Design Principles in UX

Good user-approved designs take time to finalize. Professional UX designers use a process to fine-tune their designs. Implementing design principles improves the final product. Let's take a look at how design principles are incorporated and improve the user experience.

The Evolution of a Design

Before a polished product is provided to the user, the design goes through phases. Designs start off as sketches. Designers use the ideation phase to figure out what basic components they should add to their designs. Low-fidelity mockups are created and then turned into the first prototype. Some designers conduct usability tests on their low-fidelity prototypes to ensure functionality before advancing design. After a successful usability test, high-fidelity prototypes are made. High-fidelity prototypes closely resemble the finished product. Learn how design principles are used throughout the product process.

Top Six Design Principles

1. User-Centered

A designer's number one goal is to meet the user's needs. It’s important to keep your designs objective and focus on solving the user challenge. Being empathetic towards your user would allow you to implement user-specific functions in your design. This is why it is important to conduct research prior to starting a project. Research methods include competitor audits, surveys, interviews, and past case studies. This background information helps you to come up with solutions. Throughout the design, phase solving the user problem is the target goal.

2. Consistent

Inconsistent functionality is a big user pain point. The user flow should maintain a sense of stability. Therefore, abrupt changes in typography, iconography, color and other design structures should be discouraged. Instead, it's important to maintain the design language throughout. Consistency is also needed across platforms. Both mobile and desktop prototypes of the same product should share a design system. Designers use sticker sheets to keep up with the components they will use in a particular design system.
View Airbnb’s Design System here.

3. Contextual

The context in design focuses on the user's situational needs. Think about where and when a user will use your product. User needs can change depending on the environment, socio-emotional changes, and physical accessibility. Designers consider this when implementing specific functions. A designer for a roadside assistance app will consider that the user is in a stressed mood and in need of help. Therefore the typography is limited and the user flow needed to achieve the goal, of getting roadside assistance, is simplified.