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Posted in User Interface

Explaining UI Design

UI design or User interface design is nothing but the process of building interfaces in computerized and software devices mainly by focusing on style or looks. Designers are mainly created to make the users happy and hence they should be pleasurable. UI design is the major part of the design which is typically referred to as a graphical user interface. But in most of the cases, it even includes another type of designs like voice-controlled ones as well.

User Delight and UI Design

User interfaces are nothing but the best access points where users can come and interact with the actual design. Through graphical user interface designs or GUI it is possible to control faces and panels. Through voice-controlled interfaces you can manage oral-auditory interaction. There are gesture-based interfaces and they are used for witnessing and engaging users using 3D designs.

User interface design is used to build an essential part of user experience. Users usually judge designs through likeability and usability. Designers pay attention to building interfaces so that users find it efficient and highly usable. Hence keeping in mind the user contexts is highly crucial in designing. It should be made possible for users to achieve all their goals through user interface designs easily and effortlessly.

It is very important to make the created interface effectively invisible rather than depositing icons on the screen. Users should be provided with user interfaces so that they can easily interact with the reality of the tasks. For example, if we look at the casual dating app Local Fuck App, the meet and fuck in your city feature is accessed by a button labeled as such. When a user clicks that button they are taken to a map that shows nearby casual daters. This is a good example of explicit interface features that operate intuitively.

UI vs. UX Design

Here UI can be understood as one of the parts in UX design. The majority of the users get confused with UI and UX but they are not the same. UI is majorly concerned and aimed with the entire surface and even overall feel in a design. But, when it comes to UX it is about the entire spectrum of the user experience. When the UI is driving console, UX can be understood as the entire vehicle. It is very important to create pleasing aesthetics in GUIs as well as animations for conveying the values of an organization. Through these elements you can end up in creating maximum usability as well.

Great UIs- How to Build?

An organization should always aim to deliver impressive GUIs. The designers should understand that users are humans and they need comfort when they are interacting with the design. They always expect low cognitive loads. This is the reason designers should follow the right guidelines when they are creating GUIs.

  • There are many common elements like buttons that can perform high predictability. Users can use these elements and a form must always follow function
  • It is very important to maintain a high level of discoverability
  • Include well-indicated affordances and label icons clearly
  • The interfaced should be simple and try to create an invisible feel
  • Every element in the design should serve a purpose
  • When it comes to designing a layout, always respect the user’s attention and eye regarding the layout. The highest focus should be given to readability and hierarchy
  • The number of alignment lines should always be minimized. It is better to choose edge alignment

It is very important to draw attention to key features. This can be done using:

  • Contrast, brightness, and color
  • There is no need to use buttons and colors excessively
  • Text can be highlighted via bold and sizes. It can be changed to italics if needed. Pay attention to the distance between letters and capitals. Just by scanning the content, users should be able to pick up meaning
  • The number of actions for performing a task should be reduced. But there should be one chief function that exists per page. You can make use of preferred actions for guiding users. It is possible to ease highly complex tasks through making use of progressive disclosure
  • There should control near all kinds of objects users want to control on their own
  • For responses and actions, there should be a well-designed system
  • It is possible to reduce user burdens by using defaults
  • It is better to utilize reusable design patterns in guiding the behavior of search functions and navigation
  • Brand consistency should be maintained through the design. So, all the pages should use similar design elements and users should be able to relate from one page to another

It is very important to offer nest steps that users can deduce naturally irrespective of their context. The best interface is defined as no interface and it is the one which directs user easily. The interface should be easily accessible and comfortable to control. The main aim here should be to make users forget that they are using your design.

When designing a user interface the designer should always analyze and try to make things simpler. It is always better to create the user interface keeping in mind the user’s comfort and ease. The interface should be responsive and meantime invisible.

Posted in Web Design Trends Website Design

Minimalism in Web Design

Web design can be defined as the language one, which is used by the people. Designers tend to add too many elements to make the website attractive. However, this leads to unnecessary details that do not support or are helpful for the user’s task.

