User Experience Best Practices

In our previous episode, we talked about design thinking and its techniques. We also discussed the different phases involved in the process and the significance of each. Today, we will talk about a few things to keep in mind when designing your product; the UX best practices.

A good user experience, like a measurable ROI, doesn’t typically happen by accident. It is the result of careful planning, analysis, investment, and continuous improvement.” —Jeff Horvath

Study the user profiles

To provide an exceptionally good user experience, it’s essential to study in-depth the users. Imagine you create a website which has outstanding design elements, well structured content, and stylish menus. It’s doing great. But some visitors who access your website have a slow connectivity, and some old visitors who are potential customers but find it difficult to navigate. This tells us that every product we create would be accessed by different user profiles. Its can be based on location, age, or earnings.

Don’t forget the user personas!

It’s integral to conduct thorough user tests, and then translate the results into personas. Later, use these personas to run through user scenarios and customer journey maps. Before you even start designing the product, it’s essential you have a crystal clear knowledge of the user personas and their flow. If you are selling a solution online, some users might be convinced at first glance, while others may require extra information or support. In UX, personas are probably the most important thing to take care of.

Personalize your solution

When users interact with your product, they provide you with signals of interest. These signals then help you to analyze what the users want. The more your product is personalized, the more stellar would be the user experience. Take Facebook’s news feed for example, which unlike 5 years ago, now provides you personalized feeds on your homepage. They use your interactions on their platform to assess what you would be interested in, the reason why you easily spend hours on social platforms such as Facebook.

Follow the design trends

The style guides and design trends do matter a lot in UX. Some websites look great on laptops and poor on desktop or tablet devices. It’s essential that your solution is responsive, as 50% of web traffic these days comes from mobile devices. The typography, imageholders, buttons, and whitespace also need to be taken good care of. It’s best to test these with a set of users to understand what’s working and what’s not, and then iterate accordingly. After a few iterations, you will have a product that would be tested and ready to go live.

Balance your layout and use slight animations for good visuals. Today, designs are based on simplicity, cleanliness, and the order of elements. Try keeping designs flat rather than glossy. You don’t want the user to pause before he performs an action thinking about the effects on a button, such as shadows and light directions.. What is important to you is the action to be performed.

Be consistent

Lastly, be consistent throughout the user journey. Users, after initial interactions, get comfortable with your designs. You don’t want them to feel alienated at a later stage of their journey. They may feel as if they made a wrong action and have come to something different than where they were before.

Wrap up

Every human being has a natural ability to detect good designs. When you create a product, it’s integral you design from where the user is, not where you are. Use real data, iterate, and keep improvising your product by adding personalized flavors to it. If the needs of users are well addressed and design thinking techniques followed properly, chances are that you will find a great design solution for all the personas interacting with your product.

This is the end to our chapter of “User Experience and Why it Matters”. If you would like to give your feedback to any of our episodes, tweet to us @cygnismedia