In the growing field of business technology, UI/UX designers are starting to flourish. Little by little, organizations are realizing the part UI/UX plays in helping customers appreciate one’s brand.
What is a UI/UX design?
User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) or better known as UI/UX are two things quite commonly interchanged but actually mean different things. UI/UX help in making users feel good about using products, much similar to when people buy them.
When people purchase items, whether it be a need or want, they study the things about them and the features they can make use of on that product.
UI/UX design is best explained through an example such as purchasing basic products because they ultimately have one goal: to essentially function based on a person’s need.
Now, user interface and user experience place things in the perspective that a product makes a person realize that they are not just using it in the way it should be used, but also helps them feel good about it. This takes the form of how the item looks, how useful it is, how different it is from similar competitors, and how its users are able to get the most out of it.
The terms user interface and user experience in this case are used mostly in the aspect of web development. Let’s dive deeper into the specifics of their terminology.
User Interface (UI)
On one hand, user interface has everything to do with designing the aesthetic experience of the software. When a person uses applications and websites, they are first exposed to their user interface.
User interface helps answer the questions: How visually pleasing is this application? How is my combination of typography? Do my buttons look good? How does my color affect the visualization of my elements? Are the animations not too distracting? Are my images of good quality? Is my interface spacious?
User interface designers technically have the same job as architects but for web development. They make something look good, and they present software with aesthetics that adhere to the brand identity of the organization. They ensure that every element of an application compliment the overall design of the software.
Nielson Norman Group (2020) enumerates 10 usability heuristics for user interface design. These include:
1. Visibility of System Status
In this part, it’s important to maintain a connection with the users by sending regular feedback with regard to the tiniest detail changed or bugs recognized in software. Keeping them informed means that the bug is personally acknowledged by the software and that the problem is not on the user’s end.
2. Match between system and the real world
Make the language and understandability of software recognized on a large scale suitable to many cultures. By avoiding the use of jargon, users are assured that everything they see is understandable in one reading.
3. User control and freedom
Provide “safety nets” with regard to misclicks and unwanted purchases and actions in software. This could be in the form of providing them a certain amount of time to refund a product or allow them to have leeway with regard to conscious choices that may not necessarily be in the form of purchases.
4. Consistency and standards
Every aspect of software must be clear, concise, and consistent. Users should not wonder whether different words may mean the same thing. Design consistency must be upheld from the beginning to the end of an interface.
5. Error prevention
As much as companies value customer feedback from several errors that they have experienced, it is definitely a lot better to prevent these errors from happening to begin with. Several workarounds may be done in order to prevent these errors from happening again but if they persist, companies may opt to just eliminate the feature completely.
6. Recognition rather than recall
As humans by nature, have short-term memories, it’s better to create an interface that does not require them to memorize every part of it but to focus on better recognition of a feature’s functions. Placing purely buttons with no way to identify its purpose without clicking it is a bad way to design software. Label every feature, and make them recognizable at first glance.
7. Flexibility and efficiency of use
Allow users to customize the software to their own preference. This may help them be able to familiarize themselves with software much more efficiently than others that do not allow this feature otherwise.
8. Aesthetic and minimalistic design
This basically explains why you should not bombard users with too much information on one page. Make the interface clean and concise without unnecessary buttons, words, or information that come with a page.
9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors.
Error messages must be notified to users in understandable languages, and not codes. Who would know what to do when they receive ‘Error 404: {1249%20%J#676S} page not found’ instead? Identify the problem, inform the users, and help suggest a possible solution for the problem.
10. Help and documentation
Include a help feature to allow customers to diagnose a problem for themselves or seek help from the software. Adding a customer service feature where these users could easily and immediately get help from is a plus in user interface.
User Experience (UX)
On the other hand, user experience is the design that is responsible for the optimization experience of the software. This determines how people interact with the application.
The line that sets apart user experience from the user interface is all about its process being regarded as more a scientific process than it being an artistic one.
Determining how user experience is made use of in the aspect of the design is translated from all the hypotheses formulated via induction, observation, experimental and measurement-based testing of deductions drawn from these hypotheses, and refinement (or elimination) of the hypotheses based on actual experimental findings.
The UX makes this scientific process possible typically by wireframing (starting with an initial version of the software) and user test (allowing users to interact with software and give an early diagnosis of UX design). This is measured and refined based on findings and is a continuous process even after the software is ready to go.
In the aspect of web development, user experience is concerned with the usability of an application. In user experience, the types of questions people ask are: How usable is this application for me? Am I able to interact with most of its elements conveniently? Do they need this button? Why do they lack a settings button? Do they need this much interactivity? How does it respond when there’s an error? Most importantly, are the users achieving the best that they can get out of the application?
If user interface designers are much like architects, user experience is now leaning on to the aspect of interior design, because aside from designing furniture and choosing the right one, they worry about whether this furniture serves a purpose or not. The same goes for user experience designers. They place the essential components of an application that they think serves an important function to its users.
Why do you need UI/UX Designers in your team?
1. Increases customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Having UI/UX designers in your team increases customer satisfaction and loyalty because it would leave them with reasons to stay. Customers would always prefer applications and websites that look good, feel good, and are easy to interact with.
This is essential because as much as it is difficult to maintain customer satisfaction and loyalty, it’s easy to lose them from a competitor with a website or application that has a significantly better interface, design, and interactivity.
UI/UX designers aim to avoid this problem. They do what they can to keep one’s UI and UX at the best possible quality.
2. Helps you get to know your customers.
UI/UX designers root their designs and interactivity from the characteristics that their customers have. UI/UX designers do not simply create quality user interfaces and experiences from scratch. They make sure that the UI/UX of what they are designing is congruent with the target market.
This is significant in the overall marketing of software because customers behave differently and would require different types of UI/UX in each application.
3. Builds brand awareness.
Many people say first impressions last. While it is true, UI/UX designers work to give customers not just a good first impression, but a lasting impression. This impression in turn translates into improved brand awareness of the overall brand quality of the company.
By having UI/UX designers, the brand awareness of customers is put to a high standard, and this standard would entice them to be more willing to point out features that need upgrades. This in turn helps in improving one’s application based on the preference of the company’s customers. Credibility is established and customers are able to establish trust in the brand.
4. Helps increase return on investment.
A good brand helps your customers to recommend the application to others, exponentially increasing an organization’s return on investment. Good customer recommendation leads to increased customers.
More than that, not only will these customers be loyal to the application, but they would be more willing to avail of in-app purchases should there be any.
5. Conserves time and expenses.
Investing in UI/UX designers helps minimize interface and interactivity errors that would, in the long run, might acquire a hefty cost. Applications with good UI/UX designs also reduce the chances that clients will find any problem with the application.
This will help conserve the application without frequent updates, therefore, conserve time and money.
UI/UX in Mangtas
Mangtas rapidly prototypes its interface to get a feel of user interface and user experience as fast as possible.
More than having a team affluent in UI/UX design, Mangtas also pivots its UI/UX from user data. Usability tests and user feedback have played vital roles in developing the interface that you see in Mangtas today.
To this day, Mangtas’ UX process has already gone through at least 12 cycles (iterations), 63 user tests with approximately 502 findings from these tests.
Statistically, this has given Mangtas about a 32% increase in usability so far.
This characteristic of being data-driven allows Mangtas to suit the needs of their users not just artistically, but also scientifically.
Interested in talking about UI/UX even more? Comment down below!