We all have heard people chatting and walking around the streets of tech cities, talking about the great UX service, about the bad websites, or experts talking about UI and UX Design. UI makes interfaces excellent whereas UX makes them helpful and useful. In this article, we will share the major and primary difference between UX and UI design.

‘Are you never going to be privy to a secret language? Or these people are using slang to look cool!! Let us see what UI vs. UX is in detail.

The User Interface (UI) is at the most basic level a set of screens, pages, and visual items such as buttons and icons which allow a person to interact with a product or service. 

User experience(UX), is a person’s own internal perception when communicating with every component of the products and services of an undertaking.

 

UX is not UI

The process through which a pain point or user need is identified is UX design or user experience design. A raw prototype is drawn from there that is subsequently validated (or invalidated) by testing.

The product is produced when both the business model and the value offer are validated.

User Interface Design = Interaction Design + Visual Design

Visual design is the look and feel of the website. 

Visual Design provides look and feel to your site. The way people communicate with your page is interaction design.

Designers of both UX and UI can still consider UX designers as architects of macro-interactions while UI designers can look after specifics, as developers of micro-interactions. 

A UX developer would typically model the interface experiences, such as steps to register for your newsletter. Which actions are they going to take, and how are they going to know if they succeed?

The model is passed to the user interface programmer. In the newsletter registration process, the UI developer will enhance these experiences with color and focus on the original design. It is a crucial point to consider when it comes to UI vs. UX.

 

User Interface makes the interfaces beautiful whereas UX makes them useful

A valuable service meets the need which is not already being met in the market. A UX designer’s research process includes a competitive analysis, the recruitment of working individuals, and then the production of a minimal, viable, product, or more appropriate, suitable, valuable product. It is confirmed by trials throughout the product’s life cycle.

Upon prototyping and checking the user flow and wireframes, it is the duty of the developer to make them appealing esthetically. It involves choosing an appealing and easy to use color scheme and typography. 

Color choices, typography, and interactions, however, are not based on the personal preference of the designer but on clearly expressed reasons for the people created by the UX developer. 

UI developers create a graphical hierarchy. It directs users to know what to do and when to do so to achieve their goals.

One main goal per page is illustrated by a well-designed hierarchy, which makes clear where and what the user is on the web.

You are going to do this with user-known conventions or patterns. Such patterns can act as instructions for the consumer on how to get there.

 

UX helps users meet their goals, UI allows emotional connections

People visit your site in search of information. You ask questions, you observe people, you interview people, and you can create samples and run a guerrilla experiment to see if you can verify your ideas for company and goods.

 

How do UX and UI designers work together during the design process?

The first step to determine whether to create a service or application is typically UX development and analysis. Most of the work by UX designers is validated or invalidated and guides product development.

After several prototypes have gone through the model, the UI designer has now substantially completed the project and begins the visual design and the micro-interactions.

Many factors depend on this. It may never be a straight road, however. Who manages UX and UI, for example? Is it the same person or another team?

 

UI pertains to interfaces whereas UX employs across the interfaces, services, and products

The design of user experience is a vast field and becomes increasingly popular every day. Today, not just web-based companies, but many others who develop products and offer services can gain an understanding of their customers and test their hypotheses before building them up.

The development of the User Interface is, of course, for UIs only. This doesn’t mean it’s limited to laptops, tablets, and handheld phones’ graphical user interfaces. We also see interfaces for many other items such as watches, washing machines, dashboards, sales machines, ticket kiosks, and many more these days.

You must have read about the application on the iPhone, which unlocks your car door. This array of interactions proves to be much more complicated than just using your key to open the car door. 

We should be vigilant to (again) hold our users at the center of our design process, whether we design for interfaces or experiences.

 

The user experience covers all aspects of the engagement of the end-user with the business, its services, and products

It is a wide definition that includes the interaction a person could have with a product or service— not just a virtual experience.

Many UX practitioners have chosen to call on the expertise of their customers, and others have taken a further leap to refer simply to the field as experiential design.

The original definition of UX is the essence of every logical application layout, all-encompassing, and always human-centered.

UX developers ensure that the organization provides a product or service that meets the customer’s expectations and enables it to reach the desired result smoothly.

UX developers work closely with UI designers, analysts from UX, marketing, and product groups in their research and experimentation on their clients.

We use their observations to iterate and refine services consistently on the basis of both quantitative and qualitative user research.

 

Significant Difference between UX and UI

UI comprises all the elements that allow someone to connect with a product or service at the most basic level. On the other hand, UX takes away the whole experience from the person who interacts with this product or service.

