Collecting UI inspiration is a key part of the creative design process. It helps them stay current with design trends, find innovative solutions to common design challenges, and explore different aesthetics that could improve the user experience. Popular sources for UI inspiration include platforms like Dribbble, Behance, Awwwards, and Pinterest, where designers share and discover creative examples of interface design.

UXPin is the go-to platform for designers seeking UI inspiration that’s both creative and practical. With pre-built design systems and interactive, real-code components, UXPin lets you explore and prototype with production-ready elements. Test animations, user flows, and conditional logic to bring ideas to life, all within one seamless tool. Spark your creativity—try UXPin for free today.

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What is UI Inspiration?

UI inspiration refers to sources, ideas, and examples that designers use to spark creativity and inform the look and feel of user interfaces. It’s a way for designers to explore new layouts, color schemes, interactions, typography, and design patterns that can enhance usability and visual appeal. UI inspiration can come from websites, apps, design galleries, or even non-digital sources like art, nature, and architecture.

Why You Should Seek Inspiration as UI Designer

UI design is a blend of science and art: while one part of the process relies on principles like usability, structure, and function, the other part thrives on creativity, emotion, and visual storytelling.

Seeking UI inspiration is essential because it nurtures the artistic side of design, helping designers cultivate a unique, creative flair that resonates with users. By exploring various color palettes, typography choices, layout patterns, and interaction styles, designers can experiment with new visual directions that make their work stand out.

Inspiration serves as a catalyst for creativity, allowing designers to see how others have balanced function with aesthetics. This not only brings fresh ideas but also expands the designer’s toolkit, offering diverse ways to infuse emotion, energy, and personality into their designs.

Studying UI inspiration from different sources helps designers break out of rigid design patterns and develop a more refined, artistic eye. This approach leads to UI designs that are not only scientifically sound in terms of usability and accessibility but also compelling and memorable. In the end, seeking inspiration enriches a designer’s creative palette, allowing them to merge function with artistry, creating experiences that engage users on multiple levels.

How UXPin Helps Get UI Inspiration

UXPin helps designers gather UI inspiration by providing a platform that combines prototyping, real-code components, and a vast library of interactive elements to experiment with and draw ideas from. Here’s how UXPin supports UI inspiration:

1. Pre-built Design Systems and Component Libraries: UXPin offers access to libraries like Material Design and Bootstrap, enabling designers to explore established UI patterns and see how various components work together. This helps designers get inspired by standardized elements and speeds up the design process.
2. Merge with Real Code Components: With UXPin’s Merge technology, designers can pull in real, code-based components from existing design systems, enabling them to see how actual, functioning UI elements work within a prototype. By experimenting with these components, designers can find inspiration for how different UI patterns function in a realistic context.
3. Interactive Prototyping: UXPin’s interactive prototyping capabilities allow designers to test out UI ideas in real-time, including micro-interactions and complex animations. This hands-on experimentation with functionality and interactions provides a new layer of inspiration that goes beyond static visuals.
4. Collaboration with Design Systems: UXPin allows designers to create and reuse shared design systems. By centralizing UI components, designers can explore and get inspired by elements used across projects, ensuring consistency while also sparking new ideas for reusable patterns.
5. Inspiration from Accessible and Inclusive Design: With built-in accessibility features, UXPin helps designers get inspired to create a UI that’s visually appealing while also being usable by all audiences. Accessibility tools encourage design choices that are both functional and visually inspiring, balancing creativity with inclusivity.

Where to Get UI Inspiration From?

These brands and platforms serve as invaluable resources for UI designers, offering a blend of structured design thinking, fresh creative ideas, and exposure to current trends across different industries.

Other Designers’ Work and Design Thinking

Platforms like Dribbble, Behance, and Awwwards feature designs shared by other professionals. Here, designers showcase their work and often describe the design thinking and process behind it, giving insights into creative approaches and trends.

• Dribbble: A popular social platform for designers to share small snippets or “shots” of their work, such as UI elements, branding, and illustrations. It’s known for highly visual inspiration and creative experimentation.
• Behance: A portfolio platform by Adobe where designers, photographers, and creatives share full projects and case studies. It’s ideal for seeing detailed design workflows and cohesive project presentations.
• Awwwards: A website awards platform that recognizes outstanding web design from around the world. It’s a go-to resource for cutting-edge trends and examples of innovative design.

Networking Meetings for Designers

Design meetups, networking events, and online communities connect designers to share feedback, insights, and solutions to design challenges.

• Meetup: A global platform where designers can join local or virtual groups for networking, workshops, and collaborative sessions. It’s widely used for design meetups around UI/UX.
• ADPList (Amazing Design People List): A free mentorship platform where designers connect for one-on-one or group sessions, sharing feedback and insights on design projects and career development.

Conferences

Design conferences offer sessions and workshops led by experts, covering the latest tools, techniques, and trends in UI/UX design.

• UXDX: A conference focused on the entire product lifecycle, from UX and design to development, with sessions on UI trends, design systems, and user experience strategies.
• Smashing Conference: A hands-on conference by Smashing Magazine that dives deep into UX/UI design, front-end development, and accessibility.
• Adobe MAX: Adobe’s annual creative conference, featuring sessions on everything from design tools and UI trends to interactive design, branding, and illustration.

Looking for Inspiration Outside of Design

Observing the world beyond screens, such as nature, art, and architecture, reveals patterns, colors, and textures that inspire unique, non-digital elements for UI design.

• Architecture: Architectural design, with its emphasis on structure, space, and form, can inspire layouts and spatial relationships in UI.
• Fine Art and Museums: Museums and galleries, featuring classic and contemporary works, provide ideas for color schemes, contrast, and texture that enhance visual appeal.

Reading Fiction

Fictional narratives in books, poetry, and films inspire creativity and emotional depth, which can lead to more engaging, story-driven UI designs.

• Books: Novels and short stories can spark ideas for storytelling in user journeys, helping designers create emotionally engaging experiences.
• Films: Film visuals, narrative pacing, and cinematography offer inspiration for crafting user flows and immersive digital experiences.

Inspiration Websites and Galleries

Websites like Pinterest, Muzli, and SiteInspire offer curated design galleries showcasing UI and UX inspiration from across the web.

• Pinterest: A visual search engine where designers save and share inspiration boards, covering everything from color palettes to UI patterns.
• Muzli: A Chrome extension and website that curates the latest design trends and inspiring work, including UI, UX, branding, and illustration.
• SiteInspire: A showcase of well-designed websites, categorized by style, type, and industry, helping designers explore UI ideas for specific website themes or industries.

Unlock UI Inspiration with UXPin

UXPin is more than a prototyping tool—it’s a platform that fuels creativity and brings UI inspiration to life. With access to pre-built design systems like Material Design and Bootstrap, UXPin provides an inspiring foundation of components and patterns ready to use and customize. Designers can explore real, interactive code components with UXPin’s Merge technology, allowing them to prototype with production-ready elements that mimic the final product’s look and feel. This feature enables designers to experiment, innovate, and refine, breaking away from static design and diving into fully interactive ideas.

UXPin also brings together design and development in one place, creating a seamless flow where designers can try out ideas in real time without limits. Advanced prototyping features allow you to test animations, interactions, and conditional logic, providing endless inspiration for user flows and experiences. For designers looking to keep up with the latest in UI, UXPin’s design system integrations, accessible UI patterns, and collaborative tools offer a dynamic space to explore and implement cutting-edge ideas, making it a go-to platform for both creativity and functionality. Try UXPin for free today.

The post UI Inspiration – Where to Get it From? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

ReactJS is the most popular front-end library in the world. The library’s component-based methodology allows the development team to build and reuse components throughout a project, resulting in less programming from scratch and faster development.

We’ve put together 15 React websites and web apps to demonstrate what’s possible with this versatile framework. We also showcase tools product developers use to achieve specific outcomes or optimize ReactJS website performance.

Use ReactJS throughout the product development process–from early-stage prototyping to final front-end development. UXPin Merge is a revolutionary design technology that allows you to bring React-based components to a design tool. Learn more about Merge.

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What Can You Build With ReactJS?

React developers use the framework for everything from simple landing pages and websites to complex games, social networking platforms, and enterprise applications. React’s flexibility and versatility make it the preferred choice for many projects, including responsive websites and cross-platform apps.

The component-based web development approach makes it easy for developers to build user interfaces and move elements around to make changes and iterate faster than using a standard HTML, CSS, and Javascript workflow.

React is written in Javascript, the most widely used programming language, so it’s relatively easy to learn and boasts one of the biggest developer communities in the world.

When you should and shouldn’t use React

React works best for single-page applications and complex web-based projects–for example, social media platforms, news publications, and SaaS products. Those sites handle a lot of data and interactions.

Don’t use React for native apps and small websites that don’t handle much data. Native applications and small websites are instances where you might want to choose a different front-end technology. For example, React Native and Flutter are better for native iOS and Android apps. 

15 Examples of React Websites

We’ve included a mix of enterprises, startups, SaaS companies, small businesses, and others that use React in their tech stack. This list demonstrates React’s versatility for websites and web applications built using the powerful Javascript library.

Facebook

Facebook is the most famous React website example because parent company Meta developed the front-end library in 2012 and still maintains it as an open-source project.

Meta initially used React for the Facebook newsfeed but now uses the library across its product ecosystem. React was a game changer for Facebook because when someone liked a post, only the component changed rather than a full page reload, resulting in significantly better performance and fewer resources.

Meta uses React Native–the mobile version of React–for Facebook, Facebook Ads Manager, and Oculus’ iOS and Android apps.

Repeat

SaaS platform Repeat uses NextJS for its website and web application. NextJS allows you to create fullstack web applications, extending what’s possible with “vanilla React.”

Repeat’s homepage is full of motion and immersive animations made possible by NextJS’s powerful features, like rending, routing, and asset optimization.

PayPal

PayPal uses a React version of Microsoft’s Fluent Design for its 60+ internal products. These products include a lot of dashboards and data visualizations necessary for daily operations.

PayPal also uses UXPin Merge, allowing the company’s design teams to prototype and test using React components. This code-to-design workflow bridges the gap between design and development, so designers and software engineers work with the same component library.

Netflix

Netflix uses React and React Redux for state management. According to the official Netflix Technology Blog, “React enabled us to build JavaScript UI code that can be executed in both server (e.g., Node.js) and client contexts.”

Performance is crucial for Netflix as users expect HD videos to load fast. Developers use the virtual DOM to reduce latency from live DOM manipulation. 

Netflix also uses React’s Component and Mixin APIs to “create reusable views, share common functionality, and patterns to facilitate feature extension.” This functionality enables Netflix to A/B test components to determine the best solutions during user testing.

Product Hunt

Product Hunt is another React/NextJS user. Like Facebook, Product Hunt must handle microinteractions for each post, including upvotes and comments.

Puma Campaigns

Gatsby is a front-end technology built on React which makes it possible to develop high-performing websites and landing pages. Puma uses Gatsby for its campaign landing pages, including this one for the Velocity running shoes.

Gatsby allows devs to build React websites and applications using popular CMS platforms like WordPress, Netlify, Drupal, and Contentful, to name a few, for content management. This framework gives developers the versatility of React with the convenience of their content team’s preferred CMS.

SEO is a big problem for single-page application frameworks like React and Angular. Gatsby helps to solve this problem with its SEO Component, which enables search engines to index the website’s content and individual pages.

Puma also uses React Native for its iOS and Android applications.

TeamPassword

Password-management startup TeamPassword uses a customized version of the MUI design system–an open-source React component library developed using Material Design used by many B2B enterprise and SaaS providers.

TeamPassword’s developers chose React as it was easier to maintain than their old framework. The 2-person engineering team also uses UXPin Merge, which allows them to import their React library from its private repository into UXPin’s design editor for prototyping and testing.

BBC

The British Broadcasting Association (BBC) was an early adopter of React and even hosted a workshop in 2015 introducing people to the front-end library and its capabilities.

In 2022, with the help of Vercel, the BBC rebuilt its website using NextJS and Vercel. The rebuild resulted in significant performance benefits, with HMR (Hot Module Replacement) reduced from 1.3s to 131ms–a staggering achievement for a website as large and complex as the BBC.

Airbnb

Airbnb uses React for some of its product ecosystems, including Airbnb.io, its open-source project famous for developing Lottie–an open-source animation tool for Android, iOS, and React Native mobile applications.

Airbnb.io is a website developed using Gatsby featuring the company’s blog posts and details about its open-source projects with links to the GitHub repos.

Cloudflare

Cloudflare migrated from Backbone and Marionette to React and Redux in 2015 to develop its cf-ui design system. The multi-brand design system serves Cloudflare’s internal and external websites and products.

Since Cloudflare had to rebuild its component library, the team focused on accessibility, creating three open-source projects in the process: 

• react-modal2,
• a11y-focus-store,
• a11y-focus-scope.

UberEATS

Uber uses React Native for its UberEATS web-based restaurant dashboard. The team needed to develop a web application restaurants could access via a tablet and decided to use React Native. The single-page web application communicates with three parties in the UberEATS marketplace and connects to restaurant receipt printers.

Uber also developed Base Web, an open-source design system for building ReactJS websites and web apps. The highly customizable design system boasts an extensive UI component library with theming capabilities.

Related content: Learn about design operations at Uber.

Shopify

Shopify uses React for its website and web application and React Native for its mobile applications. Developers can build React apps for Shopify using its famous Polaris Design System.

Skyscanner

Skyscanner is one of the most widely used travel websites, with over 40 million monthly visits. The website connects to hundreds of airlines and thousands of hotels to show users trip data in seconds.

Skyscanner uses React and React Native for its website and product ecosystem. The company’s Backpack design system features an extensive UI library with web and native components.

Pinterest

Pinterest is another social media platform using React. The company’s Gestalt design system features components for its React web app and React Native mobile applications (iOS and Android).

Pinterest is another example where React provides massive performance benefits for single-page applications. The website’s famous infinite scroll uses lazy loading to display six columns of images and video with impressive speed.

Cuckoo

Cuckoo is a UK-based broadband supplier that uses React and NextJS for its website. The website has a fair amount of animations, including a large revolving sequence in the hero. These animations do not impact the website’s performance, a product of using NextJS.

Create React Website UI Fast

Build UI design 8.6x faster with UXPin Merge – a drag-and-drop UI builder that makes you use coded React components to create beautiful and fully interactive layouts fast. Then, copy the code off your design directly to Stackblitz or export it to any other dev environment. Start your free trial to test AI Component Assistant, pre-built layouts, and open-source libraries. Discover UXPin Merge.

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Interaction design is one of the most critical facets of user experience design. It makes the product’s interface respond to user’s action, aiding in human-to-computer interaction.

Key takeaways:

• Interaction design is a multidisciplinary design field that focuses on the interaction between users and digital products, systems, or interfaces.
• It involves designing how users engage with and experience a product, with the goal of making that interaction intuitive and efficient.
• It’s often abbreviated as IxD.

It’s one of the most challenging stages of UX design process. UXPin’s code-based design tool reduces those challenges by allowing designers to build functional prototypes with extreme fidelity and interactivity. Deliver better customer experiences today. Sign up for a free trial.

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What is Interaction Design?

Interaction design is a process of making human-to-computer interfaces (HCI) feel human-like. Interactive digital products create this “human” connection by giving feedback to the end-users. The feedback can be through a scroll-provoked animation, clicked state of a button or transition to another page.

Often shortened to IxD, interaction design uses appropriate interactive elements, such as transitions, microinteractions, animation, but also text, color, visuals, and layout impact users’ feeling and behavior–allowing them to design interactions strategically to elicit the appropriate response.

A good use of interaction design successfully leads to positive user experiences, including:

• Greater product satisfaction
• Deeper usability comprehension
• Faster learnability
• A deeper personal connection
• Increased likelihood of repeated use

Interaction Design in HCI

Interaction design in HCI, which stands for Human-Computer Interaction, is designing the interactive elements of a product, such as buttons, menus, and other interface components, to ensure they are intuitive, user-friendly, and responsive to user actions, and facilitate good communication between the user and the system.

The goal of interaction design is to create an engaging user experience that facilitates seamless interaction with the technology. It encompasses understanding user needs, behaviors, and expectations to design interfaces that are not only functional but also enjoyable to use.

By focusing on how users interact with technology, interaction design in HCI aims to enhance usability, accessibility, and overall satisfaction.

Interaction Design vs UI Design

Interaction design focuses on human-computer interaction, including animations, microinteractions, transitions, search, and other motion-based designs. They decide, for example, what happens when a user taps an element.

User interface design focuses on visual design and aesthetics, including color, fonts, iconography, layouts, etc. They decide what a user interface must look like.

To summarize:

• Interaction design is about Interactions and movement
• UI design is about visual design and aesthetics

In smaller companies and startups, a UI designer is often responsible for both tasks, while the roles are separate in larger organizations. Like anything in digital product design, the roles and responsibilities can synergize. It all depends on the company, product, and organizational structure.

Interaction Design vs UX Design

Interaction design is a specialized discipline within UX design. Where UX looks at the entire user experience and how everything ties together, interaction designers focus on user interactions and motion.

User experience designers apply UX fundamentals like design thinking, human-centered design, and user research to make decisions. They’re specifically concerned with a user’s tasks, actions, and environment, while interaction designers focus on making the digital product respond to user actions in an appropriate way. They tend to think about what happens when a user clicks a button, types a phrase into a search bar or hovers over an image.

What are Interaction Design Principles?

We’ve chosen our favorite IxD principles from Don Norman’s (co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group) book, The Design of Everyday Things.

Visibility

With many features and limited space, prioritizing visibility is a significant design challenge. Don Norman’s theory is that the more visible something is, the more likely a user sees and interacts with it. Interaction designers must balance visibility prioritization based on user needs and business goals.

A typical example of visibility is prioritizing navigation links on mobile devices. What links are visible via the app bar, and what do designers place in the navigation drawer behind a hamburger menu?

Feedback

Feedback is how a digital product or system communicates with users. Interaction designers have several ways to express this feedback, including motion or animation, tactile, audio, copy, etc.

They must also consider accessibility and how products relay feedback to all types of users and assistive technologies.

Constraints

Cluttered UIs with too many possibilities confuse users and create usability issues. Good interaction design limits (or constrains) user actions to guide them through the product more efficiently.

We see these constraints most commonly with landing pages. Designers strip away navigation, links, and anything else that might tempt users to leave the page, leaving only a prominent button CTA or form. Constraining users to a single action allows them to focus on the content that leads to a conversion.

Mapping

Interaction designers must create a clear relationship between controls and their effect on a digital product. The idea is to map these relationships to feel natural to users.

For example, the top button on an iPhone increases the volume while the lower one decreases. This intuitive layout means users don’t have to think about which button performs which action.

The more intuitive and obvious a product is to use, the easier and more enjoyable the experience.

Consistency

Consistency is vital for interaction and UI design. Inconsistency can confuse users and create usability issues. Designers not only have to design consistent UIs and interactions but also consider consistency across multiple screen sizes and devices.

Many organizations build a design system or adopt an open-source component library to increase consistency with approved UI patterns and interactions. When designers don’t have to think about these choices, they can focus on the user experience and apply the appropriate pattern to help users achieve the desired result.

Affordance

Affordance tells users how to use something or perform an action. It’s an interaction designer’s job to ensure that it’s obvious to users how to complete tasks using UI elements.

For example, a submit button’s disabled state tells users to complete a form’s required fields before submitting. Using a different color and underline for links tells users which text they can click.

Cognition

Interaction designers must have a basic understanding of cognitive psychology in UX design–attention and perception, memory, problem-solving, and creative thinking. The aim is to design products and experiences that don’t overload these mental processes.

