Many times we come across a new application but we end up closing it. The reasons are varied, either the app doesn’t fit your screen, or doesn’t look that appealing, or is just too complicated to navigate? Or do you remember how you felt when you opened an app – your first impression? Good, boring or amazing?

So what happens when your app doesn’t match the consumer’s expectations and they face any issue related to your application design – of course, they would choose to uninstall and look for better options. This is where an experienced UI and UX designer comes to your rescue. The design and development industry has withstood the test of time and has evolved. While many brands keep on updating their app designs depending upon the consumer behaviour, there are still few brands that are not giving the attention to the app design that it deserves. Such brands or companies will slowly fade away from consumer’s smartphones and app stores.

In this article, let us look at what is the importance of UI and UX design for mobile apps. But before that, let us understand what does UI and UX mean.

You can also read – ‘The Importance of UI and UX Design for Mobile Applications’ to get further insights.

User Interface(UI), is a way through which a user interacts with the application. User Experience(UX), is about creating a system or application which provides the best experience to the users. Consult GoodWorkLabs, the eminent UX design studio in Bangalore, to get applications with world-class designs.

Why does your app need an efficient UI and UX design? 

Living in a fast-paced world, the attention span of customers/users is limited to just a few seconds. Therefore it is very important to catch their attention in a short time span so that they hook to your application for a long period of time. A user will spend more time on your application, and if both of you are on the same page he/she may become a loyal user. So, what is it that can grab a user’s attention in no time? Well, it is the UI and UX of the application that helps them to be hooked to an app. A favourable and relevant UI and UX design will help you in keeping your users engaged.

So apart from captivating users, here is what UI and UX do:

Enhances customer satisfaction

A happy user will surely recommend your app to their peers, friends and other close circles. An impressive app with easy to navigate interface, compelling design and insightful content will keep your users satisfied with the services of your application. This will increases your user database, thereby helping you increase downloads of your application.

Understanding user behaviour 

UI and UX design can help you customise your application for different audience segments, thereby keeping all your audiences sets engaged and happy. As the UI and UX of an app are designed by keeping audiences or users in the core, hence it automatically attracts the audience it is built for. UI & UX also gauge the user journey through your app so that helps you analyse the flaws in your application’s UI and UX design and you can take corrective measures to bridge the gaps.

Builds your brand 

An application that impresses the users will automatically become popular among users. UI and UX design play a major role in keeping your audiences engaged, happy, and loyal. People like engaging with applications that provide value and proves useful. It also adds more credibility to your business, which increases your business and brand value.

Consult GoodWorkLabs, the renowned UX design studio in Bangalore

The ideal way to ace your UI and UX design is to understand your audience needs. If you are looking to have a compelling UI and UX design then reach out to us at [email protected] or call +91- 9863077000 and our creative UI and UX design team will build an efficient and effective UI and UX design for your application.

Animations for UX Design

Do you think good visuals and an appealing user interface is enough to keep people hooked to your app?

Think again!

With smartphones establishing their existence in the pocket of almost every individual, the number of mobile applications has been steadily increasing. Such a situation has made it very difficult for mobile apps to stand out with something unique on offer.

This is where animations have upped the game for many applications. Without enough animations, even the best interfaces will only lead to confusion among users and instil a feeling where they are choosing things directly without any context. Nicely done animations prove crucial to enhance the user experience of your design and deliver the users a satisfying, smooth and delightful overall experience.

Animations can use and combine the sound and haptic features in mobile applications, enabling the general experience to be much more close to reality with a considerable reduction in the cognitive load as well. The pressure is less because animations make it easier to recognize every connection and context pretty quickly when using an app.

Principles of Creating Animated Interfaces

Here are some of the principles which are unavoidable when you create animated interfaces. Regardless of the tools, techniques, and framework you use, these principles will come in handy.

1) Attention and Focus:
The most significant objective of any animation in your app is to give a context and also direct the focus of a user to critical elements for a more fluid experience. The screens which seem without any connection can be seamlessly merged to assist the user in navigating while using your website or app.

To get the maximum impact from the animations on your app, you need to learn the art of restraint. Admittedly, it is a tempting prospect to exhibit a lot of animation on every single screen on your app. If you get carried away then the core motive of including animation gets lost in the process.

2) Order and Hierarchy with sequences:
If you are pondering to animate every element in your user interface, your thought process may incline in the wrong direction. While the right set of animation will focus the attention of a user inevitably, too much of it on a single page will also divert the attention.

However, if you still want to animate multiple elements on a single screen, you should always use a small delay in between them. Ensure that the ease and duration of animations are consistent. The entire process of this timing and delay in animation is known as the choreography principle of Material Motion.