It is necessary to add just those elements into the website, which makes it look simple to use yet attractive enough to bring users and visit the site. Web designers seldom misinterpret the meaning of minimalism and remove essential elements to achieve the former thing. Therefore it is important what is minimalism in web design, how it works, and benefits the users.

What is the minimalist interface on a website?

Understanding the history of minimalism will allow the web designer to incorporate this concept into the interface. It started in the 1960s after the famous German art movement was led, which mainly focused on a functional yet simple design. It was mostly limited to visual art.

It later started taking its shape as a trend within the technological human-computer interaction, where first it began with pint media and gradually made its way to the web interface. The search engine giant Google is known as the ‘pioneer of minimalism in web designing.’

Later in 2013, various tech giants started using the concept of minimalism in their interface. Now the idea of minimalism has started taking place in websites of online publications, e-commerce, and even educational sites.

If minimalism is employed correctly, it achieves the goal of presenting the features and content of a website in an effortless and direct way, which provides as little distraction as possible to the user. The web designer must understand the need and importance of the website and should try to support the user by providing the content which fulfills the primary goal of the interface. Analyzing the features which satisfy the needs and also optimizes the profitability is essential.

How can one add minimalism in web sites?

Web designers usually get confused as to what features are to be added to make the content minimalist and not incomplete. Below are some features which can be included in a website to make it the minimalist touch.

  • Flat textures and patterns- One must avoid using unnecessary shadows, gradients, and composition and must try to use larger containers and layout strategies.
  • A monochromatic palette for colors– Web designers must try to add one bold color or monochromatic color as an accent to highlight the crucial elements.
tna board
  • Restriction on features and elements- One must eliminate all the features which do not support the website to the core and makes the access difficult for the user.

Conclusion

Minimalism in the web interface has significant influence over the content and the architectural decisions of the website. It makes an impact on usability and may also turn out to be beneficial for increasing traffic and attracting users. If minimalism is performed carefully, one can come up with an aesthetically attractive interface that gets a better response.

Posted in Website Design

Online Schools To Learn Web Design For Free

Today, people often pick up new skills through courses available on the internet. Earlier, people use to leave their full-time job for pursuing some course. But, it is not the same today they can complete courses online and continue to do their job. When they need to get promoted by learning something new, they can complete a course online. There are courses available for beginners as well as for experienced people. If you are in search of web design courses, here are some of the best schools available online.

Free Web Design Courses Online

Here is a set of schools you can rely on for web design courses.

This school is best suitable for people in the photographing and art industry. They can easily learn web programming here and build websites. The course is best suitable for people who are looking to upgrade their existing website. There are just seven simple videos and they teach programming skills needed to change your website. Everything is explained in an artistic appeal and hence it is very interesting as well.

This is best suitable for people who know the basics of web design and willing to upgrade themselves. Through this course, they can learn about CSS and more about HTML. So, this course is not recommended for beginners since there is no detailed explanation needed for them. You can complete this online course anytime from your place and slides are clear and concise.

This is definitely for people who like practical learning. This school offers the best course for beginners and it is one of them. The course is built for people who are interested in developing their websites from scratch and don’t want to rely on a content management system. There are plenty of games as well as themes and you can use them in your learning.

This course is a combination of completely story-based tutorials. Viewers can easily understand web design through these tutorials. You can learn web design in general through this course and learn about CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. You can learn simple concepts here and through which create attractive websites. You can create websites that stand out in the crowd by learning these skills. If you are planning for a good looking website, then this is the right course for you.

If you are in search of courses for the up-skilling responsive design you must try this course. This is the right choice for learning about UX design, front end web design, HTML, and CSS. Here you can enroll along with other web designers since this is a class-based course. The course also takes you through coding and many other essentials of web designing. You can learn many concepts in JavaScript and Flash Cohesion through this course.

There are plenty of choices if you are in search of web design schools or courses online. You can check these courses first and try one of them for better learning.