Cognition deals with several design psychology principles, including:

• Gestalt principles: how the human brain perceives visuals to create familiar structures.
• Von Restorff effect: predicts that in a group of objects, the one that differs stands out or is most likely to be remembered.
• Hick’s Law: the more choices you give someone, the longer it’ll take them to make a decision.
• The Principle of Least Effort: users will make choices or take action requiring the least amount of energy.
• The Serial Positioning Effect: humans are most likely to remember the first (primacy effect) and last (recency effect) items in a list, sentence, or piece of content.
• The Principle of Perpetual Habit: people rely on familiar routines and habits–which is why it’s crucial to use universal design patterns.
• The Principle of Emotional Contagion: humans will mimic or empathize with the emotions and behaviors of others, including animals and animations–which is why designers use faces (even emojis) to emphasize feeling and emotion.
• Fitts’s Law: the time required to move to a target area is a function between the distance and the target’s size.

Dive deeper into cognition in this article: UX Design Psychology Tricks for Design Excellence and this one: A UX Designer’s Guide to Improving Speed of Use. These principles apply to all UX disciplines.

Interaction Design Checklist

We found this helpful interaction design checklist from the US Government’s Technology Transformation Services website, usability.gov. The checklist includes several questions to consider when designing interactions.

• Define how users interact with the interface – click/tap, push, swipe, drag & drop, keyboard controls, etc.
• Give users clues about behavior before they take action – correct labeling, different colors for links, using consistency for clickable UI elements, etc.
• Anticipate and mitigate errors – how do you prevent errors while providing helpful messages to correct problems?
• Consider system feedback and response time – what happens after users complete an action, and how soon does that feedback appear?
• Strategically think about each element – have you chosen the appropriate element/pattern? Is there enough space between clickable elements to avoid errors? Have you followed design psychology principles (mentioned above)? Scrutinize every decision from a user’s perspective.
• Simplify for learnability – make user interfaces and tasks as simple as possible, use familiar patterns, and minimize cognitive-draining tasks and features to simplify the user experience.

Also, check out the IxD Checklist from Aaron Legaspi and Amit Jakhu.

Interaction Design Resources

• Interaction Design Association
• Interaction Design Foundation
• 50 Best Interaction Design Programs

What Interaction Designers Do?

An interaction designer’s role focuses on how users interact with products, particularly digital ones like websites, apps, or software interfaces. Their job is to ensure that these interactions are intuitive, seamless, and enjoyable.

Here’s a breakdown of what interaction designers do:

1. Understand User Needs

Interactive designers spend a lot of time researching who the users are and what they need. This includes conducting user research, interviews, and analyzing data to figure out the problems they face and how the product can solve them. Understanding these needs is crucial to designing interactions that make sense for the user.

2. Create User Flows

Once interaction designers know what users need, they design user flows, which are basically maps that outline the steps a user takes to complete a task in the product. For example, in an e-commerce app, the user flow might be from adding an item to their cart, through the checkout process, to receiving a confirmation. The goal is to make these steps as easy and efficient as possible.

3. Design Interactive Elements

This is where interactive designers focus on buttons, navigation, and forms—all the interactive elements users click, tap, or swipe. They design these elements to be clear, functional, and accessible. They’re always thinking about things like: “Does this button stand out? Will the user know what happens when they click it?”

4. Prototype and Test

Interactive designers build prototypes—early models of the product—so we can test how people actually use it. This stage is all about testing assumptions. They gather feedback from users and stakeholders, see what’s working and what’s not, and refine the design based on that.

5. Collaborate with Other Teams

Interactive designers work closely with UX designers, developers, and product managers to make sure the designs are feasible and meet business goals. Developers need to know exactly how interactions should work (like what happens when you hover over a button), and I’m there to clarify and iterate as needed.

6. Ensure Consistency

A big part of their role is making sure the design is consistent across the entire product. Users should feel familiar as they move through different sections. That means sticking to the same design patterns for similar tasks and interactions.

7. Balance User and Business Needs

While their main focus is the user experience, interactive designers also need to align the design with business objectives. For example, if the goal is to increase sign-ups, they might design an interaction that nudges users towards the registration page without feeling pushy or disrupting the user journey.

8. Stay Updated

Finally, interaction designers keep up with design trends, tools, and best practices. Interaction design evolves quickly, and it’s important to stay ahead to ensure the product remains competitive and user-friendly.

In essence, They’re here to make sure the product not only looks good but works in a way that’s easy and satisfying for users. Their focus is always on improving the interaction between the user and the product.

UXPin–The Ultimate Interaction Design Tool

A lack of fidelity and functionality is a significant problem for interaction designers when prototyping and testing using traditional image-based design tools.

Interaction designers must create multiple frames to replicate basic code functionality, which takes considerable time and effort. With UXPin’s code-based design tool, designers can achieve significantly better results with less effort. Here’s how:

States

UXPin enables designers to create multiple States for a single component. For example, you can build a button with default, hover, active and disabled states, each with separate properties and triggers.

UXPin’s States also allows designers to create more complex UI patterns like carousels, accordions, dropdown menus, and more using a single frame. These UI patterns behave like code, giving interaction designers accurate results and feedback during testing.

Interactions

With UXPin Interactions, designers can build immersive, code-like experiences far beyond the capabilities of image-based design tools. UXPin offers a wide range of triggers, actions, and animations to create fully functional, animated prototypes.

Conditional Interactions allow designers to take prototypes a step further with Javascript-like “if-then” and “if-else” conditions to create dynamic user experiences. 

Variables

In UXPin, form fields look and function like the final product. Variables allow designers to capture user inputs and use that data elsewhere in the prototype–like a personalized welcome message after completing an onboarding form.

Expressions

UXPin Expressions take prototyping to another level with code-like functionality, including form validation and computational components (updating a shopping cart). When combined with States, Interactions, and Variables, Expressions allow designers to build prototypes that function like the final product.

These powerful features mean interaction designers don’t have to learn code or rely on engineers to build fully functioning prototypes for accurate testing. With UXPin, designers can build, test, and iterate faster and achieve significantly better results.

Tired of asking usability participants and stakeholders to “imagine” something happening? Switch to UXPin and start prototyping with the world’s most advanced code-based design tool. Sign up for a free trial today.

The post What is Interaction Design? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

According to a study on health sites, 94% of first impressions are design-related. If you don’t have a defined website structure, you may lose users to the websites with well-thought-out UI.

The look and feel of a website significantly impact a user’s perception of credibility and trustworthiness. A website structure helps users to navigate sites and find the information that they are looking for. This article will explain why site structure is important for designers and how designers can create effective site structures.

Key takeaways:

• A website structure is the way a website’s content and pages are organized and interconnected.
• It involves the hierarchical arrangement of web pages and their relationships to one another.
• Website structure helps visitors and search engines navigate and understand the website’s content.
• There are four types of website architectures: hierarchical, sequential, matrix, database.

Designing a new site? Use UXPin and build website architecture and turn it into a workable prototype. It’s an end-to-end solution that simplifies UI and UX design process up to design handoff, so your developers can extract ready HTML and CSS code to kick start website development. Try UXPin right now.

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What is website structure?

Website structure is the organization and layout of the various elements and pages within a website. It is how the different pages of the site are linked with each other through internal links and their hierarchy. It is about how the information on a site is organized and presented, so that the users know how to move through the site whilst the web crawlers can read the context well.

Good website structure facilitates easy navigation for both users and crawlers. Apart from influencing user experience, it also affects the SEO ranking of a website in search engines.

Why is website structure important for designers? 

The role of a UX designer is to create a website that has a great UX that takes care of accessibility and is easy to use. A great website structure improves the usability or user-friendliness of your website by making it easy for users to find what they are looking for.

4 Types of Website Structure

There are different types of web structure that you may use in UX design. They are hierarchical, sequential, matrix, and database model. What are they about?

Hierarchical website structure

Hierarchical structure is the most common website structure is a hierarchical structure that is based on one parent page (main page) and child pages (categories and sub-categories) that flow from the main page. Think of UXPin’s page (image above).

An example of this structure is UXPin’s website. You can see a screenshot of a homepage that takes you to different child pages in its navigation bar and website footer. The user can click through pages, but they can quickly go back to homepage if needed. The website is designed to guide users through a series of steps to create an account and explore the platform’s features.

Sequential website structure

A sequential website structure is a design approach that guides users through a series of steps or a specific sequence of content to achieve a desired outcome or experience. This structure is particularly effective when you want to tell a story, present a process, or lead users through a journey with a logical progression. It ensures a focused and linear flow of information, making it easier for users to comprehend and engage with the content.

An exemplary illustration of a sequential structure can be found in Growth Design‘s UX case study pages, as featured in their newsletter. In this context, the UX case study pages are meticulously organized to present information in a step-by-step manner, allowing users to follow the evolution of a project or design process. Each step in the sequence builds upon the previous one, providing a cohesive narrative and facilitating a deeper understanding of the showcased work.

Key features of a sequential website structure, as demonstrated by Growth Design’s UX case study pages, may include:

• Clear Progression – each step or section logically follows the preceding one, creating a smooth and clear progression.
• Engaging Storytelling – the structure facilitates storytelling, enabling the presentation of a narrative that captivates users and maintains their interest.
• Visual Hierarchy – visual elements such as images, diagrams, and multimedia are strategically used to enhance the hierarchy and emphasize key points in the sequence.
• Focused User Journey – users are guided along a predefined path, reducing cognitive overload and helping them absorb information in a structured manner.
• Call-to-Action Integration – integration of relevant calls-to-action at appropriate points in the sequence to encourage user interaction or prompt specific actions.

Matrix web structure

A matrix structure in organizational terms refers to a management approach where employees report to both functional managers and project managers simultaneously. This dual reporting system allows for more flexibility and a balance between functional expertise and project-oriented goals.

n the context of a website structure, particularly common for online newspapers like the New York Times, the matrix structure can be used as a metaphor to describe a complex and multi-dimensional site architecture.

In a matrix-like website structure for online newspapers:

1. Content Categories – the structure can be represented by various content categories, such as News, Opinion, Business, Technology, and more. Each category acts as a functional area with its own set of expertise and content creators.
2. Dynamic Homepage – the homepage serves as a dynamic dashboard, showcasing a mix of the latest news across various categories. It may feature a blend of top stories, trending topics, and multimedia content, breaking away from a strictly hierarchical presentation.
3. Search Functionality – the website integrates robust search functionality. Users can enter keywords, topics, or author names, and the search results dynamically pull content from different categories and sections, reflecting the matrix-like interconnectedness.
4. Multidimensional Navigation – users navigate through the website based on their interests, and the navigation isn’t strictly hierarchical. Instead, it’s multidimensional, allowing users to explore various dimensions simultaneously. They can choose to follow a specific category or delve into cross-cutting topics seamlessly.
5. User Personalization – the matrix structure allows for user personalization, where readers can customize their news feeds based on preferences. This customization could involve selecting favorite categories, following specific authors, or receiving tailored recommendations.

While the hierarchical model provides a clear and structured path, the matrix structure in online newspapers introduces a more dynamic and interconnected approach. It accommodates the diverse interests of readers, encourages exploration across multiple dimensions, and mirrors the complexity of the news landscape in a digital era.

Database website structure

Database model, also called dynamic website structure, is the model prevalent for sites that have a lot user-generated content. It is characterized by its reliance on a database to store, manage, and retrieve content dynamically, providing flexibility, scalability, and real-time interactivity.

Unlike static websites with fixed content, the database model offers flexibility in managing and displaying content. Content can be easily added, edited, or removed through interactions with the database, allowing the website to evolve based on user contributions.

Think of sites like Pinterest. This site relies on user-generated content, such as posts, likes, comments, pins, and other contributions. The database serves as a central repository for storing and retrieving this dynamic user-generated data.

Users can interact with the site in real-time, submit content, and engage with dynamic features. Personalization features, such as customized user profiles and tailored content recommendations, are often implemented based on database-driven insights.

Given the nature of user-generated content, websites using the database model incorporate robust content moderation tools to ensure quality and adherence to community guidelines. Security measures are also implemented to protect against potential threats associated with dynamic content contributions.

How to Choose the Best Website Structure?

To create a website structure, you need to map out how you will organize the content on your site (homepage, categories, individual page, blog posts). This is why website structuring should be the first step in any web design project.

The underlying principle in great website structure is Information Architecture (IA). IA ensures that content is organized, structured, and labeled effectively and consistently.

Consider the following factors to design an information architecture of your site:

1. User journey: Since websites are created to serve users, it is important to consider how they might experience or interact with your site and their expectations of how your website should work. You can determine the journey of your users through interviewing them or doing a card sorting exercise. 
2. Content: The structure of your website will also be largely determined by the type and volume of content on your site. The structure of an e-commerce site will be different from the structure of an academic site. Read more about UX content: Content Strategy for UX.
3. Context: The context of a website is determined by its business goals, the cultural context that it exists in, and the resources available. It is important to consider this fact as you structure your website.

Key Elements of Website Structure

Let’s focus on hierarchical structure of a website. This is a structure which most content websites, such as company website, eCommerce store, common blogs, etc. are based on.

Let’s look at each of these elements and how you can optimize them during your design process.

Homepage web structure

Your homepage is the top page in your website hierarchy and the central place where users navigate your website from. Ensure that all the important pages on your website are linked from this page. The relationship between your homepage and the main category pages is represented by your website’s menu or main navigation.

Here’s how to design a useful navigation/menu for your website.

Navigation or menu web structure

Your site visitors will use the navigation to understand how information is structured on a website and to find what they are looking for. Ensure that all your main category pages are represented on your menu or main navigation. Additionally, use the following rules when creating your navigation:

• Use short phrases or even one word for each element.
• Use simple language that your users can understand. 
• Don’t clutter your navigation with sitelinks.

Apple’s main navigation follows these rules to create a simple but super-useful menu.

If your site has some subcategories that are useful for users such as their account information. You can create a secondary vertical menu like Asos has.

Other useful categories such as utility pages (privacy policies, disclaimers and legal information) can be placed on the footer of the website. 

Categories and subcategories web structure best practices

Use categories to group website pages that have similar content which makes it easy for users to access the content. Blog posts can be grouped into categories such as ‘marketing’ and then be further subdivided into subcategories such as ‘landing pages’ and ‘email marketing.’

If you are designing an e-commerce website, you can group your products into categories such as ‘men’ and ‘women.’ If your categories are too many you can further subdivide them into subcategories. Continuing with our example of an e-commerce store example, the women category can have subcategories such as ‘clothes’, ‘shoes’, and ‘handbags’. 

A great example of this is the Asos Marketplace website where their clothing category has a subcategory that shows the types of clothing available in the marketplace such as swimwear, sweatshirts, tracksuits, and hoodies. 

Web structure tips for individual pages

It is important to structure your individual website pages or blog posts in a way that makes it easy for users to find what they are looking for, find similar content and understand where they are on your website. Breadcrumb trails, tags, and contextual sitelinks are used to structure information architecture on individual pages.

Take care of the headers that you put on individual pages. Make sure that they follow the right order, for example, the title of the blog post is H1 and that they all have metadata. Metadata are important part of UX, too. You don’t want to confuse users what your site is about.

Use breadcrumb trails

You can add navigation on your pages or posts in the form of a breadcrumb trail. A breadcrumb trail is made up of clickable sitelinks that show users exactly where they are on your site plus your site structure. Breadcrumb trails like the one used by Mailchimp improve usability and user experience. 

Add tags and categories

Tags are another useful way of grouping similar content on a specific page. Tagging enhances content discoverability and user navigation. This enables users to explore related content more effectively, thereby increasing engagement.

The difference between tags and categories is that categories have a hierarchy and can be further subdivided into subcategories but tags have no hierarchy. They simply group similar content. 

For example, Grammarly’s blog uses categories and tags, such as ‘how to,’ ‘product’ and ‘inspiration’ to group blog content.

The usefulness of these tags is displayed when a user clicks on one of the posts tagged ‘how to’ and they are shown other posts that are also tagged ‘how to’ at the end of the blog post. This is a great example of how website structure makes it easy for users to find information. 

Tags can also be used in e-commerce websites to group products according to brand and direct users to similar products. 

Here are 3 best practices for creating tags:

• Don’t create too many tags or a new tag for every post.
• Place tags in a place where site visitors can easily see them such as your sidebar or at the end of your blog posts/product pages.
• Make sure that the tags are clickable and users can view similar content if they need to.

Contextual links 

These are links on webpages or blog posts that point to other relevant content on other webpages. Contextual links are useful in showing users related content. In the context of a blog post, contextual links can be used to point users to other blog posts that have similar content. Grammarly does this in their blog post as shown below. 

Contextual links can also be used in e-commerce pages to link to pages that have related items, what other people have bought, or which products are often bought together. 

Identifying Site Structure Issues

An effective website structure is crucial for ensuring a seamless user experience and achieving business goals. However, structural issues can often go unnoticed until they start negatively impacting usability, SEO, or content management. By identifying these issues early, designers can maintain project quality and avoid costly revisions later in the development process. Here are some common site structure problems to look out for and how to address them:

Confusing Navigation & Hierarchy

When users struggle to find key information, it’s often a sign of poor navigation and content hierarchy. Overly complex menus, inconsistent labeling, or too many layers in the navigation can frustrate visitors and lead to higher bounce rates. To identify these issues:

• Perform a navigation audit: Test each menu item and link to ensure they lead to relevant pages.
• Analyze user behavior data: Tools like heatmaps and session recordings can reveal which paths users follow and where they drop off.
• Conduct usability testing: Ask real users to complete tasks and observe where they struggle.

Solution: Simplify the navigation, keep category names consistent, and minimize menu layers. Use breadcrumbs or secondary menus to improve the discoverability of deeper content.

Orphaned Pages or Broken Links

Orphaned pages are those not linked from any other page on the site, making them difficult for users (and search engines) to discover. Broken links, on the other hand, can frustrate visitors and hurt your SEO efforts.

• Run a site crawl: Use tools like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs to identify orphaned pages and broken links.
• Check internal linking: Ensure each page has at least one internal link pointing to it, preferably from a related high-traffic page.

Solution: Fix broken links and add internal links to orphaned pages from relevant sections of your site. Regularly update your site’s internal linking structure as new content is added.

Overlapping or Redundant Content

When multiple pages target the same keyword or topic, it can create competition between your own pages—often referred to as keyword cannibalization. This can dilute the value of each page and confuse users about which page to visit.

• Conduct a content audit: Review all pages and group them by topic. Look for instances where multiple pages serve a similar purpose.
• Use analytics data: Determine which pages perform best for their intended keywords and consider consolidating weaker pages.

Solution: Merge similar pages into a single, comprehensive resource. Use redirects to ensure that any traffic to the original pages is redirected to the new, optimized page.

Lack of Responsive Design

With more users accessing websites on mobile devices, a lack of responsiveness can significantly impact usability and engagement. Pages that don’t adjust to different screen sizes lead to poor navigation and readability issues.

• Test on multiple devices: Use tools like Chrome DevTools or BrowserStack to test your site across various screen sizes and devices.
• Check component behavior: Verify that interactive elements like buttons, menus, and forms are usable on mobile.

Solution: Ensure your site’s CSS is built with responsiveness in mind. Use frameworks like Bootstrap or apply CSS media queries to optimize layouts and component sizes for different devices.

Unclear Information Architecture

A poorly structured information architecture can make it difficult for users to understand the relationship between different content sections. This issue often arises when new pages or sections are added without considering the overall structure.

• Create a sitemap: Outline your website’s structure and evaluate if each page fits logically within the hierarchy.
• Card sorting exercises: Use card sorting with real users to see how they naturally group content and structure your IA accordingly.

Solution: Adjust your IA so that related content is grouped together under clear, distinct categories. Make sure there’s a logical flow from top-level categories down to specific pages.

By proactively identifying and addressing these common site structure issues, designers can ensure that their projects maintain a high standard of quality, enhance user experience, and support the website’s long-term goals. Regular audits and usability testing can help keep your site’s structure in check as it evolves over time.

