Starting with UX research, moving to UX wireframing, prototyping and on to UI design and testing, designers should always remember that along all the way they are not just artists, creators, or conceptualists. They are problem solvers. Every decision they make should be based on one simple but vital reason: it has to make the user’s life easier and/or happier.

In the vast majority of cases, neither designers nor customers are the ones around whom all the fuss is going on and all the hard work is being done. It’s all about users. The better we know them and wish to know them more, the better is the result. Period.

Today we decided to publish a little statement. It is done “on behalf of a user” and based on long-term user research and analysis, practical work on diverse UI/UX projects as well as studying new publications about the theme. Here we have gathered some points which designers hear or could have already heard from users. We are talking about the basics right now, but really vital basics which can become a solid foundation for a popular and efficient product or vice versa, if not considered, make even great design solutions shaky and non-efficient.

I’m a User. I want it simple. But not simpler.

No doubt, Albert Einstein had nothing in common with the sphere of UI/UX design in its modern understanding. However, in this particular field, his words “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler” are as applicable as they could only be. This is actually the basis of the efficient user interface design providing positive user experience. For user researcher, designer, and tester it is important to remember that simple doesn’t mean primitive – this is a big trap to be careful about. Making a product simple, you find the shortest and the best way to solve users’ problems or satisfy their needs. A simple product means that you make sophisticated solutions that are invisible to a user and felt as natural as breathing. Simple means helping to do something without additional efforts, confusing, and loads of specific operations. Primitive means oversimplified that often annoys users with their conscious or subconscious feeling of being treated like fools. Keeping this balance is vital for creating a positive user experience.

Randomizer concept

I want it easy to start with.

In most cases, for many users, the first experience is the high noon. The first impression on appearance and first actual interactions is able to engage a user in a long-term relationship with your product. That’s why a designer should make the start of interaction with the product as pleasant, encouraging, user-friendly, and smooth as possible. It is vital to make this stage natural and informative, to show the best features attractive for users and at the same time don’t take too much user’s time for this sort of operation. The solid foundation enabling this feature is understanding what is the core target audience and what are the problems that users will be able to solve with the product. Analyzing the abilities and specific features of the target user will help to find an efficient solution for the fast and easy start of interaction and understanding how the product works. Different kinds of tool-tips and tutorials, wizards, mascots, infographics, animated interactions, and the like can become a good way to make the user feel good and comfortable with your product.

I want it clear and understandable.

Here it’s time to remember the words from one of the famous pioneers in information design and data visualization Edward Tufte who told that “Good design is a lot like clear thinking made visual.” Users should feel understanding what’s going on at every stage of the way. It should be a nice and pleasant walk instead of hard and stressful going through the wild. And this particular task is probably the most important aspect of the designer’s job.

It doesn’t mean that every design should be accomplished as plain as a day – without the analysis of the target audience, its needs, wishes, and habits you risk making it boring. Sometimes a bit of challenge, the elements of gamification or problem solving and the like can engage the user; however, all of them should still be doable and acceptable.
Moreover, every microinteraction should provide the user with fast and clear feedback. That is actually the way how the product communicates with the user. Pushing the button or uploading the file, adding a follower, or searching the necessary item users should clearly see how the system has reacted and what is the next step. Other aspects to consider in this perspective are the issues of readability, navigation, conventions, affordances, and signifiers.

Blog App

I want it helpful.

In the vast majority of situations, people see the technologies, in particular applications and websites, as a helping hand in their everyday life and/or professional routine. This help can be totally diverse: from literal assistance in buying things, ordering tickets, connecting with friends or saving important data, to a bit more metaphoric, like helping with good and suitable ways of entertainment, chatting, self-improvement, aesthetic satisfaction. As soon as users see what kind of help your product provides to them, they are ready for the next steps. This is the good ground for enhancing positive user experience.