For example, take Google. Its familiar Spartan interface shows how a pleasant experience does not need whistles or bells.

Through focusing on the client, Google knows that they are after one thing: data when they come to the web. 

The fact that Google is a generally-accepted term demonstrates the success and ambition of the business. Almost anything a person has ever wanted to know can be found at a glance, and few other search engines still exist.

Imagine now that it took 15 seconds to get a result each time you searched for Google–the question could not be answered instantly anymore.

The interaction with Google would be quite different, even if the interface remains the same.

 

Does UI weigh  more than UX?

• Different people take on this subject differently.
• UX focuses on the experience of the user; the user interface focuses on how the surfaces of a product look and work
• The UX developer deals with the development issues so that the client concentrates on more specific elements
• UI is the bridge we want to get to, UX is our feeling of arriving.
• UI concentrates on the service, a selection of images in time. UX focuses on the consumer and the brand journey.
• UX covers all the interactions that the user has with a product or service, and UI is unique to how people interact with a product or service.

 

In a nutshell

When UX began to be a household term — at least on a corporate level— it was not rare for people to mix and swap words. Although the user experience sector will no doubt continue to develop, the vital role played by each discipline in the broader domain of human-centered design is crucial to understand.

What do you think? What is UI vs. UX? Does this mean different things, if it is used interchangeably? Think about it and visit us today at GoodWorkLabs. 

UX design is the backbone of a website. The whole UX design process is responsible for creating your site the way you always visualized it, and how a customer will see your website on accessing it.

UX design is a procedure of enhancing the user experience, or user satisfaction by increasing the overall efficiency, and usability of a website. When we talk about conversion rate, it is directly related to the UX design of the website. This highlights the importance of a great UX designer for any business.

What is very important to note that a great UX design involves several factors than just an intuitive user flow and an appealing layout. A good UX will entirely change the way a user browses a website. It is bound to bring more traffic and increase conversions.

An improvement in the User Experience will convert your website visitors to business leads, buyers, and even brand loyalists.

Ways to Improve the UX of Your Website:-

It is not very difficult to look after ways to boost the aggregate experience of your website.

These four ways serve the purpose for you just as effectively:-

1- Have an Easily Visible Call to Action Button

Call to action (CTA) buttons have a significant role in guiding the users for conversion. The most commonly used CTA’s are: to sign up for updates, start a trial, download the app, schedule an appointment, and a lot more.

Furthermore, having a clear and appealing CTA button always provides excellent experience on a website. This Call to Action attribute deserves a space on every website page. There is no denying that sites with clear CTA buttons bring more conversions with them.

To add to it, if your website has several folds, your CTA button should be above the fold for easy visibility to the users.

You can keep a few more things in mind for CTA buttons-

• The color of a CTA button has a lot of importance. The use of specific colors can provide a lot more visibility to the button. Try to use contrasting colors for CTA’s when compared with the color scheme of the complete web page.
• The text on a CTA should be action-oriented. Passive verbs are strictly not advisable. This text needs to be subtle but active enough to make the user take the desired action.
• The word count, while writing the CTA text, should not exceed more than five words.

Having a visible Call to Action button is very imperative to provide users with a great experience.

2- Control your 404 Errors

When a user looks for something on the web, they expect to land on the exact web page they were looking for in the first place. If they fall on a page error, like 404 in most cases, it will take them no time to switch over to another website for a faster experience.

It becomes very apparent that 404 errors have the potential to take active users away from your web page. What is also evident is that these errors can never be completely taken care of.

This is why a question arises- How to accurately take care of this problem?

• The first way is to find out those pages where the search results show 404 errors and fix them as quickly as possible.
• Instead of allowing your website to display a standard ‘404 error: page is unavailable’ message, you can get some customization done for the error messages to make things a little friendly for the visitors.
• You can take the help of some relevant, pleasing, and entertaining images for the error page to reduce the anger and frustration of a user considerably.
• Convey to the users that you are the provider of a very smooth and comfortable browsing experience. For doing that, personalize the error text to add a personal touch to it.

It is crucial to know that you cannot eliminate these error texts, but taking enough care not to irritate the visitors will always be an added advantage for your UX.

3- Make Use of Authentic Images

Images have the potential to enhance the appeal of any web page instantly and make the content more authentic and believable. The kind of images you use can easily make the entire call of the page is good or bad.

To be sure about the images you use, the first advice is to keep away from stock pictures. Using them is always cheap and very easy, but they tend to be more harmful than beneficial in the long run.

