished product. And so, communication is critical—especially in this day and age where remote work is becoming more of the norm. Because of that, having the right communication tools have become an essential part of the design process.

So, using tools such as UXPin, you can ensure that there is better communication and understanding between you and the developers. With UXPin’s Merge technology, you can also use the Git repository and Storybook integrations which let designers use the same technology as developers so as to produce consistency between the two teams. Plus, there is no need for designers to compromise on their own design process. UXPin’s Merge technology ensures that there is no extra work that the designer needs to perform to achieve that level of consistency between the teams.

Lastly, because Merge is a tool that both developers and designers use, both will be able to work on projects together without complications.

It’s a tool that doesn’t require you to buy plugins

If you’re like me, then you may find it annoying whenever you buy a product only to find that many of its features are locked behind a paywall. Unfortunately, that can be the case with many design tools on the market. 

A lot of design software out there is lacking needed features. So, it is not uncommon for designers to find themselves having to purchase plugins to complete their product. 

Thankfully, you don’t have to buy any plugins when using UXPin as all the necessary features are built-in and come at no additional costs. In other words, UXPin comes with everything you need to carry out your design from start to finish.

It’s available on both Mac and Windows, and is cloud-based

Design tools like Figma are only web-based. Because of that, designers can run into compatibility issues when using different devices as well as various limitations. So, it is important to find design software that is compatible and available on multiple systems including Mac, Windows, and cloud-based systems.

UXPin works across systems and can be used through desktop apps as well as on the web. On top of that, you can even import your Figma design to UXPin so that you have access to more features and increase usability across systems. 

You’ll also be able to download UXPin to your computer or simply use the web-based version. By using the downloaded software, you will have the additional ability to work on projects when offline. 

What’s more, UXPin also has a mobile app view. This allows you to create and test prototypes for mobile devices, which greatly helps assess the user experience of an app.

Try UX Design with UXPin 

All in all, UXPin is really a one-stop solution for all designers. It comes with all the features you could need such as being able to scale a design on command or engage in interactive prototyping. 

UXPin also comes with some of the best collaboration features, which will allow you to cooperate seamlessly with your team—regardless of whether you’re all working remotely or not. Plus, it is available across devices and systems which will ensure that there are no compatibility issues among team members.

So, whether you’re building out a simple design or a complex system, UXPin has all the features you need to complete a project from start to finish. Try UXPin for free here.

The post How to Choose the Best UX Tool 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.

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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.

UX design process is systematic, iterative, and structured series of actions that is necessary for designing user experience. It helps teams to follow easy-to-replicate steps to deliver interfaces while meeting the organization’s quality standards.

Build prototypes with UI components that are backed with code and never let pixels derail your UX design process ever again. Then, copy production-ready code off your UI design. Meet tight deadlines and release quality products. Discover UXPin Merge.

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What is UX Design?

UX design is a digital product design methodology to solve a human problem. “UX” stands for user experience. This human-centered design approach ensures design teams make decisions based on user feedback rather than assumptions.

Empathy is at the core of this human-centered approach. UX designers must understand the user problems, as well as what target users want to achieve with a digital product and the pain points they might encounter along the way.

What is a UX Design Process?

A UX design process is an iterative, step-by-step methodology UX design teams use to complete projects. While specific methods and steps can vary between projects and organizations, a typical UX design process often includes applying various research methods, defining project scope, using prototyping tools to create a solution and iterate on it until UX teams perfect it for real world scenarios.

What’s the Difference Between UX Design Process and Design Thinking Process?

The design thinking process is a five-step process for developing user-centered solutions to human problems. A UX design process is a multi-stage, end-to-end methodology that incorporates design thinking for delivering UX projects.

A UX design process is derivative from a design thinking process. As in design thinking process, UX designers spend time empathizing with the user, learning about the business, context, and defining problem scope.

While companies base their UX design process on design thinking principles, the steps and methods might differ slightly.

Why is a UX Design Process Important?

Here are some reasons why companies standardize a UX design process:

• Ensures projects meet quality and consistency standards
• Ensures designers design solutions without bias and assumptions
• Enables designers to test and iterate on many ideas to find the best solution
• Promotes collaboration between teams and departments
• Reduces the risk of rework by following set protocols
• Allows stakeholders to track a project’s progress 
• Identifies hidden risks and opportunities

What Are the 7 Steps of UX Design Process?

1. Define project and scope
2. Perform UX research
3. Create a rough draft of a solution
4. Design mockups and prototypes
5. Arrange design handoff
6. Launch the product

A typical UX design process has 7 UX design steps, from defining the product’s goal to design handoff and making sure everything works as intended. 

Step 1: Define project & scope

The first step of a UX design process defines the project’s goal and scope with team members and stakeholders from multiple departments–usually consisting of representatives from:

• Business – explains business requirements and goals for the project.
• Design – communicate what they need to do prior to design and manage expectations.
• Product – shares context, help plan the timeline and resources needed for design.
• Technical – define feasibility and technical constraints of a UX design.

This early design phase aims to identify the problem the new product or feature must solve. The product team will also outline the project’s scope, plan, deliverables, and delivery date.

Step 2: Perform UX Research

Next, designers research the problem to find possible solutions. During the research phase, UX designers conduct several types of research, including:

• User research: Studies potential users to understand who they are, what they need, and what context they operate. They may invite focus groups to explore user needs or do a desk research. The outcome of UX research are user personas, user journey maps, and so on.
• Market research: Analyzes the market to determine market segmentation and product differentiation.
• Competitive research: A competitive analysis to understand how competitors solve similar problems and identify opportunities.
• Product research: Analyzing insights and analytics from an existing product to understand user behavior.

Step 3: Create a rough draft of a solution

With a clear understanding of their users, market, and competitive landscape, designers can run a brainstorming session to make initial drafts of what a solution would look like, which is often referred to as the ideation phase. Designers may use paper and pen during early visual design planning or jump straight to digital UX tools.

Some of these low-fidelity techniques include:

• Sketching: Hand-drawn sketches of user interfaces
• Paper prototyping: Paper versions of a prototype
• Wireframing: Digital versions of paper prototypes featuring basic lines and shapes
• Low-fidelity prototypes: Digital prototypes using wireframes to test user flows and information architecture

The team might also use a design sprint to solve a specific problem with their stakeholders or other team members.

Step 4: Design high-fidelity mockups and prototypes

Next, the UI design team converts wireframes into mockups to build high-fidelity prototypes that look and function like the final product. If the company has a design system, designers will use the UI component library to build interactive prototypes.

Step 5: Conduct usability testing

The primary purpose of high-fidelity prototypes is usability testing. UX designers test these prototypes with real users to:

• Validate ideas
• Identify usability issues
• Test accessibility

Steps 2 to 5 are iterable. Using test results, designers return to stage two or three to iterate on ideas until they find a solution that meets desirability, viability, and feasibility criteria.

It’s important to note that even though user testing is the fifth stage, design teams conduct multiple tests throughout the UX design process to validate ideas and hypotheses. These tests include internal testing with team members or sharing ideas and prototypes with stakeholders for feedback.

Step 6: Arrange Design Handoff

The second to last stage of the UX design process is the design handoff, where the design team hands over the final design and its documentation to the development team to start the engineering process.

Although the design handoff is near the end of the UX process, designers and engineers start collaborating during ideation to streamline the transition from design to development while ensuring designs meet technical constraints. Their collaboration is facilitated through different tools that make communication easier.

Read about 5 Mistakes that Kill Collaboration Between Designers and Developers.

Step 7: Launch your Product

The final stage of the UX design process is a launch and a clear inspection of the new release. It’s time to ensure that the new release meets the project’s business goals, user experience, and accessibility requirements.

Best Practices for a Great UX Design Process

While the UX design process might not be the same for all organizations, projects, or teams, there are some best practices designers can follow to streamline the process.

