The Impact of User Research on UX Design

[Pokemons]

How does UI (User Interface) design contribute to the overall user experience, and what are some key principles that designers should follow to ensure a visually appealing and functional interface?

[Reverend Jim]

A bad design leads to a bad experience. A good design can lead to a good experience. Is that a question that seriously needs to be answered?

[john_111]

I once visited a website where there were 20 rows, each composed of 20 identical small white squares (about the size of this --> HH ), with a tiny arrow in the bottom quarter corner to indicate they were links. But no text anywhere. Can you imagine how hard it would be to remember which button took you to which page, several days later?

This was a site someone paid good money for to put an art museum on line so visitors could view the museum contents. It was a while ago, but even back then it was a totally disastrous design. And it was live for several years.

Now can you see why a good design matters?

Several years later I visited a site with links styled in 10 or 12 different ways (!), but the different styles were also applied to parts that were not links, especially on different pages where all the colours or indications were used but only three or five were links. I ended up clicking on everything to find new pages or large version of images. A site I worked on when the original designer had quit after arguing with the site owner. He used grey text on a bluish background. (Hard to read.) The page links were a slightly different shade of grey. The only way to detect page links was to move the mouse cursor over every single word!

[Reverend Jim]

Read The Essentials of User Interface Design by Alan Cooper.