These stock images do look professional, but it is never difficult for the users to understand that they are stock images, and such behavior will make them lose their interest.

Original and authentic images always attract more visitors because they bring a realistic touch with them and ensure connectivity with the users. The stock images, of course, become repetitive and bore the visitors.

If you use stock images for your web page, it sends a wrong message that you were lethargic in investing your efforts to design your website. Stock images will not allow your site to look unique, as users will most certainly have come across the pictures before.

You should make it a point to use only original images, irrespective of how basic or simple they look. The key here is to stay away from stock photos at all costs.

4- Ensure a Quicker Page Loading Time

If your web page is guilty to load slowly, it is enough reason for users to eventually abandon your site and go to a website having a quicker response time.

So, if your landing page is slow, there is a high probability that visitors will not even go through your website entirely. Also, you should also take care that just improving the loading speed is not going to be enough. Optimizing your website for mobile users is also very important.

Conclusion

Providing a lot of relevant information is not what User Experience is about. It is about how interactively, and how engaging are your efforts to ensure that information.

You might have a great product to show, but if you fail to catch the attention of the user, it will never be enough.

If you wish to have a website with all the trending practices for a great User Experience, we can help you. Get in touch with us!

 

 

The Importance of UI Design in Dashboards

‘Why to put a lot of thought into dashboard design?’

The answer is simple! Because your dashboard is the first thing that users will look at while interacting with your product.

It has to be understandable in one glance to be usable. Besides, all the brilliant technologies such as AI, Blockchain, Machine Learning are useless to the users if they are not presented in a user understandable way.

This is why dashboard designs require a thorough thought process.

Given, the importance of the dashboards, today we would like to address the popular query i.e. ‘how to make a great dashboard UI’.

But, before we dive into  the tips to make a perfect dashboard UI, let’s discuss the characteristics of a good dashboard:

 

• An effective dashboard is a visual board for simple conclusions of a rather complex set of information with a call to action. This means the dashboard provides information on which the user can base his decision on.
• A great dashboard is easy to understand and presents all the key insights.
• Besides being extremely intuitive, a good dashboard is easy to customize.
• In a very limited space, great dashboards exhibit all the crucial piece of information

Now, the point is how to come up with a dashboard which can pass for the above characteristics. Here are a couple of notes regarding the visual design that one must keep in mind while designing dashboard UI.

 

1. Be consistent

To be consistent means to have undeviating design across the dashboard. The design should be consistent on all the devices of varying sizes.  The functionalities in terms of fonts, colors, elements’ placement, navigation and style charts also need to be consistent.

The golden rule is to design the smallest screen first.

This approach helps in creating appealing spaces for more important information first and then leads you towards creating a great UI which enhances the abilities of the UX as well.

 

2. Simple customization

‘One size fits all’ approach is not the road you would want to take. Simple Reason being, usually there are multiple user roles with varying priorities and needs. Also, the designs ought to be scalable. Users should be the choosers on how they want to customize the design as per their business needs.

A good dashboard design should be able to accommodate all sorts of complexities and should allow for easy customization as and when required.

Some design tips that you could use:

– Permit easy modifications like field addition/ deletion

– For a customizable dashboard, use easy drag and drop interaction

– Cater the user with multiple color themes, if feasible

– Allow multiple options for viewing/downloading data

 

3. Communicate the necessary information first

With visual design, the vital information can be communicated to users in a usable and appealing manner. Also, with the crucial content placed and finalized, the design guidelines and layout can be easily defined.

Points to remember:

– The card layout is recommended because it allows concise data classification, along with scalability and flexibility.

– Users perceive the center portion first so the central alignment is preferred.

– Maximum font size should be 18 Pixel

– To highlight any important information a distinctive color should be used.

 

4. Prefer simple charts

Usually, in order to come up with fancy visual representation, designers get drifted and adopt complicated charts. Keep the charts simple and try to present all the variety of ideas in an easily understandable form. The main reason being charts are the prime data visualization tool for the users and should be easy and concise so that the user can perceive the information in one go.

Points to remember:

– Prefer pie charts, bar charts, and line charts as they are easy to understand and fit well in complex places.

– Use flat design charts instead of 3D charts, they are neater and easier.

 

5. Pay attention to the iconography

Icons are very small components of the dashboard but they hold great significance. A great dashboard should have icons which are familiar.

The reason being that a dashboard is frequently used by users and are accessed for prompt information or actions. Therefore, familiar icons reduce the processing time and deliver better performance.

 

6. Keep color psychology in mind

Colors are more vocal than you think.