Apply User-Centric Thinking

Designers must keep end-users at the center of design decisions to ensure designs meet users’ needs. This human-centered mindset delivers products that users want while reducing costs on irrelevant UI components and features.

Practice Empathy

One of the ways to maintain a user-centered mindset is by empathizing with users. As designers progress through the UX design process, they can drift from focusing on users to designing features that look great but don’t serve a specific user need.

By practicing empathy throughout the UX design process, designers stay focused on solving users’ pain points.

Build a Design System

Design systems can significantly reduce time to market while enhancing consistency and coherency across the organization. If you can’t afford to build a design system from scratch, consider using a themeable open-source component library like MUI or Bootstrap.

UXPin has built-in design libraries, including Material Design UI, Bootstrap, iOS, and Foundation so that design teams can build mockups and prototypes quickly.

Take prototyping to the next level using UXPin Merge–a tool that connects UXPin’s design editor to a component library, so designers can build fully functioning prototypes their dev’s components.

Communicate and Collaborate with Devs

Communication and collaboration are vital for a successful UX design process. Designers must connect with other design teams and open communication with engineers, business managers, product teams, and stakeholders.

DesignOps can help facilitate better communication and collaboration while streamlining other time-consuming operational and administrative tasks.

Enhancing the UX Design Process With UXPin

A successful UX process relies on tools that allow design teams to make changes and iterate fast. UXPin is an end-to-end design solution, providing designers with features for every stage of the UX design process.

Fully Interactive Prototypes

Designers can use one of UXPin’s built-in design libraries or import their dev’s component library to start prototyping immediately. Because UXPin is code-based, prototypes feature higher fidelity and more functionality than image-based prototyping tools.

Quality User Testing

With code-based prototypes, UX designers can conduct accurate, more comprehensive tests. Better quality testing means fewer errors and usability issues make it into the final product.

Insightful Stakeholder Feedback

Stakeholder feedback is crucial during the iterative process of UX design. If prototypes aren’t intuitive, stakeholders battle to understand design concepts that could impact buy-in and funding.

Whether you’re using UXPin, prototypes have significantly higher fidelity and interactivity than other popular design tools. In turn, designers enjoy meaningful, actionable feedback from stakeholders.

Speed up your UX design process

Instead of designing from scratch, use drag and drop components to build fully functioning prototypes that look and work like the final product. Leverage ready layouts, patterns, and AI in your workflow. Discover UXPin Merge.

The post UX Design Process – An Actionable, 7-Step Guide 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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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.

A good user interface is critical to a good user experience. If the interface doesn’t allow people to easily use the website or app, they won’t use the product or they’ll overwhelm tech support with costs, ballooning costs.

UI has real, tangible business impacts. Paying attention to it isn’t window dressing, it’s crucial to a business’s success. 

Many of these principles boil down to “make life easy for the user”. 

These 14 principles of user interface design will improve your users’ usability, so make them enjoy your product while using it. Apply this principles in practice. Use UXPin for advanced prototyping that makes you create beautiful and fully interactive prototypes in minutes. Try UXPin for free.

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Place Users at the Center

As always, the first UI design principle is to focus on people (or, the “user” as we all say). A good user interface is easy and natural to use, avoids confusing the user, and does what the user needs. 

You need to understand who your users are as well as understand what they want to do. Are they experts? The best way to do this is to talk to them.

Creating and structuring interviews is beyond the scope of this post, but interview your audience, learn who they are, and develop UI designs for them. Learning about human-centered design will help you achieve the right mindset for best interfaces and focus on people first, design second.

Strive for Clarity

The purpose of the user interface is to allow the user to interact with the website or application (or, more generally in broader design, any product). Avoid anything that confuses people or doesn’t help them interact. 

Minimize Actions and Steps Per Screen

Streamline tasks and actions so they can be done in as few steps as possible. Each screen should have one primary focus. For example, the purpose of this blog is for you to read and, hopefully, enjoy it and learn from it. It’s not to share it on Twitter or email a colleague (though please do if you find it valuable enough to share). 

Keep the primary action front and center and move secondary actions to deeper on a page or give them lighter visual weight and the right typography.  

Aim for Simplicity

Classics exist for a reason; they’re timeless and never go out of style, though they do benefit from modern touches. Think of the little black cocktail dress or the tuxedo; each are fashion style staples. They’re simple, elegant, and add a touch of class to the wearer.  

A user interface should be simple and elegant. Read more about simplicity here: Design Simplicity.

Be Consistent 

Consistency creates familiarity, and familiar interfaces are naturally more usable. How frustrating would it be to get behind the wheel of a car and the brake is on the right and the accelerator on the left? Or filling in a Web form with the “Submit” button in red and the “Delete” button in green. 

Consistent design reduces friction for the user. A consistent design is predictable. Predictable design means it’s easy to understand how to use functions without instruction. Not only should UI design be consistent internally, but externally as well.

General conventions across websites and apps that work identically or nearly so make your site easy to navigate and use. Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines provide a fantastic example of consistency across apps. The guidelines detail how functions should work across apps and on all Apple devices so that a user of any Apple product can pick up any other and easily use it. 

This also means don’t invent or reinvent common patterns. Many patterns already exist for design problems (patterns also reduce cognitive load, principle 9 below, because users already know how they work). Putting the search bar at the bottom of the page wouldn’t be revolutionary to design, it would just be confusing. 

A design system is a great way to ensure consistency in UI design. 

Make Your User Interface Design Invisible

Don’t draw attention to your user interface. A great UI allows people to use the product without friction, not spend time figuring out how to interact with the interface. 

Provide Useful Feedback

Feedback can be visual, audio (the ding of a new message alert), or sense of touch (useful in gaming or the “buzz” alert for a new email or phone call when your phone is set to “silent”). Every action should have feedback to indicate that the action was successful or not. 

Feedback helps to answer questions in four areas: 

1. Location: You are here.
2. Status: What’s going on? Is it still going on?
3. Future status: What’s next?
4. Outcomes & Results: Hey, what happened?

Hovering over a navigation item that then changes color indicates an item is clickable. Buttons should look like buttons. Feedback lets the user know if they’re doing the right thing (or the wrong thing).  

Reduce Cognitive Load

Many of these UI design principles serve to reduce cognitive load for users. Basically, don’t make users think (also a useful UX design principle as well). There are a few common ways to reduce cognitive load and make using your website or app easier:

• Chunk actions and information – Most people can handle seven-plus-or-minus two chunks of information when processing it. For instance, breaking up telephone numbers in the usual 3-3-4 way rather than a 10 digit sequence results in fewer errors. 
• Apply 3-click rule – it shouldn’t take more than three clicks to find any information.
• Minimize recall in favor of recognition – common images and icons in context help users identify functionality, think of the trash can and the bell icons (commonly used for notifications) and other commonly used icons that trigger pre-existing memory. This also means don’t take a commonly used icon that most people understand and then use it to represent something else, you’ll just confuse people. 

Make It Accessible

UI designs need to take into account accessibility issues. Online, this often means ensuring the visibly impaired can access and use the product. Don’t forget about color blindness as well.

Roughly 1 in 12 males (that’s about 8%) and 1 in 200 females (about .5%) are color blind to some degree. Use color to accentuate and emphasize, but don’t rely entirely on color to communicate information. 

Include User Feedback in the UI

Don’t design in a vacuum. Test and validate design choices by gathering user feedback. Watch users attempt to use your design (without coaching them). Are they confused? Can they achieve the desired outcome easily?

Do this in both the design process and continually evaluate after launch (heat maps are one way to track how effective a UI is; another one is A/B testing). 

Flexibility

Create a UI that will work and look great across multiple platforms. Of course, it may have to be tweaked depending on the form factor of a device and its operating system (Android and iOS, for example), but it should be flexible enough to work on anything. 