3) The right kind of speed:
The speed of the animation in an app is generally controlled by modifying the duration of the animation. It is the duration of animations which either makes or breaks a great user experience.

Follow the general rule and try to incorporate animations which have a duration of 0.3-1 second. The animations lesser than 0.3 seconds feel as if they don’t even exist because you can easily miss the transition.

Also if a user can notice them, such speed can easily confuse the app user. Even animations that are longer than 1 second do not have too many fans. Animations can feel very slow and prove as a barrier to smooth interaction between the users and the interface.

The most significant advantage of using snappy and quick animations is that your app feels faster and more responsive. If the animations lag a lot, your app will feel slow and broken, which is going to make the overall experience of using the app an unpleasant one.

The speed we are talking about is not just limited to the duration of the animation but also applies to the lag which happens between the first swipe gesture and animation which follows next.

Understand the Physics involved:

Nothing in this world starts or stops instantly. It always takes a considerable amount of time for things to speed up or slow down. Forces like friction, remember?

An ideal animation is natural in its behavior, which also helps to ease the cognitive load on a user in understanding and using the application. Other than the duration of animations, you should also familiarize yourself with the different kinds of easing that is used in the design:

1) Linear:

This is the animation which is brought to use without any easing. It is also the most unnatural, so limit its use to only when very necessary.

2) Ease-in:

Ease-in is an accelerated easing. The animation here begins gradually and ends quickly.

3) Ease-out:

Now it is the opposite of easing in. It is decelerated easing. The animation starts very quickly and slows down a bit at the end. This is the best option as the quick start lends a sense of responsiveness in the app and provides a natural slowness in the end.

4) Spring:

Spring is an animation which ends on a bouncing note. It is used in a large number of modern mobile applications due to its responsiveness and vibrancy. Once you close on the right kind of animations which are needed in your app, you will be able to extend the natural world into the devices of people, which is always better than a strange and abstract experience.

Conclusion:

Based on the above discussion, you would have clearly understood how animations are a crucial part to create a great user experience without too much last-minute thinking.

Keep animation and the interaction in your mind right from the beginning so that the focus on overall experience remains constant during the entire process of product designing.

The principles discussed are timeless. If you are getting familiar with animations or are fully aware of them as well, these are some points which you need to always keep in your mind while creating new designs and applications.

Elevating user experience to new levels should always be your priority as a designer.

Speaking of a designer, are you looking for one? At GoodWorks Design, our creative team is acing the UX with animations. If you have a design idea and need help with execution, talk to us!.

How often have you opened an app and closed it because it doesn’t fit your screen, or doesn’t look that appealing, or is just too complicated to navigate? Or do you remember how you felt when you opened an app – excited, bored, or irritated?

So what happens when your app doesn’t match the consumer’s expectations and they face any issue related to your application design – of course, they would choose to uninstall and look for better options. This is where an experienced UI and UX designer comes to your rescue. The design and development industry has withstood the test of time and has evolved to become experiential, innovative, and immersive.

While there are many brands like Swiggy, Airbnb, Uber, Instagram, etc that are actively updating their app designs depending upon the consumer behaviour, there are still few brands that are not giving the attention to the app design that it deserves. Such brands or companies will slowly fade away from consumer’s smartphones and app stores.

In this article, let us look at what is the importance of UI and UX design for mobile apps. But before that, let us understand what does UI and UX mean. User Interface(UI), is a way through which a user interacts with the application. The developers usually aim at providing easy, and effective interactions through UI. User Experience(UX), is about creating a system or application which provides the best experience to the users. UX design aims to keep users engaged by enabling a positive journey on the application.

Why does your app need an efficient UI and UX design? 

Living in a fast-paced world, the attention span of customers/users is limited to just a few seconds. It is in these 10-15 seconds that you have to sell them your application and keep them hooked to it. A hooked user will spend more time on your application, and if both of you are on the same page he/she may become a loyal user. So, what is it that can grab a user’s attention in no time? Is it the content or service offering or visuals? Well, it is the UI and UX of the application that helps them to be hooked to an app. A favorable and relevant UI and UX design will help you in keeping your users engaged.

So apart from captivating users, here is what UI and UX do:

Enhances customer satisfaction and improves ROI

An impressive app with easy to navigate design and compelling content will keep your users satisfied with the services of your application. A happy user is likely to recommend your app to their peers, folks, and friends. This will increases your user database, thereby helping you increase ROI.

