7 Key Points To Improve UX Design

You should care a lot about these basic UX points that affect usability.

To improve UX, you need to know what the “weak spots” of the interface are. There’re typical “trouble areas” a designer should pay special attention to. Usually, these are the points where you should look for the reasons for bad user experience.

Any changes mean a time and resource investment and must be justified. The sooner a problem is discovered, the easier and cheaper you can fix it.

In an ideal scenario, a UX audit should be conducted before UX improvements. However, knowledge of the basic rules of UX testing and tools for improving it is necessary for every designer to grow professionally.

For testing, you should involve real users who aren’t designers.

So where are the most common problems hiding?

1. User research

The basis for interface designing is the results of marketing research. Without knowing the target audience, its tastes, preferences, motives, and goals, any attempt to make a good design will fail. This is the foundation of the house, without which it will collapse.

Check if you have collected the full information about the users. Are their portraits and behavioral patterns thought out? Do you have enough information about the product and is there a concept for how to get your audience interested in it?

Make sure you fully understand your users and know how to meet their expectations.

2. Design concept

Some designers misunderstand the essence of a design concept. This is not about creativity or trendy and custom design.

A design concept is an idea behind a design that you use to convey your client’s message to users. The design concept must, first of all, meet the expectations of users and solve the tasks of the website (application).

Make sure your design concept meets the main objectives set.

3. User flow

Unbethought or ill-conceived user flow is a common problem. It’s important to check the following:

• Is the user performing the actions in the correct order?
• Do all scripts and processes have logical ends?
• How quickly does the user reach the goal?
• Have you prevented possible mistakes?
• Are there obstacles on the way and can they be eliminated?

People come from different entry points. On their way, there are decision points (moments of interaction). Test if user behavior corresponds to your planned scenario, do they go through key moments of interaction exactly as you intended? How many clicks do they make to the result, is it possible to reduce their number and remove all unnecessary ones?

If the flow is not going according to plan or there are obstacles, it’s necessary to change the structure of visual design and information architecture of the website (application), even if you really don’t want to. This is essential.

Make sure your user flow is a pleasant and easy journey, oriented to fulfilling the user’s desire.

4. Reasonable visual

Good visual manages users’ attention. It makes the road to the goal visible, predictable, and understandable. A bad design can ruin the user flow and lead astray. This happens when the visual hierarchy is broken, accents are missing, or placed incorrectly.

Displaced accents lead the user away from the goal, unnecessary animation distracts, visual “overload” diverts attention. If the content isn’t perceived (incomprehensible, too voluminous, unattractive, doesn’t draw attention, etc.) — the reason can be not only bad design but also poor awareness of the tastes of the audience or an unsuccessful concept (clauses 1 and 2).

Good visual design means:

• a clear and understandable path to the goal;
• attention management;
• clear visual hierarchy;
• correct accentuation of points of interaction;
• competent presentation of content;
• effective calls to action;
• contrasts of images and fonts, visual rhythm, balance;
• responsiveness and communication;
• emotional impact.

Make sure your visual design creates a gaze motion trajectory that corresponds to the user flow.

5. Optimization of interactions

Communications and interactions are the means for connection with the user, the most important part of UX. The interface should be a friend and helper for the user, with whom it’s pleasant to communicate. For this, you need to:

• Provide visual feedback on the state of the system;
• Prevent the occurrence of errors;
• Show friendly and encouraging error messages;
• Separate features that incur lengthy scenarios to reduce the probability of accidental use;
• Provide the possibility to easily undo actions;
• Minimize the negative effect of interrupted activities;
• Save information about the user’s previous actions (so that they don’t enter the data all over again, but could correct it);
• Create responsive clickable zones (with the help of size, color, animation).
• Create moments of emotional interaction.

Use these and other possible methods to make your interface as smart, caring, responsive, and “human” as possible.

Make sure your interface visually “communicates” with the user, helps them avoid mistakes and achieves their goals.

6. Readability from any device

To make the site content look good on any device, you can use an adaptive, fluid, or responsive layout, depending on your tasks. However, first of all, you need to orient towards user convenience.

Responsive layout is optimal in many cases. It allows you to transform the layout by rearranging elements using breakpoints. Responsive design uses vectors that don’t overload the page and don’t change visually at any stretch.

Make sure that you provided a good display of your interface on all devices.

Services for testing of adaptability:

1. https://responsivedesignchecker.com/
2. https://www.browserstack.com/
3. https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-gb/feature/testmysite/
4. https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

7. Accessibility

Accessibility means the possibility to use a digital product for people with different physical abilities, in any environment and situation (on different devices, with different scalability and lighting, with different control methods). Provide an option of equal access for all. High accessibility means acquiring as many users as possible and is well worth the effort.

Make sure that you took care of accessibility and comfort for all of your users in all circumstances.

The user’s goal is not to appreciate the advantages of the interface. Their goal is to get what they came to the page for, and the designer's task is to help them achieve what they want.

Also published at https://medium.com/outcrowd/how-to-improve-ux-design-cd5957f98b71