Visual Structure

Keep a consistent visual structure to create familiarity and relieve user anxiety by making them feel at home. A few elements to focus on include a visual hierarchy with the most important things made obvious, color scheme, consistent navigation, re-use elements, and create a visual order using grids.

Dialogs Should Result in Closure

Actions should have a beginning, middle, and end (with feedback at each step). For example, when making an online purchase we move from browsing and product selection to the checkout and then finally confirmed that the purchase is completed. 

Provide a Clear Next Step

Include a clear next step a user can take after an interaction. That could be as simple as a “back to top” click at the end of a long blog post or a pointer to more information. Help the user achieve their goals with the next step. 

One final thought to remember when designing a user interface, you will never successfully appeal to everyone. You can do your best to appeal to most. You can also do your best to personalize based on personas and well-defined users.

Even so, you’ll never appease everyone. However, keeping all fourteen of these UI design principles in mind as you decide what to include and exclude in your user interface design will help you keep the user front and center in your decision-making.

Creating a user interface is simple in UXPin. Work inside of a browser, get real-time feedback and collaborate with your entire team all online. You’ll create, test, and iterate your UI designs faster than ever with UXPin. Discover the power of UXPin for UI design. Try UXPin for free.

The post The Basic Principles of User Interface Design appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

In the high-tech digital UX design world, pen and paper can still be the preferred choices for fast low-fidelity prototyping. Contrary to assumptions, UX teams spend a lot of time away from the computer, writing on sticky notes, whiteboards, notepads, and adding annotations to paper prototypes.

The more planning and preparation designers can do before sitting down at the computer, the quicker they can design wireframes, mockups, and prototypes. Paper prototyping is a crucial part of the early UX design thinking process because it fosters collaboration, allowing designers to explore lots of ideas at a minimal cost.

With UXPin, design and development teams can jump straight from paper prototypes to high-fidelity prototyping, significantly accelerating the design process. Build consistent, high-quality digital experiences. Sign up for a free trial and explore UXPin’s prototyping features today!

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What is Paper Prototyping?

Paper prototyping is the process of developing ideas and designing user flows using hand-sketched “screens” that represent a digital product. Paper prototypes test on a high-level user experience rather than interaction design.

Paper prototypes are low-fidelity because they don’t have any functionality. For this reason, paper prototypes designers rarely share paper prototypes outside of the department.

The primary goal of paper prototyping is to map our information architecture and visualize user flows.

Design teams often lay paper screens on a desk or flow and imagine how real users would navigate to reach an end goal. The designs are rudimentary and usually sketched in black and white. Content is limited, with only headlines and call to action links displaying any legible text.

Sometimes, teams will build a mock iPhone or Android device using a piece of cardboard to simulate swipes, scrolls, and other basic functionality. These mock devices also allow designers to see how their designs might look within the confines of a mobile phone—especially useful if you’re designing a mobile app.

While the main benefit of paper prototyping is speed, some designers use tools like UI Stencils to design accurate, aesthetically pleasing screen layouts—vital if you plan to present paper prototypes to stakeholders or testing participants.

UXPin’s journey started with a similar paper prototyping product called Web Kit. A paper pad paired with a design tool that automatically turns paper prototypes into wireframes. UXPin has evolved into an end-to-end prototyping solution, allowing you to create prototypes that are production-ready from the start. Try UXPin for free.

Paper Prototyping Digitally

With tools like reMarkable and Apple Pencil, teams can collaborate remotely while enjoying the speed and versatility of the physical paper experience.

Using digital sketch tools can accelerate the paper prototyping process. Designers can make changes faster (without needing to redraw a screen), attach detailed notes, and upload finished prototypes instantly to design tools like UXPin to build high-fidelity prototypes or go with wireframing.

Paper prototyping digitally also reduces paper and plastic waste, which is better for the environment :)

Advantages and Disadvantages of Paper Prototyping

Aside from speed and flexibility, there are several advantages and disadvantages to paper prototyping. 

Here are some of the pros and cons of paper prototyping from our free eBook: The Ultimate Guide to Prototyping.

Advantages:

• Rapid iteration — It’s easier to discard a paper design that took 5 minutes vs. a digital mockup that you spent more than an hour perfecting. 
• Low cost — Paper is cheap, and even additional tools and kits won’t break the bank. 
• Increased creativity — The freedom of pencil and paper fosters experimentation and new ideas. Design tools have their place in the design process but can stifle creativity in the early design stages.
• Team-building — Paper prototyping is a rare opportunity where teams get together in a creative environment. Working with pen and paper brings out child-like energy, which can help form bonds and strengthen coworker relationships. 
• Minimal learning curve — Everyone can sketch ideas, making paper prototyping a great way to involve other departments like marketing, development, and stakeholders.
• Documentation — Paper prototypes serve as excellent documentation. Designers can make notes and outline ideas to reference throughout the project. They’re excellent UX artifacts.

Disadvantages:

• No user reactions — With no user feedback, it’s difficult to know whether or not your ideas will work. Even if you test your paper prototypes with participants, the feedback will be limited.
• Inaccurate feedback — Outside of UX teams, paper prototypes might be challenging to interpret, limiting any accurate or meaningful feedback. 
• Potentially unnecessary — With rapid prototyping tools like UXPin, paper prototyping might add additional, unnecessary steps to the design process. UXPin comes with pre-made design systems, so designers can quickly drag-and-drop high-fidelity elements to design and edit working prototypes quickly.

Sign up for a 14-day trial and see how quickly you can turn paper design concepts into high-fidelity prototypes that function like the final product using UXPin. 

When to Paper Prototype

Jake Knapp of Google says that “paper prototyping is a waste of time“—but admits that paper prototyping is useful for early-stage conceptualizing.

Once you move from paper to digital, there’s no reason to return. Some designers might return to paper prototyping for new features or a product redesign. But even then, returning to paper prototyping might be unnecessary.

That said, paper prototyping is perfect for early-stage conceptualizing. Its speed, ease, and simplicity make it accessible to all teams (including non-designers) while fostering experimentation and creativity—something you can’t achieve with a digital canvas.

Paper prototypes are ideal for:

• Brainstorming meetings and sessions
• Basic internal user testing early on

How to Paper Prototype

Paper prototyping is the fun part of product design. It’s an opportunity for team members to brainstorm and sketch ideas. 

Don’t worry about how beautiful your sketches look. Even the best UX designers aren’t brilliant sketch artists! The goal is to visualize your ideas and get the creative juices flowing.

Creating a paper prototype involves three main steps:

1. Prepare Materials

Gather materials like paper, pens, markers, sticky notes, and scissors. You may also use a whiteboard or large sheets of paper to sketch user interfaces.

2. Sketch Interfaces

Draw basic screens, user interfaces, and key components of the design on separate pieces of paper. Represent user flows by arranging these sketches in sequence.

3. Simulate Interaction

Lay out the sketches in the order of user interaction. Simulate the user experience by manually switching between sketches based on user actions, gathering feedback to refine the design.

For a detailed guide, check out UXPin’s article on prototyping.

