Anyone who\u2019s familiar with best practices in design fields knows how important it is to commit time and resources to UX development. But tech startups tend to spring up almost from nowhere, boosted by programmers who may not have a great understanding of the importance of user experience. The result – UX designs that confuse, infuriate, and ultimately leads to tons of questions. Here are 5 UX rules that are the most important for tech startups to recognize as early as possible in the development process.<\/p>\n
Your back-end tech ideas may be wholly revolutionary, but it doesn\u2019t mean that any design you come up with is automatically fit for purpose. The only opinions that really matter when it comes to UX are those of the users, and they don\u2019t usually leave much room for vanity design. Every designer thinks he knows a lot. But don\u2019t try to reinvent the wheel. Unless you have an incredibly compelling justification, adhere to existing UX standards, and give your users something recognizable instead of something revolutionary (familiarity beats novelty). Being creative is fun bit don’t try and over do it.<\/p>\n
Content is king is the common belief, but that isn\u2019t really true. User psychology is king. Content is just one way of affecting it, and UX is another. In fact, top UX designers are masters of psychology, carefully studying how and why users take particular actions.<\/p>\n
Startups can easily get stuck in an infinity loop when it comes to psychology, imagining one type of end user and getting trapped by their perspective. People are more complex than that. Users will vary in countless ways. You can\u2019t account for them all, but you can do a good deal of research and come up with general personas that cover most of your target audience (try using a guide on how to create personas).<\/p>\n
The best user experiences are streamlined, trimmed down for speed and efficiency. You might think this simply calls for compressing images, using clear language, and avoiding unnecessary data entry, but there\u2019s almost always more to be done.<\/p>\n
When prototyping a UX, you should cast an eye over every single element; every image, CTA, paragraph, button, or piece of styling and after careful review, ask \u201cIs this really necessary?\u201d. If you get rid of it, does the end user lose anything of significance? Will they find it harder to achieve their goal, or like the site any less? If an element doesn\u2019t justify its presence, scrap it. Smooth out the friction. A simple design is easier to demonstrate, understand, run, and maintain.<\/p>\n
Some layouts can be extremely confusing, with variable design elements and unclear contextual clues. That\u2019s why making your UX design consistent across every aspect of the project is essential. Think about basic visual elements like icons. We don\u2019t really pay that much attention to them when they\u2019re used correctly, but they glaringly stand out when they\u2019re used poorly.<\/p>\n
You can get a solid idea of what you can and can\u2019t play within a layout by taking one look at the themes. Change the colors? No problem. Change the font? Also fine. Alter the icons or the basic navigation? Not the best idea. Get it slightly wrong and users will have no idea what\u2019s happening. You don\u2019t want to make your users think.<\/p>\n
At some point in UX design history, someone decided that creating layouts and populating them with fake text (usually Lorem Ipsum) was a good idea. It really isn\u2019t, and the sooner you get out of the habit of using empty copy, the better off you\u2019ll be. At the very least, this is because text is a core component of UX. It steers people away from certain areas and towards others, and has a knock-on effect on how the rest of the interface is perceived. Iterating upon copy is just as important as iterating upon any other UX element.<\/p>\n