“Good design is about process, not product.”- Jared Sinclair
In a world where everything is continuously changing, product design is developing rapidly. Nowadays, start-ups and small ventures are recognizing the importance of UI and UX Design and know they can make or break a brand reputation.
UI/UX designers need to prioritize speed, simple page designs, a mobile-first approach, and, most importantly, artificial intelligence. A UX designer must think about how the experience can make the user feel, and how easily users can accomplish the desired tasks.
For example: How easy is the payment process when shopping online? How easy is it for people to find restaurants that can potentially deliver food to their homes? Does the online banking app make it easy for people to manage their money?
Therefore, the end goal should be to create easy, efficient, relevant, and all-around pleasant experiences for the user. Also, the user interface design must complement UX because the look and feel, presentation, and interactivity of a product also matters.
There are some core components of UI/UX design, which designers must know:
Wireframe (Prototyping)
Wireframe is a visual representation of the application, that is created to check the looks, features, usability, and functionality of an app before it is launched. A prototype is defined as the preliminary version from which other forms are developed. As a designer, prototyping offers a cheap and flexible way to prove that a product, feature, or approach is viable and is fit for purpose, whether it’s for a mobile app, physical product or a website. It provides insight into the functionality of your design and suggests changes needed in order to make your work delightful and functional.
Information Architecture
The IA plays a vital role. It gives the user easy navigation — no matter which browser she/he uses. IA is all about designing the information structure of the site in a way that can satisfy business strategies. It connects people to content in a way that can be understood easily. Additionally, it creates a hierarchy of content on a page and uses different elements such as navigation to add structure. After taking different types of information into context it organizes them and makes the process to find content easier.
Visual Design
This is the most crucial component of the UI design, because it can affect the user’s behavior, once it is finalized. Visual Design defines the persona of the brand. It’s much deeper than selecting icons, images, fonts, and the rest. Visual design uses the visual aspect of a product to improve the user’s experience. It communicates a lot about a company’s brand and can influence people into believing how desirable and engaging a product is. Visual design also informs us how a product works via color, visual hierarchy, typography and thus is a crucial part of the overall user experience.
Usability
Usability leverages data to determine the validity of design decisions. In any company, the UX designer needs to champion the needs of a user and communicate the frustrations/pain points felt by them while using the product. The data can be obtained in a variety of ways—from focus groups to surveys, from lab-based usability studies to one-on-one interviews and site visits, eye tracking, card sorts, A/B testing, telemetry, and so on.
Interaction Design
Interaction Design deals with the specific interactions between users and a screen. While Visual Design responds to the user goals supported in Interaction Design to communicate with the brand using graphics, motion, colors, sounds, space, aesthetics and more. It is all about creating a conceptual design with which users can interact with the app or the product. Additionally, Interaction designs use prototyping to define specific behaviors and functions for different components. For example; on a mobile app design, does a sign-in page “ease” in, fade in, or slide to the right? This kind of transition can be explored in an interactive concept so the final product is implemented as closely as possible to the designer’s intention.
Once all the key components of the UI UX are decided upon and developed correctly, the results can enhance app’s presentation, and usability, along with its intractability. UI UX development is mainly focused on user satisfaction, and can, therefore, play a leading role in the success of any business.