Simplicity in User Experience Design Helps To Reach Mind Goals of Users

The prime objective of UX design is to reach the mind goals of the users. For this, you will need to maintain simplicity in your design.

In fact, simplicity in design is in rage these days. This design philosophy is championed by several successful companies as it enhances the focus. However, being simple is much harder than being complex, especially when it comes to UX designing. The hardest part in it is to get your thought process clean as much as possible to make it simple.

The main reason why companies and designers focus on simplicity is that it eliminates intimidation and allows a wide range of users to use the product, unafraid. However, simplicity is not easy to define and therefore harder to follow.

·         To some simplicity in design is ‘One that works’ and

·         To some others it can be ‘Because it is simple to use.’

In order to measure simplicity, you can follow the statement of Joe Sparano, the great American graphic designer and educator who says simplicity in design is just like the difference between a good design and a great design. According to him:

·         A good design is obvious and

·         A great design is transparent.

All designers should consider the aims of the users during UX design in order to make the user interface more useful.

Whether these aims are few or vast, it is the job of a good designer is to find and offer the simplest means to achieve these goals. This is ideally the height of design sophistication. It is all about getting deeper into the matter as well as the minds of the user to understand a thing in a better way and use that understanding into designing.

·         This will help the designer to create a product that by itself will get rid of all of the inconsequential elements.

·         It will also help in closing the gap between the goals of the users and their means to achieve these through the system designed.

Though these factors are very useful, simplicity in the user interface design is not only about using minimal colors or whitespaces to include.

Maintaining clarity

One of the most significant and useful ways to achieve simplicity in user interface design is to maintain clarity. This will eventually help you to understand the goals of your users and design the product accordingly. First, you will have to consider the website.

·         Find out whether or not it is like an online retailer for the consumers or

·         Whether your product designed is an enterprise solution that will help the company executives in managing their projects.

When you consider these pints it will be easier for you to maintain clarity all through the design process. This clarity in design will ensure user satisfaction and user success as it will help the users to understand easily what you are trying to offer them and help them to achieve.

·         Avoid too much extraneous information in your design. This will create problems for the users to navigate through your site.

·         Instead, focus on how best you can make them understand the message you are trying to convey to them. This will help you to be more specific about the actions that you want the users to take within the first couple of seconds of their visit and browsing.

·         Consider the core aspects of your web page and call attention to only those aspects. Clear and the simple design will help you to draw the attention of your users towards such actions very easily.

Even the search engines favor clear and uncluttered sites which is why simplicity in web design is gaining value and popularity these days.

·         A clear design will not only take in a lot of users but will also prevent them from browsing aimlessly.

·         It will be easier for the users to select a popular and new story that is more relevant and less distracting and will help the user to find what they are searching for.

It is the fact that Google favors simplicity and maintaining clarity in web design that has made it the most popular search engine in the world. It currently holds the market share of almost 80%, much higher than what Yahoo Inc. or any other of its competitors have at present.

If you compare all the search engines you will see that Google has a very clean, clear and simple user interface. It ideally matches with the goals of the users which is employing a search engine for what it does best: search.

Use of automation

Users want things to happen fast and the best way to ensure they get exactly that is to focus on automating different processes as much as possible. This will ensure there is a minimum amount of cognitive and conscious effort required by the users.

Ideally, any behavior that is well-rehearsed will become automatic as it is explained in the paper ‘Controlled and Automatic Human Information Processing.’ This paper by cognitive scientists, Richard Shiffrin, and Walter Schneider refers to human nature and their propensity to perform common and practiced tasks with minimum effort.

·         For example, the toaster in your home is very simple to use as it requires very little or no interactions apart from pressing the power switch on to attain your appliance related goals. That means it is very little or no awareness that leads to ‘automaticity’ making you feel in control and at ease without much effort.

·         Another example is the messenger apps that you use which has very little or no variance in appearance when compared to all other different mobile interface designs. It is the common functionality and this familiar interface that helps all users to adapt to these different messenger apps quite easily and seamlessly.

Therefore, when you use similar mobile user interface components for your product it will leverage existing customs and ensure better user experience in your designs. Make use of automation to its best by figure out the commonly practiced processes and tasks to incorporate into your user interface design whenever possible.