According to data, over 250,000 websites are created daily. 250,000 more pages that people can see every day. You are one of them, and no one in this world is creating a website for just themself; everyone wants visitors.
Having an exemplary user interface that can hook the users up becomes as essential as having a website in 2003.
You must focus on the User Interface and User Experience to stand out with your business.
Here, in this blog, for the next 15 minutes, we’ll be discussing User Interface and User Experience and why you need to focus on both of them equally.
So, What Is User Interface Design?
User Interface Design or UI Design :-
In the most straightforward words, I’ll say No, let’s not say anything, hold up.
Just Do what I say. For the next 30 Seconds by the clock, Leave The Blog Here and.
Have a look. A look at this whole page, see what things are on the page. See how everything is placed and come back.
CONTINUE FROM HERE
So, what did you see?
Did you see where the heading is written? What comes after that?
What’s all there on the right side?
What’s after that this blog ends?
In how many segments are the footer and header divided into? Things that we have in separate blocks of the footer. Is it vertical or horizontal or a combination of both?
Was it easy for you to spot different things? Is everything readable?
This is the User Interface.
Everything that is on this page is the User Interface. The physical placement of every block of data that is here is User Interface Design.
Now, look around, think about anything, you’ll realize everything has a design.
Good, bad, noisy, or whatever, but the invention is present everywhere.
The goal of User Interface Design is to create designs that make users feel comfortable.
I think you probably got a fair idea of what User Interface Design Is.
USER INTERFACE DESIGN PROCESS
Now, if you go on Google and try to search “User Interface Design Process,” you’ll see people talking about different strategies, and everyone has a rule book.
Change is the only constant. You have to be very open-minded & cautious while thinking about the design.
However, few fundamentals will always remain the same. Just like a square will always have four sides, few UI design fundamentals will never change till the end of time. (Link to another blog here whenever it comes)
The number one thing to keep in mind is to keep it simple for the consumers, and they should not get lost in your design and find it hard to locate items.
Here are a few tips that you might want to apply while working on a project’s user interface.
● The first part of the process is to gather all the information that is required on the page. All the text, images, infographics, any form, technique, and make a list of everything. Make sure that you are not missing anything important.
● Now it’s all about doing the research, talking with consumers, seeing the competitors, and knowing how you can do it.
● Then you can come up with a few sketches or templates which you feel you can use further. Sit with your team, try to figure out what can be added or eliminated. Work with the colors and text size and make sure that everything is visible properly while focusing on the leading juice of the page.
● Then design the page as per your prototype and the templates you finalized after all the research and prototyping.
● The final step is to evaluate the design before you deploy it. See if everything fits in well. Ask for reviews from people. Do necessary changes as per requirement and then deploy on the primary location.
WHY USER INTERFACE DESIGN OR UI DESIGN IS IMPORTANT FOR ANY BUSINESS
● First of all, search engines nowadays focus on the UI design of the website. If you want your page to rank on Google, you need to work on the UI and ensure it’s good on all the devices like computers, laptops, and mobiles. So having a good UI will help you with SEO.
● Also, UI enhances your interaction with the potential visitor and might be one step that can turn a visitor into a customer.
● A Good UI might help you get rid of many unnecessary things that aren’t required. Imagine a wardrobe; which one will you like more, a messed up one or something adequately arranged? That’s how people feel when they are on your website; let them think at ease in getting what they want.
● Designing a UI first will help stakeholders get an idea of the final project and will help you save time and money.
WHAT IS USER EXPERIENCE or UX
Okay, so we finally understood what User Interface is. We realized the value of design, and we also learned that it could bring value to your business in different ways.
But, is it enough? Or is there anything more?
Wait!
What we discussed was just the tip of the glacier; there is much more to it.
Let me make it simple, and break your curiosity for you.
“User Interface Designing is just part of User Experience.”
Yes! User Experience involves everything that creates an experience for the user.
When you start thinking about your brand, you’re thinking about the experience you want to deliver to your client.