6 Tips to Building Paper Prototypes

1. Use printer paper and cheap pencils/pens. Ruled or line pads often stifle creativity as designers get side-tracked drawing between the lines rather than developing lots of ideas.
2. Start with a warm-up! Sometimes it takes a few sketches to loosen up and get into the flow. Crazy eights is a fantastic paper prototyping method to design many versions of the same screen fast. After a couple of crazy eights rounds, you’ll have many ideas to expand on.
3. Prototype mobile-first or progressive enhancement. Start with the smallest screen and adjust the layout as you scale the viewport (this applies to mobile and web design. Scaling up is much easier than scaling down because you prioritize content and avoid elaborate desktop layouts that don’t translate to mobile. Side note: UXPin’s Auto Layout lets you automatically resize, fit, and fill your designs. A handy feature for mobile-first design. 
4. Stick to one sketch per screen (a piece of paper). Paper prototyping requires you to create user flows by placing pieces of paper in sequences. You’ll also switch these around or add new screens. If you have more than one screen on a piece of paper, you lose this speed and flexibility.
5. Iterate as the ideas come to mind. The goal is quantity, not quality. When you create lots of paper prototype ideas, you often end up taking bits from each to get the final result—like a Lego set, but with paper.
6. Planning is crucial for a successful paper prototyping session! Ensure you have enough pens (black fine-tipped markers work best), paper, scissors, glue, post-it notes, index cards, tape, cardboard, and anything else you think your specific project might need. A whiteboard and marker are also great for outlining user flows collaboratively. Pro tip—assign the job of preparing your paper prototyping to an arts & crafts enthusiast! Every team has at least one, and they always make sure you have more than enough of everything you need!

Testing & Presenting Paper Prototypes

Testing & presenting paper prototypes outside of the UX department is always tricky. The stakeholders or usability participants have to “imagine” what will happen, which can confuse or divert focus from what you’re trying to present. Nevertheless, a study by Jakob Nielsen found that 75% of usability issues can be identified with simple, low-fidelity prototypes like paper ones.

Here are some tips for presenting and testing paper prototypes:

• Designate one person other than the presenter as play the “human computer” or product simulator – The person playing the human-computer will simulate scrolling, swiping, navigating to different screens, and other functionality.
• Rehearse – Rehearsing is essential so that the presenter and simulator are in sync. The presenter can work out a good cadence for the simulator to keep up with the presentation.
• Follow standard usability test best practices – Standards like using a minimum of 5 users and recording the tests still apply. You can download our free Guide to Usability Testing for more understanding of usability standards and practices.
• If you’re giving users a paper prototype to inspect, ensure you provide guidance and annotations, so they know where to focus and what they’re supposed to test.

Prototyping in UXPin

Whether you’re building a mobile application or a new website, UXPin provides designers with tools to build advanced prototypes; most leading design tools simply can’t!

Don’t take our word for it! Sign up for a free 14-day trial and test UXPin’s powerful prototyping features for your next project. 

The post Paper Prototyping: The 10-Minute Practical Guide 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.

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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.

The post Best Design Conferences in 2024 appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Google has always recommended responsive web design (RWD), especially after rolling out a big update on 4/21/15 which ranked mobile-friendly sites higher.

It doesn’t specify in the update that you must use responsive design though, just that a site be accessible on mobile, with good UX and performance.

With that in mind, let’s examine the pros and cons of adaptive and responsive design with regards to performance and UX design.

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What’s the difference between adaptive and responsive design?

So first up, what are the key differences between responsive and adaptive design?

Responsive vs Adaptive Website Design

Responsive web design is fluid and adapts to the size of the screen no matter what the target device. It uses CSS media queries to change styles based on the target device such as display type, width, height, etc., and only one of these is necessary for the responsive website to adapt to different screen sizes.

Adaptive web design, on the other hand, uses static layouts based on breakpoints that don’t respond once they’re initially loaded.

Adaptive works to detect the screen size and load the appropriate layout for it – generally you would design an adaptive site for six common screen widths:

• 320
• 480
• 760
• 960
• 1200
• 1600.

On the surface, it appears that adaptive requires more work as you have to design layouts for a minimum of six widths. However, responsiveness can be more complex as improper use of media queries (or indeed not using them at all) can make for display and performance issues.

The latter in particular has created a lot of discussion over the past few years as it’s been the case that many sites deliver the full desktop model which, even if it’s not loading on the mobile device, slows sites down considerably. To get around this, you can use media queries–but there will be a few tradeoffs since a responsive site is never going to be as quick as a dedicated mobile site.

How do you tell if a website is responsive or adaptive?

Responsive design offers a more fluid and flexible approach that dynamically adjusts to different screen sizes, while adaptive design provides predefined layouts tailored to specific devices or screen sizes through server-side detection.

To recognize an adaptive website, you might notice that the layout changes abruptly when accessing the site from different devices or screen sizes, as it’s loading predefined layouts rather than fluidly adjusting to the screen size.

Responsive websites use fluid grids, so to identify a responsive website, you can simply resize your browser window or view the site on different devices and observe how the layout and content rearrange themselves to fit the screen size.

Why use adaptive web design?

Adaptive is useful for retrofitting an existing site in order to make it more suitable for mobile phones. This allows you to take control of the design and web development for specific, multiple viewports.

The number of viewports that you choose to design for is entirely up to you, your company, and your overall budget. It does, however, afford you a certain amount of control (for example over content and layout) that you won’t necessarily have using responsive design.

Generally, you would begin by designing for a low-resolution viewport and work your way up to ensure that the UI design doesn’t become constrained by the content, and that usability isn’t lost.

As mentioned previously, it’s standard to design for six resolutions. However, you can make a more informed decision by looking at your web analytics for the most commonly used devices and then designing for those viewports.

If you want to design an adaptive website from scratch, that’s OK too. Start again by designing for the lowest resolution and work your way up. You can then use media queries to expand the layout for higher resolution viewports. However, if you do UI design for different screen sizes, you may find that this causes the layout to ‘jump’ when resizing a window to a smaller or bigger device screen.

It can be extra work designing and developing a site with adaptive for multiple viewports so it’s usually used for retrofitting.

3 examples of adaptive web design

When looking for examples of sites using adaptive web design, you’ll likely find them on the websites of large companies and corporations. Since many of these organizations have been around since before the advent of mobile, it is far easier (and cheaper) for them to retrofit their enormous websites with adaptive web designs rather than more complex responsive re-design options. 

Here, we look at how some of the world’s biggest companies have employed adaptive web design solutions in giving their websites the contemporary design elements they need to meet Google’s mobile-friendly rankings factors.

Amazon

The eCommerce titan Amazon quickly found that its website needed an adaptive design overhaul. This would help them ensure that its global customer base would enjoy faster page load speeds (a critical Google rankings factor) and a consistent UX, no matter which device they were accessing the site from. 

Amazon’s adaptive web design approach aligns the full-site experience with its branded apps, allowing users to switch between the two and enjoy the same functionality and workflow arrangement, irrespective of the aesthetic web and app design differences. Powered by adaptive design templates that ensure this consistency across all devices, users get to browse, shop, and checkout without having to learn how to navigate differently. 

This approach allows Amazon to ensure that page load speeds are optimized and that users are just as likely to access the eCommerce platform from a desktop website as a mobile. With elements like the all-important search bar remaining the focal point of the design layout across all formats, despite various other features optimized for mobile, Amazon’s adaptive design approach is a successful example of how to keep things efficient and consistent.

USA Today

When America’s favorite daily newspaper chose to revamp its website to ensure that its online news source remained prominent, USA Today took a tech-savvy adaptive web design approach – one that responsive web design simply couldn’t replicate. 

The newspaper adopted a technology that allows its website and applications to identify the device, operating system, and screen size being used, and adapts the content accordingly. This innovative approach allowed developers to create an experience that isn’t limited to the six common screen widths, ensuring that users received a unique experience.

IHG

When considering adaptive web design approaches, hospitality companies wouldn’t usually be top of mind.

But once IHG realized that its customers were looking for a faster web and app booking experience that allowed them to make reservations faster, irrespective of whether they were doing it on mobile or their PCs, the hotel chain responded accordingly.

IHG employed an adaptive web design approach that took advantage of accessible GPS data and location services – features you find on nearly all mobile devices. This allowed the group to develop an adaptive website interface that encourages on-the-go booking with local hotels, allowing users to review reservations and access available offers quickly and with ease.

Why use responsive web design?

The majority of new sites now use responsive, which has been made easier for less experienced designers and developers, thanks to the availability of themes accessible through CMS systems such as WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.