Just as how traffic signals communicate to us with red lights signaling us to stop and green lights allowing us to drive, color psychology is important in UI dashboards as well.

A great dashboard should be designed with mindful colors and any possible confusion should be avoided.

Points to remember:

– Avoid going overboard with the colors used

– Try and leverage contrast colors for better visibility

 

7. Use the right font style and size

It is very important to keep both font style and size consistent while designing the UI and UX of a dashboard. It is highly recommended that not more than two font styles should be used. With minimal variations in font style, the dashboard holds a neater appearance.

It is advised to create a visual hierarchy of the written content for better visibility. This can be done by placing the crucial information in the larger font size and probably with different color and less important information in relatively smaller font size.

 

Summing up

All the above tips will help you to come up with a great dashboard UI but studying the user’s requirement is the first step before all these. It is easier to design a dashboard once you are through with user’s preferences and style because then you can customize the dashboard around the specific needs of the user. A useful dashboard is way better than a well-designed but unrelatable or complex dashboard.

An unrelatable dashboard is one which is not knitted around the individual business needs of the user. For example, a corporate dashboard for a school. The UI of the dashboard makes it great or just okay, the choice is yours!

At GoodWorkLabs, we have some awesome dashboard designs to exhibit for your perusal. Our team of experts can help you bring life to your ideas and create eye-catchy UI and UX designs.

How to design for Blockchain Technology

You might have read thousands of articles on how Blockchain is proposed to bring transformation in the world we live in today. In the next few decades, the possibilities will unfold into opportunities, it’s just a matter of time. Currently, we are just beginning to understand what Blockchain is and how it can be applied for our benefit.

If you are a designer, it will be a really tough task for you to design for a concept which is barely understood by its users or potential users.

But, an early bird always stands at the favorable side. Today, we are laying down 5 simple rules to follow for creating the UX design for Blockchain. After reading this feed, your curiosity about design for Blockchain will get satisfied.

Let’s begin:

 

1. No Jargon

Jargons can make any concept difficult for a layman to understand and use. As only a handful of people are involved in using this concept, your focus should be on how to attract more people to use Blockchain and how to benefit from it.

Terms which are already floating in the market such as Dapp, DLT, and altcoins make Blockchain overly technical and highly complicated. Also, the Blockchain industry has a bad reputation of being a phony scheme of getting rich quick.

To subside all these barriers is not easy and making Blockchain easy is the first step towards design. As a designer, it is your responsibility to make your project more likable and user-friendly. To achieve this, promote ‘no complicated jargons’ approach and focus on the value that can be delivered to the users.

In short, unexplained jargons can kill your design.

2. Break Down Barriers to Entry

The market is currently segregated in two kinds of people. The minority of them are determined and excited about the Blockchain and majority of them have no idea what it is and feel like outsiders. It is like an impenetrable bubble for them to understand and get excited about the whole Blockchain technology.

To penetrate the bubble is like to walk past a Bermuda triangle and not get lost. As a designer, you will face terrible UX and might feel completely blank at several stages. The reason is that this technology has hardly evolved much and there are only a few people available to explain the core concepts and walk you through the process.

The key to get through this is to make the Blockchain usable to the layman. Simplify it to the core!

Make it so easy that every person with internet access can use it. Here, ‘Coinbase‘ can serve as an example for you.

 

3. How strong should your security be?

People consider security as a major setback of cryptocurrency since all the funds are in a digital wallet, and if stolen, there is no way back and nowhere to complain. There is no authority regulating this. This makes the security of the funds very crucial in order to make the users feel secure and to trust your product.

To keep the account secure, you should offer 2-factor authentication (2FA).

But, here is the twist. If you mandate the 2FA for all the users there will be a lot of friction at user’s end and then you won’t be able to deliver a seamless experience.

To overcome this problem, keep 2FA recommendatory and mandatory for new users. Also, 2FA should be mandated for major fund movements to keep the security tight.

This approach will keep the users at peace and deliver the optimum amount of security.

 

4. Maintain transparency with the users

In Blockchain, if you deploy something, it usually takes time to process and get finalized. The length of time that it will require is never fixed and it also depends upon how busy the network is. The time taken for completion may range between 5 minutes to 2 hours.

In this situation, to deliver an acceptable user experience, don’t keep the users waiting around. Be transparent with them as users like near-instant actions.

To manage the user expectations ask them to come back in few minutes and report the current status as accurately as possible. Even better, send them an email update when it’s done.

