Creative visuals, attractive logo design, or intricate animations! What goes into making an exceptional user interface? A good UI includes a mix of factors that make it clear, consistent, simple, and user-oriented. Defining the requirements of a good user interface is especially critical if you are considering outsourcing your project. Your design and development partner should understand the key principles that transform a user interface into a powerful tool for attracting new customers and retaining existing ones. Let us go over the core principles of an effective and appealing user interface. The 10 Fundamentals of a Good User Interface Here is what goes into an appealing and intuitive user interface for a web or mobile application. 1. Consistency is the key Source: Behance In good user interface design, consistency rules the roost! Everything is affected, from the colors, icons, and fonts to the placement of menus and buttons. If changes are required and the designers who worked on the first version are no longer available, the situation becomes even more critical. Top digital solutions do not astonish their users with radical changes. Instead, they use brand books and company style guides to maintain a consistent and unified style throughout UI design. 2. Hierarchy in screens Source: Dribbble Some inexperienced designers make the mistake of attempting to highlight everything on a single screen. Instead of guiding customers to a purchase or other desirable action, they bombard them with information. That is why hierarchy is an essential component of a successful user interface. It should be designed in such a way that users can quickly find the point of focus and understand what you’re trying to convey visually. 3. Flexibility Users now enjoy looking for a solution to their problems. That is why a good user interface should be supplemented with tabs, shortcuts, and hover tooltips. Such elements improve the interface’s usability and intuitiveness. You may also like: 10 Tips to Improve Your Website Accessibility For example, if an app allows you to upload photos, it should also allow you to crop, resize, rotate, and edit the image right next to it. The designers’ goal is to assist users in determining where such options can be found and whether such features are available at first glance. 4. Clear and intuitive user navigation Where can I find the main menu? If you’ve ever asked yourself the same question, you’ve most likely encountered a poorly designed user interface. While visible to users, it should be “invisible” in terms of user disruption. A high-quality user interface should be well-structured and contain only the necessary elements. For instance, a car-rental website should not be cluttered with unnecessary buttons, menus, and visual elements, but rather provide the option to rent a car right on the main screen. As a result, users will spend less time navigating your application and complete the transaction. 5. Target audience is well-defined A digital product with a clear understanding of its target users has a better chance of retaining and engaging users. The primary goal of any web or mobile app is to alleviate the pain points of users, which is impossible to do without understanding how they interact with an application. A good user interface is built on preliminary and in-depth market research, engagement of best practices from similar products, and evaluation of the target audience. This enables acting on a user’s needs and desires based on such an analysis and transferring the solution to the app interface’s pain points. 6. Transparency of user actions When you click a button, you expect to see some sort of response. In UI design practices, leaving users without any feedback is considered bad etiquette. When users click on a menu, it’s a good idea to confirm the action with some sort of indication of successful operation, such as animation, color change, pop-up window, progress bar, and so on. 7. Limited number of gestures Swiping, tapping, pressing, gesturing, or voice command are all options. All of these actions are used in the user interface to guide customers to the desired outcomes. Although it may appear to be a brilliant idea to use them all within an application, top interfaces such as WhatsApp or Facebook stick to a limited number of gestures. When using an application, users should have a clear understanding of the actions that must be taken in order to achieve the desired result. If you tap to open a file, you should use the same gesture in all similar situations. 8. Additional tips and tricks User retention is the primary task and, conversely, the primary challenge of any digital product. Fortunately, an effective user interface can help achieve the goal. You may also like: 3 UX Gamification Techniques to Boost Engagement Creating onboarding tips and showing them to customers is a good practice for very complex solutions. The UI carefully guides them through the app and helps them remember what each element is responsible for by placing small tips here and there, such as hover tooltips. 9. Attractiveness This point is critical, despite being somewhat controversial in the eyes of some. A good user interface is one that is appealing and reflects the brand’s personality. Buttons, colors, fonts, and visual elements all contribute to a distinct brand story. What appears appealing to one group of users may be repulsive to another. As a result, a successful user interface should be founded on extensive research. Furthermore, the visual aspect of user design should be used to reinforce functionality. Popular and well-known applications do not use colorful visuals that add no real value to the user interface. 10. Compliance with design standards As previously stated, users must understand what to expect from a user interface. Following Google’s and Apple’s primary and well-known design standards for Android and iOS is a good idea. Take, for example, a search bar. It is not a good idea to move it from the top of a page to the bottom. This way, the user interface will inadvertently make users struggle to perform actions that should be intuitive. Conclusion As you can see, good user interface design entails more than simply making an app or website look nice. It considers all of the users’ needs and creates an interface that reinforces consistency and assists users in completing their tasks in the most seamless manner possible. Use these tips as a guide for your next project, and you’ll be sure to deliver not only a functional product, but one that users will want to return to. Do you want us to get you or your company started on creating quality design components for your product? Reach out to us to get your project off the ground. About Galaxy Weblinks We specialize in delivering end-to-end software design & development services. Our UI/UX designers are creative problem-solvers with a decade of experience in all facets of digital and interactive design. We create compelling and human-focused experiences delivered through clean, and minimalist UI.