Responsive design doesn’t offer as much control as adaptive, but takes much less work to both build and maintain. Responsive layouts are also fluid, and whilst adaptive can and do use percentages to give a more fluid feel when scaling, these can again cause a jump when a window is resized. For example, in the image below, which shows a fluid layout, the designer is using percentage widths so that the view will be adjusted for each user.

Photo credit: Smashing Magazine

With responsive, you will be designing with all layouts in mind and this, of course, can confuse the process and make it quite complex. This means that you should focus on creating a viewport for mid-resolution and you can then use media queries to adjust for low and high resolutions later on.

So in essence, it’s usually better to use responsive for new projects, and adaptive for retrofits.

Check out how to make your design responsive: 8 Steps to Responsive Design.

3 examples of responsive web design

Responsive web design is the go-to for newer sites that demand a more fluid experience among users or for Google to pay more attention to. It is also the design approach of choice for many of the leading technology and design firms around the world, owing to the ease with which developers and designers can create and maintain responsive sites. 

Next, we look at some of the best examples of responsive web design-based sites and how they affect their sites’ performance and UX. All while delivering on the demands of big brands operating within the eCommerce and messaging space.

Slack

One of the biggest reasons for Slack’s surging popularity among businesses is the ease with which users can adopt and use the messaging app. Boasting a straightforward interface coupled with a raft of integration and optimization features, Slack’s simplicity and ‘human’ feel are reflected in its impressive responsive web design.

The app’s famous adaptability between desktop and mobile is highlighted by how seamlessly the display transitions and rearranges its layout. By using a Flexbox and CSS Grid Layout, Slack’s responsive interface is a step above. 

All this means that Slack’s website needs to match the app, allowing users to experience the same simplicity and ease of use on their mobile devices as they do on their work laptops and PCs.

Shopify

Shopify has taken a different route to its responsive web design. It took the website and app in different directions and chose device-choice optimization over a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.

Designers at Shopify felt that no matter the screen size, their design elements should match the screen the user was using. So, in order to ensure that all users enjoy a consistent UX (even if that meant changing things up), Shopify designed their site to respond according to the device’s screen size. It also delivered different CTAs and illustrations in different sizes and at different locations on the page. 

While PCs and tablets display Shopify CTAs and images to the right of the form, on mobile, you’ll find those elements below it and in the center. This responsive design approach allows users to enjoy a more divergent UX while still being able to experience optimized interaction capabilities, no matter the size of their screen.

Dribbble

Anyone who uses creative design hub Dribbble will likely agree that the self-promotion and social networking platform has aced its responsive web design. The platform’s website represents an excellent example of a flexible space that enhances the browsing experience by actively responding to the device on which it is being viewed. 

Dribbble’s website employs a flexible grid layout that works in concert with the screen dimensions. It actively responds to the user’s interactions by adapting the layout into grid columns that shift according to the device. This means that designers can adjust the items displayed on the grid to optimize for visibility and item count. As a result, users can enjoy a balanced experience that doesn’t appear cluttered or disorganized. 

Users accessing the site on a 13” laptop or PC screen will see a 4×3 grid configuration, while those using a smaller screen will be able to see the same portfolio presented in a single-column format.

Adaptive vs. Responsive? Consider Site Speed, Content, and UX

As discussed earlier, responsive sites can suffer when it comes to site speed (if they aren’t properly implemented).

Responsive also requires more in the way of coding in order to ensure that the site fits each and every screen that accesses it. However, the extra work is debatable (compared to adaptive design) since adaptive design requires that you develop and maintain separate HTML and CSS code for each layout. Modifying adaptive sites is also more complex since it’s likely you’ll have to ensure that everything is still working sitewide (such as SEO, content, and links) when it’s time for implementation.

You should, of course, also consider the user experience. Because responsive essentially shuffles the content around in order to fluidly fit the device window, you will need to pay particular attention to the visual hierarchy of the design as it shifts around.

According to Nielsen Norman Group, “Responsive design often turns into solving a puzzle — how to reorganize elements on larger pages to fit skinnier, longer pages or vice versa. However, ensuring that elements fit within a page is not enough. For a responsive design to be successful, the design must also be usable at all screen resolutions and sizes.”

So there are no shortcuts to whichever technique you decide to use – both require the work that comes with creating a site that’s essentially one-size-fits-all. Responsive has a slight edge, as you won’t, going forward, need to spend an awful lot of time in site maintenance.

Which is Better: Responsive or Adaptive Design?

When it comes down to it, the key is to consider your audience first and foremost no matter what design technique you adopt. Once you know exactly who they are and what types of devices they tend to access the site on, then it’s easier to design with them in mind when it comes to different layouts, content, and so on.

When it comes down to it, the key is to consider your audience first and foremost no matter what design technique you adopt. Once you know exactly who they are and what types of devices they tend to access the site on, then it’s easier to design with them in mind when it comes to different layouts, content, and so on.

It will also depend largely on whether you have an existing site to work with or you’re starting from scratch. Responsive design has become the go-to design technique and it’s thought that around 1/8 websites now use responsive (while there’s little to no data on how many use adaptive). Adoption rates for responsive are growing quickly too and have almost reached the same level as standalone mobile sites.

With all of that in mind, it’s safe to say that responsive is usually the preferred technique if only because of the ongoing work that adaptive design demands.

However, if a client or company has the budget, then adaptive might be a better choice, according to a test carried out by Catchpoint. They built two web pages in WordPress, one using the standard WP TwentyFourteen responsive theme and the other using a plugin called Wiziapp.

The plugin serves a mobile theme to users depending on the device they’re accessing the web pages from and also offers advanced configuration options so that you can further streamline the process.

The results in load time speak for themselves:

It should be pointed out that no optimization was carried out at all, but this does show that the responsive site is downloading everything that is required for the desktop computer. So right out of the box, the theme doesn’t offer a very good performance at all.

Again, this can be overcome using media queries, but the above serves as a good example of why responsive UX design – whilst being a popular choice – is not always the best for smartphones. Until something better comes along though, it’s difficult to know what we can do about it other than learn how to properly code and implement a great responsive site.

So the conclusion?

Responsive design will remain popular, but that might be because we have not yet found a decent solution to the heavy maintenance that adaptive demands. Adaptive web design hasn’t died out though, despite the web’s apparent love of responsive, so it’s possible – in theory at least – that we’ll see some improvements emerge yet that will blow responsive web design out of the water.

Responsive vs Adaptive Website Design – Common Mistakes 

Design is an iterative process, requiring some degree of trial and error before figuring out what works – and what doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean that mastering the responsive vs adaptive web design field requires designers to endure painful failures before nailing it. 

We can still count on avoiding some of the most common mistakes that tend to slow the process.

Too much focus on desktop versions

Mobile design is fast hauling in its desktop-based counterpart, delivering an optimized UX on smaller devices that oftentimes beats out design choices seen on PCs and laptops. But most things online began as desktop-based sites, with mobile versions only coming along later. This has left many platforms, tools, and sites leaning towards desktop origins, and mobile seen as a supplementary need.

Designers need to start adapting to a mobile-first work approach, moving away from their desktop-focused mentality and focusing on the potential that design has to work for mobile and how much more of an impact this can have on the evolution of design thinking. 

This means transitioning towards an approach rooted in designing for multiple screen sizes, uncoupled from the conventional six that have been touted as the most likely to require a dedicated design, and targeting percentages rather than fixed ratios. This doesn’t mean discounting desktop design altogether, but rather balancing it with mobile.

Not considering gestures 

With most of today’s mobile devices boasting touch functionality, it is only a matter of time before users can navigate a website without making contact with any hardware or surfaces. Gestures are an often overlooked responsive web design element with massive potential. 