 

5. Design Thinking

Blockchain has been promoted as the problem solver technology for many industries. Most industries have begun to turn to blockchain technology for solutions now. As a designer, it is important for you to define the problems precisely and design products that can actually solve such real-time problems.

Promote the practice of researching and user testing to indeed create valuable products. It is essential to penetrate through the hype and get original user insights.

 

Final words

A product designer’s real job title is ‘Problem solver’. As a product designer, you are bestowed upon with authorities and even bigger responsibilities. Blockchain technology may pose some friction in your already smooth design career but it will be a great learning opportunity.

Till now, the Blockchain technology has been more focused on the development part. The design on many exchanges and Blockchain websites is still in the latent stage.

To make the Blockchain technology usable for the layman, designers should work on simplifying everything. With the effort directed in the right direction, Blockchain will no longer be a mystery but become a part of our daily lives.

Are you unsure of doing this on your own? Let us help you! At GoodWorkLabs, we have a team of radical designers who strive to deliver simplified Blockchain solutions. Let’s have a word!

Design tips for Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality

Are you facing problems in evaluating the design of your AR, VR, or Mixed Reality oriented product?  

Today, we have laid down guidelines that will help you to objectively evaluate the design of your next project confidently.

Keep the following pointers in mind and you are good to go.

1. Identify your target audience and use cases

The first thing to do in the product development phase is creating ‘personas’ (a fictitious character that represents your target audience) and ‘use cases’ (the specific pain points or problems that your product intends to solve).

At any stage of the design and development process, if you feel that your product is not solving the specific problems or improving use cases for the persona then you should re-visit the fundamental design.

Therefore, it is recommended to test your product as early as possible with an external audience so that you can identify the fundamental design issues and make a successful product. This approach will be highly helpful while evaluating a design midway.

In case you have reached an advanced stage and have commenced the creation of a beautiful visual for your projects there is a risk of losing relevance.  Highly beautiful visuals may not be relatable for your users and that’s what distinguishes a great design from beautiful visuals.

 

How do the KPIs stack up across mediums?

In the contemporary world of design, your product is not only in competition with alike products but also with thousands of products across the medium.

For example, if your product is a game in the form of a mobile app, it is not only competing with other mobile games but other forms of entertainment as well such as escape rooms, movies, TV, and concerts. It is essential for your team to understand which mind space your product occupies to clearly identify the competitors across the platforms.

Beware! It is a common mistake to only compare KPIs within mediums. A slight progress in a VR product might be an edge against peer VR products but products on other mediums like mobile phone or computer may have already beaten your standards and have set a higher expectation for the user. 

So even if you are at the forefront of VR and AR technology, you are still behind the performance delivered by existing technologies. The user expects the same performance from your product in the virtual world as he is already getting in the real world.

 

How were the interactions examined?

The common variables while evaluating the design of your interactions in AR, VR, or MR are:

(i) Accuracy- How frequently the user’s intentions match the outcome

(ii) Ergonomics- Energy cost associated with the interaction

(iii) Learnability- How intuitive an interaction is to learn

(iv) Time to Complete- Time in which a particular action gets completed

 

The priorities of these variables vary with the type of product. However, if any of these factors score poorly, your design is very poor.

You might want to consider the following points before testing interactions in the above parameters.

•  Currently, stress test interactions are not tested for enough time. For example, if the intended user experience is meant to last for an hour, the stress test should be done for an hour. The interactions which feel perfect for the first five minutes might not be usable for the whole 1-hour period.

 

• Secondly, some product teams make the mistake of getting samples from excellent gamers for testing the interactions. Studies have shown results which prove that users who play video games frequently tend to learn faster and develop their abilities to do various cognitive tasks very quickly.

Because of such biased sample spaces, product team often wrongly conclude their designs to have excellent learnability while it may or may not have it.

For several reasons, it is crucial to run all the user tests on the mix of non-gamers and video gamers with no prior context of your product. It might be an easy option to run the test internally but your co-workers will already have enough context that they can once again bias the user test.

In fact, any developer who has experience in developing AR, VR, and MR is likely to learn the interactions faster than a user with no prior experience in these mediums.

 

How can features bring positive KPIs to your product if used together?

A great design is created by the synergy of complementary features which have positive KPIs. Standalone features perform well but when used along with similar features they can create a rich social experience.

If your design has numerous features with positive KPIs but without strong synergy, you should re-scope your design to bring in more synergistic features and remove the standalone features. This will help you in delivering a higher value to the Persona and either solve or improve the Use Cases accurately.

 

How can Core Loops help to add value?

Core loops are the repeatable actions in your product, It is very important to assess the core loops.