Working on how you’re going to make the user feel is user experience. For now, we’ll talk only about how user experience is involved in the websites.
Okay! Again,
I’ll make it easy for you to understand what User Experience is.
You already experienced it back when I told you to look at the website when we were talking about User Interface Design.
See the image below.
And I think you were able to hop back in at the exact point where you left the reading.
How do you think it happened? Automatically?
NO!
It’s due to that Red bold text visible out of the crowd telling you to Continue From Here.
This is User Experience. Anything that we can do to enhance a page for users is a part of the user experience.
Every little thing that a user might or might not notice or praise us for, but we care, so we have to work on every little thing to make it an excellent experience.
In simple words, User experience is making users feel easy and comfortable while using a website and making their whole experience very easy and intuitive from the very beginning to the very end while they’re on the website.
Of course, we have our Contact page in the header; tell me you thought it wasn’t there?
Suppose you’re on a website and feel like connecting with them, your brain will pre-assume that they have a contact page, and you’ll somewhere also assume that it is in the website header; if not, in the footer for sure you know it’s there.
And if it’s not there, you’ll get disappointed. Because now you have to struggle a little to connect with them. That will be a bad user experience.
● Imagine Amazon asking you to enter your home address every time you want to buy something.
● Imagine Google showing no search suggestions on the search bars.
● Imagine no notification when your friend or favorite influencer posts something on their social media.
All of these things are done to enhance the user experience.
That is the difference that user experience creates when we have users in mind while designing the product.
However, user experience is not just about designing the web page; it includes everything, from the experience of landing on a page to clicking on the buttons, the time it takes in loading, filling a form, buying a product, everything.
Amazon One-Click Buy technology is also an excellent experience for the buyers, with no hassle, just one click and buy. They also patented the tech because they know how big of a deal it is.
User Experience as a whole is How the user’s experience is; from one page to move from one page to another; everything should be flawless for the user.
USER EXPERIENCE/UX DESIGN PROCESS
Although many frames and processes can be used for designing the UX and
There are a few principles and procedures that we follow that help in creating a better user experience.
● The first thing that we do while working on the UX of a project is Empathise.
We should understand what our audience is. What are their requirements?
This is mainly the research phase. We do our research by interviewing users, auditing the direct and indirect competitors, and discussing with all coworkers and anyone we can get in the room.
● We also create user prototypes, stories, and journey maps that help us understand a more transparent user journey path. Just collect every sort of information that we can get without judging anything in the first place.
● After this, what we do is filter and design. We filter out and create designs and wireframes which contain all the functionality of the final product. We can say that here we design a prototype of the final product, which we will deploy. We do the necessary changes and edits till we come up with the best possible prototype.
● After everything is done, we finally jot down things together on the final project and come up with the product the consumer will use.
WHY USER EXPERIENCE/UX IS ESSENTIAL FOR BUSINESSES
While working on the user experience, the sole goal of this process is to make the website friendly for the user.
Why do we do it?
● So that the user doesn’t move to any other competition platform and stays loyal to the brand and its product/service.
● While working on User Experience, you’ll give through different phases, which will help you get an idea of the final product in the very beginning, which you’ll ultimately iterate, again and again, leading to better final products.
● It will also help you save a lot of time and money.
● It enables the stakeholders to get a visual of the final product.
● Only brands that think about the UX are going to create something of value and long-lasting products.
Also, while working on the UX, we focus on the accessibility of the product/service so that it is accessible easily by different groups of people, which ultimately broadens the scope of the product or service.
And the more we diversify the accessibility of the product and service, the better it gets for the regular users, and that’s how some of the biggest things are found.
For example, when the typewriter came out, it was a product for blind people. People who can see found the typewriter of no use. Later the typewriter became one of the most significant inventions of humans and was used by everyone because it did work efficiently, even for the people who could see.
Also, we got the idea of the keyboard from the typewriter, and it inspired the modern computer.
What a typewriter did was enhance the user experience of both the writer and the reader.