The Secret to Designing an Intuitive UX
It is important to design websites and software with the user in mind and intuitive user experience has huge impact on customer satisfaction. UI design experts firmly believe that intuitive user experience boosts user adoption, satisfaction and retention. As the starting point, desktop software, mobile app, and website, should incorporate an umbrella structure (The umbrella structure is the overall structure that lays out what the product can do for us). Umbrella structure in a typical website is the navigation bar along the header and the iPhone’s central phone app is a classic example. There are five icons along screen bottom for contacts, voicemail, and other features that tell users right way.
Overloading the umbrella structure should be avoided and UI designers should keep a keen eye on how the elements are being labeled. It is recommended to stick to one word names as users will get a quick idea of what this will offer them. Another important user experience aspect to be considered is nexus structure and it is almost like a form of navigation. As a user experience concept, nexus structure separates mediocre design from great design and it lets users switch from one application to another easily.
It has been said that too much text impacts how quick users look at the screen. For example, the phrase “please sign in here” can be simplified into just ‘sign in’. It is to be ensured that graphics are clean and not distracting in any web page so users will have a better visual experience. Buttons should look clickable with bright and high contrast colors and it should be clearly labeled with one word actions like ‘send’ or ‘submit’. Experts familiar with developments in web development arena say that high quality user experience is the difference between failure and success.
Major objective of any UX project is to have an intuitive UI and describing UI as intuitive is a commendable achievement for developers. ‘Simple’, ‘easy to use’, and ‘clean’ are other phrases used for denoting an intuitive UX among developers.
Do you feel that intuitive is a fancy word for affordance, consistency and predictability? As a rule of thumb, we can state that a UI is intuitive when it has a well balanced combination of affordance, expectation, efficiency, and responsiveness. From the perspective of functionality, UI delivers the expected and predictable results with no surprises.
In an intuitive UI, users can navigate throughout the UI without the fear of penalty or unintended consequences. An intuitive UI will be memorable, discoverable, easy to learn, familiar and matches expectation. A system design presents two aspects of the control user needs to operate in order to make the device function properly and the domain user is operating in.
Consistent and intuitive user experience is a pivotal element in web software of contemporary age. The most important thing about intuitive design is that it is invisible and intuitive design directs user attention to extremely important tasks. Since intuitive design is invisible, users will not appreciate it initially and they will immediately take note of it in its absence. A web developer or designer should take note of requirements of users ranging from tech savvy youngsters to computer illiterate folks. The interesting fact is that fifty percent of users can’t find what they are looking for and search is super important in this context. An intuitive design happens when we don’t force our users to attend to change and higher conversions as well as user loyalty are the amazing benefits of having an intuitive UX.