User interface design or user centered interface design makes a web application or software more user-oriented, so that users are able to optimize its use. Today, both websites and web applications are no longer limited to the desktops, but are also being built for the mobile platform. Whatever the nature of the platform, the importance of usability remains the same and so do some of the core principles that determine user centered interface design.

Let’s take a look at some of the principles that have a significant role to play in ensuring that the design interface is user friendly.

Understanding the Users is the Key

The reason why, understanding users and their goals is important is because your users are going to have no interaction with the core components of your web application, website or software. What they will actually be doing is experiencing the system as a whole, so if the UI doesn’t consider this fact, the system won’t be able to meet all the goals and objectives of the users. This is why it’s important that you are able to understand the users, their needs, and what is it that they require from a particular system. This will help you provide them with a UI that helps them access the various features and functionalities of your system in a manner that is effective and comfortable.

For this, you need to begin by identifying the users, the functionalities that they want; their objective for using the kind of system that you are developing, their technical expertise and experience and also understand the ways in which they would like to interact with their software or web applications.

The UI should be Easy to Understand and a Joy to Use

If the user not enjoying using your UI, it means you have failed to offer a great user experience. Let’s take the example of an iPhone app. What separates the successful apps from those that end up a failure? Is it the features and the functionalities? Do successful apps have brilliant programming that makes them enjoyable to use? The answer to these questions is a big No. What helps them stand out from their competitors is the degree of usability of their UI. Their interface is very easy to use and users don’t need to spend time understanding its nitty-gritties. It’s the UI that determines whether the app is a big hit with the user or not. This same brand of thinking can be applied for all systems, whether it’s a website, an application or software or something else. Using the most familiar navigation structure and design elements will work more than trying to make the UI as inventive as possible.

User are looking for constancy

A principle often ignored by developers is that of consistency. Your UI should be able to ensure that users are able to maintain their spatial orientation. Users are looking for a consistent look and feel, but it’s not just limited to the design. They are also looking for consistent response from the actions performed on the interface. Users are bound to feel disoriented if there is a marked change in the navigation links and the action buttons are not found where they usually are. By ensuring that all elements of the UI are consistent with the expectations of the users, you are ensuring that they don’t need to put in a lot of effort for understanding its use.

Consistency makes for simplicity and it is simplicity that wins appreciation from the users and nothing else.

Allow the UI and users to interact with one another

Allowing your users to offer feedback ensures the thumbs up for an UI. Everybody loves a UI that they can interact with and not just one way interaction, but a dialogue. As can be imagined, this is difficult and not many user interfaces are able to form a dialog with their users. But, you can use certain elements that can act as a catalyst for creating a dialogue process. One such element is ‘labeling’. Yes, something as simple as labeling the UI will ensure that it makes more sense to the user. Another great way of initiating a dialog with users is by integrating a feedback mechanism within the UI. Something as simple as a feedback form will do the trick and will work wonders for your UI.

As can be imagined, these four principles are not the only principles you have to keep in mind to ensure a UI that is not only reliable, but also offers optimum performance. But keeping them in mind will definitely set you on the right track.

A website is a sum of the various functions that it brings together on a single platform. It’s important to understand that website visitors will love a visually appealing design, but they will appreciate a highly functional design more than anything else. So, the focus should always be on the functional components that will be useful and which can ensure website success.

There are a few ‘must haves’ that can really make or break your website design. Let’s take a look at some of them. These haven’t been picked randomly and have not been given in any order of importance.

Well Thought Out Website Forms

Every website has forms and yours will have them too. Now, the question is whether you are going to use simple forms whose sole purpose will be to enable your customers to sort out any problems they might be having with your products or services; or they might be used to put in a query about your products and services – but nothing else. Otherwise, you could think about implementing intuitive website forms, which do all this and more. Such forms can help you initiate a far more personal interaction with your website visitors, which helps you improve customer service. The idea behind using such forms is helping open engaging channels of conversation between you and your customers and vice versa, to build a reliable and mutually beneficial working relationship. This is one way that you can ensure website success.

Social Media Integration

Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn etc. have left their mark everywhere, in all spheres of the online world and also contribute towards ensuring website success. How? By integrating Twitter Feeds and Facebook activity streams in your website, you are making it more engaging. Like it or not, these days, your website has become a means of initiating a conversation between you and your target audience. So, offsite conversations happening on your social media networks can be integrated with the exchanges taking place on your website, improving the overall engagement quotient of your website. Another related component of your social media integration are Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons that can be placed on the web page to enable visitors to share content that they like, by clicking the buttons. The content can be immediately shared with their followers on Twitter, Facebook and Google plus.

