Designing can often feel overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be. Simplifying your design can lead to cleaner, more effective outcomes. Let's delve into the art of decluttering and streamlining your design process for maximum impact and minimal fuss.

Too many choices will scare off customers

The Jam Experiment shows that offering consumers less choice can be good for sales

  • Customers presented with fewer choices are 10 times more likely to purchase compared with those who are shown many choices
  • This study reveals when precisely offering less choice may enhance your sales

Translate data into a meaningful format

Try to extract the meaningful from the data you have and put it in front of the user

Support quick decision making

Users bombarded with choices have to take time to interpret and decide, giving them work they don’t want.

Rely on commonly accepted patterns and interactions

Users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know, and they come on with specific expectations to how your product should look and behave.

Progressive disclosure

Seamlessly sequencing information and actions across multiple screens so as not to overwhelm the user or hide irrelevant information until it becomes relevant

Provide recommendations where multiple choices are presented

Try to limit the number of choices that can be presented.

  • Either provide a recommendation yourself or share statistics of what is most preferred by other customers to clearly communicate the key difference between the options. This approach is often used on pricing plans pages.

Use Smart Defaults to Reduce Cognitive Load

Defining relevant defaults, designers need to understand users and the context in which they will use a product.

  • Always set the default to the choice the vast majority of users (say, 90-95 percent) would choose if explicit choices were required.

Draw users attention to the right areas

Understand the journey of your user to reach their goals, and identify key areas that are more relevant and will help you reach your goal.

  • Find those key areas and draw user attention to them to progress to the final goal.

Build products with focused value

Define a core value, identify who your product is really for

  • Not every product should have Facebook built-in, but most do.
  • Identify the core value of your product, and who it is designed for, and why.

Design for Accessibility

Make sure your product is accessible by a broader audience without exclusions.

What is “simplicity”?

Something that is easily understood or done; presenting no difficulty

  • Things that appear simple for one person will not be perceived identically by another
  • We form our personal opinion regarding any process being simple or complex
  • Removing difficulties on the way of users to their goals – will help you move towards simplicity
  • What about complexity?
  • The sense of complexity is subjective and should be avoided in product design as much as possible

Design a streamlined first-time experience

The primary goal of any design is to connect users to the value the product provides as soon as possible

  • User expectation is the product should be simple enough to understand and they expect help on demand or when something goes wrong
  • Provide contextual help instead of overwhelming users with learning material

Support inline edit and autosuggest values

There is an optimal speed at which the user should operate the system, it called the “state of the flow”. Don’t break that flow with popups.

  • For all actions/values that can be changed later, support inline edit as much as possible. Autosuggest values when a great number of values is available.

Organizations help the system of many look fewer and more manageable

Organization of elements not only improves recognition but also makes it easier to remember

  • It’s only a minute ago you were counting the dots in 2 images, now please recall the position of every dot in 2 squares.

Group related content

Add borders around elements to create separation from surrounding elements.

Remove everything unnecessary

When in doubt, just remove.

Prevent errors

Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.

Break up huge tasks in smaller steps, try one column layout

One column layout makes it easier to fill out the same amount of information in a shorter period of time

  • The end result is that the user feels as if they have completed a task, which gives them more satisfaction and endorphins

Be transparent in communicating the process and system status

At any time, the user should be able to see where they are currently in the process, where he coming from and what’s coming next.

Keep in mind ergonomics and circumstances under which product will be used

Ergonomics is the process of designing or arranging workplaces, products, and systems so that they fit the people who operate them

  • In 1954, psychologist Paul Fitts showed that the time required to move to a target depends on the distance to it and relates inversely to its size
  • Make sure commonly used elements large and position them close to users

Use color and typography to communicate a hierarchy of content

With right use, you will be able to reflect product branding and make it instantly recognizable, much more attractive and memorable

  • Characteristics that can influence what type communicates
  • Fonts, kerning, leading, capitalization, and color

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