Euphemia Wong wrong this piece about how to learn ways to achieve simplicity in your designs and recognize why certain designs are overly complex. Simplicity is also one of the key reasons why some companies do better than their competitors.
What is simplicity? Simplicity is all the rage these days. It is a design philosophy that is championed by many successful companies and fans of those companies alike.
Simplicity in design isn’t just about the minimal colors you use or the whitespace you include, it’s about going deep into your user’s minds and using that understanding to design a product that rids itself of inconsequential elements and closes the gap between the user’s goals and the means to achieve those goals through your system.
Ways to achieve simplicity in your designs:
- Maintain clarity: understand and design for your users’ main goals
- Make use of automation: design for a minimum amount of conscious and cognitive effort
- Limit options: design for a strong “information scent”
- Reduce the gulf of execution: make your users see how your product can help them achieve their goals
It’s not easy to design for simplicity. It’s not supposed to be. Your job as a UX designer is to dig deep into the complexities of everything from user goals to system constraints in order to output a beautiful and easy to use design that will help users achieve their goals effortlessly. Nice one!
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