Understanding audiences and user behaviour 

UI and UX of an app are designed by keeping audiences or users in the core. Once you design your application keeping that in mind, your app will automatically attract the audience it is built for. Furthermore, UI and UX design can help you customise your application for different audience segments, thereby keeping all your audiences sets engaged and happy. Therefore, this is what helps you to convent your prospects to your loyal customers.

Also, the user journey through your app will help you analyse the flaws in your application’s UI and UX design and you can take corrective measures to bridge the gaps.

Builds your brand 

A great UI and UX design will keep your audiences engaged, happy, and loyal. People like sticking to applications that make them feel happy and will be the best ambassadors for your band. They add more credibility to your business, which increases your business and brand value.

Now you know how crucial the role of UI and UX design is in the success of your application. The only way to ace at your UI and UX design is to understand the pulse of your audience. If you are looking to have a compelling UI and UX design then reach out to us at [email protected] or call +91- 9863077000 and our creative UI and UX design team will you build an efficient and effective UI and UX design for you application.

An introduction to Enterprise Application

Beyond streamlining business processes and functionalities, enterprise applications are now featured with remote mobility and real-time knowledge transfers. They are the oil in the corporate system keeping functions intact and are saving a lot of money, time, and effort. No doubt the dependence on enterprise applications is increasing and they have become indispensable in the contemporary world. As the enterprise apps have a very crucial role to play in the overall operations of any organization, special attention is paid to every aspect of the UX design for enterprise applications. 

These apps can be categorized across several platforms like across intranets, internet, or corporate networks. Usually, enterprise apps are customized to meet the requirements of multi-layer organizations. 

To create one full-fledged dynamic enterprise app, hundreds of separate requirements are knitted together to design a flawless app that delivers assistive, functional, and delightful user experience. As easy and cheesy as it may sound, the designing process of an enterprise app is tiresome and requires patience, commitment, and endless hours of designing. 

Why put serious thoughts into designing enterprise apps?

Do you ever buy a piece of clothing that misfits your body? No right?

Precisely why some serious thought process is required while designing enterprise apps! It has to perfectly solve the issues faced by real users. The UX is designed after full comprehension of user requirements, user behavior, user preferences, and pain points that were not addressed by the existing software. Intelligent design will extend the benefits of utility to users, employees, and organizations at large.

If your enterprise app is updated and agile to adapt to changing user requirements, you are already ahead of your competitors who are still using legacy apps. A well-integrated enterprise app that is designed to fulfill the requirements of all business departments is a high-grade tool to boost your business revenues.

Find out how UX design can help increase the performance of enterprise applications:

1. Improves Efficiency: Usually, the enterprise apps are not user-friendly as they are designed based on how the top management wants employees to work. A more productive enterprise app will be the one that assists employees in their work and improves their productivity. 

A user-centric approach is required to bridge the gap between the existing enterprise apps and the actual requirements of the users. A customized UX design will drive better and faster workflows that are easy on the users and will improve the efficiency of the tasks at hand.

2. Data Optimization & Forecasting: Enterprise apps backed by big data capabilities helps in unlocking business insights and actionable opportunities with a single click.

Contrary, corporates of all magnitudes are leveraging big data analytics to drive better comprehension of customer’s needs and behavior. Based on these insights, companies are building products and services around user needs.

3. Less cognitive load: It is often seen that enterprise apps have a cluttered home screen. This inflicts users to deal with confusing options to accomplish a rather simple task. With a cautious effort put in designing, such confusing interfaces can be simplified to minimal and most relevant choices.

It is essential to simplify the home screen. Human abilities to perceive and process data are limited and access to unnecessary information diminishes efficiency at work. With a well-designed interface, the possibility of errors reduces and information can be accessed at a very fast pace.

4. Cost-effective Solutions: The cost benefits of good design are indisputable. With an intuitive interface, little or no training is required for the user to learn how to operate the app. Also, scalability issues and technology redundancy that can lead to ad hoc investments in the future can be optimized by an agile design. This, in turn, will also help to optimize maintenance and set up costs to a major extent.

5. Greater Employee Satisfaction: A digital tool should assist users rather than burdening them with the requirement of understanding complex functions. Hence, simplified interfaces are the most essential elements of user interaction. An intelligent UX design directly relates to lowering the stress levels of the users. Lesser efforts, in turn, result in better productivity.

Roadblocks while designing an Enterprise application

There are sizeable roadblocks in creating a UX driven enterprise app and these require the immediate attention of a UX designer. Also, a proper UX driven app requires investment in terms of time, efforts, and funds. 

Below, we have listed a few roadblocks that you might face while designing an enterprise app.