Easily Incorporate Website Structure In Your Designs 

Web structure is how information is organized and interconnected on a website. An effective site structure improves usability and user experience which makes web structuring an important step in the web design process. The UXPin design tool makes it easy for you to design, prototype and structure a website, as you collaborate with other team members and designers. Try UXPin now.

The post Website Structure 101 with Examples appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Mobile-first design is an approach to designing UIs that prioritizes small-screen experience. Given that different devices need different layouts based on their screen size and orientation, it makes sense to design multiple arrangements for your users. This article will show you how to create a mobile-first prototype of a product and transform it into tablet and desktop screens.

Make your own responsive variations right in UXPin. Create a mobile-first design and scale it up for tablet and desktop views in UXPin – an advanced prototyping tool. Go ahead and create a free trial and follow along below.

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What is Mobile-First Approach?

The mobile-first approach is designing for the smallest screen and working your way up. It is one of the best strategies to create either a responsive or adaptive design.

• The mobile-first approach is a tenet of progressive enhancement. It is the ideology that mobile design, as the hardest, should be done first. Once the mobile design questions are answered, designing for other devices will be easier. What it boils down to is that, the smallest of the designs will have only the essential features, so right away you have designed the heart of your UX.
• The opposite approach is graceful degradation. This incorporates all of the complexities right from the start, then strips them away later for smaller devices. The problem with graceful degradation is that when you build the all-inclusive design right from the start, the core and supplementary elements merge and become harder to distinguish and separate. The entire philosophy runs the risk of treating mobile design as more of an afterthought since you’re “cutting down” the experience.

We, along with others, strongly recommend progressive enhancement with a mobile-first approach. In this post, we’ll explain tips & techniques, then finish off with a hands-on lesson in which we build a hypothetical website with the mobile-first workflow.

Mobile-first design is also a response to the realities of modern user behavior and technological advancements, such as increasing mobile usage, future-proofing the design, and more. By prioritizing mobile, designers can ensure a more effective and efficient design process that meets the needs of the majority of users.

Who uses Mobile-First Design?

Mobile-first design has been adopted by numerous organizations across various industries. Here are some notable examples and case studies of companies that successfully implemented mobile-first design.

1. Google

• Context: As a leading technology company, Google recognized the shift toward mobile usage early on.
• Implementation: Google began encouraging a mobile-first approach through initiatives like AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) and mobile-first indexing.
• Outcome: Websites adopting Google’s mobile-first guidelines generally experienced improved mobile performance and search rankings. Google’s emphasis on mobile-friendly designs helped shape industry standards and practices.

2. Dropbox

• Context: Dropbox transitioned from a desktop-centric service to a mobile-friendly platform to meet user demands for accessibility on-the-go.
• Implementation: They adopted a mobile-first approach in redesigning their app, focusing on a simplified, intuitive interface for mobile users first and then scaling up for desktop users.
• Outcome: The redesign led to a more consistent user experience across devices and contributed to increased mobile engagement and user satisfaction.

3. BBC

• Context: The BBC needed to reach a global audience on various devices, particularly mobile phones, given the increasing consumption of news on the go.
• Implementation: They adopted a mobile-first strategy for their website and apps, ensuring content was accessible and optimized for mobile devices.
• Outcome: The BBC saw a significant improvement in mobile traffic and user engagement. Their responsive design approach also made it easier to manage content across multiple platforms.

4. Flipkart

• Context: Flipkart, a major e-commerce company in India, recognized the growing trend of mobile commerce in the region.
• Implementation: They adopted a mobile-first approach to design their app and website, focusing on fast load times, simplified navigation, and a user-friendly interface.
• Outcome: This approach contributed to a surge in mobile transactions, with Flipkart reporting that a large majority of their sales came from mobile devices.

5. Airbnb

• Context: Airbnb aimed to create a seamless experience for travelers and hosts who increasingly relied on mobile devices.
• Implementation: They redesigned their platform with a mobile-first mindset, prioritizing mobile usability and a responsive design that adapted to various screen sizes.
• Outcome: The mobile-first design contributed to higher user satisfaction, increased mobile bookings, and a more consistent user experience across devices .

6. Spotify

• Context: Spotify needed a mobile-friendly design to cater to users who accessed music primarily through mobile devices.
• Implementation: Spotify embraced mobile-first design principles to ensure a seamless, intuitive user interface on mobile devices before adapting it for desktop users.
• Outcome: This approach enhanced user engagement and satisfaction, with the majority of Spotify’s user base accessing the service via mobile devices.

Mobile-First means Content-First

If your site is good on a mobile device, it translates better to the rest of devices, be it tablet, desktop computer or laptop. More important, though, is that a mobile-first approach is also a content-first approach. Mobile has the most limitations, screen size, and bandwidth to name a few, and so designing within these parameters forces you to prioritize content ruthlessly.

The mobile-first approach organically leads to a design that’s more content-focused, and therefore user-focused. The heart of the site is content — that’s what the users are there for.

One caveat, though, is that mobile users sometimes require different content than desktop users. Device-specific content can be gauged by considering context — what, in a given situation and a given environment, will your user appreciate more. The best way to plan ahead for these is by creating user scenarios.

Another advantage to the mobile-first approach is that the small-screen breakpoints can better fit around the content. Again, the alternative is worse: having to squeeze an already plump design into a tiny framework. But with the mobile-first approach, the breakpoints develop naturally around content, so you don’t need any awkward edits.

What is mobile-first design framework?

We’ll describe a process that helps our designers at UXPin.

As usual, wireframing is a recommended early step to most efficiently structure your layout. When wireframing or prototyping, we use the responsive breakpoint menu to streamline the process of moving to different screen sizes, starting with the smallest.

These presets layout the proper screen size for you, so you can wireframe keeping only the content in mind.

Our procedure follows these steps:
1. Content Inventory — This is a spreadsheet or equivalent document containing all the elements you want to include. Learn more about doing an inventory of content.

Source: Maadmob

2. Visual Hierarchy — Prioritize the elements in the content inventory and determine how to display the most important elements prominently. Learn more about visual hierarchy.

3. Design with the smallest breakpoints and then scale up — Build the mobile wireframe first, then use that as the model for larger breakpoints. Expand the screen until there’s too much negative space.

4. Enlarge touch targets — Fingers are much wider than pixel-precise mouse cursors, and so need larger elements on which to tap. At the time of this writing, Apple recommends 44 pixels square for touch targets (read about mobile design for iOS and Android). Give hyperlinks plenty of space, and slightly enlarge buttons, and make sure that there’s enough space around all the interactive elements.

5. Don’t count on hovers — It almost goes without saying, but designers often rely on hover and mouseover effects in their interactive work. If you’re thinking mobile-friendly, don’t do that.

6. Think “app” — Mobile users are accustomed to the motion and a modicum of control in their experience. Think about off-canvas navigation, expandible widgets, AJAX calls, or other elements on the screen with which users can interact without refreshing the page.

7. Avoid large graphics — Landscape photos and complex graphics don’t display well when your screen is only a few inches across. Cater to mobile users with images that are readable on handheld screens.

8. Test it in a real device — Nothing beats discovering for yourself how usable a website is (or isn’t). Step away from your desktop or laptop computer and load up your product on a real phone or tablet. Tap through pages. Is the site easy to navigate? Does it load in a timely fashion? Are the text and graphics easy to read?

This is just a basic outline. For the complete guide to our process, download the free Content Wireframing for Responsive Design.

How to Create Mobile-First Design

We prepared for you a tutorial that will explain how to create a mobile-first design. Our mobile-first design tutorial has four steps.

• Step 1: Set your content priorities.
• Step 2: Design smartphone view.
• Step 3: Work on tablet view.
• Step 4: Create desktop view.

Step 1: Set your content priorities

A “mobile-first approach” differs from “desktop-first” in that we add information to each progressively larger layout rather than cut away as we design smaller. Thinking mobile doesn’t mean eliminating information. It means sorting information into primary, secondary, and tertiary content.

In this example, we know that the home page should have certain elements, like the company’s name and links to products. A blog post wouldn’t hurt either. But like we said, not everything will fit into a smartphone view, so we set priorities based on what will achieve the site’s goal: selling bikes.

1. The newest model bike

2. The best-selling bike

3. “Find your perfect ride” CTA

4. Company name and hero image

5. Navigation

6. Search

7. The second-best-selling bike

8. Gift certificates

9. A testimonial

10. The latest blog post

Based on that ordered list, we can create with the confidence that our work will solve a design problem of getting sales.

Step 2: Design smartphone view

How much do users need?

Thinking mobile-first forces us to think about what’s really important. In this smartphone view, the top-selling bike and newest model will lead directly to sales, so can we leave other items — such as gift certificates, a less-popular model, the latest news — for inside pages. The final call to action is especially prominent and easy to hit with a single tap of the finger.

Step 3: Work on tablet view

As we design for a tablet-sized view, we’re better able to add secondary information like additional products (e.g. “The Capacitor”). We can also expand the navigation at the top of the page and add content that encourages sales without actually leading to them — namely, the testimonial.

Because more options are available, this can be surprisingly more difficult than deciding what to include in a smartphone UI. The difference between secondary and tertiary elements is a blurry line, and temptation is strong to include everything.

Resist the urge. Use the ordered content list. Like smartphones, space is still limited.

Step 4: Create desktop view

Finally, the desktop view can support as much information as you decide is important. This is where the home page can accommodate all of the information you see fit, whether or not it fits. Notice some of the additional content we’ve included:

• Gift certificates
• Customer testimonials
• Blog post exploring the newest Lightning Bolt bike

Design device-appropriate layouts yourself

#1: UI Design with regular UXPin

If you’re using UXPin, it’s fairly easy to create different layouts for these views.

1. Open a UXPin prototype.
2. Tap “Add new adaptive version” at the bottom right of the UXPin editor.
3. Choose a preset size or enter your own dimensions.
   
4. You don’t have to recreate everything from scratch. Choose a size from which to copy your design’s elements.
   

And that’s it. Switch between breakpoints by tapping the different sizes above your canvas, and adjust each to suit your needs. If you’d like to try prototyping mobile-first yourself, go ahead. Start a free trial in UXPin.

#2: Code-backed design with UXPin Merge

Those of you who use UXPin Merge can use Frames to build fully responsive prototypes.

1. Open a UXPin prototype.
2. Select the Frame tool from the Quick Tools Bar.
3. Click anywhere on the canvas to create a default frame (300 x 100 px), or click and drag on the canvas to create a frame with custom dimensions.
4. Put code-backed components inside of Frame and manage their properties.

You can preview just a frame of full design in the Spec Mode. Frames in UXPin work similarly to iFrames but offer more flexibility for responsive design. They support dynamic resizing and styling which allows components to automatically adapt their appearance and behavior for different screen sizes, making it easy to ensure a responsive design across all devices. To see how it works exactly, request access to UXPin Merge.

The post A Hands-On Guide to Mobile-First Responsive Design appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

A well-structured web design process is essential for creating user-friendly, engaging websites that effectively communicate your brand’s message. Whether you’re a designer, developer, or business owner, understanding the website development process can save time, reduce costs, and ensure a seamless collaboration between teams.

To streamline this process, UXPin offers a powerful solution: UXPin Merge. With Merge, you can use a drag-and-drop interface to build fully functional prototypes using actual code components. This unique approach bridges the gap between design and development, reducing inconsistencies and accelerating project timelines. Request access to UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

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Step 1: Ideation & Goal Setting

The ideation and goal-setting phase establishes a solid foundation for your web design project. This is where teams come together to define the purpose of the website and set clear, measurable goals. Here are some critical questions to guide this stage:

• What problems is the website solving for its users?
• What specific actions do we want users to take (e.g., sign-up, purchase, explore content)?
• What are the key messages or value propositions to highlight?
• What platforms or devices will users access the website on?
• How will success be measured (KPIs like conversion rates, time on site, etc.)?

With these questions answered, it’s important to establish a timeline and budget. Setting realistic expectations early on can help avoid potential project delays or cost overruns. During this phase, engage all stakeholders to ensure alignment on priorities, deliverables, and constraints.

Tools for Brainstorming

Brainstorming is an essential part of ideation. Leverage tools like Miro, FigJam, and Affinity Board for real-time collaboration and visual organization of ideas. Affinity Board, for instance, is particularly useful for grouping related concepts, making connections, and prioritizing features.

Other tools to consider:

• MindMeister: Create mind maps to explore and organize design ideas.
• Stormboard: Capture brainstorming sessions with sticky notes, images, and documents.
• Lucidspark: A virtual whiteboard for diagramming workflows and gathering team input.

Combining these tools enables teams to turn abstract concepts into concrete plans, providing a solid base for the next steps in the web design process. After brainstorming, consider documenting the insights in a project brief to outline objectives, scope, and key milestones—setting the stage for a streamlined, efficient design process.

See also: Best Design Collaboration Tools.

Tools for Goal Setting

For goal setting, web designers and their teams often use a combination of strategic frameworks and digital tools:

Frameworks to Organize Goals

1. SMART Goals: Goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
2. OKRs (Objectives and Key Results): Define high-level objectives and identify specific, measurable outcomes.

Goal Tracking Tools:

1. Trello or Asana: Manage tasks, deadlines, and goals in a visual format.
2. Google Sheets: Track goals, timelines, and progress collaboratively.
3. Notion: Combine note-taking, planning, and goal-setting in one platform.
4. Miro: Visualize project goals and workflows with diagrams and mind maps.

These frameworks and tools help teams align on goals, prioritize tasks, and track progress throughout the project.

Step 2: Research & Strategy

Research and strategy lay the groundwork for informed design decisions, helping you create a website that resonates with your target audience and stands out from competitors.

Competitor Analysis and Inspiration Sources

Start by evaluating competitor websites to identify strengths, weaknesses, and industry trends. Look for design patterns, content structure, and user experience elements. Tools like SimilarWeb, SEMrush, and Ahrefs provide insights into competitor traffic, user behavior, and content performance.

For web design inspiration, platforms like Awwwards, Dribbble, and Behance are excellent sources to gather visual ideas and emerging trends in web design.

User Persona Creation and Understanding the Audience

Creating detailed user personas is crucial for aligning the website’s design with user needs and preferences. A persona should include:

• Demographics: Age, location, profession
• Psychographics: Interests, behaviors, and pain points
• User Goals: What users want to achieve on the website

Tools like Xtensio and HubSpot’s Persona Creator help document personas, while Google Analytics provides data on user demographics and behaviors.

Defining Scope, Content Strategy, and Functionality Requirements

Defining the project scope sets boundaries for design and development. Use a scope statement to clarify the deliverables, timeline, and resource allocation. Content strategy, meanwhile, should address:

• Messaging: Key topics and tone of voice
• Content Types: Blog posts, case studies, product descriptions
• SEO Requirements: Keywords, meta descriptions, and internal linking

Lastly, document the functional requirements, such as interactive elements (forms, calculators) and integrations (CRM, e-commerce platform). Tools like Jira, Confluence, and Notion are ideal for tracking scope and feature requirements, ensuring that everyone is aligned and the project stays on track.

This comprehensive approach to research and strategy will ensure your web design project is both user-centered and strategically sound.

Step 3: Sitemap & Wireframing

Once research and strategy are established, it’s time to create a blueprint for the website. The sitemap and wireframing phase outlines the structure and visual layout, ensuring that the site is easy to navigate and meets user needs.

Creating a Sitemap

A sitemap is a visual representation of the website’s structure. It outlines the pages, hierarchy, and navigation, making it easier to visualize user flows and ensure that all essential pages are included.

When building a sitemap, consider:

• Logical Structure: Organize pages based on user journeys.
• Content Hierarchy: Prioritize important pages and define categories (e.g., Home, About, Services, Blog).
• Internal Linking: Plan for how pages will connect to each other to enhance navigation and SEO.

Designing Wireframes

Wireframes are low-fidelity sketches that define the placement of elements on each page, such as headers, navigation, content areas, and footers. Wireframes help you focus on layout and functionality before diving into visual design.

When creating wireframes, consider:

• Content Placement: Ensure key elements like CTAs, headlines, and visuals are strategically positioned.
• Usability: Design for intuitive navigation and logical flow of information.
• Breakpoints: Plan for responsive layouts that work on different screen sizes.

Tools for Wireframing and Sitemap

With UXPin, you can streamline the entire process of creating sitemaps and wireframes, making collaboration and iteration much more efficient.

Creating a Sitemap in UXPin

1. Use UXPin’s Pages Panel: Begin by creating new pages in the Pages panel, which allows you to structure your sitemap hierarchically.
2. Organize Pages: Drag and drop pages to establish parent-child relationships, visually representing the structure and navigation paths of your site.
3. Linking and Navigation: Create interactions between pages to simulate internal linking and user flows.

Designing Wireframes in UXPin

1. Start with a Blank Canvas: Choose the appropriate canvas size for your project. UXPin’s flexible canvas allows you to design for different devices and screen sizes.
2. Add Elements from the Component Library: Use drag-and-drop elements like buttons, forms, and text fields from the built-in UI library to quickly build your wireframe.
3. Create Reusable Components: If certain elements, like headers or footers, will be used on multiple pages, create them as reusable components to maintain consistency across your wireframes.
4. Establish Layouts and Grids: Use guides and grids to structure your layout and ensure alignment of elements, which is crucial for creating visually balanced designs.

Collaboration and Feedback

UXPin allows for real-time collaboration and feedback, making it easy for your team to leave comments directly on specific elements within the wireframes. Use the commenting features to manage feedback and iterate quickly, ensuring everyone is on the same page before moving to the next step.

This integrated approach in UXPin allows you to manage sitemaps and wireframes seamlessly within a single tool, enhancing efficiency and collaboration while maintaining alignment across all project stages.

Step 4: Visual Design & Prototyping

In this phase, it’s time to turn your wireframes into interactive prototypes using UXPin’s robust design tools. Consistency in branding, testing, and iterating designs are key components of this step.

Importance of Consistent Branding

In UXPin, you can create a design system that includes your brand’s colors, typography, and components. By using the Design System Manager (DSM), you ensure that all elements—buttons, icons, forms—are consistently styled across your prototype, eliminating discrepancies during design handoffs.

1. Define Branding Elements: Set up your brand’s primary and secondary color palettes, typography styles, and reusable UI elements in UXPin. This ensures that all elements reflect your brand guidelines.
2. Utilize Design Tokens: Create tokens for consistent spacing, border radii, and shadows, ensuring uniformity across all screens.

Designing High-Fidelity Mockups and Prototypes

High-fidelity prototypes in UXPin allow you to create pixel-perfect designs with interactive components that closely simulate the final product. Here’s how you can build them:

1. Drag-and-Drop Components: Use UXPin’s library or import your custom components to create layouts quickly. With UXPin Merge, you can build screens using code-backed components, providing a seamless integration between design and development.
2. Create Interactions and Animations: Use UXPin’s interactive states to show different component behaviors like hover, click, or disabled states. Add microinteractions to enhance user experience, such as smooth transitions or animations.

User Testing on Prototypes for Early Feedback

Testing high-fidelity prototypes early on helps identify usability issues and design flaws before development. UXPin integrates with tools like FullStory to record user interactions and collect insights, making it easier to validate designs with real-world users.

1. Share Prototypes for Usability Testing: Share a link to your interactive prototype, and use the commenting feature to gather feedback.
2. Integrate with FullStory: Analyze how users interact with your prototype to understand pain points, drop-offs, and successful flows. Iterate based on these findings to optimize the design.

By leveraging UXPin’s high-fidelity prototyping and testing capabilities, you can create a cohesive visual design and validate it before development, ensuring a smoother project workflow and fewer revisions.

Step 5: Content Creation & SEO Optimization

Creating compelling content is essential for engaging users, while SEO optimization ensures that your content reaches the right audience. Here’s how you can use UXPin to manage and optimize content effectively.