From using gestures to zoom, swipe, scroll, and return to delivering instructions and executing complex commands, responsive design is fertile ground for taking these movements to the next level. Yet designers continue to bypass this potentially revolutionary aspect of design. Primarily, due to the complexity of developing a gesture architecture that allows for consistent navigation across all devices. 

One possible solution would be to ensure that a website follows a uniform structure that replicates on other devices and provides ease of use and accuracy.

Buttons are too small 

Anybody who has ever dealt with an app that has buttons too small to hit accurately will agree that this is one of the most frustrating design issues on mobile. While desktop versions enjoy the benefit of accurate mouse cursors, thumbs and fingers have a habit of missing their mark on smaller screens and mobile devices. 

Sometimes responsive design looking to optimize layouts and available space will tend to bunch clickable elements together or shrink them down as they scale with smaller screens. This can cause frustration among users and even cause a site’s accuracy, navigability, and UX to degrade.  

Developers must pay attention to how buttons will be affected by their responsive design approach, considering that not all thumbs, fingers and eyes were created equal.

Putting design over functionality 

While a website that looks good on both desktop and mobile is important, a website should, first and foremost, work. Users who access an attractive site will naturally assume that an equivalent amount of effort has been invested in its utility. So, one can imagine the anger at a website that doesn’t work as well as it looks. Anger that can lead to significant drops in traffic and reputation.

The same goes for the level of functionality between desktop and mobile. A desktop site that sets a benchmark for good design and operability only to fail miserably on the mobile front would be better off not even bothering with mobile at all. 

Go beyond developer perceptions by testing with different niches and using effective prototyping to ensure that the design matches its functionality.

Having a separate URL for mobile 

Making use of separate URLs between desktop and mobile website versions is a design killer, wasting precious time and damaging your search rankings. Aside from frustrating users by ferrying them back and forth between each version, using multiple URLs goes against SEO best practices and are often unnecessary.

In some cases, however, using multiple URLs can allow developers to create lightweight mobile versions of websites that perform better on mobile devices, though only in instances where the desktop version is very anti-mobile.

Not accounting for future maintenance and development costs

Development costs money, and oftentimes, design decisions are taken based on short-term financial considerations without thinking about what the future holds.

While adaptive web design requires higher upfront investment owing to the labor-intensive nature of its development, AWD maintenance costs generally remain stable down the line. 

Responsive web design, on the other hand, can lead to unexpected cost implications. However, the rewards stemming from an improved UX may offset those financial risks.

Design UI in UXPin

If you’d like to start mocking up your own adaptive user interface design, you can do so with UXPin. The collaborative platform comes with pre-set and custom breakpoints. Once you’re done, activate Spec Mode to automate your design handoff to developers.

Use UXPin to build prototypes for mobiles, desktops, and everything in between. Try various interactive prototyping features and make your design easy to understand for stakeholders and engineers. Start a free trial.

The post Responsive Design vs. Adaptive Design: What’s the Best Choice for Designers? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

The argument about how design fits into the workflow of web development is a constant struggle.

We often hear designers say, “can we develop these new onboarding flows and put them into the app?! It will massively improve our conversions.”

Then, developers come back with “no. Those onboarding flows are much more complicated than you think, and they use elements we’ve never coded before. I don’t think we should do this.”

And that’s just a basic example.

Let’s take that situation and scale it up to a team of 20 developers and 5 designers. The result is inconsistencies in design patterns, broken onboarding flows, one week of wasted developer time, slow mobile web-pages, and one date picker that looks like it’s from 1995.

Here at UXPin, we’ve seen this situation happen over and over again. UXPin with Merge technology helps designers build interfaces with coded components from MUI, Ant design, and more. The components look like flat UI components on the surface but they are, in fact, ready for production. Try UXPin Merge for free.

Reach a new level of prototyping

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

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Where does the designer to developer disconnect come from?

We see a disconnect between designers and developers, as the designers are tasked to imagine what could be, and the developers are tasked with the materialisation of it.

Some people say the solution is that designers should learn to code. If designers could code, then they would understand the challenges at play when developing the product.

On the other hand, some people say that developers should design. If developers just had a better design mind from the get-go maybe we wouldn’t need the designer at all.

As we know, both of these perspectives are completely wrong. 

Developers and designers: two completely unique roles

Developers have a specific skill set. They know deeply how to put websites and apps together. But understanding how a user will respond to an app is not intuitive. The UX needs to be researched and reiterated. It’s a full time job to study your users and identify how they move through your app.

Designers need to be looking at their population of users to identify how they behave. Constant and reiterative design needs to occur before an app can be positioned well to cope with the behaviour of users. 

UX designers have a unique skill set for understanding user psychology, and they need to be focused on careful experimentation on pages.

But how do developers cope with the constant demands of designers while simultaneously building the product according to the customer’s needs?

We need a tool that helps designers use code without coding

Even if a designer knew how to code, the challenge of optimizing design implementation would remain. Understanding the whole product’s existing components, functionalities, and branding takes a ton of time, regardless of who is doing the work. 

If we’re aiming to design in a way that re-uses the most pre-existing components, we would still need someone to go and catalogue everything existing in the app to date. As well, other analysis would need to take place to make sure the designs fit the exact parameters.

We can’t assign this operations job to the designer or the developer, as both of these roles are already well defined. The designer’s role is already a full time job, with deliverables related to UX research, UX design, and conversion rate optimization. A developer has their hands full with building and coding features.

We need a real solution that improves the design and development workflow.

We need a tool that outlines all of the existing components and elements in a specific repository in a visual, drag and drop way. This would allow designers to pick and choose from the menu of existing components while making new designs.

Introducing UXPin Merge

UXPin with Merge technology is a design tool that leverages dev tools through Git and Storybook integrations. Sounds great, but what does that mean?

First, we have Git integration. Merge allows you to import existing components from your Git repo into UXPin design editor. 

Second, we have an integration with Storybook, an open source UI development tool.

UXPin has built an integration with Storybook that allows you to use your existing design components directly in Storybook. This means you can use a library of your existing design components when building out your next UI changes.

Then, you can just pass the design to a developer and have him use the code that he already has to build your new product.

Let’s dive in deeper.

Part 1 – UXPin Merge

UXPin Merge is a drag-and-drop UI builder for creating interfaces with coded components. It has built-in libraries available on trial and paid plans.

It also allows you to import your design components from your Git repository or Storybook into the UXPin editor. This integration is currently only for the React framework, allowing you to pull in React components and work with them directly in UXPin. 

Your components will get stored in your UXPin design libraries, and any new components or updates will automatically sync into your library.

The functions of your components, and how they function, are also directly visible in your UXPin editor. This allows you to see mouse-overs, auto-fills, text field suggestions, emphasis animations and more directly in your UXPin editor.

Everything that you design with UXPin Merge will be coded exactly to spec by your developers. Why? Because all of the code in your design already exists in devs’ Git Repo. Your developer won’t have to make anything new.

Part 2 – The UXPin Storybook integration

The UXPin storybook integration allows you to use your existing design components, imported from Storybook- public or private. As in Git integration, you can change properties and add new interactions to parts of the ready components if you want to.

Consistency achieved

UXPin Merge solves DesignOps problems quickly. Designers use components that are already existing in order to do their design. If they need to change items, they know exactly which components to change, as well as every page that will be affected once that change is made.

There aren’t three versions of the same component throughout your site, making your site easy to build, change, and keep consistent. 

Should designers learn to code? 

Why learn to code if you can do your job with a no-code interface.

For designers, learning to code will give you a wider perspective, and give you more life experience to draw from when designing your app. However, it’s not necessary to learn to code when you can improve your design-dev communication by using the right tools. 

Therefore, as the world trends towards making code more accessible, our answer to this question trends towards “no”. Designers should improve themselves not by learning to code, but by getting better and better at design.

We build teams so that we can bring people with different skills together. We need people who are thinking about UX 100% of the time so that our apps can actually measure up to the needs of our users. We need people who can code rapidly, and we need them to code without being weighed down by UX design questions. 