Like if your game is about 3D vegetable slicing, the frequent action is to swing the sword-

How does the user feel while doing that?

Is he enjoying it? Are the sound effects appropriate?

Product teams spend most of their time in iterating and testing core loops. External users should be involved in testing the core loops for the reasons we mentioned before.

For getting accurate feedback for AR or VR or MR, involving external users is a perfect way as of now.

The art style and visual design of a product are subjective but hopefully, the above framework helps you design better experiences and objectively evaluate the core design of your product. For more resources on AR, follow our blog.

UI Design for FinTech Apps

Do you have a wheel swirling Fintech app idea and are wondering how its UI should be like?

You have stumbled upon just the right article as we are here to help.

We sure know that presentation takes a major pondering before launching an app. As an experienced team of mobile app designers, we would love to share our thoughts on ‘What should be kept in mind when UI of Fintech App is on the table’.

First of all, Fintech has emerged as a major industry in the last decade. Its significance can be sensed with the contribution of £6.6bn to the U.K. economy in 2016 and employment to 60000 people and growing. 

The signature products of this industry are digital banking, online trading apps, and e-wallets. Now is a good time for existing financial market players to launch their own app or to redesign their existing apps.

Most of the Fintech apps have either poor or confusing user interface which requires the user to take a pause and understand the app first. Such complexity of Fintech apps defies the basic purpose of having the app, i.e to initiate smooth interactions and hassle-free transactions. 

In this blog, we have created an exclusive list of notes for designers and entrepreneurs to deliver a widely accepted and user-friendly user interface for FinTech Apps.

We also created a video version of the blog to help you quickly glance through the top tips on UI designing for FinTech Mobile Apps.

 

 

1. Focus on User Behaviour

As the B. J. Fogg’s Behavioural Model suggests a user should be motivated to use the app.

Q1: Are you solving any problem?

If yes, how quickly and smoothly are you solving it?

The app should be able to solve a persisting user hardship or bring something new to the table like enhancing user convenience.

A best-seller app will be a combination of both. To achieve this, it is essential to study the business first.

It is very crucial to grasp the client’s product basics, knowledge of target audience, and stakeholders. If you can inculcate any tricks of the trade to the mobile Fintech app it will add an edge to the interaction of the application.

 

2. Simplify information 

The apps which are considered as leading mobile Fintech apps, condense the mass of data to relevancy and are very easy to use.

To make the app interactive and simple, you need to work on page layout, content display, and task flow to begin with.

Other important pointers are to keep the frequently used tasks upfront and easily accessible to the user. Also, transform bulky financial data to graphs, or charts.

Immediate call-to-actions should be placed to help users take the desired actions. Detailed information should be available when asked for.

This practice enhances the user’s confidence in smoothly handling their finances through mobile Fintech apps.

 

3. Choice of Background

App background is worth consideration as it is directly related to the app efficiency. The target audience should always be kept in mind before picking an app background.

While the light backgrounds are very popular in Fintech apps, dark backgrounds also come with their own set of pros and cons.

Dark backgrounds are great when it comes to presenting graphic content but are not very helpful when the app is operated on mobile devices with poor displays.

 

4. Font selection

Some recommended fonts are Lato, Roboto Condensed, and Titillium Web

You can always pick another font but ensure that the selected font should fit in compact spaces without affecting the legibility.

Also, check the appearance of individual characters like $. This is necessary because the finance world revolves around numbers and figures and you don’t want to have a leaning dollar sign in your app.

This conveys that the frequently used characters should be tested for flexibility and legibility.

 

5. Charting Styles

The key is to use simple charting styles which is comprehensive and familiar to the users. The Fintech apps come with various limitations like Frameworks and APIs, so there is not much that can be done with the charting styles.

To make it user-friendly just keep them clear easy to read and understand.

 

6. Gamification

We shouldn’t take the fun out of an app just because it’s a Fintech app. When you are making UI advancements on the app, it is good to consider gamification.

App gamification increases the user engagement and efficiency. Add colors to your imagination and gamify the app with elements which will not only help users enjoy the transaction journey but also enhance user satisfaction.

At this point, we would also caution you about loud elements that don’t support seriousness involved in financial transactions or things that can be a distraction for the user.

 

7. Color palette

You remember how they say, ‘take the world and paint it red’.  Don’t!

A color palette is the most crucial thing that can affect the UI of an app.

Fintech apps are for several purposes including banking and stock markets. One needs to keep the data visualization in priority while selecting the color scheme for the app.