1. Cross-platform Integration: The purpose of an enterprise app is that it has to be a single point platform for all organizational needs. It is supposed to be integrated with different types of software, processes, and frameworks, and remain user-friendly across different verticals. This purpose is defeated when the organization proceeds to buy different software at the time of development without considering the integration challenges that can arise at the later stage. At this point, cross-platform integration is a big challenge for UX designers.
2. Training Sessions: An enterprise application is built to suit the needs of employees from different departments and across different verticals. Separate training sessions will be required to demonstrate the functionalities of the enterprise app. These sessions will also require additional resources.
3. Iterative Process: As the enterprise app serves multiple purposes at the same time, it is bound to undergo several iterations to achieve a near-to-perfection operative stage. Hence, when you design an enterprise app, be prepared for a long-term association with the project.

With the correct UX design strategy, enterprise applications can do wonders for your organization. Want to build a custom enterprise application for your business? Let’s talk!

One of the best phrases from the world of design is

‘if a picture is worth 1000 words, then a functional prototype is worth a 1000 meetings.’

From pure experimentation to see your vision turn into a tangible project, prototypes help a lot in the phases of testing and building. The best thing they do is the fact that also take care to preserve the overall design uniformity too.

Designers are under an obligation to design things according to the description of their clients, but not all understand the requirements clearly. Several meetings, emails and phone discussions then follow. All of these are done to arrive at a final design.

This hassle, though, can be avoided to a large extent by the use of correct prototyping tools.

Prototyping tools help the designers and clients to collaborate in a better way and not have any creative differences. The clients get a visual idea about what will get created. The teams too, build a better understanding and explore options becoming visible, only after building and testing.

The most crucial advantage of prototyping tools is the risk involved, because the sooner we get a failure, the faster we can learn. Failing in the initial stages gives us a soft landing. You have the opportunity to work and improve on those errors.

How are Prototyping Tools Used?

We know very well that user experience is a critical metric for the branding of any company. Companies, therefore, use different prototyping tools to show different versions of a product to clients as per their requirements. It allows the UI/UX designers to put a ‘Proof of Concept’, an essential factor for a stable commercial relationship between the customer and the client.

How to Choose the Right Prototyping Tool?

Choosing the right prototyping tool is the key to describe your thoughts and collaborate in a better way with your clients. However, getting the right prototyping tool is not easy. This is because there are too many tools available online; enough to confuse you to pick the best one.

Every tool is different from the other because each one either lacks a particular feature or has an added one to stand separate from the others.

To choose the right kind of prototyping tool for design, a few factors need to be evaluated to check if the tool addresses our requirements or not-

A LEARNING CURVE

It is essential to analyze how easy the tool is to adopt. In other words, a learning curve where it is determined how long it takes for a designer to understand the tool.

SHARING ABILITIES

Because collaboration is crucial in design, the perfect tool will be the one to provide a collaboration feature for multiple people and stay in sync with each other.

USAGE

This is another point to know when choosing a prototyping tool, about how well it merges with your design process and other tools you use regularly.

COSTS

There are several prototyping tools, and many of them have niche features. A lot of these tools fail to meet our budgetary needs, though. Hence, it is better to choose the tool according to costs and not just by the features on offer.

The 11 Top Prototyping Tools for UI/UX-

INVISION

Invision is the most popular prototyping tool available today. With its project management page, it is effortless to organize the design components into a status workflow.

Invision has simplified every single aspect of the workflow and collaboration between design and development. Better, faster and more collaborative design in real-time is what Invision does best.

ADOBE EXPERIENCE DESIGN

Adobe XD allows you to draw, reuse and remix vectors and create artwork and build wireframes, interactive prototypes, and screen layouts in the same app.

With Adobe, designers can be more productive as they can import files from their Adobe tools without any trouble at all. Clients too, can make comments on your shared prototypes and look at the designs in real-time.

ORIGAMI STUDIO

Facebook initially created this tool for helping teams build and design products. Origami enables you to show your designs in a presentation on full screen on various devices.

You can also export prototype components by a single click, and engineers can copy-and-paste in the project. The tool is more suited to freelancers just starting, due to lack of collaboration features.

SKETCH

WebSketch has a lot of similarities with Photoshop, allowing the user to edit pictures. The fully vector-based workflow makes it easy to create beautiful and high-quality artwork from scratch.

With Sketch, the reusable elements like lines and bubbles can be automatically copied and pasted.

AXURE

Axure is a tool providing some very powerful prototyping without any coding. It also makes the process of sharing a prototype for the team or client very easy.

Axure will also publish all your diagrams and prototypes to Axure Share on the cloud. With a single link, others can view your project in their browser.