Best Practices for Writing Website Content

1. Create Clear and Concise Content: Make sure that every piece of content serves a purpose. Use headers and bullet points to break up text, making it easy to scan.
2. User-Focused Language: Write content that addresses user pain points and needs, and use a consistent tone that matches your brand.
3. Accessibility Considerations: Make text readable by choosing the right contrast and font size, and add alt text for images to support screen readers.

SEO Tips for Better Visibility and Performance

1. Keyword Integration: Use primary and secondary keywords naturally throughout the content, and include them in headings, subheadings, and meta descriptions.
2. Optimize for Core Web Vitals: Use UXPin to design responsive layouts and reduce layout shifts, improving page load speed and user experience, both of which are critical for SEO rankings.
3. Internal Linking: Use UXPin’s prototyping to map out and link between key content pages, ensuring clear navigation and site structure that search engines can easily crawl.

Integrating Multimedia Elements

UXPin allows you to easily integrate and position multimedia elements like images and videos within your prototypes. Using multimedia effectively can boost engagement and SEO:

1. Optimize Images: Compress images and use descriptive file names and alt text to help search engines understand the context.
2. Utilize Video Content: Embedding videos in your designs? Use UXPin to add video and test different placement options. Videos can significantly increase time-on-page and reduce bounce rates, enhancing user experience.

By applying these best practices, you can ensure that your content is both user-friendly and optimized for search engines, giving it the best chance to rank highly and attract organic traffic.

Step 6: Development & Implementation

After finalizing the visual design, the next step is converting these designs into functional code. With UXPin’s integrated features, you can streamline the development process and ensure consistency between design and implementation.

Converting Designs into Code

Using UXPin Merge, you can build prototypes with live React components, making your designs as close to code as possible. This feature allows developers to extract production-ready React code directly from the prototype, reducing handoff errors and speeding up implementation.

1. Export Production-Ready Code: Use UXPin Merge to seamlessly transition designs into code. This process reduces the gap between design and development, minimizing discrepancies.
2. Live Preview: Use UXPin’s live preview mode to see how your design will render in a browser, ensuring all elements are coded correctly before final export.

Responsive Design Principles and Testing

Responsive design is crucial for delivering a consistent user experience across all devices. With UXPin, you can test responsive layouts and interactions directly within the platform:

1. Responsive Breakpoints: Use UXPin’s responsive design features to adjust layouts for different screen sizes (mobile, tablet, desktop) and preview them in real-time.
2. Testing Across Devices: Run interactive tests to ensure designs adapt correctly to different breakpoints, helping you catch layout issues before they reach development.

Collaboration Tips Between Designers and Developers

UXPin simplifies the collaboration between designers and developers through its robust commenting and handoff features:

1. Design Handoff: UXPin’s Design Specs feature allows designers to share specs, assets, CSS styles, and dependencies with developers. Developers can easily inspect and download the necessary assets and styles, making it easier to implement designs accurately.
2. Real-Time Collaboration: Designers and developers can leave comments, resolve issues, and track changes in real-time, ensuring continuous alignment throughout the project.

By leveraging UXPin’s development and collaboration tools, you can significantly reduce design inconsistencies and speed up the development cycle, ensuring a smooth transition from design to implementation.

Step 7: Testing & Quality Assurance

Testing and quality assurance (QA) are critical steps in the web design process to ensure that the website functions correctly, provides a positive user experience, and meets the expected standards of quality. Here’s how to execute a thorough QA process using a step-by-step approach:

Types of Testing

1. Usability Testing: focuses on evaluating how easily users can navigate and interact with the website. This type of testing helps identify areas of friction or confusion in the user journey. QA teams conduct usability testing by observing real users as they complete tasks and noting any difficulties they encounter. The goal is to enhance overall user satisfaction by ensuring an intuitive and seamless experience.
2. Functionality Testing: ensures that all interactive elements, such as buttons, forms, and navigation menus, are working as intended. This includes verifying links, form submissions, and interactive UI components. Functional tests can be done manually or automated to ensure that there are no broken elements that could hinder user interaction.
3. Performance Testing: evaluates the website’s responsiveness and speed under different conditions. It includes checking page load times, server response, and resource usage. Performance testing tools can simulate heavy user loads to test how well the website performs under stress.

Cross-Browser and Cross-Device Testing

To ensure a consistent user experience across different devices and browsers, it’s crucial to conduct cross-browser and cross-device testing. Tools like BrowserStack can help by simulating different environments, allowing you to test the website’s compatibility and performance on multiple devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets) and browsers (e.g., Chrome, Firefox, Safari).

1. Create a Testing Plan: Define which browsers and devices are most relevant for your audience, based on user analytics data.
2. Execute Cross-Browser Testing: Use tools to check visual appearance, layout consistency, and interactive elements across different browsers.
3. Test for Responsive Design: Validate that the website adapts well to various screen sizes and resolutions.

Creating a QA Checklist

A comprehensive QA checklist ensures that all aspects of the website are tested and verified before launch. A well-structured QA process includes the following steps:

1. Test Planning and Design:
   • Define test cases based on the project requirements, such as form validation, navigation flow, and media functionality. Outline expected outcomes and set up the staging environment to replicate production conditions​.
2. Test Execution:
   • Execute the planned tests, including both manual and automated testing, as needed. Record all identified defects in a defect-tracking system for efficient management and follow-up.
3. Defect Management and Reporting:
   • Report bugs to the development team for resolution, and re-test to validate fixes. Conduct regression testing to ensure that bug fixes do not introduce new issues​.
4. Configuration Management:
   • Maintain version control and change management throughout the testing process. This ensures consistency and integrity in the testing environment, minimizing risks of unapproved changes or unauthorized access​.
5. Final Release Testing:
   • Perform final release tests such as smoke tests and performance tests to validate the stability and readiness of the website for launch. If the tests pass, generate a QA report summarizing test results and findings​.

By following this structured QA process and using appropriate tools, you can ensure a smooth, error-free launch that provides a high-quality user experience and meets all functional requirements.

Step 8: Launch & Post-Launch Activities

The final step of the web design process is launching the website and planning for its ongoing maintenance and improvement. A successful launch involves more than just pushing the site live; it requires a robust strategy to ensure a smooth rollout, promote the website, and monitor its performance post-launch.

Final Review and Checklist Before Launch

Before going live, ensure the website is thoroughly tested and optimized. Conduct a comprehensive pre-launch checklist, which should include:

• Cross-Browser Testing: Verify that the website looks and functions correctly across different browsers and devices.
• Performance Testing: Check page load times and server response under various conditions.
• SEO Optimization: Confirm that all on-page SEO elements—title tags, meta descriptions, and alt text—are correctly implemented.
• Accessibility Compliance: Ensure the site adheres to accessibility guidelines such as WCAG, making it usable for all visitors.

Launch Strategies

Effectively launching a website involves more than just hitting the publish button. A well-coordinated launch strategy will help you maximize visibility and traffic:

• Pre-Launch Marketing: Generate buzz by sharing sneak peeks or teasers on social media and through email campaigns.
• Launch Day Announcements: Use various channels like newsletters, press releases, and social media platforms to announce the website’s launch. Platforms like Product Hunt can be particularly effective for promoting new products or services.
• Partnerships and Influencer Outreach: Collaborate with influencers or partners to expand your reach and create excitement around the launch.

Post-Launch Maintenance and Continuous Improvement

Launching the website is just the beginning. Post-launch, you need a structured plan to gather insights, make improvements, and keep the content fresh.

1. Gathering User Feedback: Tools like surveys, heatmaps, and FullStory integration can help you analyze user behavior and gather feedback. Use these insights to identify pain points, drop-off areas, and usability issues that need to be addressed.
   • Surveys: Use tools like Google Forms or Typeform to ask visitors about their experience.
   • Heatmaps: Tools like Hotjar or Crazy Egg can show you where users are clicking and scrolling, helping you optimize layouts and CTAs.
   • FullStory Integration: Analyze user sessions to see how they navigate your site, where they struggle, and what features they find most useful. This data helps you make informed decisions on what to improve.
2. Regular Updates and Content Refreshes:
   • Plan for periodic content updates, including new blog posts, case studies, or product information, to keep the site relevant and engaging.
   • Schedule regular SEO audits to identify opportunities for optimization, such as updating meta tags, improving page speed, and addressing broken links.
   • Implement new features or design enhancements based on user feedback and technological advancements.
3. Tracking and Monitoring:
   • Use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to monitor website performance, track key metrics like traffic, bounce rates, and conversion rates, and identify areas for improvement.
   • Set up alerts for site errors, performance drops, or other issues that may arise, ensuring that you can act quickly to resolve them.

This structured approach to post-launch maintenance and continuous improvement will help you maintain a high-quality website that evolves with user needs and market trends, setting it apart from competitors and ensuring long-term success.

Design Your Website Now

Creating a successful website requires a structured approach to the web design process, covering everything from initial ideation and research to design, development, and post-launch activities. By following these steps, designers and teams can produce user-centric, high-performing websites that meet business goals and provide a positive user experience.

By leveraging UXPin’s all-in-one platform, especially with UXPin Merge, you can streamline the web design process, reduce rework, and ensure a cohesive, high-quality product that meets user needs and business objectives. This comprehensive approach sets you up for success and helps your website stand out from the competition. Request access to UXPin Merge.

The post Web Design Process – A Step-by-Step Guide from Planning to Post-Launch appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

So you wanna be a Web Designer huh?

I mean why not? After all, everything is on the web …

As of writing this article 100 Million+ companies have an online presence through their websites.

But AI is here! Does that mean Web Design is dead?

Not at all! AI is changing the game, yes. AI can assist with the heavy lifting, no doubt. But creativity and empathy? Those are things it’s still catching up on. We need to be realistic about what AI can do and separate the hype from practical applications.

In this beginner’s guide, we’ll cover the fundamentals of web design to get you started on your path to becoming the next Mark Wheeler.

I’ll also show you a case study without overwhelming you so you get a sense of what you’ll actually be doing as a Web designer. Hopefully, this will give you a practical understanding of what it’s like to work as a web designer and inspire you to learn more.

Let’s go.

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What Is Web Design?

Web design is the creation of visually appealing and functional websites. It involves planning, and designing (not coding) the structure and layout of a website and its content.

Wait, “and its content”?

Yes, more often than not, a company will not hire a separate content planner which can sometimes mean the designer takes on that responsibility. We’ll come back to that later.

Just like other design disciplines, web design also has humble beginnings. In the early 90s, websites were primarily text-based, focusing on information. As the web evolved, visual elements like images and graphics added engagement. Today a website can have hundreds of web elements. Buttons, text, fields, dropdowns, icons, video, sliders, gifs, checkmarks … you name it.

In web design, like many other fields, we face a common challenge: balancing form (how it looks) and function (how it works). This is why we have two specialties – UX for user experience and UI for user interface.

Many experts will categorize the web design process into many parts or phases.

But here is the industry standard:

Discovery Phase > IA and Wireframing > Visual Design > Prototyping > Testing

While these are important, they’re not what this post is about. This post is focused on the fundamental/core principles of web design. Let’s take a look:

The 7 Pillars of Web Design

Not to be mistaken with Principles of Web Design, These are one the first concepts every web designer must be familiar with. These pillars are the foundational elements that ensure a website is effective, engaging, and functional.

Pillar #1: Usability (UX)

Frustration doesn’t have to be vocalized! Usability in UX Design measures how effectively users can interact with and navigate a website to achieve their goals. Oh, and one of the most ubiquitous terms you’ll get used to as a web designer is actually “User Goals”.

What are User Goals? Let’s look at an example:

Sarah, a busy working mother, is looking for a birthday gift for her 7-year-old son. During her lunch hour at work, she uses her iPad to surf internet stores. Sarah’s primary goal is to buy a gift that her kid would enjoy, and her secondary goal is to make the transaction swiftly and effectively.

So, as a Designer, you want to LISTEN to these queues. If you’re designing an eCommerce store in this example, you’d wanna make sure that there are filters. Filters for gifts for example, and maybe you can go down to specifics of what kind of gifts and for what age.

Amazon has a collection of Gift Ideas for example. With sub-optimal filters … take a look:

On this page, Shara could filter by product category, but it’s hard for her to find filters for age range or toy color. And since she’s browsing on a tablet with weak eyesight, the font used in the filter section can be difficult to read – these are the kinds of usability issues that you try to solve.

So, To solve them you have to KNOW the user. There is a simple three-step process approach to getting to know the user:

Define Pain Points > Create Journey Maps > User Personas

We’ll use MOLDO: a sample case study project I was involved in as an example. “Moldo” is an online shopping app for furniture and interior ware.

To understand our users’ needs, my team conducted research through surveys. We analyzed the results, prioritized the feedback, and identified the most common pain points that users were experiencing:

Then, we analyzed the major phases the user will have to go through on the App, and for each phase, we mapped user emotions, actions, and opportunities.

And finally, we have our personas …

Great UX design should consider the following factors:

• User’s Goals. As we already saw above: these are User Needs.
• User’s Emotions. How does the user feel when using the product?
• User’s Behavior and Actions. How does the user behave when using the product? Are they able to complete their tasks efficiently?
• User’s Context. Where and how is the user using the product? Are there any environmental factors that affect the user’s experience?

You will need to put yourself in the user’s shoes so that ultimately you can be able to create an intuitive design.

What is intuitive design? A design that is easy to use and understand, even for first-time users. This means that the product should be developed to align with the user’s expectations and mental models.

Here is another example …

Our home page has a clear and prominent call to action – a form that explicitly tells users what they need to do next.

The text clearly states the purpose of the product, which is to design UI with code-backed components. It is concise and free of distractions, making it easy for the user to focus on the main message and CTA.

The initial CTA is “Try for free”, which guides the user to take action and try the product. And even tells the user that we prefer their work email.

Again, this is why UX always comes before UI. UX is the why, and UI is the how.

Make it functional, then make it pretty.

We’ve written extensively on this topic in our blog – like Heuristic Evaluation, and UX Requirements feel free to browse around after you finish reading this one.

We even have a free ebook: Guide to Usability Testing.

Pillar #2: Design (UI)

UI Design focuses on the visual elements of a product, based on UX research findings. Visual elements are the ones a user directly interacts with, such as buttons, menus, and typography.

Its primary objective is to ensure that these interfaces are not only visually appealing but also user-friendly, enhancing overall satisfaction and efficiency in task completion.

I’ve been a UI Designer for half of my career, and let me tell ya, it’s fun. We worry about design movements, hierarchy, layout, interactions, and so on …

To start with, There are three types of UI Elements, Input, Output, and Helper elements, we cover them broadly in an article about UI elements, but let’s look at them quickly:

• Input elements. These elements allow users to enter data into the interface. Examples include text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, drop-down menus, and sliders.

• Output elements. These elements display information to the user. Examples include labels, text, images, and icons.

• Navigation elements. These elements allow users to move around. Examples include buttons, links, menus, and breadcrumbs.

The UI Design Process

As I mentioned before, UI Design mainly involves the visual design and prototyping (and testing phase shared between UX and UI) part of the design process.

Depending on who you ask, Wireframing is part of UI design. Wireframes are the blueprints for your interface. So it goes like this:

Wireframing > Sketching > Lo-fi Prototype > Hi Fidelity Prototype > Mockup

But for brevity, we’ll stick to:

Wireframing > Sketching > Prototyping

Usually, the UX Designer would provide the IA (Information Architecture) of the app/website, and based on that we can start sketching out the project design scope.

IA is just a fancy term meaning a graph or map of how the content and pages should be structured, and it usually looks something like this:

But it’s the foundation of Wireframing which is the next step.

We use wireframes to define page elements (buttons, forms, images), Arrange content (headers, sidebars, main content areas), and Show basic interactions (click paths, transitions).

You can create wireframes by hand (on paper) or digitally using tools like UXPin or Figma.

Getting back to the MOLDO example, here is what the wireframe looked like:

For most ecommerce products we found that the navigation was visually not inviting or was bulky. So we wanted to make sure that we have our UI balanced between obvious but not lame …

Beyond the optimized design itself, We also adjusted the size of buttons to be particularly bigger than what’s usually a standard in mobile apps.

The point of having a wireframe is to change and iterate to your heart’s content. As you progress through the design process there will naturally be less wiggle room so this is your way of telling your clients, “hey … here is what I’m thinking” and gathering feedback.

As you can see the wireframe stage makes it easy to know what goes where.

Next, you flesh out the Lo-fi and Hi-fi versions. Lo-fi usually is the flat but colored version of the wireframes. And Hi-fi almost looks like the real product. Sometimes we simply use a prototype and then a mockup.

You can see what a visual design prototype might look like in a design tool, with all the visual elements and layout finalized.

And then finally the polished Mockups … yay!

As UI Designers, we don’t only design how elements look but also how they behave during interactions. AKA animations.

And I’m not necessarily talking about transitions or motion animation.

Animations that guide and interact with the user in a way that feels natural, but consistent. That gives users feedback about their actions, so they know what’s happening.

We call these micro-interactions. are small, purposeful animations triggered by specific user actions (clicking a button, hovering over an icon … so on).

For example: When you click a button, it slightly depresses/shrinks to give visual feedback that your action has been registered.

UI Motion Principles

• Consistency. As a user, I should experience familiar motion patterns across different parts of an application. I should be able to predict how interactions will unfold. If a button slides in from the right on one screen, it should do the same elsewhere.

• Hierarchy. Primary actions (like submitting a form) deserve more attention than secondary ones (like canceling an operation). That’s just an example, but prioritize animations based on their importance within the user flow and website structure.

• Realism. UI animations should mimic real-world physics to feel natural. Depending on what you’re going for Objects should accelerate when they start moving (ease-in) and decelerate when they stop (ease-out).

• Context. Animations should align with the context and purpose of the interaction. A loading spinner during data retrieval makes sense. A playful bounce effect on a serious error message might not.

Pillar #3: Accessibility

Accessibility in UI design goes beyond just color. Color can not be used as the only way to convey information. Surely, many other disabilities are not related to the human eye.

According to a survey, more than 1 in 4 adults in the United States have some type of disability. That’s a population of more than 83.5M!

Accessibility refers to whether a product or service can be used by everyone, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. 

Read: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

Check out the full list of tools curated by W3.Org.

According to the WCAG, a website should do the following to be accessible: 

• Perceivable. Content should be presented in ways that users can perceive (e.g., through text, images, or sound).

• Operable. Users should be able to navigate and interact with content (e.g., using keyboard shortcuts or voice commands).

• Understandable. Content should be clear and easy to comprehend (avoid jargon, provide instructions, etc.).

• Robust. Content should work reliably across different technologies and devices.

WCAG also has Levels of Conformance ranging from A to AA and AAA.

At UXPin we are very serious about accessibility. With UXPin’s accessibility features, you can design for all users, both disabled and nondisabled.

Image Source: Web.Dev

Accessibility Ground Rules:

1. Color Contrast and Text Legibility. Poor color contrast can make text difficult to read, especially for people with limited vision or color blindness. The solution is to use high-contrast combinations (e.g., dark text on a light background or vice versa). Avoid relying solely on color to convey information. Use additional cues like icons or patterns.

2. Alternative Text (ALT Text) for Images. People who use screen readers rely on ALT text to understand images. ALT text Describe the image’s purpose or content concisely.

3. Keyboard Navigation and Focus States. Some users rely on keyboard navigation (e.g., screen reader users or those with motor impairments). All interactive elements (buttons, links, form fields) should be keyboard-navigable.

4. Semantic HTML and ARIA Roles. Proper HTML structure aids screen readers and other assistive technologies. Learn more about ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications).

5. Captions and Transcripts for Multimedia. Deaf or hard-of-hearing users rely on captions for videos and audio content.

6. Forms and Error Handling. Forms are critical for user interaction, but poorly designed forms can be frustrating. Label form fields clearly and provide error messages in a perceivable way.