With UXPin Merge we can bring these two sides together so that the two sides of our web development teams can actually work together easily.

The post Should Designers Code? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

User-friendly design is a fundamental aspect of UI and UX design, driven by a desire to make technology more accessible and usable for everyone.

Over the years, designers have developed methodologies, best practices, and design principles to create interfaces that prioritize user needs and enhance usability. As technology continues to evolve, user-friendly design remains a critical consideration in creating successful digital experiences.

How to tell that your interface is user-friendly? You need to test it! You can’t test a static prototype. That’s where UXPin comes in. It’s an easy-to-use tool for functional prototyping that increase the quality and impact of user testing. See how fast it is to build interfaces with UXPin. Try UXPin for free.

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What is the definition of user-friendly?

User-friendly is a term that describes products, interfaces, or systems designed with the user’s ease of use and convenience in mind. It signifies that the item in question is intuitive, easy to understand, and navigate, enabling users to accomplish tasks with minimal effort and frustration.

In an English dictionary, “user-friendly” is typically defined as an adjective that describes something (such as a product, system, or interface) that is easy to use or understand, especially for the end user. It suggests that the item or system is designed for the user’s convenience and ease of interaction.

The term “user-friendly” originated in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) and user interface (UI) design, referring to systems or interfaces that are easy for users to understand and interact with.

Looking at the history, there are some “eras” of user-friendliness.

1. Early Computing (1960s-1970s): In the early days of computing, interfaces were primarily text-based and designed for technical users. User-friendliness was not a significant consideration, as the user base was limited to professionals and researchers familiar with computer systems.
2. Graphical User Interfaces (1980s-1990s): The introduction of graphical user interfaces (GUIs), popularized by systems like the Xerox Star, Apple Macintosh, and Microsoft Windows, marked a significant shift in UI design. GUIs utilized icons, windows, menus, and pointing devices (e.g., mice) to make computing more accessible to non-technical users.
3. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Research (1980s-Present): HCI emerged as a field of study focusing on the interaction between humans and computers. Researchers investigated cognitive psychology, usability engineering, and user-centered design methods to improve the user-friendliness of interfaces.
4. Web and Mobile Interfaces (1990s-Present): The proliferation of the internet and mobile devices led to new challenges and opportunities in UI design. Designers had to adapt interfaces for various screen sizes, input methods, and browsing contexts, leading to the development of responsive design principles and mobile-friendly practices.
5. User-Centered Design (UCD) and Usability Testing (1990s-Present): User-centered design (UCD) became a dominant approach in UI design, emphasizing the importance of involving users throughout the design process. Usability testing methods, such as interviews, surveys, and usability studies, helped designers identify usability issues and iterate on designs to improve user-friendliness.
6. Accessibility and Inclusive Design (2000s-Present): With a growing awareness of accessibility issues, designers began incorporating inclusive design principles to ensure that interfaces are usable by individuals with disabilities. This includes considerations such as screen reader compatibility, keyboard navigation, and color contrast.
7. Emergence of User Experience (UX) Design (2000s-Present): User experience (UX) design expanded the focus beyond usability to encompass the holistic experience of using a product or service. UX designers consider emotional engagement, brand perception, and user satisfaction alongside usability principles to create user-friendly experiences.

What is a user-friendly system?

A user-friendly system is intuitive, efficient, and accessible, allowing users to accomplish tasks or goals with minimal effort and frustration.

User-friendliness often involves clear communication, intuitive design, logical workflows, and consideration for the diverse needs and abilities of users. It aims to provide a positive and satisfying user experience by prioritizing usability and ease of use.

Whether it’s software, websites, appliances, or any other product, user-friendly design prioritizes the needs and expectations of its users, aiming to provide a positive and efficient interaction experience.

What are the characteristics of user-friendliness?

From a design perspective, user-friendliness encompasses several principles and considerations aimed at creating interfaces that are intuitive, efficient, and enjoyable to use, as well as prioritize usability and accessibility.

1. Intuitiveness: Users can easily understand how to navigate and interact with the interface without the need for extensive instructions or prior knowledge.
2. Clarity: The interface communicates information clearly and concisely, using language and visual elements that are easily comprehensible to the target audience.
3. Consistency: Elements such as layout, color scheme, typography, and navigation patterns remain consistent throughout the interface, providing a cohesive and familiar experience.
4. Feedback: The interface provides users with clear feedback on their actions, informing them of any errors, progress, or changes in state.
5. Efficiency: Users can accomplish tasks efficiently and with minimal effort, thanks to logical workflows, well-organized content, and streamlined interactions.
6. Accessibility: The interface is designed to accommodate users with various disabilities and needs, ensuring that everyone can access and use the system effectively.
7. Flexibility: The interface allows users to customize their experience to some extent, adapting to individual preferences or requirements.
8. Error Handling: Error messages are presented in a helpful and non-threatening manner, guiding users toward resolving issues without causing frustration or confusion.
9. Visual Appeal: While functionality is paramount, a visually appealing app or web design can enhance the user experience, making the interface more inviting and engaging.
10. Responsive Design: Interfaces that adapt seamlessly to different devices and screen sizes ensure that users can access and use the system across a range of platforms without sacrificing usability.

Examples of user-friendly interfaces

Spotify

Spotify’s user-friendly design prioritizes simplicity, personalization, and convenience, providing users with a seamless and enjoyable music streaming experience.

Here’s why Spotify’s interface is considered user-friendly:

1. Intuitive Navigation: Spotify features a simple and intuitive interface that allows users to easily navigate through the app. The main navigation menu, located at the bottom of the screen, provides quick access to essential sections such as Home, Search, Library, and Your Library.
2. Personalized Recommendations: Spotify utilizes sophisticated algorithms to offer personalized music recommendations based on users’ listening history, preferences, and behavior. The “Discover Weekly” playlist and personalized daily mixes provide users with fresh music tailored to their tastes, enhancing the overall listening experience.
3. Search Functionality: Spotify’s search functionality is robust, allowing users to quickly find artists, albums, songs, playlists, and podcasts. The search results are displayed in a clear and organized manner, making it easy for users to locate the content they’re looking for.
4. Playlist Creation and Organization: Spotify makes it easy for users to create and organize playlists according to their preferences. Users can easily add songs to playlists, reorder tracks, and rename playlists, providing a seamless music curation experience.
5. Offline Listening: Spotify allows users to download songs, albums, playlists, and podcasts for offline listening. This feature is especially useful for users who want to listen to music without an internet connection, such as during travel or in areas with limited connectivity.
6. Cross-Platform Syncing: Spotify offers seamless synchronization across multiple devices, including smartphones, tablets, computers, smart speakers, and gaming consoles. Users can start listening to music on one device and continue seamlessly on another, without interruption.
7. Accessibility Features: Spotify’s interface is designed to be accessible to users with disabilities. It includes features such as voice commands, text-to-speech support, and customizable font sizes and color schemes, ensuring that all users can enjoy the platform regardless of their abilities.