In the case of any stock market-related app, red and green colors hold great significance but it is important to keep the rest of background in a light color so that these colors can stand out.

Enhancing data visualization is the key here.

 

Summing up

Last decade has witnessed some of the revolutionary Fintech apps with a smooth user interface and awesome responsiveness.

Besides the basic app functionalities, the user interface helps the app to stand out from the competitor apps.

However, for Fintech apps, the market is still not ready. Users resist opting for online options of banking or investment because of the risk involved.

Facts have that only 3% of  Indians are actually using the online versions of Finance handling, thus reducing your target audience.

To build user confidence, you need to keep your Fintech app simple and grievances-free because when money is involved user might not give your app a second chance.

An Introduction to Design Systems, their uses, why we should use them and the nuances surrounding the topic.

What is User Research and Why should you do it?

Research, as we all know, is a crucial aspect of any undertaking, be it shopping for clothes or building your own backyard nuclear-powered submarine. Especially if you are a UX designer, research is quite important to understand the what people want from the product that you design. Without a clear understanding of what your users’ needs are and what they expect, you might as well be throwing darts in the dark. Unlike designing, user research is almost a never-ending process which needs to be carried out throughout the product’s lifecycle. However, in this article, we will focus on the user research for designing and what you need to know when you are starting out.

Where should you start?

There are a lot of points from where you can start your research depending on the nature of your product. A hypothesis of your current objectives will provide a picture of the goals you seek to achieve through the research.  

1. Introspection

Before starting the research process itself it would be a good idea to try and define your product, the basic function it would serve and the demographic it is intended for. At this point, discovering the problems users presently face in the market would help define your products’ purpose. Analysing the market demand and your chances of proliferation would also be a wise strategy at this stage because going back to the drawing board because of an overcrowded market is never a good contingency.

2. Conceptualization    

Identify various business demographics that you feel might be interested in your product and understand their real-time user goals. Conducting surveys, interviews, focus groups etc. are among the many methods that are commonly used. The data achieved through research can be broadly classified between qualitative, quantitative, attitude and behavioral. Using the all the information and feedback thus received to create a rough iteration of the design.

 

3. Research Methods

• Surveys

Surveys are often an easy way to start out with UX research. With online surveys being a huge trend today, it is not hard to find participants. However, the ease of finding participants hardly makes up for the level of inaccuracy involved in this process as most people tend to give biased responses. Short surveys with simple, well-worded questions involving both open-ended as well as multiple choice questions tend to work best with this method.

• Interviews

Interpersonal Interviews are one of the oldest, tried and tested methods of understanding users and getting to know them. Interviews offer a great deal of flexibility when it comes to questions and ensuing discussions that could lead to a higher level of revelation. Compiling a valid set of questions and putting them through a trial run before the interview to check their feasibility will help. As always the interviewer must remain calm and composed and make the user feel comfortable before the interview. Engaging the user to get the most out of them would be a good idea.

• Focus Groups

Engaging a small group of people in a discussion on your product and its potential can bring out valuable insights and ideas. However, this process has a good chance of backfiring as groups tend to follow a herd mentality eventually leading to supporting the popular opinion rather than their own which ultimately can produce inaccurate data. Allowing each person in the group to express themselves properly is the key to success when dealing with focus groups.

• Usability Testing

One of the most effective methods of UX research is usability testing. This method involves putting the target users through a set of tasks designed to demonstrate the features and functionality of your product. This process can be leveraged to derive valuable inputs. Although not as elaborate as with questionnaires, usability testing provides the most accurate data and feedback. There are several methods of usability testing as well as tools that can aid in carrying out the processes.

4.Analysis

The data derived from these research methods can be analyzed and compared with your initial hypothesis. By doing so you will get an idea of the changes that need to be done. One of the advantages of UX user research is that it can be done at any stage in the development process and it’s up to you to choose the most valid method at your current stage.

Conclusion

When it comes to UX it is easy to lose your way with designs and most of the time designers end up designing the product with their own needs in mind and that of their investors as well. Research here can offer a neutral perspective and bring out the best ideas that users can identify with. While each method has its own advantages it would be ideal to use them in combinations to paint a wholesome picture.

How to use Product Thinking in UX Design

The original premise behind user experience which is often understated is the fact that lies in its namesake itself- to make the user’s experience with any product better. Product designing is an intricate and complicated process where the designer could get lost in a coded web and in all the ruckus it is easy to ignore the user’s needs. Designers can hardly be blamed for doing so because every product has a fundamental purpose it tries to serve which defines its existence.

