7 Reasons Why UX & UI Design is Important for Your Website

User experience and user interface help create a strong brand story, increasing website traffic, leading to a delightful customer journey.

“UI is the saddle, the stirrups, & the reins. UX is the feeling you get being able to ride the horse.”

-Dain Miller, Web Developer

A great website experience starts with UX (User Experience) and is followed by UI (User Interface) since both these processes are crucial for a smooth user experience and interaction. You would wonder why these processes are so important for a website? With a poor UI / UX experience, an online customer can get frustrated and result in a direct drop-off.

UI tends to complement UX, as it is a process that proceeds the initial user experience wireframing. It consists of the look and feel of the website, like the product appearance, functionality, and interactivity.

What is the difference between User experience & User Interface?

User Experience (UX): design is creating an interactive layout to provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. UX starts with user research which is focused on primary and competitive analysis. It then analyzes that research through insights & findings, plotting customer journeys, understanding the website’s user flow, and creating personas.

The analysis process then moves into an ideation phase with prototypes, idea sketches, and wireframes. The process moves on to the User interface (UI) phase on approval of the UX design.

User Interface (UI): Phase focuses purely on the website’s design elements through branding, look & feel, creating mood boards, style tiles, user testing, layout, and responsiveness.

It then proceeds to the design specs stage, where you would create a UI wireframe with a visual design document. Combining efforts with the UX design, the project then moves into an implementation and finalization phase.

7 Laws to follow for a delightful User Experience design

• Law of Aesthetics

This Law is focused on the observation that if a user design is aesthetically appealing, it is then assumed to be more efficient and valuable by the user.

Aesthetics = Usability

An aesthetically pleasing design creates a positive emotion or response from the user; this response then translates into believing that the design is superior due to its visual appeal. It is said that people tend to ignore minor usability issues and errors if the design of the product or service is appealing to them. People tend to believe that things that look good will work much better.

• Fitts’s Law

In the 1950s, psychologist Paul Fitts, while examining the human motor system, observed that the time required to move from “Target “A to “Target B” depends on the target distance and target size. To further explain how this Law is significant for UX design, it takes for a mouse cursor to move from Target A, the distance to Target B, the CTA button size. Distance and size are inversely related in this aspect. Thus, the longer the distance and the smaller the target’s size, the longer it takes to complete a task.

• Hick’s Law

Hick’s Law was named after two psychologists William Edmund Hick and Ray Hyman; this is why the Law is sometimes referred to as “Hick-Hyman law”. This Law states that the more options are available to a user, the longer it will take for the user to decide. Designer’s often quote this Law as “Keep it Simple, Stupid.”

More Options = More Confusions

• Jakob’s Law

Jakob’s Law was coined by the famous Nielsen Norman Group (Co-Founder), Jakob Nielsen. His view of the Law states that users would want your website to work as seamlessly as a competitor website would. Users tend to transfer their expectations on how a website should interact or function compared to similar websites. Jakob’s Law helps create a superior user experience in which the user is focused on the tasks and not blind-sided by new learning models.

• Gestalt Theory

The Gestalt Law was founded by German thinkers Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler, and Kurt Koffka. “Gestalt” is German for “unified whole.” This focuses on laws of human perception that describe how humans group similar elements, recognize different patterns, and simplify complex images when we perceive objects.

• Law of Similarity

The Law of Similarity states that elements or icons similar to each other tend to be perceived under one group. Visually identical elements will be perceived as connected. Shape & sizes, icons, designs, orientation & movement can put elements into a single group and likely share a collective meaning or functionality.

The human eye perceives the same elements in a design as a complete picture, shape, or group, even if those elements are separated.

The human eye tends to perceive similar elements in a design as a complete picture, shape, or group, even if those elements are separated.

• Pareto Principle (80/20 rule)

The Pareto Principle is named after famous Italian-born economist Vilfredo Pareto. Back in the 1800s, he observed that 20% of the population has the majority of wealth; this observation of disparity in wealth distribution gave ideation for the 80-20 rule.

If 20% of your customers contribute 80% of revenue, you should focus on satisfying these customers.

Design constitutes a significant contribution to a successful website. “Design is everywhere. From the dress you’re wearing to the smartphone you’re holding, its design”.

Create a custom immersive experience with a new user experience & design, transform your business today, connect with Tekhné

Written By: Anisha Chaudhari