One more aspect of helping is forestalling and preventing possible user’s problems, mistakes, and points of confusion in the process of interaction with the product. Efficient and intuitive navigation, fast and clear feedback already mentioned above as well as various tips, auto search, prompts and other stuff of this sort could make the experience natural and help the user to avoid negative emotions.

I want it useful.

The first and foremost thing behind any product is providing some useful features. It’s easy to say that there are a lot of applications and websites which have no purely practical use and exist only for entertainment or other “not-serious” aims. It is one more huge trap. Entertainment, rest, aesthetic pleasure, presentation, collecting and loads of other things or activities which seem to be “not-serious”, “not-useful”, “time-wasting” and so on, are also as important for the person’s full life scope and routine as “serious” and “business-like” stuff.

When adults see how the kid is fiddling with the simple set of building blocks, most of them do not realize that this kind of “non-serious stuff” is highly useful for the child’s development and, what is more, the correct design of the blocks can influence and improve this process. The same happens with applications and websites. To create a successful product, it’s needed to find not only well-known unique selling points but also unique useful points. No matter what kind of product is created and designed, they always exist. That is why user research and analysis is an important stage of designing an effective user interface. It helps to find the problems that could be solved and the wishes that could be satisfied with the product, which is the most important feature for retaining the user. Nothing can make the users stay with the product is they do not see the personal interest and benefits.

Library Widget

I want it fast.

Creating designs, it’s important to consider what are going to be technical and physical conditions of the product use. Out of this data, designers and then developers should make important decisions on how to make design working fast. And it’s not only about the fast interactions and navigation enabling a user to find the quick way of transition to anything potentially important in a couple of swipes or clicks. It’s also about the time of loading the pages, screens, animations, complex images, etc. No user is going to keep around your product for long if he or she needs to waste their time waiting for downloading. It is forgiven in exclusive cases but not on a regular basis. Neglecting this aspect can kill even the product of great importance and functionality.

I want it updated.

In the fast-paced world of technology, it is vital to stay tuned and trim the sails to the wind. Certainly, the power of habit is a great thing retaining users, but a regular shade of minor changes aimed at improving usability supports the feeling of refreshment in experience.

There are, nevertheless, two things to keep in mind about this aspect. Firstly, the changes should improve and support positive experience via usability or attractiveness. Secondly, adding something new, in most cases, it’s better not to do it as a bright revolution bringing a totally new life, since for a particular segment of users it can become a shock and will be the reason of rejection. Being careful, user-friendly, and consistent is a great policy of changes.

Cinema App

I want it nice and stylish.

The famous guru of usability Don Norman once mentioned that “It’s not enough that we build products that function, that are understandable and usable, we also need to build products that bring joy and excitement, pleasure and fun, and yes, beauty to people’s lives”. This is actually a philosophy we support here in the studio.

There are lots of tips, proverbs, and sayings assuring that wise people do not judge the book by its cover, but in reality, a good dress is still the card of invitation. Certainly, this sort of good dress for the app or web will mean nothing if it is empty in content, useless and not solving any problems. However, if the product is not attractive, the users will not even turn their eyes to your product. They will not identify it among the others in AppStore or PlayMarket. They will not feel that flash of interest and curiosity that is the start of so many great meetings, events, and relationships, including choosing the products for everyday use.

So, appearance really matters as it stands among the most important factors encouraging the user to try your product. Moreover, beautiful, attractive, and appropriate to the target audience, nicely done and consistent visual style of all the design elements satisfies aesthetic needs and beautifies everyday life. Practice shows that this is a great factor in retaining a great deal of users.

Page 404 

I want to have a choice.

The last but not least position here is the choice ability. There are loads of discussions on simplification and unification of UI/UX solutions in the design sphere, in which we often read that designs should be minimalist and limited to activating only basic and necessary operations. Application or website should do only what is really necessary and the additional stuff is always the element of distraction, they say. Users do not need complex animations, users do not want funny illustrations, users do not wish bright and unexpected color combinations, they say. And so on, and so forth, here and there.