Viewable Photo galleries

Can something as ordinary as a photo gallery determine web design success? It definitely can, more so, because most websites don’t have a decent photo gallery. They get the visuals of the website spot on, but falter when it comes to choosing photo gallery. Let’s face it; using Java based photo galleries is no longer a worthwhile option, because it might not show up well if the website is accessed through a smartphone. More importantly, the photo gallery must be such that it is aligned with user requirements. So, a user might want a full page view of the photo gallery or might want to view one photo at a time. The idea is to put in place the kind of photo gallery that can keep the user on your site for a longer period of time.

These are by no means all the functions that you absolutely must implement in your website design. More often than not, the purpose and objectives of the website also determine its functions. The choice of functions must be a product of brainstorming and comprehensively charting out the direction of the website and its quantifiable goals. This ensures that the combined usability of the functions goes a long way in ensuring website success.

Website redesign is usually done when businesses or individuals want the ethos of the website, its message, and its overall appeal to remain the same, but also want the design to appear fresh. They want a design that makes use of its existing concept and rework it to address the changing needs and expectations of their website visitors.

But, before the redesign process is actually underway, you will need to consider a few crucial factors that need to be considered before redesigning a custom website.

The Objective

Every purpose needs an objective. When it comes to redesign you need to have a very clear idea as to what you want accomplished. It’s your reasons and motivations that will go a long way in ensuring that the process of redesign has a clear direction. All through the process of redesign, you will need to take some crucial decisions and these can only be taken correctly if you have a clearly underlined goal for redesign.

The Extent of Redesign

You need to clearly define the nature of the redesign as to whether it’s a minor upgrade or you are overhauling the site completely. There is a very thin line between a complete site overhaul and an entirely new site. You need to consider this factor because the cost of the project and the time and effort required to bring it to fruition depend on the scope of the redesign. It’s also important to remember that the amount of changes you make is inversely proportional to the way the new website resembles the older site.

Incorporating features/Elements of Existing Site

Your older website design can offer the designing framework for the new website. So, you will need to work out which aspects of the older website do you want incorporated into the redesigned site. Just make a list of what you like about your current site and ask your re-designers to incorporate the same in the new site.

Ignoring the Non Workable Aspects

There are some aspects that work and some that don’t. Now, there might be a case wherein, you like a feature that has become redundant. Well, it’s important that when it comes to choosing the features of the current design that need to be incorporated into the redesigned site, you need to adopt a mercenary approach. Just ignore something that is non-workable irrespective of whether you like it or not.

Identifying Target Users

Don’t forget your target audience in the proceedings. You are redesigning your website for your target audience and nobody else. So, you will first need to identify them, never mind that you had identified them when you had designed your existing website. You will need to start afresh, as your target audience must have increased in the ensuing years. So, you must identify the user, recognize their needs and try and make sure that the website redesign has kept their needs in mind.

Ensuring User Friendliness

There is a tendency for both designers and the concerned clients to go one up over their existing design when it comes to redesigning it. In doing so, they add certain design complexities to the new website, which have an impact on its user friendliness. This must be avoided at all costs. The website must be user friendly, which in turn encourages a better and more satisfactory user experience.

Determine Design Focus

A website’s design, even if it’s a redesign will highlight certain sections of the website, text or images above others. So, you will need to first determine those parts of the website that need to be emphasized so that they get more user attention. There are many different ways to make this possible, so you need to choose the ways and means that suit your needs and requirements best.

These are just 7 considerations, but there are plenty of others that need to be considered before beginning the process of redesign. This will make sure that the redesign efforts do not go in vain. 

Some designers believe, and I want to emphasize ‘some’ in this sentence, that Flash can only be used to display animation or videos and to enhance the visual impression of the website. But, Flash is all that and much more. It can be used to offer a striking visual experience to website visitors but at the same time it can also be used to make the user experience more interactive. No doubt, when it comes to the matter of usability and even the accessibility of the website, Flash doesn’t get full marks, but the correct use of Flash will definitely go a long way in make the website improve its interactivity and make the design more engaging for its users.

