5 UX Design Principles You Should Know

What are the most important principles in UX design? User-centricity, consistency, hierarchy, testing, and usability. The first means focusing on the user’s needs, the second is delivering the same experiences and using the same patterns all across your site or app, the third is developing a proper information architecture, the fourth is verifying your choices, and the fifth is ease to use for the target audience. Follow all of them, and you’ll see a rise in conversions, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty.

What Are the 5 Fundamental Principles in UX Design?

The better the user experience, the more customers you attract and convince to convert. However, building it is not easy. You need to avoid cognitive biases, carefully plan each change, and test your solutions; otherwise, you might make mistakes that will translate directly into potential income loss. Therefore, let’s discuss what principles you need to follow to design a site or app with a UX that will help you achieve your business goals rather than stop you from doing so.

1. User-Centricity

Think about your product, website, or app as a tool – a solution to solve your customers’ problems. Only this will allow you to design a UX that will work in your favor. How to do that? It involves a bit of marketing. First of all, you should create user personas – examples of who your target users could be. The more thorough you are and the more detailed the personas, the better you will understand your target audience, thus helping you build a user experience that will be appealing. Knowing this, you can proceed with adjusting your site. Even the tiny elements matter, like the font size (especially if your target audience is a bit older) or the loading speed and content layout (if your audience is younger and has a shorter attention span).

2. Consistency

This UX principle is simple, yet often overlooked or even not followed – be consistent with your design. There is nothing more disruptive for users than the lack of consistency in both UI and UX design, as it makes the site/app less intuitive and harder to navigate. In this case, we suggest using UX design patterns and building a library out of it – you can, for instance, use WordPress blocks for this sake. This way, you’ll be able to add the same elements to all subpages quickly, ensuring consistency all over your site (or app).

3. Hierarchy

Information architecture is crucial! When designing your app or website, you need to create a hierarchy of all the elements and information you present and place them accordingly. Usually, this means the most critical data/functions/content on top and the least important on the bottom. This does not refer only to the UI but also to the whole content. If you create a blog article, start with the most essential information – the answer to the question posed in the title. Then follow up with less crucial information, leaving the facts that the reader might like, but doesn’t have to read at the bottom.

4. Usability

Think about your users – is it easy for them to navigate the page? Are there any errors that might prevent this from being smooth? Can they quickly return to the content that they once found? Usability is the most fundamental UX design principle, as without it, hardly anybody will want to use your page or app. You have to look at all possible aspects that can affect it, including loading speeds, as all these elements can increase (or reduce) the conversion rates significantly. Just take a look at the research conducted by Deloitte – they have found out that even a minor, 0.1-second boost to your loading speed can take your conversions up by 8%-10%!

5. Testing

Finally, none of the above UX design principles matters without this one – testing. You have to conduct tests regularly, gather feedback, and improve your web/app with time. Why is it so crucial? 

• Your team is susceptible to various cognitive biases, which could result in ineffective UX solutions. 
• With innovative technologies, solutions, or plugins come new opportunities to enhance user experience even further.
• You can make improvements based on user feedback and try to reach a site that doesn’t offer a good user experience but a perfect one!

The Takeaway

Follow these 5 principles of UX design, and see how your website or app thrives. In the current customer-centric market, providing the best possible experience is a must, so don’t try to cut down the costs – instead, embrace UX and see what returns it brings.

Do you feel that it all is difficult? Don’t worry – see our UX design services and discover how we can help you build your website or mobile application!

Sources:

Deloitte (2020). Milliseconds make Millions. https://ledgeviewpartners.com/blog/web-traffic-statistics-you-should-know-in-2020/