Posted in SEO Web Development

How to Increase Page Load Speed

It is a proven fact that slow speed kills conversation and as a matter of fact users expect websites to load faster in a speed of less than two seconds. Most of the users will immediately abandon a web page if it takes more than three seconds to load. This implies that in case your site takes more than three seconds to load then you risk the chance of losing almost all your visitors. This will greatly affect your conversion rates.

What is page speed?

Page speed refers to a measurement of how fast the content of a page loads. It is often confused with site speed which is actually the speed for a sample page views on a site. The page speed can be described in either page load time which is basically the time it takes to fully display content on a specific page. It can also be described as time first byte which is basically the time it takes for your first browser to receive the first byte of information from the web browser.

Why is my website slow?

You have conducted a site speed test and found that the load time is very slow. There could be a number of reasons why the web pages are taking a lot of time to load. This could be anything from server load time to image size or the number of redirects. There are various ways in which one can increase the loading time of the pages however, you will need to understand what a good load time is?

What is a good load time?

Before you start to work on the speed of your site it is highly recommended that you understand what a good speed entail. According to Google search engine the best load time is less than three seconds. It is very hard to find a website that can achieve such speeds this might be due to the diversity and complexity of the requirements so as to achieve such tremendous speeds.

SEO Best practices

Google uses site speed as one of the techniques that it uses by its algorithm to rank pages. Research has proven that Google might be measuring the time to first byte when it is considering page speed. A slow page speed simply means that search engines are able to crawl fewer pages using their allocated crawl budget and this could negatively affect indexation. It is also very important to user experience simply because pages with a longer load time tend to have higher bounce rates and lower average time on the page. Below are some of the techniques which one can use to increase the speed of the page.

Minimize HTTP requests

According to research, close to 80% of the time it takes to load a page is spent in downloading different parts of the pages such as images, stylesheets and scripts. HTTP request is made for each of these elements hence the more on-page components the longer it will take for the pages to render. The first step would be to minimize your request so as to figure out how long you site currently takes.

Enable compression

Gzip is a software application for file compression that tends to reduce the size of CSS, HTML and JavaScript files that are larger than 150 bytes. It is not recommended to use gzip on image files. Instead you should compress this in a program like photoshop where you will be able to retain control over the quality of the image size.

Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML

The best way to increase the speed of the page is through optimizing your code which includes removing spaces, commas and other unnecessary characters. You also need to remove the code comments, unused code and formatting. You should also reduce redirects. Every time a page redirects to another page the visitor faces additional time waiting for the HTTP request-response cycle to complete. You will see this type of slim code on many adult sites. Fuckbuddyhookups is a strong example of an adult dating site with slim code that loads extremely fast.

Leverage browser caching

Browsers cache a lot of information so that whenever a visitor comes back to the site your browser won’t have to come back to your site. Use a tool like the YSlow to see if you already have an expiration data set for cache. You will then need to set your expires header for how long you want the information to be cached. Unless the design of the site changes frequently like a year.

Improve server response time

Content distribution networks (CDNs) are referred to as content delivery networks and are network servers that are used to distribute load for delivering content. The copies of your site are usually stored in multiple geographical data centers so as enhance speed and easier access.

Optimize images

image optimization

In order to increase the speed of loading then you will need your images to be smaller and in the right file format. For example, PNGs are preferred as they offer better graphics with fewer than 16 colors while JPEGs are generally better for photographers and are usually compressed for the web. There are free web tools like TinyPNG that allow you to compress images of various formats.

Make use of CSS scripts to create templates and for images that are used frequently on your site such as buttons and icons. CSS combines the images into one large image and then loads it at once then it will display all the sections that it will want to show. This will help save a lot of time especially when loading multiple pages.