But this post isn’t about the benefits of Flash; rather it’s about the mistakes some designers tend to make when it comes to using Flash optimally. This usually happens when a designer is unable to ensure that all Flash elements such as animation, sound, video and graphics come together in the right amounts; or it can also happen when designers are not able to follow the various usability guidelines of Flash that are a prerequisite for better user interaction.

Mistake 1- When Designers Try to Imitate

Imitation is definitely the best form of flattery but not in the case of Flash especially when designers try to imitate CSS or (X) HTML. They make a cardinal sin of trying to embed long texts in Flash movies etc. because it increasingly gets difficult to work with such long texts, especially if you want to offer better usability to website visitors. One of the biggest drawbacks of such imitation is that the website’s overall experience goes for a toss as users are not able to open new links in new windows and are also unable to select or copy text. While both problems might not look so serious on one hand, they take a whole lot away from the effectiveness of the website. Imagine if your site has an enviable design but does not score high on the usability factor; what is the use of such website design?

There is no point in imitating conventional web presentation when Flash can be used to showcase heightened visuals including motion graphics, videos and sounds, and all in all, offer users stunning but unusual visual solutions.

Mistake 2 – Unimaginative and Problematic Navigation

A navigation menu plays a crucial role in the user experience of a website. Flash, if used incorrectly, can play the spoilsport when it comes to the usability of the navigation menus. Let’s first take a look at what works when it comes to flash menus.  First, they need to be intuitive, second, they need to be easy to understand and use and thirdly, they should be problem free. Many a times, designers get carried away by their own creativity and seemingly endless knowledge of Flash and built a Flash based navigation menu that is actually not navigable at all. It is completely unintuitive and instead of making things easier for visitors, makes things confusing and even disturbing.

It’s important to understand that you as a designer might want to offer your website visitors an unusual navigational menu, but not all of them will appreciate or understand it. Most website visitors won’t take time out to explore a complex Flash design. They love simplicity and your creativity must not infringe upon their ‘right to simplicity’.

Taking note of these designs will definitely help save your Flash website design from being called ineffective. It makes no sense to make all the effort to create an enviable design but lose the plot when it comes to the basics of applying Flash design.

User experience in terms of a website, web application or a mobile application is all about usability. As a user, you need to feel comfortable when you use a certain application. The experience of using this application must be meaningful and engaging.

When developers build an application, irrespective of the development platform or OS, they need to cater to a user’s perception of the application’s efficiency, convenience and utility. As far as the user experience is concerned, it’s all about giving the right direction to the user’s feelings and thoughts about the system in question. The difficulty in ensuring an effective user experience lies in the fact that it’s subjective and changes from one user to another and it’s also circumstantial; it keeps changing over time and is dynamic.

But there are certain factors that definitely play a crucial role in ensuring a satisfactory user experience.

Let’s take a look at two of them.

Simplicity, but within the limits of logic

If you want to travel from Point A to Point B, do you take the longer route or the shorter route? It’s a given that, a person is always looking for a simpler solution. But, this is where, developers miss a trick. Simplicity is not only about reducing the clicks in an application. There is absolutely no doubt that design optimization plays a crucial role in offering an effective user experience, but the focus should always be on reducing the mental effort rather than the physical effort of using a system. In an attempt to make the application as simple as possible, some developers are guilty of making it harder to use. By reducing the number of steps to perform a given activity, they make users think more and do less.

In order to ensure the ideal psychological and physical response from the users, the system needs to be kept simple, but not overtly so. It’s important that a user does not struggle with a certain concept, just because you want to keep the design simple. It’s important that the simplicity is propped up by logic. Failure to do so, will only give rise to complexity.

One-Size-Doesn’t-fit All

An oft-repeated phrase, boring to quote and difficult to implement! But, to ensure satisfying user experience, you will need to ensure that the design is acceptable to the majority of people who are using the application/system.  The situation is definitely a little tricky, but like everything else, there is always a way out.

You need to aim to make the design as productive as possible. It’s simply not necessary that you offer a design that meets the expectations of a large section of users. If you can achieve this, pat yourself on the back, but if you can’t find a way out, it’s important that you make things easier for users. A case in point being options – numerous options thrown at the user can lead to confusion. But, by using a design that leads up to users choosing the option that you have presented to them, is a much simpler way of going about things.

The factors mentioned above might sound as if web developers are trying to dumb down the system. But, even if it looks that way, it’s still improving the user experience a long way, and it’s only this that is going to ensure a successful app. Nothing else! So, don’t shy away from dumbing the app system down.