In this article, we give you the Complete Guide to Develop User-centered design. Usability and utility determine the success or failure of an internet site. Since the visitor of the page is that the only person who decides everything, the user-centered design has been established as a typical approach for profit-oriented web design. Over the past years, the user-centric approach has taken the front seat.
Developing a User-centered Website that Drives Great User Experiences.
User-centered design is a practice that caters to a user’s needs and expectations, as opposed to forcing them to consume whatever is there. As the web has evolved, users became more sophisticated. The demand for user-specific content has increased. They expect relevant and valuable information served straight up that is easy to understand and designed to enhance usability.
Key Areas to Enable a Smooth User Experience
Ensuring content is tailored to the needs of the user is the first step in the process. This is achieved through a comprehensive operation process, uncovering the wants, user stories, functional specifications, basic wireframes, and prototyping. Here are some areas that need focus while developing a user-centric web design:
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Navigation
No matter where a user arrives on your website, they should never be more than three clicks away from being able to access the information for which they are looking. This means consistency in your navigation menus, as well as keeping the number of menu items to an absolute minimum. An excellent navigation system should have no more than five elements. If the navigation and site architecture aren’t intuitive, the amount of question marks grows. It ultimately makes it harder for users to comprehend how the system works and how to get from point A to point B. A clear structure, moderate visual clues, and simply recognizable links can help users to seek out their path to their aim.
Color Schemes
Human eyes ideally use the principle of focus. The only element which is directly visible to the users is the thing which is attractive and appealing, but still calm and purely informative. Subtle hints provide users with enough information on how to find more about the product. Furthermore, these visual considerations are also subject to the whims and requirements of the users. You can try to combine simplicity with aesthetics with a rather laid-back color scheme. It allows you to make the most crucial elements of your website more prominent than the rest. Try to use color sparingly and have typography or font that is not too loud.
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Responsive Designs
Irrespective of the genre or nature of the website you’re working on, you should never omit the importance of accessibility. Accessibility can be in various ways in terms of the search bar, navigation menus, content organization, and so on. Another aspect to consider is the organization of your website. Helpful descriptions come handy when users try to know which section or link results in what a part of the web site. Responsive design is, by far, the most popular and well-known solution for this purpose. If you would like, you’ll also think about using different themes for mobile users and non-mobile users. Alternatively, you’ll go the adaptive design route and offer a separate mobile version of your main website optimized for users browsing via portable devices.
Communication
The fundamental principles involved in the use of visible language is the content users see on a screen. Consistency, screen layout, relationships, and navigability are important concepts of organization. Further, it includes doing the most with the least amount of cues and visual elements like simplicity, clarity, distinctiveness, and emphasis. Communication, in such ways, matches the presentation to the capabilities of the user. The interface keeps in balance the legibility, readability, typography, symbolism, multiple views, and color or texture to speak successfully. From the visitors’ point of view, the simplest site design may be a pure text, with no advertisements or further content blocks matching precisely the query visitors used or the content for which they’ve been looking.
Features
Modern web designs use the approach of guiding users with visually appealing 1-2-3-done-steps, large buttons with visual effects, etc. From the design perspective, these elements are incredibly effective as they lead the visitors through the site content in an effortless and user-friendly way. Letting the user see what functions are available is a fundamental principle of successful user interface design. Complex structures are harder to read, scan, analyze. If you’ve got the selection between separating two design segments by a clear line or by some whitespace, it’s usually better to use the whitespace solution. What matters is that the content is well-understood, and visitors feel comfortable with the way they interact with the system.
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Content
As the web is different from print, it’s necessary to regulate the literary genre to users’ preferences and browsing habits. Promotional writing, long text blocks without images, and keywords marked in bold or italics are some things people usually skip. People also like to ignore exaggerated language like marketing-induced names, company-specific names, and unfamiliar technical names. An optimal solution for effective writing is to use short and concise phrases and come to the point as quickly as possible. You can also use a layout that has multiple categories, heading levels, bulleted lists, and visual elements to break the uniform text block flow. Also, you can use plain and objective language and give some reasonable reason why they should stay on your website.
Final Thoughts
Designers must not forget the whole point of their trade is designing for the user. When that happens, you get sites that won’t frustrate users and end up being more than just a website i.e. the brand. There are many features of user-centered design on which to focus, but the consummate designer will take care to ascertain that each one of them is addressed successively.
9series is a leading website design services company that aims to complete a design process that has a good deal of thought and consideration.
Your users are everything, so it stands to reason that you should design to make their experience as delightful as you can.