WEBFLOW

The most significant benefit of Webflow is that the tool provides a very high degree of functionality without the need of writing a single line of code. The tool heavily focuses on web animations, interactions and very responsive web design.

You can either host a prototype with Webflow or even export the code in HTML, CSS or JavaScript.

FRAMER

Framer has the premise that with the right code, it is possible to prototype anything, resulting in beautiful designs. It provides an effortless workflow, further eased by version control, device previewing and easy sharing.

Framer also makes it possible to import graphics directly from Sketch, Figma or even Photoshop.

ATOMIC

Atomic is a web-based prototyping tool and requires Google Chrome. The tool provides you with the flexibility to tune your interaction. There is easy access on offer for all developers with a simple shared prototyping system.

The best feature is the history option, allowing you to rewind to previous designs and create new versions from any point.

PRINCIPLE

Principle has been built for OS X and has an iOS app to watch live prototypes. The app appears a lot like Sketch and other aspects like alignment, art-board creation and real-time previews.

Principle also permits designers to work offline at increased speeds so that you do not have any problem with a slow connection.

JUST IN MIND

A significant advantage of Just in Mind is that it can be downloaded on your system for offline work as well.

The tool comes packed with tutorials and guided videos for everyone, who is a beginner or even an expert. You also have access to use items from UI libraries and then download several other add-ons.

BALSAMIQ MOCKUPS

Balsamiq Mockups replicates the speed and convenience to create mockups on paper but at a digital medium. Designers get to choose from more than 500 pre-made icons or components.

If you are not a professional designer but looking for a tool allowing you to create static and straightforward wireframes, Balsamiq is ideal for use.

Still not sure, how to get on with it? Let us assist you, Contact us.

UX design is the backbone of a website. The whole UX design process is responsible for creating your site the way you always visualized it, and how a customer will see your website on accessing it.

UX design is a procedure of enhancing the user experience, or user satisfaction by increasing the overall efficiency, and usability of a website. When we talk about conversion rate, it is directly related to the UX design of the website. This highlights the importance of a great UX designer for any business.

What is very important to note that a great UX design involves several factors than just an intuitive user flow and an appealing layout. A good UX will entirely change the way a user browses a website. It is bound to bring more traffic and increase conversions.

An improvement in the User Experience will convert your website visitors to business leads, buyers, and even brand loyalists.

Ways to Improve the UX of Your Website:-

It is not very difficult to look after ways to boost the aggregate experience of your website.

These four ways serve the purpose for you just as effectively:-

1- Have an Easily Visible Call to Action Button

Call to action (CTA) buttons have a significant role in guiding the users for conversion. The most commonly used CTA’s are: to sign up for updates, start a trial, download the app, schedule an appointment, and a lot more.

Furthermore, having a clear and appealing CTA button always provides excellent experience on a website. This Call to Action attribute deserves a space on every website page. There is no denying that sites with clear CTA buttons bring more conversions with them.

To add to it, if your website has several folds, your CTA button should be above the fold for easy visibility to the users.

You can keep a few more things in mind for CTA buttons-

• The color of a CTA button has a lot of importance. The use of specific colors can provide a lot more visibility to the button. Try to use contrasting colors for CTA’s when compared with the color scheme of the complete web page.
• The text on a CTA should be action-oriented. Passive verbs are strictly not advisable. This text needs to be subtle but active enough to make the user take the desired action.
• The word count, while writing the CTA text, should not exceed more than five words.

Having a visible Call to Action button is very imperative to provide users with a great experience.

2- Control your 404 Errors

When a user looks for something on the web, they expect to land on the exact web page they were looking for in the first place. If they fall on a page error, like 404 in most cases, it will take them no time to switch over to another website for a faster experience.

It becomes very apparent that 404 errors have the potential to take active users away from your web page. What is also evident is that these errors can never be completely taken care of.

This is why a question arises- How to accurately take care of this problem?

• The first way is to find out those pages where the search results show 404 errors and fix them as quickly as possible.
• Instead of allowing your website to display a standard ‘404 error: page is unavailable’ message, you can get some customization done for the error messages to make things a little friendly for the visitors.
• You can take the help of some relevant, pleasing, and entertaining images for the error page to reduce the anger and frustration of a user considerably.
• Convey to the users that you are the provider of a very smooth and comfortable browsing experience. For doing that, personalize the error text to add a personal touch to it.

It is crucial to know that you cannot eliminate these error texts, but taking enough care not to irritate the visitors will always be an added advantage for your UX.

3- Make Use of Authentic Images

Images have the potential to enhance the appeal of any web page instantly and make the content more authentic and believable. The kind of images you use can easily make the entire call of the page is good or bad.