The features of a product are hardly of any consequence if they don’t satisfy individualized needs and goals. This redundancy factor is what prompts a need for more comprehensive strategies like product thinking.

What is Product Thinking?

To put it in simple terms product thinking is a strategy where the product is the sum of all the users’ expectations. Here the users are the instigating factor and the product becomes the end result. The common pattern followed with product thinking is as follows:

Start with the user

• What is the problem your product would seek to address?
• What is the target audience?

The Job at Hand

• The idea behind it?
• How would you go about executing it?

Your Expectations

• The goals you seek to achieve.
• The resultant features that come out of the aforementioned efforts that would go into your product.

 

Product before Features

A common flaw when it comes to designing is the amount of emphasis that designers put into features. While features are important, for most designers building a product means creating a preset of features that will eventually define it. This is where they lose touch with what the user actually needs. With product thinking, the idea is to visualize the product during inception as it will be presented to the users. The features are then added in to complement that idea and build the ideal product.

 

Defining the Product and its Purpose

The level at which user experience is today, understanding the user is not that much of a task. With such valuable resources at their disposal designers get a clear picture of their target audience, their issues, the vision behind the product and its end goals. However, this part is easier said than done because when it comes to users their problems are often latent and it is up to UX professionals to uncover them.

Once designers comprehend the purpose why people would purchase their product in the real world, they can create a rough idea of what the product would be like, what it would mean to them and what ends it would serve. Once this core aspect of the product is laid down, the features will automatically fall in place and the designers can tweak them in any way that would ultimately enhance the user experience.

 

Problem vs Solution

For a designer, there are many ways to go about solving problems with a product but understanding the heart of that problem is what sets the bar for innovation. Many see problems as a prosaic concept where consequence translates to causation. But, in the real world problems with a product can be anything. In some cases, things that are seemingly negligible could be causing people to walk away from your product.

The complication here is that people themselves seldom realize this fact. The users know that they don’t like the product, but they can’t explain why. So designers have to delve deep into the psyche of the users to understand the problem and fix the product and its features.

 

Conclusion

Product thinking in its essence is the combined effort of everyone involved in a project. It is as abstract as a concept as to implementing it. Yet without it, a design is nothing more than just a UI. The layers of research from both the product management and designing point of view leave little room for doubt when it comes to users.

 

UX Design for Chatbots

If you look at the market and business trends, Chatbots are available on almost every list. All the big businesses and brands are leveraging chatbots. On the other hand, small brands are planning to have one for their business.

Experts say that chatbots are going to cover about 85% of customer service related interactions in the coming years. However, the popularity has also increased the demand for a quality experience. Hence, businesses can’t compromise the UX design of their bots in any manner.

Sure the functionality of the bots matters a lot, but it is the user experience of the design that brings customers again and again.

Here, in this article, you will find the most valuable UX guidelines to create an impressive chatbot for your business.

1. Make it easy to understand

The initial impression matters the most in your chatbot design. The users should be able to understand the functions and the processes of the chatbot very easily. Only then, you can expect them to come back for further interactions.

So, make sure you include exciting and helpful elements in the onboarding process of the chatbot. This will make the design more impressive for the users.

2. Add elements to maintain the conversational flow

Many times, the users don’t realize that they are interacting with a chatbot. So, if the bot does not maintain a conversational flow, the users might leave and never come back.

To avoid this, it is important to add elements that can help you maintain a conversational flow. A chatbot can ask pre-defined questions or present suggestions to the user. These elements in the design help out the user throughout the conversation. Some of the advanced chat platforms such as Facebook Messenger and Kik leverage such elements in their chat methods. These platforms offer regular response suggestions during an ongoing conversation, which helps the users.

3. Give it a consistent personality

The personality of the chatbot is probably the most important UX design component. The goals should be to attain consistency. Plus, the bot should sound friendly during the conversation.

To achieve that, you need to focus on providing clear diction capacity and simple language to the chatbot. Use a vocabulary that is generally used in the common language. This will make the conversations more smooth and friendly.

4. Prepare chatbot for anticipated issues

A conversation between a human and a chatbot presents some difficulties. Sometimes, a user might ask an invalid question or a query, which won’t allow the Chabot to answer. However, that should not stop the conversation. Your design should get the user on the right track for the conversations to flow. For that, you can include polite reminders of the purpose of the bot. The bot can provide suggestions and tips to help the user ask the right questions and queries. This way, the conversation won’t end in the middle.

 

So, in this way a good UX can help you create an impressive chatbot and also create immersive user experiences for your customers.