Essentials of UI Design XXII: How UI Standards Can Help You Create the Best User Interfaces, Part II
After reading the first part of this series, you should already appreciate how UI standards can help you with creating user-friendly and engaging user interfaces. These guidelines are critical to finetune the UI as the point of interaction between human users and digital products. As you check out our catalog of inspiration screens on UILand, this article shows you more ways to help your users enjoy a consistent product experience through UI standards.
Effective Designs Using Google UI Standards
Following Google’s comprehensive UI guidelines when using UILand’s inspirational mobile and web user flows positions designers to always create spectacular designs. Here are more ways to approach this:
1 – Using memorable colors and typography
It hardly matters if you’re designing a social media platform or business-focused brand. A recommended design guideline is to use color palettes and typographic elements. This is like Material design in its use of brand-focused and bold colors. These can prioritize an element in your design’s visual hierarchy and can clarify how specific elements relate to one another.
Notably, colors engage users to focus on critical information such as error messages. An example is a login field using ample white space but a vibrant red to indicate an input error. The rich red hue makes it easier to look at errors.
For typographic elements, it’s best to stick to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 requirements on legibility and compliance. It’s always a safe choice to make your text contrast the colors of your UI background.
2 – Brand-centric icons are cool too
Consistency and accessibility are important when creating icons. But consistency involves more than adapting your icons to different screen sizes.
Therefore, icons must reflect brands adequately enough to communicate the brand’s core ideas. This is why you need to use your brand’s signature colors in establishing visual consistency.
Also, you must consider designing with simplicity in mind. Google’s Material Design ethos eschews using too many overlapping surface layers, asymmetry, and distortion when designing icons. You’re better off using bold geometric icons that make your design more intuitive and readable.
Conclusion
While Google standards can up your UI game, they can be limited in impact. That’s why you need UILand’s versatile inspirational screens to adequately capture diverse user journeys. Click here to commence in-product navigation.