To be sure about the images you use, the first advice is to keep away from stock pictures. Using them is always cheap and very easy, but they tend to be more harmful than beneficial in the long run.

These stock images do look professional, but it is never difficult for the users to understand that they are stock images, and such behavior will make them lose their interest.

Original and authentic images always attract more visitors because they bring a realistic touch with them and ensure connectivity with the users. The stock images, of course, become repetitive and bore the visitors.

If you use stock images for your web page, it sends a wrong message that you were lethargic in investing your efforts to design your website. Stock images will not allow your site to look unique, as users will most certainly have come across the pictures before.

You should make it a point to use only original images, irrespective of how basic or simple they look. The key here is to stay away from stock photos at all costs.

4- Ensure a Quicker Page Loading Time

If your web page is guilty to load slowly, it is enough reason for users to eventually abandon your site and go to a website having a quicker response time.

So, if your landing page is slow, there is a high probability that visitors will not even go through your website entirely. Also, you should also take care that just improving the loading speed is not going to be enough. Optimizing your website for mobile users is also very important.

Conclusion

Providing a lot of relevant information is not what User Experience is about. It is about how interactively, and how engaging are your efforts to ensure that information.

You might have a great product to show, but if you fail to catch the attention of the user, it will never be enough.

If you wish to have a website with all the trending practices for a great User Experience, we can help you. Get in touch with us!

The Importance of UI Design in Dashboards

‘Why to put a lot of thought into dashboard design?’

The answer is simple! Because your dashboard is the first thing that users will look at while interacting with your product.

It has to be understandable in one glance to be usable. Besides, all the brilliant technologies such as AI, Blockchain, Machine Learning are useless to the users if they are not presented in a user understandable way.

This is why dashboard designs require a thorough thought process.

Given, the importance of the dashboards, today we would like to address the popular query i.e. ‘how to make a great dashboard UI’.

But, before we dive into  the tips to make a perfect dashboard UI, let’s discuss the characteristics of a good dashboard:

• An effective dashboard is a visual board for simple conclusions of a rather complex set of information with a call to action. This means the dashboard provides information on which the user can base his decision on.
• A great dashboard is easy to understand and presents all the key insights.
• Besides being extremely intuitive, a good dashboard is easy to customize.
• In a very limited space, great dashboards exhibit all the crucial piece of information

Now, the point is how to come up with a dashboard which can pass for the above characteristics. Here are a couple of notes regarding the visual design that one must keep in mind while designing dashboard UI.

1. Be consistent

To be consistent means to have undeviating design across the dashboard. The design should be consistent on all the devices of varying sizes.  The functionalities in terms of fonts, colors, elements’ placement, navigation and style charts also need to be consistent.

The golden rule is to design the smallest screen first.

This approach helps in creating appealing spaces for more important information first and then leads you towards creating a great UI which enhances the abilities of the UX as well.

2. Simple customization

‘One size fits all’ approach is not the road you would want to take. Simple Reason being, usually there are multiple user roles with varying priorities and needs. Also, the designs ought to be scalable. Users should be the choosers on how they want to customize the design as per their business needs.

A good dashboard design should be able to accommodate all sorts of complexities and should allow for easy customization as and when required.

Some design tips that you could use:

– Permit easy modifications like field addition/ deletion

– For a customizable dashboard, use easy drag and drop interaction

– Cater the user with multiple color themes, if feasible

– Allow multiple options for viewing/downloading data

3. Communicate the necessary information first

With visual design, the vital information can be communicated to users in a usable and appealing manner. Also, with the crucial content placed and finalized, the design guidelines and layout can be easily defined.

Points to remember:

– The card layout is recommended because it allows concise data classification, along with scalability and flexibility.

– Users perceive the center portion first so the central alignment is preferred.

– Maximum font size should be 18 Pixel

– To highlight any important information a distinctive color should be used.

4. Prefer simple charts

Usually, in order to come up with fancy visual representation, designers get drifted and adopt complicated charts. Keep the charts simple and try to present all the variety of ideas in an easily understandable form. The main reason being charts are the prime data visualization tool for the users and should be easy and concise so that the user can perceive the information in one go.

Points to remember:

– Prefer pie charts, bar charts, and line charts as they are easy to understand and fit well in complex places.

– Use flat design charts instead of 3D charts, they are neater and easier.

5. Pay attention to the iconography

Icons are very small components of the dashboard but they hold great significance. A great dashboard should have icons which are familiar.

The reason being that a dashboard is frequently used by users and are accessed for prompt information or actions. Therefore, familiar icons reduce the processing time and deliver better performance.

6. Keep color psychology in mind

Colors are more vocal than you think.

