Designing an application or a company product might not be as simple as it seems when it comes to UI UX designs. Although the beautification of a software product lies in the hands of the design team, there is much more going on than just adding colours or adding interactive illustrations. One might say that the credibility of an app is proven by the product design it carries and the design of its marketing assets, like landing pages of the website.

Hence, is this really the case or are designers simply creating a need for their skills in the market to a degree we never really needed before? Let’s discuss!

First Is The Lasting Impression!

If you have heard of the quote that the first impression is the last then know that it holds true in many aspects of life. This also applies in software engineering, coding and designing. Nielsen Norman Group’s conducted research proves that a typical web user is only going to spare between 10 and 20 seconds to look at your web product. Now, how you captivate your audience through UI UX design so that they spend more time is what will set you apart from your competition.

One reason the front-end design can work is because visuals are the number one feature of your product (website or an App) that the audience notices even before the content itself. This is what determines the credibility of a product now in 2020. This is why UI UX designs have always stressed on the need to develop presentable and marketable landing pages that establish a quick reputation and gain maximum trust.

Constantly Being Consistent!

In UI UX designs, consistency is the key when giving the final touches of your web product. Inconsistent designs also lead to visitors developing views of disorganization or incompetence. Let this not be the case for your product; always focus on building externally and internally consistent designs.

A few examples are the following:

  • Choosing the same style, theme or colour scheme for the entire product and its pages.
  • Focusing on ‘layout consistency’ which means that main features are always found in the same spot in all pages of the product.
  • Also concentrating on ‘functional consistency’ which means that a certain button with a certain design will always perform the same function. One example of this is to set a ‘Green’ button for the Save option.

Style guides are available on the internet to further aid in UI UX designs. It is also important to note that different colour schemes represent different kinds of businesses. A business working on the environment will rather use a yellow/green colour schemes rather than red or even black, and so on.

No Tricks In UI UX Designs!

As a general rule in UI UX design, always avoid cheap tricks and false buttons. False buttons are shoddy methods of making a word seem like a button to add interactions to your web product. This adds mistrust and lowers the quality of the application as well.

Another trick here is to use dark patterns. These are cunning ways of making more money off users in your site. In the case of an eCommerce store, this means to subtly place items in a shopping cart so people would be forced to pay later. While these tricks may help you with short-term benefits, the fact that it also adds mistrust in your audience shows that you are losing in the long-term scenario. This is called staying true to your features and services in your product. Hence, when a user is paying for a certain action, they know that they will not be risking in buying additional services/products from you by accident. This also means that the users will have an option to immediately cancel or opt-out from any commitment they are making, whether regarding cancelling shopping, or account deactivation.

Always Remember Quality Assurance

Launching a product before running it past your team of SQA is a big NO in software development. Performance issues are like ‘make or break’ situation for new applications and that is why a thorough quality check is required after every turn while building an app. Once a prototype is complete, vigorously test it out and check all the UI UX designs that are added. Two main requirements here is to test out functionality and proofreading for grammar. Are the animations working fine? What about interactive features like buttons and sliders? Are all the buttons working the same way as they should?

Grammar check is also a part of this. A keen eye is required to spot out typos and grammar mistakes. Know that these errors reek of untrustworthiness and should be eliminated. To see why this matter, try putting yourself in the shoes of your visitors and see how you would feel if you stumble upon a website that has simple grammar errors.

If you are behind schedule, taking care of quality might seem like a hectic job to do. Some may even skip it entirely. However, it is still a very important function in UI UX design. Therefore, when a company is running behind schedule, they tend to finish up with major features and go straight for the launch. It is during their many updates where the team would then release patch upgrades to finalize everything once and for all.

Boring Designs That Still Work?

This generally works for corporate institutes like banks, insurance companies and similar financial platforms. Here the idea is not to attract user with colours or attractive features, it is simply to give them what they want: trust and service. If we take an example of Chase, notice how they are displaying their main priority on top of their landing page (account building). As you can notice, the website did not add much to their UI UX design, kept it at minimal levels. With the right amount of logos and navigation menu that can easily guide the users, they have provided everything that their target audience would require. Simplistic designs such as by Chase offer their unique value that companies often make use of, especially those in corporate large-scale organizations.

Conclusion

What we have discussed so far is not the result of digital media. Rather, these are the same patterns that conventional businesses have used in the previous decades as well. May it be billboard advertising or running a TV commercial, it was always about how a company presents itself to its audience that ultimately leads to the type of response that it gets. These tactics are an iteration of what we have been doing in the past, refining our processes and doing them on digital devices to keep up with the new, digital age.