THE ULTIMATE UI DESIGN GUIDE

Daniel Schwarz delves into the world of UI design to bring you top techniques and the latest tools for creating great interfaces

UI design is such an archaic term. What actually goes into the design of a user interface? Aesthetics? Usability? Accessibility? All of them? How do all of these factors unite to enable an optimal user experience and which should come first?

Accessibility should always come first, laying the foundations for optimal usability. And then, when a UI is both accessible and usable, it should already look rather decent in terms of aesthetics. Let’s take a closer look at the foundational elements of most designs and what can be done to ensure visual consistency.

CHOOSE YOUR TYPOGRAPHY

Paragraph spacings, letter spacings, font sizes and line heights should enhance readability and communicate the visual hierarchy of different snippets of UX content

Great typography (like many aspects of design) boils down to accessibility.

Visual design certainly adds to the user’s overall experience but at the end of the day, users are interacting with the UI, not viewing it as art. Legible letters result in clarity and readable words are what help users digest content efficiently. Both are more important than any visual aesthetic.

However, well-designed typography can still be aesthetically satisfying. Black-on-white Helvetica (or a similar font) can be a thing of beauty after only a few simple typographic enhancements. By enhancements, what I mean is tweaking the font size, line height, letter spacing and so on – not the font or the colour of the text.

‘Beautiful’ typography is actually ugly when it’s unreadable because frustration always trumps aesthetics. Great design is balanced and harmonious.

Like many aspects of UI design, fine-tuning visuals to balance accessibility and aesthetics isn’t the challenge. The challenge is maintaining consistency throughout the entire design.