User Interface Design (UI Design)

A website is something that is going to appeal to your users to crawl your webspace. It is an online space where an individual or company’s web presence meets and communicates with each other. A User Interface is complete when you select those elements, which even not being familiar to the users, redirect them to choose and perform appropriate actions. User Interface should guide users towards their goal and the main point is how to design a perfect landing page. It should give them a visual representation of where to click next / what action to perform next.

User Interface usually focuses on visuals - looks or style. Theuser interface design is more concerned about the base and feel and attraction of a design. It is all about creating pleasing aesthetics and animations which will help convey your organization’s values. According to Wikipedia, “the goal of UI design is to make user ‘s interaction simple and efficient as much as possible, in terms of accomplishing user’s goals”.

Usually, people refer to it as UI/UX design and as the name suggests, UI and UX are interdependent upon each other and they go hand in hand. UI express the art of User Interface Design while UX express the art of User Experience Design and UX basically means improving the user’s experience with designing the product through test results and constant feedback from the users. UX design includes various aspects of design like visual design, interaction design, usability and more. UX focuses more on structure, layout, and navigation. UI is the first encounter of the user with the site and UX is how the user feels after scrolling throughout the site.

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Design is a process that needs thinking and results. Design is a process that helps businesses solve problems. And to achieve that it is necessary that designers follow a proper workflow, use design tools in which they feel comfortable and confident, research on topics that they don’t have prior knowledge about and gather all the requirements for the design. Design workflow can include for instance- sketching first on a rough paper, preparing wireframes, asking queries and questions to the end-users, prototyping and transforming them into designs lastly. Don’t forget to mention the design specifications to the developer.

You should keep in mind the user’s needs and behavior when using your designs. Provide them with what they actually want and not what you want to give them. Knowing your users can be a daunting task because it means knowing your users, talking with them face to face, asking them for feedback for your designs. These things will help you generate a better interacting UI that your users will actually love. Users are definitely going to bring your site a lot of traffic if it is visually appealing and comfortable to operate for them.

Design consistency is one of the most relaible usability User Interface Design Principle: It enables a user to feel familiar with your website. Consistency is the path to build relationships with your audience. Consistency doesn’t mean sticking to the same visuals and design. Consistency is the placement of elements in a design, making it look familiar to the audience which will eventually help you save time in the process. Lack of consistency can create confusion among your clients and makes your design look disarranged.

A heatmap is the best way to recognize where a user is spending maximum time on any given page on your website. A heatmap tracks the mouse pointer and this data is represented using colors so that it can be easily understood. Heatmap is where UI meets data. It can capture the data about the user you want - click maps: where the user clicks or taps the most, Move heatmaps: where the user moves the mouse pointer, Scroll heatmaps: to recognize the horizontal as well as the vertical scroll depth of the user.

USER INTERFACE ELEMENTS

User Interface elements usually fall under 4 categories:

• Input Controls 
• Navigational Components 
• Informational Components 

• Checkboxes: It mainely allows the user to choose one option from a group of options.
• Radio buttons: It allows users to select exactly one choice at a time from a list of two or more options that are mutually exclusive.
• Dropdown list: A dropdown list is a compact way of displaying multiple choices.
• List Boxes: It allows users to select one or more items from a list of multiple items.
• Buttons: These elements act as a call to action for users and it promotes and urges the user to take action on the screen. A button needs proper labeling and styling to redirect the user to take proper actions. Button states let the users know whether they can click or have clicked, or had successfully clicked a button. The placement of buttons is very important in UI design. The button should feel clickable as well.
• Toggle: As the name suggests, the toggle is used to switch or change the state of the system.
• Text Field: A place where users can enter text and edit it as well.
• Date Field: It allow the user to choose time zone as input from the calendar and clock.

• Breadcrumb: It acts as a navigation system for your website. It helps in showing the user’s location on the site.
• Slider: It allows the user to make selections from a range of values along a bar.
• Tags: Tags are the relevant keywords associated with the information. Tags are often used on social media to be relevant to the content.
• Icons: Icons are symbols designed to make users take actions by just viewing the visuals.

• Tooltips: It is short and brief information about an element with which the user interacts.
• Progressbar: A progress bar is used to visualize the progression of the operation. For example- file downloading progress.
• Notifications: The bar Notifications provides such a  short, term, and athoritive information about your application.
  
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