Whether you’re designing a website or an app that you hope will serve as the main point of contact between yourself and your customers, one thing is essential to get right: the user interface (UI). The quality of your UI will decide how enjoyable and accessible your audiences find your web content to navigate – and if that is something that fails to live up to the standard set by your competitors, it could turn people away.
But how do you know what’s good? Where do you look for inspiration? That depends on what kind of sector you find yourself in, but there will be certain objective qualities that make this an easier topic to research.
Apps You Use
If you’re trying to understand what customers might like, why not tap into that part of you that is, itself, a customer? From food ordering apps to exercise apps and games, you can get an idea of what you do and don’t like by simply looking at something. Just using one example might not be able to accurately inform you why you feel a certain way about something, but using several might start to paint a clearer picture.
Couple this with research that you can conduct online about what others consider signifiers of high-quality app design, and you can begin to see the whole picture. In this case, it might also be beneficial to look at examples that might be considered negative so that you can understand what to avoid if you’re unsure.
Think About Your Audience
It might also help you to think of your target audience so that you can look to outlets they might frequent, hoping that the association they get from could draw them to what you’re offering. That’s not to say that you should copy it, but taking inspiration from something can help you to better understand what’s appealing about it in the first place.
Online pokies might be a popular pastime that your target customers are interested in, for example, but you might find that the overlap that these outlets have with what you’re offering is somewhat minimal. So, the ways in which you take inspiration and then apply that to your own UI should be carefully considered and appropriate.
The Greats and the Trends
Again, you don’t want to be thought of as copying unsuccessful things – you very much want to leave your own impression on your consumers. However, the big names in business and the apps they have to offer will be widely used and may therefore conform to modern design tastes. For example, if you take a look at what the UIs of these apps or websites have in common, you might discover that minimalism features throughout them.
It’s not hard to see why minimalist design might be popular among users, given that it cleans up the screen and often makes understanding where to go a very straightforward process. Still, it should never be thought that it’s easier just because there is less on the screen, as it means you have to think about what goes where and how you can telegraph where to go.
