How to Improve the UI/UX of Your Web Design
Mastering your UX/UI design skills is essential for crafting products or services that resonate with your users. By offering visually appealing interfaces and an exceptional user experience, you can captivate and leave a positive impression on your user base.
We at Ravyn Design, a web design agency in Toronto, have compiled a set of fantastic UX/UI techniques and insights that you can readily apply to assist you in developing aesthetically pleasing design solutions for your website, application, or any digital product you're working on.
1. Arrange Buttons Strategically
Users naturally follow a left-to-right reading pattern. In the poorly designed scenario, users first notice "Delete," then "Cancel," and finally return to "Delete." Conversely, in the well-structured version, user focus flows sequentially from "Cancel" to "Delete." In this context, we can infer that "Delete" suggests forward movement (often associated with rightward progression), while "Cancel" implies a backward action (usually symbolized by a leftward step).
2. User-Friendly Cards
To create user-friendly cards, it's crucial to prioritize quick and efficient information retrieval. Visual differentiation plays a pivotal role in achieving this goal. Incorporating elements like icons, bold text, varying font sizes, and other unique visual cues is essential. These design strategies serve as signposts, guiding users to critical content. When users can easily spot what they're looking for, it enhances their experience, saves them valuable time, and reduces frustration. Ultimately, well-designed cards not only improve usability but also contribute to a more positive and efficient interaction, making it easier for users to navigate and extract the information they need.
3. Common UX/UI Selectors
These three selector types—checkboxes, radio buttons, and toggle switches—are commonly employed in UX/UI design. Radio buttons are utilized when selecting a single option from a set of choices is necessary. Conversely, checkboxes serve the purpose when multiple options from a selection set can be chosen. Toggle switches, on the other hand, find their use when toggling between two distinct states (On/Off) is required. These adjustments can significantly enhance user satisfaction with your product.
4. Maintain Icon Consistency in Your UI
When incorporating icons into your designs, ensure they maintain a consistent style throughout. Avoid blending different icon styles, such as combining simple icons with complex ones or mixing outlined icons with filled ones. By preserving icon uniformity, your designs will exude professionalism and aesthetic appeal, presenting a cohesive and polished visual experience.
5. Enhance Text Style for Better Appeal and Readability
You can employ various techniques to improve the visual appeal and legibility of your headings and paragraphs. Play around with elements like white space, size, line spacing, colour, font weight, and letter spacing to create an aesthetically pleasing look. It's crucial to establish a clear contrast between headings and paragraph text by making headings more prominent and darker than the body text, which enhances readability.
However, avoid complicating the design excessively; prioritize legibility and easy reading over elaborate visuals. When experimenting with colours, utilize contrast checker tools to ensure compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), aiming for at least WCAG AA standards as a rule.
6. Simplify Forms for Improved User Experience (UX)
Multiple studies on eye tracking have consistently found that positioning labels to the left of input fields necessitates more eye movement and adds to users' cognitive workload. A more user-friendly approach is to position labels above the input fields. If, for some reason, you choose to disregard this recommendation and opt for left-aligned labels, ensure that the labels are right-aligned to mitigate usability issues.
7. Get Creative
As commonly understood, initial impressions hold significant importance. The visual appeal of something can be the decisive factor in capturing someone's attention. This principle extends to written material as well. To ensure that your readers can effortlessly access the information they seek, employing visual distinctions becomes crucial. This entails the utilization of icons, bold text, varying font sizes, and additional visual indicators to grant essential content a unique appearance that sets it apart from the rest. By adopting this approach, you facilitate your users in promptly identifying the necessary information, ultimately saving them valuable time and effort.
8. Enhance Password Fields
Incorporate visibility options for password input components in your design. Provide users with the option to reveal the password they've entered by including an eye icon to the right of the password field. Allowing users to easily view their passwords upon clicking the icon greatly improves user experience. Failing to provide this feature can lead to frustrating user experiences, particularly on mobile devices, potentially resulting in an increased volume of password reset requests.
9. Correct Use of Text Over Images
When crafting components featuring text atop a background image, it's crucial to prioritize legibility, particularly when scalability is a concern. For instance, while light text on a darker background image may appear readable, it's essential to assess its legibility when a lighter background image is utilized. It's prudent to consider various scenarios, especially when user-generated content comes into play, to ensure that the component maintains optimal performance regardless of the background employed.
To guarantee text visibility and legibility across any image backdrop, several approaches can be employed. You can opt to overlay the text with a layer blur that complements the image's tone or employ a background blur, both of which serve to enhance readability.
10. The Significance of Empty States
Empty states are often overlooked in UX/UI design, yet they have the potential to yield substantial business advantages and, when executed effectively, can enhance the overall user experience significantly. When crafting empty states, apply creative thinking and strategic planning to steer clear of unproductive dead-end scenarios. Instead, provide users with guidance, suggestions, or actionable prompts. Consider incorporating illustrations and icons to reinforce your message and make optimal use of the available white space.
Contact Our Web Design Agency in Toronto to Elevate Your Brand
Do you want to improve the UX/UI for your web design? Ravyn Design can use its skills to enhance your business. Refresh your current brand or give it a complete makeover with our web design services.
Contact us to schedule a consultation today.