Essentials of UI Design XXI: How UI Standards Can Help You Create the Best User Interfaces, Part I

UI designers need UI standards to make effective design decisions. This is because user experience design crucially depends on exceptional user interfaces. This is why I am discussing using UI design standards in this article. As you consider subscribing to our growing universe of UI inspiration screens on UILand, you’ll do that with ample knowledge of user interface design standards and their importance.

What You Need to Know about UI Standards

UI standards are critical in effective UI design and by extension, the end-to-end UX design process. You may call them the best practices, guidelines, and principles that support UI design teams in crafting accessible, intuitive, and enjoyable user interfaces.

But user interface standards can do more than help you build the best UI websites and applications. They empower you to do more effective team collaboration and increase the utility (in economic terms) of your target users.

If you follow UI standards in your design workflows, you can reduce your users’ cognitive load while ensuring they can access a consistent, high-quality user interface.

Benefits of Crafting Effective Designs Using Google UI Standards

Google’s impact in our daily lives goes beyond search. The company also offers Material Design, a comprehensive design system that’s useful for all kinds of digital design projects. This system offers helpful guidelines that will help you master responsive design.

Here are the best bits from Material Design.

1 – Create realistic designs

Elements of a digital product can mimic real-world objects as closely as possible. Google’s Material Design elements provide a sense of depth through surfaces, light, shadow, and elevation. This makes designs more intuitive to the user and makes visual hierarchy more concrete.

2 – Create clear and consistent layouts

Google achieves user-friendly layouts by using consistent, reusable UI components and spacing techniques. This includes negative space, flexible containers, and alignment.

Your user interfaces can adapt to any screen and device using this combination. With reusable UI components, your designs convey a sense of familiarity, making navigation more natural.

3 – Achieve user-centric navigation

One thing Material Design excels at is aligning your product’s information architecture with the user’s mental model and goals. So, where your users prefer access to all screens from one location, you can opt for lateral navigation patterns.

Besides user-first navigation patterns, the framework also supports the design of navigation transitions. This enables users to easily traverse your defined user flows.

Conclusion

UILand offers a growing library of user flows and screens from digital products users love to spend time in. Get started today to learn how to advance product navigation using tested UI standards.