Gmail

Google’s email service, is renowned for its user-friendly design, which has evolved over the years to prioritize simplicity, efficiency, and organization. Here’s how Gmail achieves its user-friendly interface:

1. Clean and Intuitive Layout: Gmail’s interface features a clean and minimalist design, with intuitive navigation elements that make it easy for users to access their emails, compose new messages, and manage their inbox.
2. Tabbed Inbox: Gmail’s tabbed inbox automatically categorizes incoming emails into different tabs such as Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates, and Forums. This helps users prioritize and manage their emails more effectively, reducing clutter and improving organization.
3. Powerful Search Functionality: Gmail’s search functionality is robust, allowing users to quickly find emails using keywords, sender names, subject lines, and other criteria. Advanced search operators further enhance the search experience, enabling users to narrow down their search results with precision.
4. Conversation View: Gmail’s conversation view groups related emails into threaded conversations, making it easier for users to follow the flow of communication. This feature reduces inbox clutter and streamlines the email reading experience, particularly for lengthy email chains.
5. Customizable Settings: Gmail offers a wide range of customizable settings and preferences, allowing users to tailor their email experience to suit their needs and preferences. Users can adjust settings related to inbox layout, email forwarding, filters, signatures, and more.
6. Integration with Google Services: Gmail seamlessly integrates with other Google services such as Google Drive, Google Calendar, and Google Meet. This integration allows users to access and share files, schedule events, and join video meetings directly from their inbox, enhancing productivity and collaboration.
7. Responsive Design: Gmail’s mobile apps for iOS and Android devices feature a responsive design optimized for smaller screens. The mobile apps offer a user-friendly interface that retains key functionalities from the desktop version, allowing users to access their emails on the go.
8. Sence of security: Gmail prioritizes user security with built-in features such as spam filtering, phishing protection, two-factor authentication, and confidential mode. These features help safeguard users’ email accounts and sensitive information from unauthorized access and malicious attacks.

Amazon

While Amazon’s interface may not be aesthetically pleasing to everyone, its user-friendliness lies in its functional design, intuitive navigation, personalized recommendations, and convenient features that prioritize the needs and preferences of its diverse user base.

1. Clear Navigation: Despite its busy appearance, Amazon’s interface is logically organized, with clear navigation menus and search functionalities prominently displayed. Users can easily find what they’re looking for without getting lost in the clutter.
2. Comprehensive Search: Amazon’s powerful search engine allows users to quickly locate products by name, category, brand, or even specific features. The autocomplete feature and advanced filtering options help users narrow down their search results efficiently.
3. Detailed Product Information: Each product listing on Amazon includes comprehensive details, specifications, images, and customer reviews. This wealth of information empowers users to make informed purchasing decisions without needing to visit multiple sources.
4. Personalization: Amazon employs sophisticated algorithms to personalize the user experience. It recommends products based on past purchases, browsing history, and preferences, making it easier for users to discover relevant items.
5. Convenient Checkout Process: Amazon streamlines the checkout process by offering various payment options, saved shipping addresses, and one-click purchasing. This reduces friction and enhances the overall user experience.
6. Prime Benefits: Amazon Prime membership offers additional perks, such as free two-day shipping, exclusive deals, streaming services, and more. These benefits incentivize users to engage with the platform regularly and contribute to its user-friendly reputation.
7. Customer Service: Amazon’s commitment to customer service is a key factor in its user-friendliness. It provides robust customer support channels, including live chat, email, and phone support, as well as a hassle-free returns policy, instilling trust and confidence in users.

TikTok

TikTok, a widely popular social media platform, also boasts a user-friendly interface tailored to mobile devices. Here are some key aspects of TikTok’s user-friendly interface:

1. Feed: The main feed of TikTok displays a continuous stream of short video clips, tailored to the user’s interests based on their interactions with the app. This algorithmic feed ensures that users are constantly presented with engaging content without having to search for it manually.
2. Discoverability: TikTok’s interface makes it easy for users to discover new content and creators. The “For You” page provides personalized recommendations, while the “Discover” tab allows users to explore trending challenges, hashtags, and categories.
3. Video Creation Tools: TikTok offers a wide range of intuitive video creation tools, including filters, effects, soundtracks, and editing features. The interface is designed to be user-friendly, allowing users to quickly record, edit, and share creative videos directly from their smartphones.
4. Engagement Features: TikTok encourages user engagement through features like likes, comments, shares, and duets (where users can create split-screen videos with other users). These interaction options are easily accessible within the interface, fostering a sense of community and collaboration among users.
5. Accessibility: TikTok’s interface is designed to be accessible and easy to navigate for users of all ages and backgrounds. The layout is clean and intuitive, with prominent buttons and icons guiding users through the app’s various features and functions.

Overall, TikTok’s user-friendly interface plays a significant role in its widespread adoption and popularity among users worldwide, enabling seamless content consumption, creation, and engagement within the platform.

How to make your interface user-friendly

Here’s how to make your interface user-friendly:

1. Simplicity: Keep the interface clean and uncluttered, prioritizing essential elements and minimizing distractions.
2. Intuitiveness: Design the interface so that users can easily understand how to navigate and interact with it without the need for extensive instructions.
3. Organization: Group related elements together logically and provide clear visual cues to help users understand the structure of the interface.
4. Personalization: Offer personalized recommendations or customization options to cater to the individual preferences and needs of users.
5. Efficiency: Streamline workflows and interactions to allow users to accomplish tasks quickly and with minimal effort.
6. Feedback: Provide users with clear feedback on their actions, such as confirmation messages, error notifications, or progress indicators.
7. Accessibility: Ensure that the interface is accessible to users of all abilities, with features such as keyboard shortcuts, screen reader compatibility, and adjustable font sizes.
8. Consistency: Maintain consistency in design elements, layout, terminology, and interaction patterns throughout the interface to provide a cohesive and familiar experience.
9. Integration: Integrate with other relevant services or platforms to provide users with a seamless experience across different tools and devices.
10. Security: Implement security features to protect users’ data and privacy, such as encryption, secure authentication methods, and proactive threat detection.

What is another word for user-friendly?

Another word for “user-friendly” is “intuitive” when you open a thesaurus. Both terms can be regarded as synonyms that describe interface designs that are easy for users to understand, navigate, and interact with, often requiring minimal instruction or prior knowledge.

Conversely, an unfriendly user interface may be called unintuitive, confusing, frustrating, or cumbersome. These terms describe interfaces that are difficult to navigate, lack clear organization, provide little feedback, and overall hinder the user’s ability to accomplish tasks efficiently.

Such interfaces may also be described as counterintuitive, unfocused, overwhelming, or inaccessible, as they fail to prioritize user needs and preferences. Ultimately, an unfriendly user interface detracts from the user experience, leading to frustration and dissatisfaction.

Software applications that are overly complex, difficult to navigate, and require specialized knowledge to use effectively can be considered not user-friendly, as they may frustrate users and impede their productivity.

Does user-friendly and ease of use mean the same thing?

While “user-friendly” and “easy to use” are related concepts, they are not exactly the same.

“User-friendly” generally refers to products, interfaces, or systems that are designed with the user’s ease of use and convenience in mind. A user-friendly product or interface is intuitive, efficient, and accessible, allowing users to accomplish tasks or goals with minimal effort and frustration. It encompasses various aspects such as intuitiveness, clarity, efficiency, feedback, accessibility, and flexibility, all aimed at providing a positive and satisfying user experience.

On the other hand, “easy to use” specifically emphasizes the simplicity and straightforwardness of interacting with a product or interface. A product that is easy to use is one where users can quickly understand how to navigate, operate, and accomplish tasks without encountering unnecessary complexity or confusion.

In essence, user-friendliness contributes to ease of use, but it also encompasses additional factors such as accessibility, feedback mechanisms, and flexibility that enhance the overall user experience. Therefore, while user-friendly products are often easy to use, not all easy-to-use products may necessarily be considered fully user-friendly.

Create user-friendly interfaces with UXPin

To craft a user-friendly interface, prioritize simplicity and clarity to prevent overwhelming users. Ensure intuitive navigation, organizing features logically, and offer personalization options for user customization.

Streamline workflows for efficiency and provide clear feedback to enhance user understanding. Design with accessibility in mind and maintain consistency throughout the interface. Seamless integration with relevant services and a focus on security and privacy round out the approach. By following these principles, you can create an interface that fosters user satisfaction and engagement.

Build user-friendly interfaces in UXPin, a prototyping tool that will make your design highly interactive and collaborative. Streamline UI design, design handoff, and keep your design consistent between design and development. Try UXPin for free.

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