There are loads of arguments and proofs, examples and debates, criticizing and preaching. The only thing is missed. There is no user behind all this stuff. A user, who can be totally and absolutely different, who can have millions of different preferences, likes and dislikes, various cultural and educational backgrounds, diverse environments, and abilities to use technology. And all of them, as well as in any sphere of human activity, are keen to have a choice looking for the applications and websites. Users are those who really benefit from the diversity of offers and designs on the market of digital products. They really adore the opportunity to choose. And hope not to see it killed with ubiquitous unification.

Stats Concept 

No doubt, the topic is really deep, so today’s post has been concentrated on the major basics leaving more details for further posts. However, considering those factors provides good support in creating efficient UI/UX design solutions. Designing for users, we should keep a user and only a user as the highest priority. This is the best way to get all the features of efficient and popular products via usability, utility, and desirability.

Useful Articles

How to Make User Interface Readable

Visual Hierarchy: Effective UI Content Organization

3C of UI Design: Color, Contrast, Content

How to Improve Web Scannability

Gestalt Theory for UX Design: Principle of Proximity

Gestalt Theory for Efficient UX: Principle of Similarity

Negative Space in Design: Tips and Best Practices

Originally written for Tubik Blog

Сообщение UI/UX Design. On Behalf of a User появились сначала на Design4Users.

The original Quora question we are answering today was the following:

What’s the difference between human-centered design and user-centered design?

Two terms mentioned in the question are widely used replacing each other in different contexts and often perceived as equals. The difference between the meaning people put behind those words is really slight and blurred that it is easy not to notice it at all. However, with a content manager onboard holding a degree in linguistics and being a keen lover of the slightest semantic nuances, we decided to get deeper into the issue. As research and practice show, although these terms, in fact, have the same roots, the idea they present is viewed from a bit different perspective.

It can be supposed that human-centered design is the process of creating things deeply based on general natural characteristics and peculiarities of human psychology and perception. It doesn’t matter if you design furniture, cars, stationery, TVs, websites or anything else – any object of design can be made human-centered on the ground of psychology, physiology, sociology, and other sciences analyzing human life and interaction with the environment. It means that human-centered products will be not only nice but also functional according to psychological traits and features typical for big groups of users.

A really good and simple definition is found in the article “Characteristics of Human-Centered Design”: “…human-centered design can be defined as the process that places the human needs and limitations in a higher priority compared with other targets during the design thinking and production differential stages. During this process, the designer is required not only to analyze and come up with a solution for existing problems but test and validate the designed products or service to achieve planned targets in the real world.”

For example, there are basic conditions of general physical human abilities, color perception, contrast perception, readability, interaction with a product in different environments that are typical for the vast majority of people. Let’s say, typically people are not able to see in the darkness, and the darker is the environment, the harder it is for most people to perceive something visually, it doesn’t matter what age, education level, social layer, professional skills you represent. This is a common human physical characteristic. Neglecting it means creating a product which people will not be able to use properly, being limited in their abilities.

Creating objects with which people are going to interact with, designers have to be aware of those traits and take them into account in the process. That is the reason to study at least the basics of psychology, physical and emotional perception for designers who would like to create things convenient and friendly for people in general. We also believe that is a strong reason to involve psychologists, behaviorists, physiologists and other experts in the process of design.

Portrait vs Landscape

Here you can see the interactive concept of transition from portrait to landscape mode. It is based on the general ability and necessity of any user of digital products used on the iPad to get feedback from the system that the action of transition from one mode to the other is done. If it is done smoothly and with a quite natural speed, that is one more element of positive user experience, sometimes even unnoticed as the microinteraction takes split seconds. The presented example actually imitates interaction with a physical object and therefore makes the user experience more clear and positive for users of different age, gender, educational background, etc. This is actually a small piece of the human-centered design solution.

