12 things that I learned during 9 years of UI design

I know these can seem a bit cliché but I will try to explain everything from my own experience.

No.1 Never assume

The first time I heard this sentence, I was in a car with my father and a pedestrian jumped in front of the car, luckily I dodged but I learned a valuable lesson. “Never assume” mindset can apply to design or any other aspect of your lives.

Designing something by assuming means that it is on your head and you consider everybody had the same experience before, which is impossible. You might think that a person can see what you put in a user interface, but people tend not to read. Make sure you give proper feedback on every important object in your design. Consider every possibility, think about what might the user be capable of, and act on it.

No.2 Consider every feedback

When your work goes live, every kind of person will be seeing it, reading it, using it. People usually don’t try to hurt you when they say “Oh! I did not see that button” They just say the truth. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to change it but you might think what made that person missed your obvious button. At some point, you can say “Is this guy stupid? How he could not see that?”. Instead of arguing, just tell thank you for your feedback, I will consider. This makes the person feel participated, to more likely to work with you in the future and give positive feedback about you. Also, try to understand why that button seemed invisible to that person. Maybe the colors were not right, maybe the hierarchy in your design has some flaws that the eye of that person caught something else on that screen.

No.3 Dumb proof your work

User interface designs are mostly online designs. Which means, anybody can see your designs. To dumb proof your work:

1st and most importantly, have a clear hierarchy between your items. Let your user have a flow of reading. Business needs mostly tries to overcome those such as “Lets put a banner on top. That is the most important thing.” As the designer, you need to be able to say, no this page is for “Insert design element here” and it should be the strongest visual.

2nd have proper feedback. If a user tries to move on from the page without fulfilling the purpose of the page, remind the user to see what they are missing. If they miss something in a form, let the screen focus on that object. Don’t be scared to be aggressive if necessary. When a user finishes the task, they would be much happier.

No.4 Be consistent

Consistency is key to a UI designer, it is like creating a building without a solid foundation, the rest will fail at some point. Being consistent makes your design easier to be learned. For example, having the same button style for ‘Cancel’ or ‘Continue’ all around the website, makes your user feel much more in control when they decide on a choice. Consistency comes from having a proper style guide. Zeplin is my go-to software for having a proper style of communication with the developers.

No.5 Form follows function

In user interface design, we are not creating art, we are building an interface design system. This means nobody will see your work and say: “I can’t use this but it looks epic!” Unfortunately, our audience is people who need to perform an action to achieve something. Every UI has a function and it should be considered as the CORE of your design. First, you should implement the necessary copyright and call to actions (CTA — Buttons). After you are sure that you don’t miss any functionality then you can start stylizing it. No user will scroll and try to find the main button if you fill your first view with unnecessary imagery or illustration.

No.6 Be simple

Because it works! Think simple, create simple, be simple. User interface solves problems, it should not complicate it. Being simple does not mean be boring. Being simple is being to the point. If you are a user interface designer, your job is to make your users be able to the interface you created. Every screen should have at least 1 purpose. You should not mislead your users and users should understand the reason for that screen under 10 (max) seconds.

No.7 Know your audience

If you build a user interface system without knowing who will be seeing it, that means you are building a generic interface. Generic interfaces works, but not as good as a personalized one. If you want your users fully satisfied, you need to understand their needs. To understand the audience, you should test it on them, there are many ways to do that see link (user tests) My favorite memory was when I was working for a bank, and they told me their main users were between 30–52 age and %60 male. When we checked the numbers, we found out that their users are mostly elders who get their pensions and college students with student loans. We delivered a UI that was dedicated to these groups. (there were some epic solutions in that project, I will share it in another post) It got 4.7 average stars on the app store which is one of the best ones at those times.

8- Not every day will be your day

Some days are not that creative. 1 day or 2 days might be dry for you. Know that it will pass. This is just temporary. The only thing you can do about it to be prepared. For every work, spare some buffer time. This way, then you have these moments, you won’t fail your managers, colleagues, and obviously your clients.

No.9 Always have a reason behind

Without a reason, don’t add an element to your design because you think it is cool. By the way, if you place some element to your design and you liked it, it means that you did something right, but if you can’t justify it, it will be garbage.

Why this is so important has 2 scenarios:

1- If you work with a group of people (which is always the case), a vocal person, even if s/he is not a designer, might ask you why just because they want to be involved or worse, just to show her/himself. You need to be prepared, if your integrity crumbles a bit, the trust for your design will also start to fail.

2- During the user tests, people can’t always give you super clear feedback but they will be annoyed by something they can’t understand, and when this happens, most common sentences are as follows “I don’t like it”, “Oh, I missed that info text”, “What should I do next?”. You need to understand why do they say these, and how can you fix that. In most cases, the unnecessary but cool looking element is the main distraction.

Be strong with your opinion, when you add a super looking design element, and always have a reason and connect it with the rest of the design system.

No.10 Act positive (if you can, be positive)

Positivity is contagious. I always try to be extra positive both in life and in work. This made the people I work with always happy, and they wanted to work with me again. All of the feedback that I got in my life always had a sentence about a positive mood, always smiling, happy to be around. This job can be stressful and all of us knows that everyone thinks they are designer and this bugs us all, but this doesn’t mean everyone can do your job. They can only share their ideas, but in the end, you will be the one who gets paid and gets all the credit. %90 of my work life, I am genuinely happy and try to share this enthusiasm with my colleagues, and for the rest of 10%, I act happy. Which is also has a positive effect on people. This solves many problems before even their surface. Colleagues tend to be more honest with you because even with bad feedback, you keep a smile and fix the problem.

No.11 Respect and get respected by the developers

Always remember, someone will develop your design. In order to be respected by your developer, first, you need to understand how they code. Basic coding knowledge can improve your skills exceedingly. I am not saying that you should code yourself, but you should understand how it works. That way you will have so much respect for their job, and finally, understand what is possible in coding and how they solve simple and complex problems. If you respect them, they will see your value and respect you back. You will be the main designer they go to if you manage to do this. This means more projects and more creativity. I always say this, every idea of yours can be developed, but you need to understand the rules to deliver your designs.

No.12 Test everything

There is no perfect in UI design, you can only be better and better. If you want to upgrade your work, you can test it, see the problems and fix it, then test again and fix it again. This method seems agile related but the waterfall also uses this. This part is really easy: if you want to create something better, test it, and fix it.

Bonus: There is always more than 1 solution to every design problem. If one solution won’t work, stop wasting time, and start fresh. Never give up!

Thank you!