Just as how traffic signals communicate to us with red lights signaling us to stop and green lights allowing us to drive, color psychology is important in UI dashboards as well.

A great dashboard should be designed with mindful colors and any possible confusion should be avoided.

Points to remember:

– Avoid going overboard with the colors used

– Try and leverage contrast colors for better visibility

7. Use the right font style and size

It is very important to keep both font style and size consistent while designing the UI and UX of a dashboard. It is highly recommended that not more than two font styles should be used. With minimal variations in font style, the dashboard holds a neater appearance.

It is advised to create a visual hierarchy of the written content for better visibility. This can be done by placing the crucial information in the larger font size and probably with different color and less important information in relatively smaller font size.

Summing up

All the above tips will help you to come up with a great dashboard UI but studying the user’s requirement is the first step before all these. It is easier to design a dashboard once you are through with user’s preferences and style because then you can customize the dashboard around the specific needs of the user. A useful dashboard is way better than a well-designed but unrelatable or complex dashboard.

An unrelatable dashboard is one which is not knitted around the individual business needs of the user. For example, a corporate dashboard for a school. The UI of the dashboard makes it great or just okay, the choice is yours!

At GoodWorkLabs, we have some awesome dashboard designs to exhibit for your perusal. Our team of experts can help you bring life to your ideas and create eye-catchy UI and UX designs.

Getting to Know User Persona for UX Design 

A vital part of User Experience design or pretty much any business-based technology, user persona can be defined in simple terms as a virtual representation of your typical customer. Derived from user research and web analytics a persona serves many ends for UX designers. A persona usually includes qualitative and quantitative information of a user’s personal attributes such as their behavior patterns, likes and dislikes, needs, ambitions and so on. A persona can also be defined as the collective representation of a particular demographic using a typical user which the designer can use to relate. This also provides you with a valuable tool while trying to pitch ideas to stakeholders, designers, and anyone who is involved in your project.

How do you Create One?

There are a multitude of ways for creating a persona. But the most commonly followed ones are those from user experience research methods. Through interviews, casual interaction and such, one can ascertain enough information about the user and build a profile of their general attitude, character, and behavior. While direct research methods are quite commonly used, web analytics also plays a large contributing factor. Social media websites and applications and search engines too are valuable sources of information to create such a profile.

A persona usually consists of the following aspects:

1) Personal Information

Vital information such as name, age, marital status, number of kid etc. are a staple in all personas. Usually accompanied by a photograph, this statistical information helps build a clear demographic profile of the user.

2) Environmental Data

Information pertaining to the users’ social life, work life and the technology they use and so on. This helps build a profile of the surroundings they live around and the kind of company they keep and their work ethics and profile as well.

3) Psychological Data

Information regarding their personal interests such as food, movies etc. along with their attitude, strengths, weaknesses and pain points can all be found in the persona as well. These give the profile a human touch beyond the rather mechanical statistics.

4) Personal Ambitions

One of the more inquisitive features of a persona is the information regarding goals and ambitions. While other information is quite vital, goals and ambitions provide an idea of exactly what the user needs, and how your product could influence if not help achieve it.

5) Scenario

This is the final aspect of a persona and is created based on all the aforementioned aspects. The users are put in a typical real-life scenario and an analysis is made on how they might interact with your product.

What are the different type of user personas

While most user personas are created from actual users, to serve your marketing and designing agendas, some organizations build personas without any actual information. These are called proto-personas. While proto-personas like regular personas are used as a means of actionable insights, their information is usually the result of guesswork and experience using which people create their own image of their typical customer. The reasons for this usually are either time or budget constraints or both.    

So what do you do with user personas?   

The most fundamental purpose of a persona like mentioned above is to serve as a communication tool while pitching ideas with your team and anyone else who is involved in your project. For a designer, a persona serves as a guideline and inspiration to design the product for a particular demographic. All the information pertaining to the users’ emotional and psychological state along with their interests and goals allow the designer to clearly conceptualize what the product should be doing and how it will be serving them. The organization as a whole can also gain valuable insights and stay in tune with their customers’ lives.   

Conclusion

Despite the many research tools available today, user persona serves as a reliable tool for both designers and marketers to understand the product and their users. The plethora of small information available in personas generally helps out more than elaborate details on a particular aspect of the user. Additionally, when you have access to multiple personas, the common points between them serve as a deciding factor.

UX Design Trends in 2018

Did you know that a whopping 79% of individuals abandon a particular site if they don’t like the content? Also, with marketers placing utmost importance to content, it is only imperative that design layouts, both mobile and desktop incorporate the content experience as a crucial factor of UX design.