7. Test with Real Users. Real-world feedback is invaluable. Conduct usability testing with diverse users, including those with disabilities.

Pillar #4: Layout

Layout refers to the arrangement of visual elements within a given space. It is part of UI primarily but decided by factors in UX.  A well-designed layout enhances user experience by making content easy to find and understand. Here are some common types of website layouts:

Grid Systems. In a grid-based website layout, elements like margins, flowlines, rows, columns, gutters, and modules work together to create a structured and visually appealing design. Margins define the edges, flowlines guide reading, rows and columns organize content, gutters provide spacing, and modules combine elements into organized groups.

Box Model. The box model represents how elements are rendered on a web page. It includes four components: margin, border, padding, and content.

Image Source: W3

Flexbox. A powerful layout mode that allows flexible and responsive designs.

Key properties include display: flex, flex-direction, and justify-content.

Using a flexbox system is perhaps the best choice for managing responsive layouts.

Here are the primary types of website layouts, that provide a solid foundation for understanding web design principles:

• Fixed Width Layout. The content area has a fixed width, regardless of the screen size.
• Fluid Layout. The content area expands or contracts to fit the width of the browser window.
• Responsive Layout. A combination of fluid and fixed layouts, using CSS media queries or clamp functions to adjust the layout based on the screen size.
• Adaptive Layout. Similar to a responsive layout except it’s specifically arranged in the most suitable way for each device. (Separate layout for each).
• Grid Layout. A flexible layout that uses a grid system to organize content into columns and rows.

Learn more about website layouts and how they affect user psychology.

A fundamental principle that greatly impacts layout is balance, which web design relies on. Balance is all about distributing visual elements in a way that creates a sense of harmony. 

There are two main types:

• Symmetrical Balance: Mirror-like fashion, creating a sense of formality and stability. This is often used in traditional designs and logos.
• Asymmetrical Balance: Arranged in a way that is not symmetrical but still feels visually balanced. This can create a more dynamic and interesting composition.

Another thing to keep in mind when working with layouts is Negative Space. This is an overlooked design element that differentiates between a noob and a pro.

Did I say “design element”? Yes!

In fact, thinking about negative space as an active element in web design will help you understand how layout works. It’s obvious that when a webpage is cluttered with too many elements, it becomes overwhelming for users.

But what is the point where it stops becoming clutter?

For example, look at this:

Unless you’re intentionally aiming for a busy, maximalist aesthetic and it makes sense for your audience, this approach can be detrimental to focus.

Modern WebUI is almost always incorporated with negative space like this:

Pillar #5: Typography

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type/letters, numbers, and symbols to make written language legible, readable, and visually appealing when displayed.

It’s an entire field of its own.

But in our context of web design, it involves choosing fonts, adjusting the spacing between characters (kerning), the space between lines (leading), and the overall layout of the text. Good typography guides your eye across the page smoothly without making you think too much about it.

It’s a big deal because it’s directly connected to clients’ ROI. So let’s take a look at  some typography basics:

Font Families

A font family is a group of fonts that share a common design style. Think of a typeface as a broad category of fonts that share a unified look and feel. Within a typeface, you’ll find individual fonts that vary in size, weight, and style.

Font families are classified into types: Serif, Sans-Serif, Monospace, Display and Handwriting.

Let’s focus on the first three:

• Serif Fonts. Have small strokes (called serifs) at the edges of each letter. They exude formality and elegance. Think Times New Roman, Georgia, and Baskerville.

• Sans-Serif Fonts. Mostly used on UI and are sleek and modern. They don’t have those little serifs just clean lines. Arial, Helvetica, and Open Sans.

• Monospace fonts. Give every letter the same fixed width. Fonts like: Courier New, Consolas, and Inconsolata.

I once designed my own custom font, although I loved Proxima Nova. It took two months and gave me an insight into what works well on the web. It might even be one of the factors that I was nominated for Awwwards.

And from that experience, here are some tips that I’ve learned:

• Use regular medium font weights and anywhere between 18-21px for body text.
• Don’t use more than two types of fonts. And always stick to one font for the body.
• When choosing a font for headlines or titles, feel free to explore more expressive options. Bold, playful, or unique fonts work well here.
• Use a clamp function for responsive text.
• Always use a different font style for links (usually bold or underlined).
• More typography tips.

Web-Safe Fonts

Web-safe fonts, also known as system fonts, are pre-installed on most operating systems. These fonts are readily available to users without requiring any additional downloads.

These should only be used as either a fallback font or if your client only wants raw performance and doesn’t give a dime about custom fonts. Or if other overarching elements on the site compensate for it.

Google Fonts

Google fonts are hosted by Google, making them easy to incorporate into your web projects. You can use the API or directly download them and include them in your projects.

HTML Example:

<head>

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=inter">

<style>

body {

  font-family: "Inter", sans-serif;

}

</style>

</head>

Typeface Anatomy

I think while we’re at it it’s good for you to familiarize yourself with some common terms. Like “Glyphs”. So here is a quick rundown: 

Each letter, number, punctuation mark, or symbol is a glyph. X-Height is the height of lowercase letters (excluding ascenders and descenders). 

Ascenders and Descenders? They are upward-bound strokes of lowercase letters that extend beyond the x-height. The baseline is the invisible tightrope where letters stand. It’s their foundation the ground level.

Kerning is the space between individual characters. And tracking controls the overall spacing across a block of text. 

Here is a better look:

Image Source: Yesiamadesigner

And again you can learn in more detail about typeface anatomy.

Pillar #6: Responsiveness

Responsive Design (not to be mistaken with Adaptive Design) is a web design approach that ensures a website adapts seamlessly to various screen sizes and devices

Responsiveness is the ability of a website to adapt its layout and content to different screen sizes and devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and desktops.

Design for mobile first!

It’s often easier to adapt a mobile design to a desktop than the other way around. Since larger screens can accommodate more content, it’s best to start by designing for mobile and prioritizing the most important elements.

Media Queries

Simple but if the user drags the window size they step towards the next set size.

Here is an example:

/* Tablets and smaller */

@media (max-width: 768px) {

  .container {

    width: 100%;

  }

}

/* Mobile devices */

@media (max-width: 480px) {

  .container {

    width: 100%;

    padding: 0 10px;

  }

}

Clamp Function

The clamp() function in CSS lets you set a value that’s dynamic between a minimum and maximum. It adjusts based on the screen size or viewport width. So, instead of using media queries, you can have a property (like font size) scale naturally between limits.

Formula: clamp(minimum, preferred, maximum);

Example: Responsive Font Size with clamp()

h1 {

  font-size: clamp(1.5rem, 5vw, 3rem);  /* Between 24px and 48px */

}

With clamp(), you don’t need to set up media queries for every screen size. The text grows naturally between your set limits, and you don’t even have to calculate it by hand there are great free clamp() generators out there.

Responsive Images

Images can be a big hurdle when it comes to making a website responsive. They can slow down your site if not optimized, or worse, they might look distorted or too large on smaller screens. But, don’t worry, you’ve got a few tricks up your sleeve.

• Srcset. The srcset attribute is for delivering different image sizes based on the device. You’re telling the browser “Hey, use this image for mobile, this one for tablet, and this one for desktop.” 

• Vector Images. SVGs (Scalable Vector Graphics) are amazing because they scale infinitely without losing quality. This makes them perfect for logos, icons, or any simple illustrations. 

• Image Optimization. Beyond just choosing the right size, you can optimize images to load faster using lazy loading. You can use Webp or any other modern web image format. Read more about what matters for web performance.

Flexible Grid Systems

While responsive images handle the visual content, flexible grids manage layouts across different devices. These grids allow your design to flow naturally, adjusting based on the screen size.

1. CSS Grid

CSS Grid allows you to define rows and columns that automatically adapt to the size of the screen.

Here’s a basic example:

.container {

  display: grid;

  grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fill, minmax(200px, 1fr));

  gap: 10px;

}

2. Flexbox

While CSS Grid is perfect for two-dimensional layouts, Flexbox is awesome for one-dimensional layouts … think rows or columns.

Here’s how you can use Flexbox to build a simple responsive layout:

.container {

  display: flex;

  flex-wrap: wrap;

  gap: 10px;

}

.item {

  flex: 1 1 200px;

}

You can even combine both! For instance, use Flexbox to lay out different sections of your site, and then use Grid inside those sections for more complex layouts.

Now you need to think backwards FROM CSS towards your UI Design tool.

Pillar #7: HTML & Performance

Ultimately, your design will be brought to life in HTML, so having a basic understanding of HTML and CSS can be a huge advantage. It’s not a must for designers to know about this, but it sure helps a lot! 

Browsers read HTML like a book, from top to bottom. They create a DOM (Document Object Model) as they go. The simpler this book, the faster it can be built. Believe it or not, it all starts with the designer.

Image Source: Mozilla

If you’re a designer who understands this, you can start making decisions that not only look great but make life easier for the developer. For example, knowing how HTML is structured (with headers, paragraphs, images, and links) allows you to visualize how content will flow and stack across different devices. It also means you can avoid suggesting IMPOSSIBLE LAYOUTS that would take hours of unnecessary coding.

Benefits of Knowing Code as a Designer

• Identify and troubleshoot design issues more efficiently.
• Achieve precise control over the layout, typography, and styling of their designs, resulting in a more polished and professional final product.
• Experiment with more advanced techniques and create innovative designs that might not be possible for designers who rely solely on visual tools.
• Utilize a tool like UXPin much better because they can understand the code behind the elements.

The Handoff: Collaborating with Developers

The designer-developer handoff is often where dreams go to die, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Handoff is transferring a completed web design from the designer to the developer for implementation. 

When you understand the basics of HTML and CSS, you’ll know what’s possible, what’s tricky, and how to meet halfway to create something that both looks great and works smoothly.

Developers will appreciate it, too, because you’ll be speaking their language   or at least enough of it to avoid miscommunication.

Key Components of Handoff:

Design Files: These typically include:

• PSD, Sketch, or Figma files: Contain the visual elements, layers, and styles of the design.
• Style guides: Document the typography, colors, and other design elements used in the project.
• Wireframes: Provide a basic structure and layout of the pages.

Specifications:

• Measurements: Dimensions of elements, spacing, and padding.
• Typography: Font families, sizes, weights, and line heights.
• Colors: Hex codes or color names for all colors used in the design.
• Interactions: Descriptions of how elements should behave when clicked, hovered over, or focused.

Annotations:

• Notes and comments: Additional information or instructions for developers.
• Placeholders: Indicate where content will be added dynamically.

Design with Implementation in Mind

When designing a responsive navigation bar, knowing that developers can use CSS Grid or Flexbox to make it dynamic can inform your design decisions. You’ll create a flexible layout that adapts to different screen sizes, rather than specifying rigid pixel values for each breakpoint.

This approach streamlines the design-to-development process, reducing the need for back-and-forth revisions. By showing that you’ve considered the build process, you’re more likely to earn the development team’s respect and ensure that your design is implemented as intended.”

Suggest Solutions, Not Just Problems

We’ve all been there – pouring our hearts into a design, only to have it rejected due to technical limitations. But what if you could turn those limitations into opportunities? By having a basic understanding of HTML and CSS, you can collaborate with developers to find alternative solutions that achieve the same visual effect.

For instance, if an animation is deemed too complex, you can suggest using CSS transitions or animations that are easier to implement. This way, you’re not just handing off your design and hoping for the best – you’re actively working with the development team to bring your vision to life.

My favorite places to start learning CSS are: Kevin Powell, and Bro Code.

Web Designer Career opportunities

There are different ways web design can be added as a skill set of other professions like a web developer, freelancer digital marketer and so on but here are the major roles you can embody as a web designer:

• UI or UX Designer
• Web Design Consultant
• UX Researcher
• Product Designer

UI/UX Designers and Product Designers are the most common. I’ve personally worked in these exact roles myself.

I just did a search on LinkedIn for “UI/UX Designer” and just today there are 1000+ offers available. And this is just in the United States.

Taking a peek at Indeed shows another 1000+ results:

The best platforms for finding web design jobs are:

• Company Websites
• Dribbble and Behance
• Toptal
• Linkedin and Upwork
• Traditional Job Boards

Web-designers anywhere between $62K – $112K/yr according to GlassDoor. 

You’d also be well-positioned to explore a wide range of entrepreneurial opportunities. Like freelancing, starting a web design agency, selling products, taking web design courses and workshops, and so on.

Resources and Tools

Resources

• The Guide to UX Design Process & Documentation
• Design Trends Collection
• DesignOps 101: Guide to Design Operations

Courses

• Google UX Design Professional Certificate
• Web Design for Everybody by the University of Michigan
• Ultimate Web Design Course by Webflow
• Fundamentals of UXPin on Udemy

Books

• Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
• HTML and CSS by Jon Duckett
• The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett
• Laws of UX by Jon Yablonski

Conclusion

Even if you’re focused purely on the visual side of things, web design isn’t just about making things pretty. A site has to work in real-world conditions: it needs to load fast, be responsive, and be accessible. Knowing the pillars helps you think beyond the surface and consider what makes a site functional. That also makes working with developers smoother you’re speaking the same language, and you’re both aiming for a seamless user experience.

The perfect website balances purpose and functionality with beauty and simplicity. It’s easy to navigate, works on any device, loads quickly, and is accessible to all users.

At the end of the day, web design isn’t about you, it’s about the people using your product. 

UXPin empowers teams to create seamless, interactive prototypes of websites and apps with realistic, fully functional components. Try UXPin for free.

The post 7 Pillars of Web Design – A Beginner’s Guide appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Lists are fundamental components of user interfaces, helping to organize information in a way that’s easy to scan and digest. Whether it’s a simple to-do list or a complex product display, well-designed lists enhance usability and improve the overall user experience. By understanding the principles of list design, designers can create intuitive layouts that streamline navigation and engagement. In this guide, we’ll explore best practices, key principles, and hands-on tips to create visually appealing, functional lists for any UI project.

Optimize your list design process with UXPin Merge. Bring code-backed components to a design editor and create interfaces that are production-ready from the start. Design prototypes that feel like a real product with UI elements that can be shared between design and development. Request access today.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

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What is a List in UI Design?

In UI design, a list is a method of organizing information vertically, allowing users to scan and process data quickly. Lists can display a variety of content, from simple text items to more complex layouts that include images, descriptions, and interactive elements.

They improve usability by breaking down information into manageable chunks, ensuring users can navigate effortlessly. Lists are versatile and appear in many forms—such as single-line lists, multi-line lists, and image lists—each tailored to specific content types and design needs.

What is the Difference Between a List and a Data Table?

Designers use data tables to display a dataset to users. Tables have a specific structure, including a header, rows, and columns with sorting and filters to find and manipulate data.

Read this: How to Design a Table UX

Lists don’t have a fixed structure. Each list item is independent rather than part of a structured dataset with rows and columns. The list item could feature a single line of text in a menu dropdown or a complex card component with lots of data.

In summary, the most significant difference between lists and tables is the data structure. Tables have a specific design, while lists can exist in many formats.

Types of List Designs

There are three types of list designs:

• Text lists
• Image lists
• Card lists

Text List Design

There are three types of text lists. These lists typically include text and an image, icon, and other UI elements like a checkbox or radio. 

• Single-line lists: These are the simplest form of lists, displaying only one line of content per item. They work best for short, easily digestible information, like settings or contact lists.
• Two-line lists: These lists include a second line, often used for supplementary information, like subtitles or descriptions. They balance brevity and context, making them ideal for emails or notifications.
• Three-line lists: These lists display more detailed information, such as titles, descriptions, and additional metadata. They’re useful for content-heavy items, like product listings or media files.

Image Lists

Designers use image lists when visuals are the primary content–like an image or video gallery. Sometimes a single line of text will accompany the image to provide detail or context.

Where image lists don’t include text, designers must ensure to use descriptive alt attributes so screen readers can navigate the content accordingly.

Card Lists

Card lists typically include visual content and text and may also include a CTA. We often see these card lists in eCommerce store product lists that feature an image, title, short description, category tags, price, and “Add to cart” button.

How to Design a List UI

Step 1: Think Content First

Designers must decide on the best list item design based on the content they want to display. 

UX designers have three primary ways to structure content lists: horizontally, vertically, and grid layouts.

List Example: Instagram

An excellent example of these lists in action is Instagram:

• Main feed – vertical list
• Story feed – horizontal list
• Search feed – masonry grid list

UX designers have seemingly endless options and variations within these three list structures.

Step 2: Follow Atomic Design Principles

There are three components to a list design:

• The list: All list items together
• List item: An individual item in the list
• List content: The content that makes a list item–image, text, metadata, title, subtitles, and other user interface elements

It’s helpful to use an atomic design approach when deciding how to put these pieces together. 

• Atoms: The content within each list item–individual images and text
• Molecules: The components within each item–a profile image component
• Organisms: Each list item
• Templates: The entire list with a search field, filters, etc.

Step 3: Design with Consistency in Mind

Consistency is key in list UI design. Ensure that list items follow the same layout, including the placement of text, icons, and actions. This not only enhances the visual flow but also improves usability, as users learn to anticipate where to find the information they need. A consistent structure reduces cognitive load, making the interface more intuitive.

Step 4: Optimize for Responsiveness

Always consider how your list will appear across different screen sizes. On mobile devices, a vertical list may work best, while on desktops, a grid layout could be more effective. Adjust font sizes, spacing, and layout to maintain readability and usability regardless of device.

Step 5: Test for Accessibility

Lists must be accessible to all users, including those relying on screen readers. Use proper HTML elements like ordered or unordered lists, and avoid nested lists when possible. Additionally, ensure proper color contrast for readability and include alternative text for images.

Best Practices of List UI Design

1. Prioritize User Needs

Good list UI design follows design thinking and user-centered design principles. The list design must match user needs while providing appropriate fields for the content. UX designers must pay attention to responsiveness and how the list will look across multiple devices and screen sizes.

2. Follow Material Design Principles

Google’s Material Design UI defines three principles for designing lists – lists must be logical, actionable, and consistent. This means that:

• Logical: Organize lists in meaningful ways (alphabetical, numerical, etc.).
• Actionable: Ensure items are easy to identify and act upon.
• Consistent: Use uniform layouts for icons, text, and actions.

3. Make Lists Scannable

One of the keys to designing a great list UI is making it easy for users to scan content to find what they need. The quicker someone can find what they need, the better the user experience and the more likely they are to use and recommend your product.

4. Leverage Visual Hierarchy

Hierarchy plays a vital role in making lists scannable and easier to read. UX designers have several ways to create this visual hierarchy, including typography, color, spacing, images, etc.

List UI Example: eCommerce

For example, this eCommerce list uses color, size, and typography to separate content and create a visual hierarchy:

• Product name: bold black and white typography top center
• Product description: smaller grey text
• Price: Large dark text
• Reviews: Small text with bright star icons
• Image: Large circular product image

This product list is an excellent example of a visual hierarchy that makes it easy for customers to scan products by the content that matters most to them–i.e., by product name, description, price, etc.

List UI Example: Spotify

In a more simplified example, Spotify uses font size and color to create a visual hierarchy between the song title and the artist. The different size and color make it easy for users to scan a playlist accordingly.

5. Ensure Accessibility

Lists can cause problems for screen readers, creating a poor user experience for visually impaired users. For example, screen readers can’t decipher nested lists correctly. So, designers should use a heading with an unordered or ordered list instead.

Further reading on list accessibility:

• Lists in HTML from Penn State
• Lists from NC State
• Lists Accessibility from Oregon State University

List UI Design Patterns and Interactions

Here are some common list design patterns and interactions that you can apply to website and mobile app design projects.

Checkboxes & Radiobuttons

Checkboxes and radiobuttons are essential UI elements to allow users to make selections and actions on list items. As a general rule, designers use checkboxes for selecting multiple list items and radios for a single selection.

Scrolling & Swiping

Scrolling and swiping allow users to perform multiple actions. For example, many apps allow users to swipe list items left or right–one way to delete the other to archive.