Choose the right hosting

web hosting

Most of the site owners choose the cheapest possible option for hosting. As much as this is enough during the beginning you will definitely need to upgrade once you start once you start getting more traffic. You don’t necessarily need to skimp on your host as you can start getting more traffic. When looking for hosting services you will need to consider from the different options which include shared hosting, dedicated server and VPS hosting. Shared hosting is the cheapest option however, you get to share resources such as CPU, disk space and RAM. VPS hosting means that you get to share server with other user in a virtual private network while dedicated hosting means that you have much more space therefore you will need tons of space so as to have complete control over your hosting.

web design trends
Posted in Web Development Website Design

Web Design Trends To Watch

In the past few years, internet has changed and it has revolutionized many things. It has introduced many things like AMP, AI, VR, and even AR. There are many acronyms which we can name which are the gifts of Internet. Even in 2019, we have seen new web design trends that are very useful and interesting.

The new trends in web designing have started abandoning traditional vibrant illustrations of stock photos, bold color schemes, and even asymmetrical layouts. Because of the revolutionary advancements in technologies, we can see websites with the smartest features. Today websites are also backed up with subtle interactions and machine learning. Due to all these, there are a lot of changes that can be observed in web design trends.

Here are a few web design trends of 2019. But this list is not the limit since there is no end for creative innovation in web design trends.

  • Black and white palettes
  • Serifs on screen
  • Organic and natural shapes
  • Glitch art
  • Chatbots evolve
  • Micro-interactions
  • Minimalism
  • Rich video content
  • Diversity
  • Navigation which is thumb-friendly

Palettes with black and white color

One of the very important elements of a website is color. Color is something that is capable of changing your mood. Along with that color can uniquely identify the brand. Color can also create highly effective visual landmarks that can guide users through specified interfaces. In 2019, the color combination black-and-white is making highly impressive statements.

Color is something through which we see the world through light particle absorption. Think of the situation when color is completely missing from this world, when this happens we may start seeing the world differently. When there is no color, shapes and textures will be clearer. White represents clean and where black represents assertive and strong. Through combing these two colors it is possible to get striking look.

Serifs on the screen

We already know that serifs are meant for print whereas sans serifs are used for the screen. Since sans provide high readability, they are preferred for longer bouts of the websites. Today most of the brands are choosing old serifs mainly for callouts and headers. Serifs can be utilized for decorations since they can provide right emphasis. Even though serifs are something which is connected to the past, they can offer varieties of characters and along with that they are highly adaptable.

Organic shapes

Even though most of the web pages are set for systematic grids, today most of the designers are picking smooth lines and natural shapes. Geometric shapes like triangles, rectangles, and squares usually create a high sense of stability but when it comes to 2019 web design trends they are more towards comfort and accessibility.

The majority of the organic shapes are asymmetrical and imperfect as well. They have the capability to create depth into the web design which results in page elements more and more highlighted. Organic shapes are based on nature.

Glitch art

Without some type of retro design, it is challenging to complete any trend. Think of glitch art as retro which is gone wrong. Glitches are considered highly significant especially in this era. Today is the world where machines are taking over but meantime humans have also realized that without the presence of machines they cannot live.

Micro-interactions

These are nothing but events that have a response. Hence when designing it is very important to create the events which are human and inviting. Micro-interaction is nothing but the response you received for the action you performed on your website. For example you hear a beep whenever you refresh your Twitter page. This is nothing but micro-interaction. In case of Facebook there will be a red icon for displaying the unread messages. This is the micro-interaction on Facebook. Dating sites/apps like Bumble, Hinge, and Tinder have strong examples of micro-interactions when members match with other members.

Evolution of Chatbots

Even though chatbots existed for long, they came into spotlight in the year 2019. The main reason behind this was advancements happened in the field of machine learning and AI. Due to these two technologies, chatbots have become more efficient and intelligent. In coming years, chatbots can be seen in more and more pages on the web and they may also come with highest level of customization.

Final thoughts

With all these new web trends web designers are having fun and they are trying to make use of all these trends in the websites they are developing. All the new trends are really amazing and especially diversity.

The Internet is capable of connecting people from all over the world. It has united people of different ages, cultures, abilities, and identities. People who want to see themselves in their content are able to make it through internet. Along with making use of technology, today people are able to open up themselves with the world in front of them. This was difficult without the presence of internet. Today it is very easy to reach out to the world and express yourself just by owning a website or by creating an account on social media.