Continuing the theme, user-centered design is a more focused and concise version of human-centered design with a deeper analysis of the target audience. It is concentrated on not only human characteristics and perception in general but also specific traits and features of target users to make the problem-solving potential of the designed product as high as possible in the perspective of its users. This is the stage when details about the target user of design objects start playing their role: defining a target audience, the designer takes into account age, gender and social status, potential education level and professional background, influential social factors and typical environments of product usage, etc. On this basis, the designer makes deeper research on preferences and peculiarities, special aspects of interactions, specifying general human-centered ideas with important details of target audience’s preferenсes, emotional and physical perception traits as well as levels of technology awareness and tons of other factors. This is what we usually do on the stage of user research in Tubik Studio and practice shows this stage is vital for creating problem-solving and user-friendly designs.

So, it can be said that human-centered design is the first obligatory step to making the product applicable, while the user-centered solution is the next step to make it concentrated on the pains and needs of a specific category of users.

Let’s look at one more example.

Contact List Concept Scrolls

This design concept for a contact list looks nice and voguish. It presents two different variants of scrolling the directory and refreshes traditional interaction experience. It is grounded on basic aspects of readability, contrast, visual hierarchy, provides clear feedback to user’s actions and necessary functions. It follows the basics of color theory, logics, and visual harmony. Certainly, it is human-centered. No doubt, a big proportion of teenagers and millennials, people who use diverse interfaces every day and see them as an integral part of their life, will be engaged and would like to try it. However, for older people, this sort of interface can seem a bit scary and overloaded as well as somehow darkish comparing to simple traditional interfaces based on the light background. So, this user-centered interface responds to the wishes and preferences of the narrower target audience.

Here is one more case featuring web design concept by Ernest Asanov. It represents interface design for a website presenting online bakery selling. On the basis of the design solutions, it is easy to assume that this is the service positioning itself as a producer of upmarket products which are exclusively hand-made and presumably because of that reason cost higher than average bread in the supermarket. Therefore, the website is designed aimed at a particular target audience. As we mentioned in one of our articles about the benefits of dark background in user interfaces, dark color solutions can form popular associations in visual perception. Dark colors are usually associated with elegance and mystery. Moreover, black is often associated with elegance, formality, prestige, and power. This is the style provided by the presented design: dark background, branding element as a central element of a header, strong and clear headline establishing positive emotional message, visual elements enabling immediate perception of the theme and setting strong visual association with tasty pastry, short text block describing basic benefits of the product and clear visible call to action. The designer worked out the solutions that will look attractive and informative for target users wishing to feel the exclusivity and high-quality of the product and able to pay more than average. Therefore, this example also shows the techniques of not only human-centered but deeper user-centered design.

However, supporting previous answers given by other professionals along with this question on Quora, it also has to be mentioned that in modern design, especially in a digital field like creating applications and websites, human-centered design and user-centered design are most often inter-replaced and used basically as full synonyms. Perhaps that happens because in this sphere most products are created and updated for a certain category of users rather than “for all and everybody”. Moreover, users of all the digital products are people, therefore all the solutions should get based on the positions of human-centered design. Certainly, it doesn’t mean that universal interfaces cannot be found: they do exist and we apply some of them on daily basis, so they are a good example of general human-centered design that successfully applies knowledge about features typical for the great majority of users. However, they are closer to the exceptions which prove the rule.

So, in terms of web and app design, we can assume that description of design as “human-centered” or “user-centered” just shows different levels of detalization in the design process, different stages one of which considers human interaction features and the next gets deeper in details of certain categories of users, their needs, wishes, and problems. A great example of the synonymic perception of the terms is the video powered by IDEO, great experts in human-centered design.

Again, it’s important to emphasize that the definitions given represent our personal vision of the terms based on linguistic nuances of given terms and practical experience of processes in the design studio with all respect to other points of view.

Originally written for Tubik Blog

Сообщение Human-Centered vs User-Centered. Are the Terms Different? появились сначала на Design4Users.