If you are planning to create a website with unique design ideas and are letting customers be effective with their time on the site, then UX will emerge as the key success driver.

Here’s a quick look at the eight major design trends that will rule the world in 2018!

8 UX Design Trends to look out for in 2018

Building an exciting website in 2018 can be tough if you don’t know the latest trends on board. The following pointers will surely help you create a stunning, unique, and fully functional website:

• Use the power of  ‘negative space’ for Content Experiences

Minimalist design is the most widely accepted design trend and the whole purpose is to remove distractions and help the reader focus on the main thing – Content.

Negative space also known as white space is a crucial aspect while designing a web page. It offers room for creativity and also acts as the breathing space for the important elements in your website. This white space design also helps readers to navigate easily on the website without creating any visual obstacles.

However, the concept of ‘white space’ isn’t new. Crucial changes in reading habits have compelled  UX designers to incorporate this particular element. Open layouts and white space will increase readers’ focus, and it greatly improves the user experience.

The best example of using white space for a content centered experience is Medium – the single and utmost focus is to enable readers read long form blog posts without any visual distractions.

• Conversational bots

Facebook popularized Chat Bots to a great extent. The messenger app helped numerous individuals create operational bots, and the number has increased significantly. The initial figures were 30,000 and that has gone up to a whopping 100,000 today. With some of the leading companies embracing the idea of Chat Bots, effective marketing communications and customer service has become easier than ever!

Some brands have also seen a spike in orders because of the ease and convenience of conversational bots. Hence, it is safe to assume that 2018 shall see more of such interactive design features on their websites.

• Omnichannel UX

It is time we change focus from a mobile-first design. The number of connected devices are increasing and especially with Internet of Things (IoT) gaining more popularity, it is just natural that designers thing of an omnichannle user experience now. Today’s users are more goal oriented and are more concerned with completion of that goal irrespective of the devices they interact with.

While creating an omnichannel UX, a designer should be mindful of creating a seamless flow of user journey and make it easy for a customer to transit from one device to another without any hiccups in the user experience.

• Moving closer to Virtual Reality

Although there’s a lot to improve, VR will still make significant impacts this year. Companies will incorporate VR strategies while showcasing products. Also, designing gestures for a VR environment that are similar to the natural environment will bey a key focus to help the VR market grow. More and more brands are opting VR technology for their marketing strategies only to create a different ‘user experience’.

Hence, VR is definitely going to be a subset of the greater picture of UX design in 2018.

• Micro-interactions are common

If you wish to accomplish or complete a single-dimensional task, micro interactions will give you the perfect opportunity to do so. Here are some of the use cases of micro interactions:

• Feedback communication or the consequence of a particular action
• Accomplishing individual and isolated tasks, connecting one post to the other
• Manipulation of a particular setting
• Prevention of user error

The flexibility to add reactions to a particular post on Facebook is the greatest example of Micro-interactions.

• Voice User Interfaces

Technology is constantly evolving to make daily tasks of human life easy and 2018 is definitely the year where Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) are going to gain more popularity. Design is bound to slowly move focus from clicks on websites to screenless experiences.

We already have a range of VUIs such as Siri for Apple, OK Google for Google, Alex for Amazon and Cortana for Microsoft, and a Gartner survey also suggests that 30% of our interactions with technology will happen in a more conversational style.

Hence, designing fro VUIs is going to gain momentum in 2018 however there is still time for this technology to mature and replace graphic user interfaces as these AI systems still need to become more efficient at understanding ‘how’ people talk about topics and the conversational flows.

• Card-based designs are going a long way

Web designers and marketers are quite familiar with the ‘card-style’ design. The trend isn’t new and will continue to rule the design world. With Google implementing it into the material design, the trend seems to have a bright future.

The card design layout helps to showcase a lot of content in a clutter-free way on smaller screens. Also, the card layout helps to maintain design consistency across different devices such as mobiles, desktop and tablets.

A good example of the card-based design is again Medium where tons of content is displayed in a neat layout and it also makes it easier for the user to find what he is looking for click.

• Smart and Personalized designs

Brands are moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach to a creating custom tailor-made experiences for each individual user. Also, with advancements in AI and Machine Learning, today companies have enough and ample data about user behavior, buying patters, interests etc.

Design also will now cater towards creating more personalized user experiences to enhance interactions with the brand. This is bound to take personalization and brand experience to the next level.

Conclusion

We looked at some of the key UX design trends that are going to take dominate 2018, but like they say, trends come and go, but what matters is that we continue to design and build products that touch people’s life. If you think there is an upcoming design trend that needs attention, let us know 🙂