Good design does not only look great, it works. Nowadays, especially in the era of AI and rapid design generative tools a lot of designers tends to prioritise visual aspect of their work more than it’s purpose.
Seweryn Kulak
UXD 3rd Year
S.Kulak@student.hhs.nl
Why does it matter?
While it’s tempting to just jump into figma or any other design tool and create next Picasso or DaVinci worthy art piece, us UX designers need to remember that at it’s core, user is in the first place. Especially nowadays when AI can help us create good looking UI’s in no time and designers are bombarded with these flashy design concepts all over social media, it’s easy to forget what good UX is about. I know it may be boring for some people because who needs research right? Why does it mater if I have good user journey or if I know needs/problems of my users well? While nice looking design can bring people attention at first, in the long term it always fails. That’s because design is a tangible extension of the business model. Even if this model is non-profit, role of the design is to solve some kind of problem. Whether it’s helping users do something or maybe bring business more revenue by generating conversions, we as UX/Product designer need to focus first on solving that problem, in other words, we need to make sure the design works.
How does one make a design work?
As with everything there is no one right answer to this question. However there are some golden rules and guides to follow that will greatly improve your chances of creating good design. First of all, develop a strong framework for your projects that you will be able to consistently follow. This should include user and competitor research, getting to know pain points, needs and wants of your target user group and later using that knowledge to create a good user flow for your product. To solve a problem you need to understand it first. When you have a strong foundation, next step is design itself. When designing to solve a problem you should nearly always put usability and good UX in the first place. You need make sure that your design will achieve goals and solve issues that you specified with your research, and having flashy but barely usable interface won’t work. But don’t get me wrong, good UI is also an important factor of every design, and you should experiment with it. Just remember to not overcomplicate it. After all, rules are there to be broken, but in order to do that, first you need to know the rule book by heart.
Est. 2024
Loc. The Hague