Designers must also create scrolling interactions and lazy loading to optimize performance.

Select Lists

Select lists or dropdown menus allow users to select from several options–like choosing which shipping method they want at checkout. UX designers might also include a search feature for long dropdown menus, a feature we often see for state/province or country lists.

Collapsing & Expanding

Designers can use collapsable lists to hide and show details. Reducing the amount of content that’s always visible is crucial for usability and minimizing cognitive load. Collapsable interactions are also useful for nested lists or submenus.

Reordering & Sorting

Reordering list items gives users control over how they prioritize and experience data. Depending on their preference, they can move items manually up or down the list, usually by dragging and dropping. This customization creates a positive user experience because users can arrange content to suit their needs. 

Sorting works similar to reordering, except users choose from predefined categories rather than reorder list items manually. For example, Spotify allows users to sort a playlist by title, artist, album, or recently added.

Filtering

Filtering helps users find what they need much faster. Accommodation booking platforms like Airbnb and Booking.com allow users to apply multiple filters to list properties that suit their needs and preferences.

Dividers

Dividers help create separation between content; however, they can add unnecessary “visual noise.” If your lists get too busy, try testing white space as an alternative content separator. 

List UI Design in UXPin

With UXPin’s code-based design tool, UX designers can build list prototypes that accurately resemble the final product. Our Multilevel Dropdown Navigation example demonstrates how designers can use States and Interactions to build a functioning dropdown list–using only a single frame.

Designing a List with MUI Components in UXPin Merge

With UXPin Merge, you can sync code components like MUI (Material-UI) into UXPin for fully interactive prototyping. Follow this tutorial to create a list using MUI components.

Step 1: Import MUI Components

Ensure you have your MUI components integrated into UXPin using Merge. This will allow you to drag and drop pre-coded components directly into your design.

Step 2: Add a List Component

1. In UXPin, navigate to your MUI component library.
2. Drag the MUI List component into your canvas. This is the container for your list items.

Step 3: Configure List Items

1. Next, drag in ListItem components within the list container. These components will represent individual list items.
2. Use ListItemText to add the main content, such as the title or description for each list item.

Step 4: Customize with MUI Properties

With Merge, you can modify component properties like styling, layout, and behavior. For example:

• Typography: Adjust fonts, colors, and sizes within the ListItemText to create a visual hierarchy.
• Icons: Use ListItemIcon to include interactive icons, such as checkmarks or navigation arrows.

Step 5: Add Interactions

Use UXPin’s interaction panel to add click actions, hover states, or dynamic behaviors. For example, configure the list item to navigate to another page or trigger a modal when clicked.

Step 6: Preview and Test

Use UXPin’s Preview mode to test the list in a fully functional prototype. Check responsiveness and usability across different devices to ensure an optimal experience.

Step 7: Hand-off to Developers

With UXPin Merge, your list UI is code-ready. Developers can directly access the code, ensuring a seamless design-to-development process without discrepancies.

Increase Fidelity and Functionality with UXPin Merge

Take your prototypes to the next level using UXPin’s proprietary Merge technology. Sync your product’s design system or an open-source component library from a repository to UXPin’s editor so designers can build prototypes using fully functioning code components.

You can see Merge in action with our MUI library integration. Using MUI’s React library, designers can build fully functioning list prototypes. MUI’s React components come complete with states and interactions, so designers only have to focus on product design rather than building everything from scratch. Everything you see in MUI’s documentation, designers can replicate in UXPin without writing a single line of code. Request access to UXPin Merge.

The post List Design 101 – A Short Guide for Beginners appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

npm is a package manager for JavaScript that helps developers install, share, and manage libraries or pieces of code that are commonly used in applications. These packages can range from small utility functions to full-fledged UI components like buttons, form elements, or even complex layouts.

npm is also a key enabler of the design-development collaboration that UXPin Merge facilitates. By packaging React components through npm, developers can hand off real, functioning UI components to designers, who can then integrate them into their designs effortlessly. This results in a more consistent and efficient workflow, ensuring that your design system and the final product are perfectly aligned.. Discover UXPin Merge.

Design UI with code-backed components.

Use the same components in design as in development. Keep UI consistency at scale.

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What is NPM (Node Package Manager)?

npm or Node Package Manager is an open-source repository of tools engineers use to develop applications and websites.

npm is two things:

1. A repository for publishing open-source projects.
   Simplified version: a digital storage and retrieval facility.
2. A command-line interface (CLI) for interacting with the repository.
   Simplified version: a tool to communicate with the storage facility.

What is a Package Manager?

Before we can explain what npm package is, it’s essential to understand the idea of a package manager. Think of a package manager as a toolkit for developers.

Let’s say you’re building an application that uses Stripe for payments. A package manager installs all the code your product will need to communicate with Stripe and process payments.

Instead of writing all that code or copy/pasting it from Stripe’s docs, engineers simply enter a command, and the package manager installs the code dependencies they need from Stripe.

There are millions of these packages for everything you can think of to develop an application–like different types of search functionality, APIs, payments, authentication tools, maps, icons, hosting, and more.

You get public open-source repositories (like npm) where anyone can upload and install packages, as well as private package repositories with restricted access.

What is a Command Line Interface?

A command-line interface (CLI) is a text interface developers use to interact with computer programs. This CLI allows you to execute commands to run background operations necessary for software development.

In the case of npm, the CLI allows you to interact with the package registry. For example, engineers can use commands like npm install followed by the package name to install a specific package.

The npm Registry

The npm website is where engineers can search and learn about packages. This website is just a registry and doesn’t host the packages. Instead, engineers use platforms like GitHub, Packagecloud, AWS CodeArtifact, and others to host and distribute packages.

For example, if we look at the UXPin Merge CLI on NPM, it has displays GitHub as the repository and relevant link. Above that is the command to install the UXPin Merge CLI and its dependencies: npm i @uxpin/merge-cli. The “i” after npm is an abbreviation for “install.” So, typing npm install @uxpin/merge-cli would render the same result.

What are Dependencies?

Packages consist of other packages that engineers call dependencies–we know, confusing, right! These dependencies are packages of code that perform different tasks within the project.

For example, the UXPin Merge CLI uses Typescript and therefore requires the typescript package as a dependency. Typescript is just one of the 41 dependencies UXPin Merge CLI requires. 

What are Devdependencies?

Looking at the UXPin Merge CLI’s dependencies, you’ll notice 41 Dependencies and 41 Dev Dependencies (also referred to as devDependencies–one word).

• Dependencies: The packages required to run a piece of software
• Dev Dependencies: The packages needed during the development phase only

Dependencies and devDependencies reside in a separate folder called node_modules, so your packages.json file and project code know where to find them.

What is the package.json File?

There’s a package.json file that provides its metadata and dependencies. When installing the project on your computer, npm will reference the package.json file to install the dependencies and devDependencies.

Instead of installing each dependency individually, you simply type npm install in the command line.

Hosting providers also use the package.json file to install the dependencies (excluding devDependencies) needed to run the project on its servers.

What is package-lock.json?

The package-lock.json specifies the exact version of the package used to build the project. This file locks the dependencies so that when the project is installed, it references the versions used during development rather than the latest release.

Engineers update packages regularly, often changing the way the package works. So, locking your dependencies ensures the project operates as intended.

How to use npm

Here are some common npm commands and what they do:

• npm init: Creates a package.json file for your project. If you’re building an application from scratch, npm init will be one of the first commands you use to include key project information. NPM will automatically update your package.json file whenever you install or remove packages.
• npm install: Installs all of the project dependencies in a package.json file.
• npm install <package-name>: Installs a specific package from the NPM registry and saves it to your node_modules folder. For example, npm install @uxpin/merge-cli will install the Merge CLI.
• npm install <package-name> –save: Installs an NPM package and adds it to the dependencies in your package.json file.
• npm install <package-name> –save-dev: installs an NPM package and adds it to the devDependencies 
• npm uninstall <package-name>: Uninstalls a specific package from your project.
• npm doctor: Runs diagnostics on your npm installation to check if it has everything it needs to manage your packages.
• npm update <package-name>: Updates a specific package to the latest version.

These are just a few of the most common npm commands. You can find the complete list in the npm documentation.

Understanding npm as a Designer

npm is simply a toolkit comparable to plugins or app extensions for design tools. You don’t need to know the ins-and-outs of how packages are created, but it may be useful to know a thing or two about it.

First of all, some of code component libraries are shared as npm packages, such as MUI, Ant Design, etc.

How to find component libraries that are distributed as npm packages? Let’s say you search through Adele, UXPin’s library of publicly available Design Systems, for a component library that you can bring in to UXPin. You pick Shopify’s Polaris and notice that it is distributed via npm.

So, you go to the NPM site, look for Shopify’s Polaris, and find it.

UXPin with Merge technology allows you to import UI elements from component libraries via NPM packages. Then, you can use those elements to put together fully-functional prototypes.

UXPin Merge is usually being set up by a developer. But if you lack the development support, you can use our new tool – Merge Component Manager and manage UI components by yourself.

However, if you want to enhance your programming knowledge to collaborate with devs better, then learning about basic code principles (HTML, CSS, Javascript) and component libraries is far more valuable for designers.

What Can You Do with npm Integration?

Even though npm is typically a tool developers use, it plays a crucial role in enabling powerful design workflows—like bringing React components into UXPin for seamless drag-and-drop UI building.

Here’s why npm is important for technical designers working with tools like UXPin Merge:

1. Access to React Components: If your design system is built using React, npm allows you to package these components and make them accessible for use in other applications or tools—like UXPin Merge. React components that are available as npm packages can be directly imported into UXPin, giving designers the ability to drag and drop real code components into their designs without writing code.
2. Easily Manage Updates: npm simplifies version control. When a developer updates a package (such as a new version of a button component), npm can automatically manage this update in UXPin Merge, ensuring that designers always work with the latest components from the development team. This ensures consistency between design and development without the need for manual updates.
3. Collaborate Seamlessly with Developers: npm helps technical designers and developers work from the same source of truth. Developers use npm to publish the components they create, while designers can easily import those components into UXPin using Merge. This ensures that the components designers use for prototyping are exactly the same as the ones developers will implement in the final product.

Improve Collaboration With UXPin Merge

Merge enhances collaboration between design and development because designers and engineers work with the same component library. 

Instead of having a UI kit for designers and code for devs, Merge syncs a repository to UXPin’s editor so design teams can build fully functioning prototypes using code components.

You can sync your company’s design system or a component library like MUI so that you only have to drag and drop UI elements to build interfaces. Request access to Merge.

The post What is npm? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Turning a website into an application involves adapting and extending the functionalities and design of the website to fit the framework and user expectations of a mobile, desktop or web app. Let’s see how to make website an app, when is the right time to do so, and which websites became apps.

Design on-brand and responsive UI with UXPin Merge, a drag-and-drop UI builder for creating production-ready interfaces with React components. Build mobile, web or desktop apps, cross-platform experiences, and other digital products with the same components. Try UXPin Merge for free.

Design UI with code-backed components.

Use the same components in design as in development. Keep UI consistency at scale.

Try UXPin Merge

What does it mean to create an app out of a website?

An app created on top of an existing, popular website is a software application designed for desktop, web or mobile devices (such as smartphones and iPads) that extends and enhances the functionalities, user experience, and accessibility of the original website.

This type of app leverages the established user base and features of the website, offering a more optimized, intuitive, and interactive interface.

It typically includes capabilities like offline access, push notifications, and seamless integration with device-specific features (e.g., GPS, camera, biometrics), providing users with a more engaging and convenient way to access the same services and content available on the website.

7 examples of turning a website into an app

• Online Newspaper: A native app can offer push notifications for breaking news, offline reading capabilities, and a more personalized user experience.
• E-Commerce Site: An app can provide a more streamlined shopping experience, with features like notifications for deals, easier access to purchase history, and better integration with mobile payment systems.
• Recipe website: An app can provide instant access to recipes. The app can offer personalized recommendations, AI support, and a vibrant community where app users can share their culinary creations and exchange tips.
• Event Management and Ticketing: An app can enhance user experience by offering easy access to event schedules, ticket purchases, and real-time updates. Users can receive notifications about upcoming events, access their tickets offline, and get personalized recommendations for future events.
• Social Network: Transforming a social networking site into an app can enhance user engagement through push notifications, real-time messaging, and better integration with device features like the camera and contacts.
• Educational Platform: An app can facilitate better learning experiences with offline access to content, interactive quizzes, and real-time collaboration tools. Features like push notifications can remind users about upcoming classes or assignments.
• Travel and Hospitality: A travel app can offer real-time updates on bookings, flight statuses, and itineraries. It can also provide offline access to essential travel information, personalized recommendations, and integration with maps for navigation.

Why should you convert a website into an app?

The decision to transform a website into an app should be based on several key factors and the specific goals of your business and users.

High Mobile Traffic

If your website attracts a significant portion of its traffic from mobile devices, it might be the right time to develop an app. Mobile apps can offer a superior user experience compared to mobile websites by providing improved performance, more intuitive navigation, and better accessibility.

As users increasingly rely on their smartphones for online activities, having an iOS or Android app ensures that your content and services are optimized for mobile usage, leading to higher user satisfaction and retention.

User Engagement and Retention Needs

Increasing user engagement and retention rates is crucial for the success of any online app. Apps can significantly boost these metrics by offering personalized experiences and direct communication through push notifications.

Additionally, apps can provide offline access to content, ensuring that users can engage with your services even without an internet connection. This consistent and personalized interaction helps build a loyal app user base.

Enhanced User Experience Requirements

Some features and functionalities are more seamlessly integrated into mobile platforms than web environments. If your website relies on device-specific capabilities such as GPS, camera access, or offline functionality, transitioning to a mobile app can be beneficial.

Apps can utilize these features more effectively, resulting in a more intuitive and seamless user experience that leverages the full potential of mobile devices.

Frequent User Interaction

For websites where users frequently interact for updates, transactions, or communications, an app can provide a more streamlined and efficient experience.

Whether it’s a social media platform, e-commerce site, or news outlet, apps offer faster access and real-time updates through push notifications. This immediate and smooth interaction can significantly enhance user satisfaction and convenience.

Improved Performance and Speed

If your website suffers from performance issues or slow load times on mobile devices, developing an app can be a viable solution. Desktop or mobile apps generally offer better performance due to local storage, caching, and optimized code, which leads to quicker load times and a smoother user experience. This performance boost can be crucial in retaining users who might otherwise be frustrated by slow website interactions.

Competitive Advantage

In a competitive market, having a mobile app can give you an edge over competitors who do not offer one. If your competitors have apps and it provides them with a competitive advantage, developing your own app becomes essential to stay relevant. An app can help attract more users, meet market expectations, and offer a modern, convenient way for users to engage with your brand.

Advanced Features

Websites that offer or plan to offer advanced features such as augmented reality, complex animations, or real-time functionalities can benefit from being transformed into mobile or website apps.

Apps are better suited to handle these advanced features and can deliver a more engaging and interactive user experience. This capability can be particularly important for businesses looking to innovate and provide cutting-edge services.

User Feedback

Listening to user feedback is vital for any business. If users are requesting a web, desktop or mobile app or expressing dissatisfaction with the current web experience, it’s a clear indicator that developing an app should be a priority.

Addressing user feedback by offering a new app can significantly improve user satisfaction and loyalty, demonstrating that you value and respond to their needs.

Brand Loyalty and Marketing

Mobile apps can strengthen brand loyalty and provide a direct marketing channel to your users. Through push notifications, apps allow you to communicate directly with users, informing them about updates, offers, and important events. This direct line of communication that a webpage can’t compete with helps keep your brand top-of-mind and enhances customer loyalty by providing timely and relevant information.

Monetization Opportunities

If there are potential monetization opportunities through in-app purchases, subscriptions, or ads, developing an app can be a strategic move. Apps can offer more effective and varied monetization strategies compared to websites, allowing you to tap into new revenue streams. This can be particularly beneficial for businesses looking to diversify their income sources and maximize profitability.

How can you make a website into an app?

Initial Analysis and Planning

To begin transforming your website into an app, start by defining clear objectives. Determine the primary goals, such as improving user engagement, offering offline access, or enhancing the overall user experience. Next, analyze your existing website to evaluate its core functionalities, user interface, and user experience.

Don’t forget to devote some time to understanding app users. Conduct user research through surveys, interviews, and analytics to gather insights into what users expect from the app and identify any pain points in the current web experience.

Remember that apps require additional design, such as creating an app icon, home screen or a nav bar placed on the bottom or the top of the app.

Choosing the Type of App

Decide on the type of app that best suits your needs. If you opt for a native app, you’ll be developing specifically for iOS (using Swift or Objective-C) or Android (using Java or Kotlin), which offers the best performance and access to all device features but requires separate codebases and higher development costs.

Alternatively, a cross-platform app, developed with frameworks like React Native, Flutter, or Xamarin, allows for a single codebase for both platforms, reducing development costs. Although cross-platform apps may have slightly less performance compared to native apps, they are a cost-effective solution.

Another option is a Progressive Web App (PWA), which enhances your website to provide app-like experiences without the need for app store distribution and can work offline, though with limited access to device features.

Design Phase

In the design phase, create prototypes to visualize the app’s user interface and user experience. The best tool to do that is UXPin Merge which allows you to build UI fast using pre-made React or Tailwind UI components. With this, you can create an app’s interface super fast and without having to waste time on translating design to code — your design is code by default. Just check out our responsive dashboard tutorial to see how UXPin Merge speeds up design.

Validate your design decisions by conducting usability testing, gather feedback, and then, iterate on the design to ensure that you’re providing a good user experience.

App Development Phase

Set up your development environment by installing the necessary development tools and frameworks based on your chosen app type. Ensure version control with tools like Git. Begin frontend development by implementing the UI using appropriate frameworks, such as React Native or Flutter, ensuring the app is responsive and works well on various screen sizes.

For backend development, connect the app to your existing website’s backend API or create new API endpoints if needed. Implement core features by translating essential website functionalities to the app and adding mobile-specific functionalities like push notifications, offline access, and device integration (e.g., camera, GPS).

Testing Phase

Conduct thorough testing to ensure the app functions correctly and provides a seamless user experience. Perform functional testing to check that all features work as intended, using tools like Appium, XCTest, or Espresso.

Conduct usability testing to ensure the app is intuitive and user-friendly. Optimize for speed and responsiveness through performance testing on multiple devices and operating systems. Ensure data security and privacy by conducting security testing, including penetration testing and vulnerability assessments.

Deployment Phase

Prepare for the app launch by setting up app store accounts on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Create app store listings with compelling descriptions, screenshots, and promotional materials.

Conduct beta testing by releasing the app to a group of beta testers for final feedback, using platforms like TestFlight for iOS and Google Play Console for Android. Once ready, submit the app to the iOS App store for iPhones or Google Store for Android devices and plan a marketing campaign to promote the app.

Post-Launch Phase

After launching, monitor the app’s performance using analytics tools to track user behavior and app metrics. Keep an eye on app store reviews and ratings to gather user feedback. Regularly update the app to fix bugs, improve performance, and add new features.

Transform your website into an app fast

Design is crucial in transforming a website into an app because it directly impacts user experience and engagement. A well-designed app reduce user frustration and increase overall satisfaction and makes the transition from website to an app seamless and risk-free.

Create app designs with UXPin Merge. Drag and drop coded components to build stunning UI without compromising on quality. Bring your coded design system elements or use pre-built ones and design experiences that make your design shine. Try UXPin Merge for free.

The post How to Create an App out of a Website appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

An art portfolio is a curated collection of an artist’s best work. It promotes the artist’s work and attracts potential employers, clients, galleries, or educational institutions. Most professional artists present their portfolio in form of an artist website and today we’re going to go through a couple of artist portfolios to help you build one.

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What is an art portfolio?

