Web_Designer_UK__May_2018

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Opinion
There is no excuse
for bad UI
What makes a good User Interface and why is it important?
James Norman
Content editor
fasthosts.co.uk
A good user
interface design is
characterised by
aesthetics, ease of
use, and functionality.
Apple devices are famous for their intuitive user interfaces and good design. The
fact these two characteristics are so prevalent in their products is no accident.
The late Steve Jobs was famous for his unflinching focus on good design,
because he understood how critical design was to the user experience:
“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People
think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s
not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
Having a good user interface means that a customer will know intuitively how to use your
website or app without too much help. By contrast, bad user interface design can leave a user
abandoning their session frustrated with an empty cart. That’s why it’s so important to optimise a
user interface design, and think about how your customers are interacting with your website.
It is worth taking a step back to see how user interfaces have evolved, in order to understand
why users have such high expectations for user interfaces today.
User interfaces have grown from a text-based command-line interface (CLI), to a
two-dimensional text-based user interface (TUI), and into the graphical user interface (GUI) in use
today. Where CLI and TUI were only interacted with by keyboard, a GUI is controlled by a
keyboard, mouse or, ever more commonly, a touchscreen device.
Also growing in popularity are voice user interfaces (VUI) like Siri on Apple devices and
Amazon’s Alexa, where devices are controlled through speech. For web designers, the GUI
remains the most logical interface to focus on, however interaction with the prevailing VUIs is
something that should not be overlooked.
A good user interface design is characterised by aesthetics, ease of use, and functionality. The
design should be quite minimalistic. An overload of content, images and buttons can confuse
users who will search unnecessarily around the screen trying to find the bit that is relevant to
them. Remember to include whitespace to break up the content a bit.
Make buttons and options easily recognisable by using existing icons. Think of classic user
interface icons like the trash can – most computer savvy users would know what the trash can
does. The same goes for the floppy-disk save icon. Even though a lot of the new internetgeneration
would never have seen a floppy disk in real life, they recognise that the floppy-disk
icon is synonymous with saving.
These icons haven’t changed over time because they’re so iconic and recognisable that users
immediately know what they do, and that’s a fundamental of good user interface design. You
want to make it intuitive. Users expect certain icons and will search for them, so there’s no use
having a wacky, well-designed icon in place of a traditional, simple and effective one.
You want to make the user interface as simple to use as you can, whilst still giving users all of
the functionality they require. And of course you want it to look great.
The bounce rates of your website can have an effect on your SEO (search engine optimisation).
If someone lands on your site and bounces straight back because they’re overwhelmed and can’t
figure out how to navigate, then that’s going to reflect on your bounce rates, which will affect your
search rankings. This is particularly prevalent on mobile devices.
Make sure that your internal linking is intuitive and easy to follow for humans, because search
engine web crawlers will look at the internal navigation structure of your site and analyse its
effectiveness when deciding on your search ranking.
As well as that, having a page cluttered with too much content or too many features can cause
the page to load slower, which can also have an effect on search engine optimisation.
Remember; design is how it works. Strike the right balance between form, functionality and
content, and you’ll deliver a smooth and intuitive user experience for your customers. Never
forget Steve Jobs’ words; “Design is not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works.”
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