Getting Started with User Interface Design

What is the User Interface?

User Interface (UI) design is a process of building interfaces in devices and software with the main focus on style and looks. Designers focus on creating interfaces that are user friendly and the user finds pleasurable as well. The UI design typically refers to the GUI (Graphical User Interfaces) and other forms like voice-controlled interface.

The User-Interface design has grown over the past few years as people look for more friendly front end interfaces. It has become one of the most innovative, creative, and exciting fields in technology. You might be looking at a UI designer job on some job board and wondering what is UI and how you can design a user interface?

Let’s dive into the nitty-gritty of UI meaning. It is a point of human interaction with a computing device for communication. This includes anything a user may touch or see. A UI makes a user able to effectively control a computer they are in interaction with. A successful user interface should be efficient, intuitive, and user-friendly.

So, if we simply put it in words, UI meaning is anything a user may interact with when using any digital service or product. This can mean anything from computer screens to touch screens, sounds, lights, keyboards, and many others. For a complete and proper understanding of UI evolution, it is helpful to know a bit more of its history and how it has grown into a profession with best practices.

Back in the ’70s, you use computers by using a Command Line Interface. For commercial purposes, users needed to communicate by using a programming language. By the ’80s, the first GUI was introduced, and with this innovative advancement, users could use commands to perform various tasks like buttons, menus, icons, and checkboxes.

In 1984, Apple manufactured a PC with a pointer and mouse click. It became the first successful home computer with this interface. With time's evolution, there came endless possibilities and opportunities to work on applications, websites, and other technologies. So, as long as computers are part of our lives, we need to make more innovative user interfaces.

  • Input Controls They allow users to add information to the system. For example, if you are building a website for international users, you may need to ask your user to choose their country. For this, you can use the input control to let them do it.
  • Navigation Components This element helps the users to move around the website or a product specifically. Navigational components may include tab bars on iOS and the hamburger menu on Android.
  • Informational Components The informational components are used to share information with the users. They may include message boxes, progress bars, notifications, and pop up windows.
  • Containers Containers typically are the ones that hold the related content together, like accordions. An accordion is a vertically stacked list of all available items that use the show/hide function.
Industry Best Practices and Design Tools for Success

UI Design and It's Importance

The UI design is the aesthetic design of all visual elements of a user interface for any digital product. The UI design is normally confused with the UX design term. UI and UX designers work together, but these two are separate fields and have different designing processes.

UX design is a process of boosting user satisfaction by improving the accessibility and usability of a product, app, or website. While on the other side, UI design is the complete design of the interface of the product. In simple words, what users see when they interact with the service. UI designers are responsible for the look and feel of the product, and it includes the anticipation of the user’s preferences and interface creation. UI design is not just about aesthetics but also about maximizing the efficiency, responsiveness, and accessibility of a product or website.

UI designers have an endless and diverse range of tools at their disposal. As software is becoming intuitive, the built-in UI components allow the designers to go through pre-built design decisions and create the layouts in less time. Now let’s dive into three top UI designing tools that every designer must know about:

Sketch

Sketch uses a group of artboards and design shapes to enable the designers to create a hi-fi level of interfaces and prototypes on a pixel-based canvas. Sketch also has a very convenient symbols feature that makes you reuse the UI elements you have once created. They also help to keep the interfaces consistent.

InVision Studio

InVision studio allows the designers to create high quality and interactive interfaces, transitions, and custom animations. The efforts of creating numerous artboards for more than one device will become a thing in the past as all designs can be approached from on a single artboard.

Adobe XD

It offers the best environment for digital projects within the Adobe Creative Cloud collection of various designing tools. These tools can help you draw, reuse, and remix the vectors and build up artwork to create anything from the screen layouts for interactive prototypes, and this all can happen in one same app. Simply quoting, Adobe XD is all dancing and all signing when it comes to UI designing tools.

For delivering impressive GUIs, you should keep in mind that users are humans, and they have needs like comfort and have a limit on their mental capacities. For that, you should follow a few guidelines:

  • You should make buttons and other elements performing predictably so that the users can use them anywhere. The form should be following the function.
  • Ensure that you maintain discoverability, clearly label the icons, and include well-indicated benefits, such as shadows of the buttons.
  • Also, keep the interfaces simple and create some invisible feel.
  • Keep in mind the user’s perspective and point of view and pay attention to the layout. Use proper alignment and pay attention to colors, contrast, and brightness. Also, check for the font sizes, types, capitals, and distance between letters and lines.
  • Reduce the number of actions for the performance of tasks and guide the users by suggesting preferred actions.
  • Put the controls close to the objects for the users, like the button of form submission near the main form body.
  • Keep the users informed of system actions with the feedback option.
  • Make sure to use proper design patterns for helping the users and reducing the burdens.
  • Maintain the consistency of the brand.
  • Always come up with the next steps for the users to understand naturally.