An art portfolio is a collection of an artist’s work that showcases their skills and style. It serves as a professional curation, often used for presenting their work to potential clients, applying for jobs or academic programs, and presenting at exhibitions or galleries.

An art portfolio can be physical or digital, but in the modern context, online art portfolios are more prevalent. Most artists have their own websites that they use to post their work, stay in touch with the art world or even run an online store where people can buy their work.

5 Art Portfolio Website Examples

Julia Plath

Julia Plath’s online art portfolio website effectively showcases her work with a minimalist design that emphasizes the artwork. The site excels in visual presentation and simplicity, making it easy for users to focus on the illustrations, admire the artist’s technical skills, and find contact information.

The website is visually appealing, using a minimalist and clean design. It focuses on the artwork with a white background that highlights the images without distraction. When it comes to typography, simple, sans-serif fonts are used, consistent with the minimalist approach. The text is legible and complements the visual elements without overshadowing the artwork.

A predominantly black-and-white color scheme ensures the artwork stands out. Colors used are minimal and primarily come from the art pieces themselves, drawing attention to them.

The website has intuitive navigation. The menu is clear and accessible at the top of the page, leading to sections like Home, Portfolio, About, and Contact.

While the design is visually appealing, the site could improve on accessibility aspects. For instance, adding more descriptive alt text for images and ensuring text contrast is high enough for readability.

The website has limited interactivity, focusing mainly on viewing the artwork. There is a subtle hover effect on images, enhancing the user interaction without overwhelming the design.

Bonnie White

Bonnie White’s portfolio site showcases a distinct approache to digital portfolio design and brings to mind traditional fine art websites. It’s well-made in terms of SEO, featuring a blog that adds dynamic content to the site, engaging visitors with updates and insights into the visual artist’s process and activities.

Her design portfolio embraces a warm, vibrant aesthetic with a soft color palette that complements her folk art, creating an inviting and personal atmosphere. Artwork is well-organized and displayed with ample spacing. Each piece is accompanied by titles and descriptions, offering context to viewers. The portfolio is accessible directly from the main menu, making it easy to browse.

Fonts are clean and readable, with a mix of serif and sans-serif. The titles use a decorative serif font that adds a personal touch, while body text is in a simple sans-serif, balancing readability with style.

The use of earthy and pastel colors aligns well with the folk art theme. The colors are not overwhelming and help create a cohesive look that reflects the artist’s personality.

The site is fairly accessible with reasonable text contrast and alt text for images. However, some improvements could be made, such as ensuring all text is large enough for readability and enhancing keyboard navigation.

Camille Walala

The art portfolio of Camille Walala has a dynamic and vibrant design that mirrors the artist distinctive graphic design-like style. It uses bold colors and geometric shapes throughout, effectively capturing the essence of her work.

The homepage features full-screen images of her most striking projects, giving a dramatic presentation that immerses the visitor in her world of art. This approach effectively showcases the scale and impact of her installations.

The top navigation menu is straightforward, with clear labels like Work, About, and Contact. This simplicity ensures that users can quickly find what they’re looking for without distraction.

The website design incorporates a vivid color palette, primarily consisting of bright blues, reds, yellows, and blacks. These colors are consistent with Walala’s artistic style and create a cohesive visual experience.

The typography is playful yet clean, featuring bold fonts for headings and simple, sans-serif fonts for body text. This balance maintains readability while adding to the site’s energetic feel.

High-quality images of Walala’s work are prominently displayed. The website effectively uses full-screen images and slideshows to showcase her projects in various settings, making her portfolio visually impactful.

While the site is well-optimized for performance and user experience, there are areas for potential improvement, particularly in accessibility and SEO, which could further enhance its effectiveness and reach.

Timothy Goodman

Timothy Goodman is another visual artists whose online art portfolio is a great example of good web design and a great presentation of visual arts. Based in New York City, Goodman is known for his distinctive graphic style and has created numerous public art installations, illustrations, and typographic works throughout New York and beyond.

Timothy Goodman’s own portfolio successfully captures the essence of his artistic style through its bold, vibrant, and playful design. The intuitive navigation, responsive layout, and engaging visual elements create a positive user experience. The site effectively showcases his diverse body of work while providing clear paths for exploration and interaction.

Hovering over project thumbnails in the Work section triggers visual feedback, such as color changes, zoom effects, or brief overlays with project titles. This interaction invites users to explore and signals that the images are clickable.

Navigation buttons and links change color or style upon hovering, providing a clear indication of their interactivity.

Each project thumbnail is clickable, leading to a dedicated page with detailed images, descriptions, and context for the project. This interaction makes it easy for users to delve deeper into specific works that interest them. Clicking on project links dynamically loads the new content without refreshing the entire page, ensuring a seamless user experience.

Lily Clementine Orset

Lily Clementine Orset uses a unique and unconventional approach to present her art. The web design of this online art portfolio reflects an experimental and DIY aesthetic, aligning with her artistic vision and providing a different experience compared to traditional portfolio websites.

The interface allows users to click and drag elements, enhancing the interactive and hands-on feel of the site.

The use of textured backgrounds and layered images gives the site a tactile, handmade quality that complements the DIY ethos of her work.

The website employs a mix of hand-drawn and digital fonts, contributing to its quirky and artistic vibe. The variety in font styles adds to the visual interest but might affect readability in some areas. Font sizes vary across the site, which adds to the eclectic feel but can create challenges in maintaining a clear visual hierarchy and readability.

The site is designed primarily for desktop use, with the interactive elements best experienced on larger screens. On mobile devices, the navigation and interactions may be less effective or more cumbersome. Elements might not scale well on different screen sizes, potentially affecting the browsing experience on tablets and smaller screens. Having said that, the interactive design invites exploration and encourages users to spend more time on the site, though it may also create some usability challenges.

10 UX and UI tips based on those art portfolios

Effective UX and UI design is crucial for art portfolio websites to showcase the artist’s work, engage visitors, and create a memorable browsing experience. Here are some tips to follow when creating your art portfolio website:

1. Align with Art Style: Ensure the website’s design reflects the artist’s style. Use colors, fonts, and layouts that complement the artwork.
2. Showcase Artwork Effectively: Use high-resolution images that capture the details and colors of the artwork. Include full-screen images, close-ups, and various views to give a comprehensive presentation.
3. Use Neutral Backgrounds: Opt for neutral backgrounds to make artwork stand out. A simple color scheme (e.g., white, black, or gray) ensures the focus remains on the art.
4. Apply Readable Fonts: Use clean and readable fonts. Ensure font sizes and colors provide good readability against the background.
5. Clear Menu Structure: Provide a simple and intuitive navigation menu with clear labels such as Home, Gallery, About, Blog, and Contact. Make sure the menu is accessible from all pages.
6. Breadcrumbs: Use breadcrumbs or a similar mechanism to help users understand their location within the site and easily navigate back to previous pages.
7. Responsive Design: Ensure the website is fully responsive. Design layouts that adjust smoothly across different devices and screen sizes, including desktops, tablets, and smartphones.
8. Interactive Elements: Incorporate subtle hover effects and clickable images to enhance interactivity. Ensure that interactions are intuitive and provide visual feedback, such as highlighting clickable elements or changing colors on hover.
9. Categorize Work: Organize artwork into categories or series. This helps visitors find specific types of work quickly and provides a structured browsing experience.
10. Optimize Performance: Optimize images and code to reduce loading times. Fast performance is crucial for keeping visitors engaged and reducing bounce rates.

Design your own website today

We’ve seen five totally different art portfolios today and what would you say about creating your own with UXPin? Drag and drop interactive UI elements that have code behind them, arrange the perfect layout of your website and then, copy the code to build your own site. Try UXPin Merge for free.

The post 5 Art Portfolio Examples that Will Leave you Awestruck appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Crafting websites that are visually appealing and user-friendly is essential for business’ success.This guide will cover essential web design best practices, focusing on accessibility, grid design, consistency, and design systems. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting in the field, these tips will help you leverage UXPin to create outstanding website prototypes.

With UXPin, a powerful prototyping tool, you can efficiently implement these best practices from the earliest stages of design, ensuring that your final product is both effective and inclusive. Try UXPin for free.

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Accessibility Tips

Accessibility in web design ensures that your website is usable by everyone, including people with disabilities. This is not just a moral and legal obligation but also a practical one—an accessible website reaches a broader audience and can improve SEO rankings. Familiarize yourself with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to understand the standards you should aim for.

Incorporating Accessibility into Prototypes

Using UXPin, you can integrate accessibility features directly into your prototypes. Here’s how:

• Text Readability: Ensure that text on your website meets WCAG guidelines for contrast ratios. UXPin allows you to experiment with different font sizes, colors, and typographic choices to find the perfect balance.
• Keyboard Navigation: Test your prototype for keyboard accessibility by simulating how users navigate through your site without a mouse. Ensure that all interactive elements are easily accessible.
• ARIA Roles and Labels: Add ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) roles and labels in UXPin to make sure assistive technologies can interpret your site’s elements correctly.

Testing for Accessibility Early

Testing for accessibility should not be an afterthought. Use UXPin’s built-in features to simulate screen readers and test your design with different assistive technologies. Conduct usability testing with diverse user groups to gather feedback and make necessary adjustments early in the design process.

Grid Design Tips

Grids are the backbone of any well-structured website, providing a framework that guides the placement of elements in a consistent and aesthetically pleasing way. Understanding the types of grids—fixed, fluid, and responsive—will help you decide which is best for your project.

Implementing Grids in UXPin

Setting up a grid system in UXPin is straightforward:

• Responsive Grids: Create and save grid layouts to adjust your design to different screen sizes.
• Visual Harmony: Maintain visual balance by aligning text, images, and other elements to your grid, ensuring a clean and organized layout.

Best Practices for Grid Usage

Consistency is key when applying grids. Ensure that your grid system is uniformly applied across all pages. This not only helps in maintaining a cohesive design but also makes the site more intuitive for users.

Consistency Tips

Consistency in design builds trust and reduces cognitive load for users. When elements behave predictably, users can navigate your site with ease, leading to a better overall experience.

Ensuring Visual and Functional Consistency

UXPin’s components and design libraries are invaluable for maintaining consistency:

• Color Schemes and Typography: Develop a consistent color scheme and typographic hierarchy that is applied across all pages.
• Code-Backed Components: Try React or other code-backed UI components like buttons, forms, and navigation bars to ensure a uniform look and feel.

Maintaining Consistency Across Teams

Collaboration is easier when everyone is on the same page. UXPin allows teams to share libraries and components, ensuring that everyone follows the same design guidelines. Version control features in UXPin help keep track of changes and ensure consistency throughout the design process.

Content Design Tips

Content design is the practice of planning, creating, and organizing content to ensure it effectively communicates with users and supports their needs. It involves crafting clear, concise, and accessible text, visuals, and multimedia elements that guide users toward completing specific tasks or finding necessary information.

Incorporating Content Design in UXPin’s Prototypes

UXPin allows you to seamlessly integrate content design into your prototypes, ensuring that your content is user-focused from the early stages of development. Here’s how to incorporate content design in UXPin:

• Content Structure: Use UXPin to prototype various content layouts, experimenting with different text structures, such as short paragraphs, bullet points, and subheadings. This helps you find the most readable and user-friendly format.
• Visual Hierarchy: Implement visual hierarchy by adjusting font sizes, weights, and colors to emphasize important content. UXPin’s design tools let you create prototypes that prioritize content based on user needs.
• Interactive Elements: Incorporate interactive content elements like buttons, forms, and links directly into your prototypes. UXPin allows you to test how these elements interact with content, ensuring a cohesive user experience.
• Content Accessibility: Use UXPin to prototype accessible content by ensuring proper color contrast, adding alt text for images, and designing layouts that work well with screen readers. This ensures that your content is accessible to all users.

Best Practices for Content Design

To create effective content that resonates with users, follow these best practices:

• Clarity and Conciseness: Keep content clear and to the point. Avoid jargon and complex language. Users should be able to understand the message quickly and easily.
• User-Centered Content: Always design content with the user in mind. Consider what information users need at each stage of their journey and how they prefer to consume it.
• Consistency: Maintain a consistent tone, style, and format across all content. This not only builds trust but also ensures that users can easily navigate and understand your site.
• Engaging Visuals: Complement text with relevant visuals that enhance understanding. Use images, infographics, and videos that are directly related to the content to maintain user engagement.
• Responsive Design: Ensure content is optimized for all devices, especially mobile. Test your content on various screen sizes in UXPin to ensure it is readable and visually appealing across platforms.
• Continuous Testing and Iteration: Regularly test your content with real users and iterate based on feedback. UXPin’s prototyping features make it easy to update content and test different versions to find what works best.

By integrating these practices into your design process, you can create content that is not only informative but also engaging and accessible, providing a superior user experience across all platforms.

Performance Tips

Taking care of website’s performance is one of the most important website best practices these days. A slow-loading website can lead to high bounce rates and poor user experience, which ultimately affects your site’s success. As a designer using UXPin, you can take several steps to ensure your website prototypes are optimized for speed from the ground up.

Optimizing Image Sizes and Formats

Images are often the largest files on a webpage, making them a primary target for optimization:

• Choose the Right Format: Use the appropriate image format based on the content. For instance, use JPEGs for photographs, PNGs for images with transparency, and SVGs for icons and logos. WebP is also an excellent option for smaller file sizes with good quality.
• Compress Images: Before uploading images to UXPin, use tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim to reduce file sizes without sacrificing quality.
• Responsive Images: Use UXPin to design responsive images that adjust based on the user’s screen size. Implementing srcset attributes ensures that the browser loads the correct image size for each device, reducing unnecessary data load.

Reducing File Sizes with Efficient Use of Assets

Every asset on a page—whether it’s CSS, JavaScript, or images—contributes to the load time:

• Minimize and Combine Files: Use tools that combine and minify CSS and JavaScript files to reduce the number of HTTP requests and overall file sizes.
• Reuse Components: Design reusable components in UXPin to avoid creating multiple versions of the same element, which can bloat file sizes. A single well-designed component can be reused across different pages, keeping your design lean.
• Lazy Loading: Implement lazy loading for images and videos, where media is only loaded when it comes into view. This technique helps reduce initial load time and saves bandwidth for users who may not scroll through the entire page.

Optimizing Typography and Fonts

Fonts can significantly impact website performance if not handled properly:

• Choose System Fonts: Whenever possible, use system fonts that don’t require additional downloads. This ensures faster rendering and better performance.
• Limit Web Fonts: If you’re using custom web fonts, limit the number of font families and weights to reduce the amount of data that needs to be downloaded. Use font-display: swap; to improve perceived performance by showing fallback fonts until the custom fonts are fully loaded.
• Font File Compression: Ensure that font files are compressed (e.g., using WOFF2 format) to reduce their size.

Design System Tips

Another website best practices is designing a website based on a design system. A design system is a collection of reusable components and guidelines that standardize your design process. It helps scale your design efforts across different projects, ensuring consistency and efficiency.

Building a Design System in UXPin

UXPin is an excellent tool for creating and managing design systems:

• Component Libraries: Create and maintain a library of reusable components that can be easily updated and shared across projects.
• Integration with Git or Storybook: UXPin’s integration with Git or Storybook allows for seamless updates and management of your design system.

Scaling and Evolving Your Design System

As your design needs evolve, so should your design system. Regularly review and update your design system to incorporate new trends, technologies, and feedback from users. This ensures that your design system remains relevant and effective.

Implement Website Best Practices Now

By following these best practices for accessibility, grid design, consistency, performance, and design systems, you can create websites that are not only visually appealing but also user-friendly and inclusive. UXPin provides all the tools you need to implement these practices efficiently, from the earliest stages of prototyping to the final product.

Remember, the key to a successful website is not just in how it looks but in how it works for all users. Start applying these best practices in your next UXPin project and take your web design to the next level. Try UXPin for free.

The post Website Best Practices – Basic Tips for Better Web appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

User flows are integral to the UX design process. These valuable UX artifacts help product teams visualize flows and processes from users’ perspectives to reduce errors and enhance the user experience.

This article takes a deep dive into user flows, their importance, the principles that guide them, the visual representations, and the various types of flows.

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What is User Flow in UX?

A user flow is a graphic visualization representing the sequence of steps, decisions, and actions users perform while navigating a digital product, app, or website.

Product teams typically focus on one task or goal at a time, such as an onboarding sequence or eCommerce checkout. Designers build prototypes of these user flows to test the user experience with usability participants and stakeholders, iterating on feedback until they have a product ready for development.

Importance of User Flows in UX Design

User flows help product teams visualize the paths users take through an application or website to complete a specific task or achieve a goal. This visualization enables teams to identify friction points and opportunities within user flows and design solutions to fix them. 

Additionally, designers can look at optimizing flows to create more efficient and satisfying user experiences.

Benefits of a well-designed UX flows

A well-designed user flow offers many important benefits for users and the organization:

• Improves usability: optimized user flows feel intuitive, simplifying decision-making while reducing cognitive load, resulting in a user-friendly experience where users don’t get lost or frustrated. 
• Better retention: when a digital product meets user needs, allowing them to complete tasks and achieve goals, they’re more likely to keep using it and share their positive experience.
• Higher conversions: streamlining user flows removes roadblocks and obstacles for tasks that generate revenue for the business, like signups, purchases, subscriptions, etc.
• Reduce costs: optimized user flows remove redundant screens and features, resulting in many cost-savings, including design, development, maintenance, server requests, API usage, etc.
• Improved accessibility: design teams can visualize and optimize user flows to meet accessibility requirements, making user interfaces more inclusive while increasing the product’s user base.
• Data-driven design decisions: analyzing user flows provides valuable insights into user behavior and preferences, allowing designers to make informed decisions based on actual data rather than assumptions. Data-driven design decisions deliver products and experiences that meet user needs, making them more intuitive, enjoyable, and user-friendly.

UX Principles of Effective User Flows

Successful user flows incorporate UX principles that guide design concepts and decision-making. Here are some fundamental UX principles to consider when designing user flows:

Clarity and simplicity

Your user flows must be easy to understand and navigate. Avoid complex designs or features that people must learn before using them. Navigation and interaction elements must be consistent, predictable, and straightforward. When you force people to overthink a process or interaction, they’ll abandon it for an easier option, even at a higher cost.

Consistency

Maintain a consistent design language, layout, patterns, and interaction design throughout your product and user flows. Design consistency increases familiarity resulting in a more intuitive, user-friendly experience.

Flexibility

Design flows that cater to different needs, preferences, and abilities by offering multiple ways to complete tasks–for example, providing alternate paths, shortcuts, or input methods.

Feedback and communication

UI feedback guides users and manages expectations as they navigate user flows–for example, progress indicators, visual cues, status information, messages (success, error, etc.), and alerts. This communication informs users of the system status, whether their action was successful, and what to do next.

Anticipate user needs

Designers can utilize user research to predict and address user needs to prevent obstacles and roadblocks. Adding helpful tips and error prevention features enables users to solve problems faster for more efficient and streamlined flows.

Minimize steps

Designers can streamline user flows by eliminating unnecessary steps, actions, and decision points. Minimizing these points of friction increases efficiency while reducing errors and drop-offs.

Focus on user goals

Would you rather use a product that helps you achieve your objectives efficiently or one inundating you with business value proposals and other irrelevant content? Design user flows that prioritize the user’s goals and desired outcomes with features that enhance efficiency and success.

Accessibility and inclusivity

Ensure that users with diverse abilities, preferences, and devices can use your products, navigate flows, and complete tasks. Designers must consider how factors like font size, color contrasts, keyboard navigation, language, and screen-reader compatibility impact user experiences. Read more about accessibility here: Web Design Accessibility Checklist.

Types of User Flow Visualizations

Before we explore the user flow types, it’s important to explain the visualizations design teams use to map these journeys. 

