How to Design a Great User Interface for Mobile and Web App?

The success and popularity of any website, web, or mobile app depend upon the user experience. User Interface refers to space or access points where users interact with the designs of the site or applications. These interfaces may be graphical user interfaces, voice-controlled, and gesture-based. Considering the importance of great user interface design, designers strive to design easy to use, elegant and engaging UI designs that would meet the needs of the clients and provide visitors the best browsing experience.

Designing the most intuitive and great UIs for providing a seamless experience to the visitors is a complex task wherein designers need to take care of the users’ comfort, varying skill sets, and diminishing attention span. Here is a checklist of some invaluable golden tips to create great UIs for web and mobile applications.

1. Let Users Have Control of the Interface

Great UIs let users feel always in control of the interfaces. Be it seamless navigation, Undo/Redo option and providing feedback for every action of the users, experienced designers create interfaces that lead users to perform their desired actions in a trouble-free way and get the best experience. All the UI elements like input controls, containers, navigational and informational components should perform predictably that should serve users’ purposes.

2. Enhance Users’ Comfortability to Interact with a Product

Make it easier or comfortable for users to arrive at the decision and perform their desired tasks effortlessly. Designers should eliminate irrelevant tasks, buttons, jargon from the user interfaces and place only those elements that are essential and provide value to the users. Using Fitts’ law that states that the time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target, designers should make larger and prominent important icons, buttons or text links and place it closer for easier clicking. Navigational buttons can be safely placed on the edges or screen corners.

3. Maintain Consistency throughout UI Design

Consistency in user interface design is a great quality that enhances usability and intuitiveness. Be it the visual consistency (consistency in color, font, and icon), behavioral consistency (all interface controls and elements should behave the same throughout the design) and consistency with users’ expectations, only those interfaces are highly preferred that behave consistently with the expectations of users and let them get the desired information to be able to make a well-informed decision.

4. Make It Simple and Easy to Use and Learn

Users come with varying skill sets. However, it is always rewarding when you reduce the cognitive load and the number of tasks required to make a decision. Users should feel it easy to remember a limited number of things to effectively use the interface. By chunking information, giving more importance to recognition than recall, and making way for simplicity and visual clarity, designers can easily come up with great user interfaces.

Simplicity, aesthetics, comfort, clarity, and consistency are some of the important factors to consider when designing the layout or user interfaces for ensuring a great user experience.

This is Stephen Foster. I am a software developer and a professional writer.