UI UX Designing for Cats
Tags: ux, uiweekly, design, webdev
Published: 2020-10-20 06:03:48

As we go into the last quarter of 2020, we can see some massive changes in the industry which are centered around UI UX. You can observe a surge in demand for UX designers. Wonder why? The tolerance of people for poor experience is declining over time and teams are now focusing on putting the customer first.

User experience has no clear cut definition to date. Broadly saying, it is how someone finds your app or website in terms of ease of use, accessibility, performance, etc. As a UI UX designer, you make or break a company's business.

> "If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good I am satisfied." - _Alfred Nobel_

## Your Role?

First of all, UX and UI are both different. UX deals with the psychology and mentality of people while UI is pure design skills. There are places where UX and UI designing are done by different individuals and there are also teams where it's a single person. As a designer, you will be responsible for understanding the problem what you are trying to solve and draft a meaningful prototype as the solution. A good level of creativity is required as your imagination will be the face of the solution. It is always important to include your teammates in the design process. Sometimes a small suggestion can bring a huge difference in how people interact with your product.

## User-Centered Design

User-centered design or UCD is a design process that has gained popularity over the period. As the name sounds, the user and his opinions are always put first. It follows a basic rule, "constant improvement for the better." Let's break it down into four phases: Research, Concept, Design, and Test. This repeats as a loop with numerous iterations.

#### Research Phase
This is where you layout and understand the problem thoroughly. You need to interview the audience for whom you'll be targeting as customers. Make sure the questions are simple and the flow is structured. It is better to do a trial run on your teammates before going out to the real world. Sometimes there will be someone by the title, business analyst who does this job and understanding what customer wants. He/She will then give all the inferences and requirements as a requirement doc.

#### Concept Phase
You can start drafting the solution once you have a good understanding of the problem. Always keep your target audience in mind. Creating a product that is not practical or doesn't solve anything is just a waste of money and time. Create personas and stick them up to your wall. The objective of this phase is to understand the user journey, a path that will be followed by the user to achieve the desired goal within your app or website. An ideation workshop is optimal if you want to bring your team together. Start with paper as this will take so many iterations. Make as many variations as you can, discuss with others, and get their feedback. Once you reach some saturation level, Voila, you have the first functional wireframe with you.

#### Design Phase
This is where your graphic design skills step in. We're talking about colors, fonts, buttons, and all that brings your wireframe to life. Most large companies have a design language of their own. A design language is a set of consistent elements and rules like buttons, font specifications, etc. [Material Design](https://material.io/) by Google, [Fluent Design](https://www.microsoft.com/design/fluent/) by Microsoft are popular design languages out there. There are a lot of tools, both offline and online such as Adobe XD, Figma which facilitates UI designing. Make sure you master at least one. Another key thing in UI design is responsiveness. Since the mobile internet started to kick in, people are looking for the same accessibility with their small devices like smartphones, tablets that they achieve on desktops. A UI designer can make or break a great wireframe. So UX and UI designers must be in sync in places where they are not the same person.

#### Test Phase
Once the first version of the product has been developed, start testing it with real people. Watch how people use it and trust me, you'll find it amusing. Ask questions about navigation, ease of use, accessibility. Deploy some analytics like [Google Analytics](https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/) or [Crazy Egg](https://www.crazyegg.com/) and analyze your user's behavior. These results can show what you need to improve. It can be highlighting call-to-actions, removing unwanted imagery, or even changing the colors (do some research on color theory and how they are related to human mentality). From here, you are going back to the research phase for the next iteration.

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UX UI designing is not something you can master in a single day. Push your creativity to the limits and you'll improve over time. Listen to podcasts, subscribe to newsletters, and keep up to date with design trends. You may want to check out [this course](https://antonyconboy.com/) on UI UX designing by Antony Conboy which is perfect for beginners.

Have a nice day!