Flowcharts

User flowcharts (user flow diagrams) are a diagramming technique used across many industries to represent the information flow, decision points, and user actions. These visualizations use symbols, arrows, and other shapes to depict elements, processes, decisions, and data input/output.

Wireflows

Wireflows combine wireframes and flowcharts to provide a detailed view of a user’s journey through an interface. These visualizations describe each screen’s layout as well as how users and information flow between them. 

Wireflows help visualize user interactions with specific elements and understand the context of these interactions. Designers and engineers can use these wireflows to visualize information architecture and navigation in greater detail.

Screen-flows

Screen-flows are annotated screenshots or mockups illustrating a user’s path through a product. These high-fidelity versions of wire-flows allow designers and stakeholders to visualize user flows in greater detail with screens that accurately represent the final product.

Storyboarding

Designers use storyboarding similarly to the film industry, using a series of illustrations, images, or screens to show a user’s journey. Storyboarding is helpful as it allows design teams to zoom out from the user flow and visualize a user’s environment and circumstances.

For example, if you’re designing an app for food delivery drivers, you’ll need to visualize the user flow from multiple perspectives:

• Walking
• Cycling
• Scooter/motorbike
• Car
• Van

Storyboard combined with user flows helps design teams empathize with users better to deliver more relevant solutions.

Types of User Flows

Here are seven common user flow categories. Design teams can use the techniques and mediums above to visualize these user flows.

Task flows

Task flows represent the steps users must follow to complete a specific task. These flows focus on sequential user actions and decision points, often visualized using a flowchart. Task flows are particularly helpful for identifying pain points and optimizing user journeys.

Onboarding flows

Onboarding flows allow product teams to visualize and design the product’s initial setup and introduction. These flows incorporate account creation, tutorials, feature highlights, and personalization options to familiarize users and get them started quickly.

Conversion flows

Conversion flows are crucial for generating revenue and growth. These flows represent the steps toward a desired action or outcome–for example, newsletter signups, purchases, plan upgrades, etc. Designers typically aim to minimize friction and distractions for these flows to maximize conversion rates, upsells, and other revenue-generating activities.

Navigation flows

Navigation flows outline the structure and architecture of a digital product. These visualizations help design teams understand how users move between screens, sections, and features. They can use these insights to prioritize features and content so users can find things faster and complete tasks more efficiently.

Account management flows

Users often need to update account information like addresses, passwords, billing details, app preferences, subscriptions, etc. Account management flows allow designers to simplify these administrative experiences so users can return to more important tasks.

Error flows

Error flows allow design teams to simulate issues and design solutions to fix them. They can use these insights to improve the user flow and eliminate errors from occurring or create appropriate feedback for users to correct problems.

Offboarding flows

Offboarding flows guide users through discontinuing a product or service, like canceling a subscription or deleting their account. These flows must be as efficient as onboarding to minimize frustration, increasing the chances of winning back customers.

How to Create a User Flow in 8 Steps

Here is a step-by-step framework for creating user flows.

Define the goal and entry points

Identify the task or goal you want to analyze–this could be one of the above user flows or something specific to your product. This goal will help determine the scope and focus of your user flow and which visualization is most appropriate.

If you are designing a website user experience, another good practice before creating your flows is to determine and map out where your users are coming from. Based on Morgan Brown’s advice in Stop Designing Pages and Start Designing Flows, we’d recommend you consider the following sources for your web or mobile prototype:

• Direct traffic
• Organic search
• Paid advertising
• Social media
• Referral sites
• Email

Identify personas

Your product may have many user personas. Determine which of these is most relevant to the user flow. You may assess the user flow for multiple personas to ensure it meets everyone’s needs and expectations.

For templates and helpful tips on creating personas, check out the chapter “Analyzing Users Before Diving Into Design” in the free ebook The Guide to UX Design Process & Documentation.

List user actions and decision points

Break down the user journey into a list of individual actions and decision points. Consider each step a user must take to achieve goals and their choices. For example, a signup screen might have several options, including email signup and multiple social logins. Each option will have a different path to completing the signup process.

Map the flow

Start by sketching your flows on paper or in a digital tool to iterate on many ideas fast. This should be a collaborative effort where team members share ideas and suggestions.

Once you have a basic outline, you can create your user flow in a design tool. UXPin offers five built-in design libraries, one of which is aptly named User Flows. UXPin’s User Flows library includes everything teams need to create and share user journeys, including:

• Flow lines for every conceivable direction
• Action blocks
• Icon blocks
• Labels
• Devices (mobile, tablet, desktop)
• Gestures

Here are a couple techniques for outlining your flow.

Writing-first Approach to Outlining a Flow

You can use the writing-first approach, which Jessica Downey writes about in her article Jumpstarting Your App Conception Without Sketching UI. This outlining method helps flesh out ideas and build a “common understanding” of each page of your app or site.

Let’s create one for, say, a banking app. The scenario: someone wants to turn on auto deposit. Note in the outline below, content in [brackets] represents action buttons/links.

Step 1: Would you like to set up auto deposit?

[Set auto-deposit]

Step 2: Select Deposit Frequency

[Once per month][Twice per month]

[Every other week][Every week]

Step 3: Deposit Once per Month

[Select calendar day]

Step 4: Set Amount

Display amount field

[Set auto-deposit]

Shorthand Approach to Outlining a Flow

You can also try  a shorthand approach used by Ryan Singer at Basecamp. Ryan’s approach treats flows as ongoing conversations.

For our banking app example above, we can create a shorthand for Steps 2 and 3 that looks something like this:

To see how Singer demonstrates shorthand for Basecamp and how he can illustrates complex flows with this outlining process, check out A Shorthand for Designing UI Flows.

Add screens

If you’re designing a wireflow or screen-flow, you can add relevant wireframes, mockups, and screenshots depending on the level of fidelity you need for your user flow.

Include system feedback

Add system feedback and responses such as error messages, success notifications, or loading indicators. This detail will help designers and engineers create the appropriate UI components and content to guide users.

Review and iterate

Analyze the user flow for potential improvements, pain points, or friction. Share the visualizations with team members and stakeholders for feedback and iterate until you have a flow ready for prototyping.

Prototype and test

Create a prototype of your user flow in a design tool. UXPin’s built-in design libraries (iOS, Material Design, Bootstrap, and Foundation) provide designers with UI components and patterns for web and native applications. Drag and drop UI elements from the Design Libraries panel to create high-fidelity mockups you can test in the browser or use UXPin Mirror for mobile app testing.

Create fully interactive prototypes using advanced UXPin features to achieve results that accurately replicate the final product:

• States: allow designers to create multiple states for a single UI element and design complex interactive components like accordions, carousels, steppers, and more.
• Variables: capture data from user inputs and create personalized, dynamic user experiences–like a welcome message using data from the name field in a signup form.
• Expressions: Javascript-like functions to create complex components and advanced functionality–no code required!
• Conditional Interactions: create if-then and if-else conditions based on user interactions to create dynamic prototypes with multiple outcomes to accurately replicate the final product experience.

Enhance your user flows with high-quality prototyping and testing from UXPin. Start designing the user experiences your customers deserve with the world’s most advanced design tool. Sign up for a free trial.

The post User Flows – How to Create Perfect User Flows for Smooth UX appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Tables are essential components for many enterprise UX projects. UX designers must find the best UX table design solution to visualize and sort data according to user needs.

This article explores table UX design best practices with examples to solve common content and usability issues. We also provide links to resources to help research specific topics further.

Key takeaways:

• Data table UX design involves organizing and presenting data in a way that allows users to easily find, understand, and interact with information.
• Effective data table design involves layout selection, data organization, legibility, and user task functionality.
• Data table designers should prioritize readability, create visual hierarchy, ensure responsiveness, order columns sensibly, and focus on accessibility for a better user experience.

Data table UX design and prototyping are challenging for designers using image-based design tools. These tools lack features to create basic table functionality like sorting, search, scrolling, actions, etc. 

With UXPin Merge, designers can sync a fully functioning data table or use a component library like MUI to design, prototype, and create their own table using live components. Try UXPin Merge for free.

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Data Table UI Design

First, let’s break down the data table anatomy and how these elements fit together so users can visualize information.

• Table Header: The labels for each column in the data table
• Rows: Each entry from the database
• Toolbar: Tools to work with the data (search, edit, delete, settings, etc.)
• Pagination: A UI pattern for displaying multiple pages of data
• Row checkbox: Used to select one or more rows to complete tasks, i.e., delete, copy, process, etc.
• Sorting: Allows users to sort a specific column, i.e., ascending or descending
• Horizontal rule: A horizontal line (the <hr> HTML element) separating each row

What Makes a Good Data Table?

There are four primary ingredients to designing good data tables:

1. Use the correct data table UI for the content you want to display.
2. Prioritize table layout and content correctly.
3. Make content legible.
4. The data table provides users with the functionality to complete tasks.

First and foremost, your table must be sufficient to display all the data users need. UX designers must also prioritize data correctly, with the most crucial information starting from the left.

A good data table has a clear header and description, so users know what they’re viewing. Designers must also use legible typography and adequate spacing between columns and rows to make it easy for users to read and absorb content.

Lastly (and most importantly), your data table must be user-friendly. It must solve users’ needs and be intuitive to use. There should be little or no learning curve, so users can focus on analyzing data rather than learning how to use the data table. 

How to Design User-Friendly Data Tables?

Here are some best practices for designing user-friendly data tables. 

Data Table Readability

Readability is crucial for data table UX. Designers must assess several elements to make data tables readable, including:

• Reduce visual noise: Only display content and UI elements necessary for users to read and manipulate data.
• Use legible fonts: The data table’s typeface, sizing, white space, and letter spacing must be adequate for users to read content–even if this means using a different font from the rest of your application.
• Create separation: Padding, spacing, alignment, and lines can help create separation so users can differentiate and absorb data easily.
• Consistency: Using fonts, spacing, sizing, etc., creates consistency and familiarity so users can scan tables faster to find what they need.
• Fixed headers: Keeps headers visible even when users scroll so they always have context.

Create Visual Hierarchy

Linked to readability is creating a visual hierarchy–where designers use typography, sizing, spacing, and other elements to differentiate data and make tables scannable.

• Use bold and slightly larger font sizes for column and row headers.
• Use shading to differentiate between headers and table content.
• “Zebra stripes” help create divisions between rows, making them easier to read.
• Use a contrasting color for links, so users know what content is clickable.

Data Tables Must be Responsive

UX designers must understand how users use these tables while completing day-to-day tasks to create a consistent and cohesive user experience across the platforms and products.

Data tables must be responsive so users can analyze data anywhere in the business. The sales team might want to access the data from their mobile device on the go, while warehouse employees primarily use tablets.

Order Columns According to Data Relevance

An article from the NN Group recommends, “The default order of the columns should reflect the importance of the data to the user and related columns should be adjacent.”

UX designers must arrange and group columns according to their relevance. For example, location details like address, city, country, and zip code must be together. Placing these apart would create more work for users as they scroll or scan the table to compare columns.

Data Table Accessibility

WebAIM offers several tips for Creating Accessible Tables, including:

• Table Captions: An HTML element <caption> placed after the opening table element provides context for screen readers. While HTML falls on engineers, UX designers must provide the appropriate caption description based on user research and testing.
• Identify Row and Column Headers: UX designers must use appropriate row and column headers so screen readers can identify content correctly.
• Associate the Data Cells with the Appropriate Headers: The scope attribute tells screen readers whether a header belongs to a row or column. For example, <th scope=”col”>Name</th> and <th scope=”row”>Jackie</th>. The scope attribute makes it easy for screen readers to jump around the table like a user would scanning it visually.
• Use Proportional Sizing, Rather than Absolute Sizing: Using percentages rather than fixed pixel cell sizing allows tables to automatically adjust to a screen’s dimensions, making it easier to read for visually impaired users.

More resources for data table accessibility:

• Creating Accessible Tables by WebAIM
• Accessible Tables by the University of Minnesota
• Tables Tutorial by Web Accessibility Initiative

Atomic Design for Complex Data Tables

Smashing Magazine outlines an atomic design approach to designing complex data tables. Atomic design is a technique for designing from the smallest UI element and progressively building to create more complex components, patterns, and entire user interfaces.

Smashing Magazine breaks down data tables UX using this methodology as follows:

• Atoms: Fonts, colors, icons
• Molecules: Cells, headers, and accessories
• Organisms: Rows, columns, pagination, toolbar
• Templates: The entire table

6 Great Tables UX Best Practices in Examples

Here are six examples of tables UX best practices and why they work for users.

Horizontal Scrolling for Large Datasets

Large datasets require horizontal scrolling to accommodate many columns. UX designers must decide which content is most important to users to prioritize what is always visible and what users must scroll to view.

This preference may change across an organization, so allowing users to personalize what’s visible by rearranging the columns is crucial for creating a good user experience.

It’s advisable to place identifiers in the first column and fix it so users always have a reference as they scroll. Allowing users to fix multiple columns can help when comparing different data.

Expandable Rows and Columns

Expandable or resizable columns serve two purposes for users:

1. Allow users to view cells with exessive content
2. Allow users to minimize cell widths for the content they deem less important

UX designers might also consider making rows and columns “hideable” to reduce visual noise and make it easier to read the content that matters most for the task at hand.

Expandable rows allow UX designers to include detailed information only visible when users need it. This example from CodePen shows a series of job cards with a brief description and status. Users can open the accordion to display additional notes and job costs.

Row Focus Data Table

This hover effect allows users to focus on a single row at a time. If you have multiple columns and data points, this effect enables users to highlight a row, making it easier to read. 

Here’s a real-world example of this hover effect. We built a pricing table with React-Bootstrap components. To compare features between the plans, the user can hover over the feature and quickly see what feature they are comparing. Open the preview of this UXPin’s example: Bootstrap Pricing Example.

The same effect is used in our Ant Design table. The hover effect makes the user focus on the employee they want to check. See this effect live at: Ant Design Dashboard Example.

UX designers could also blur the other rows, making picking out a single row easier. 

In a similar example, this data table highlights a specific cell with a raised hover effect.

Infinite Scroll Data Table

Infinite scroll is helpful for tables with lots of data. It’s an excellent alternative to pagination, where instead of having to click, users only have to scroll to see more content.

Column Sorting

Column sorting is essential for users to reorder data according to their preferences. For example, a warehouse manager can sort orders from the earliest first to monitor progress and address issues early. They can also sort by shipping preference and ensure that same-day orders are on track to leave before the deadline.

Inline Filters

Data table filters help users narrow their preferences to only display relevant entries. This data table example allows users to apply multiple filters to find exactly what they need. These inline filters are especially helpful for large datasets where users can eliminate irrelevant content.

How to design a table in UXPin

UXPin is an advanced prototyping tool for building interactive, high-fidelity prototypes. Instead of creating multiple static artboards to simulate one interaction, UXPin enables designers to utilize States, Variables, and Conditions to design functional components using just one artboard (‘Page’).

To insert a table in UXPin, click on the “Search All Assets” search icon (command + F / Ctrl + F), type “table” into the input field, and then click on “Table” under the “Components” heading.

Importing data into a table component

To populate the Table Component with real data, connect it to an external data source such as a JSON file, CSV file, or Google Sheet. It’s best to do this before styling the table to get a better idea of the content that you’ll be designing for.

First, you’ll need to ensure that the Layer names match that of the JSON/CSV/Google Sheet table headers. See the image below to understand how this would work with a Google Sheet.

To sync the data, select the Layers that you’d like to populate, click on the “Fill with Data” icon in the horizontal toolbar, navigate to “JSON / CSV / Sheets”, and then either click on “Browse File…” (to import data from a local JSON or CSV file) or paste a URL to an external JSON, CSV, or published-as-CSV Google Sheets file into the “Import from URL” input field.

After that, the data will appear in the Table Component (if the structure matches up correctly).

Adding sorting functionality to a table component

It’s also possible to make the data sortable using States and Interactions.

First, select all of the Layers that would be different in the new State (which in this case would be all of the Text Layers from a specific column). After that, click on the “Add state” (command + shift + S / ctrl + shift + S) icon in the horizontal toolbar and then give the new State a name using the “Set state” input field.

Next, reorder the table cells (e.g. numerically, alphabetically, or however you want). The best way to do this is by creating an alternative external data source (Google Sheets would be best in this case) and then repeating the previous steps to pull in the new data.

After that, switch back to the original State (which should be called “Base” by default).

Finally, select the relevant table header, click on the “New Interaction” icon (“+”) in the “Properties” panel, choose “Set State”, choose the relevant element under “Element”, and then choose the State that you created under “Set state” (plus any additional settings that you’d like to specify).

Styling the table component

Next, you’ll want to style the Component. It’s already structured and styled in a way that commits to the UX design best practices outlined in this article, however, you can still use the Properties panel to adapt it to your design’s visual aesthetic.

If you’re using Design Systems in UXPin, you can speed up this step by reusing your Design System’s Color Styles and Text Styles. To do this, select the Layer that you’d like to style, navigate to your UXPin Design System Library by clicking on the “Design System Libraries” icon (⌥ + 2/ alt + 2), and then selecting the Style you’d like to apply.

Don’t design from scratch. Use open-source components.

A better way is: import an open-source React components to UXPin or use one of built-in libraries. In UXPin Merge, you can find MUI, Ant design, and Bootstrap data table components. Just take them out of the library and drop them on the canvas.

Then, just import your data, adjust component properties to match your needs, and you’re ready to show your design to stakeholders. It’s done! Since the table is backed with code, you can copy it directly to your development environment like StackBlitz.

Traditionally, UX designers would need programming skills or have to rely on engineers using HTML, CSS, and Javascript to build functioning data tables. Merge puts UX designers in control, and they don’t need to write a single line of code to use components. They can also make changes and iterate without input from engineering teams. Try UXPin Merge for free.

The post Table UX Best Practices – What Makes a Good Data Table? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Google has always recommended responsive web design (RWD), especially after rolling out a big update on 4/21/15 which ranked mobile-friendly sites higher.

It doesn’t specify in the update that you must use responsive design though, just that a site be accessible on mobile, with good UX and performance.

With that in mind, let’s examine the pros and cons of adaptive and responsive design with regards to performance and UX design.

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What’s the difference between adaptive and responsive design?

So first up, what are the key differences between responsive and adaptive design?

Responsive vs Adaptive Website Design

Responsive web design is fluid and adapts to the size of the screen no matter what the target device. It uses CSS media queries to change styles based on the target device such as display type, width, height, etc., and only one of these is necessary for the responsive website to adapt to different screen sizes.

Adaptive web design, on the other hand, uses static layouts based on breakpoints that don’t respond once they’re initially loaded.

Adaptive works to detect the screen size and load the appropriate layout for it – generally you would design an adaptive site for six common screen widths:

• 320
• 480
• 760
• 960
• 1200
• 1600.

On the surface, it appears that adaptive requires more work as you have to design layouts for a minimum of six widths. However, responsiveness can be more complex as improper use of media queries (or indeed not using them at all) can make for display and performance issues.

The latter in particular has created a lot of discussion over the past few years as it’s been the case that many sites deliver the full desktop model which, even if it’s not loading on the mobile device, slows sites down considerably. To get around this, you can use media queries–but there will be a few tradeoffs since a responsive site is never going to be as quick as a dedicated mobile site.

How do you tell if a website is responsive or adaptive?

Responsive design offers a more fluid and flexible approach that dynamically adjusts to different screen sizes, while adaptive design provides predefined layouts tailored to specific devices or screen sizes through server-side detection.

To recognize an adaptive website, you might notice that the layout changes abruptly when accessing the site from different devices or screen sizes, as it’s loading predefined layouts rather than fluidly adjusting to the screen size.

Responsive websites use fluid grids, so to identify a responsive website, you can simply resize your browser window or view the site on different devices and observe how the layout and content rearrange themselves to fit the screen size.

Why use adaptive web design?

Adaptive is useful for retrofitting an existing site in order to make it more suitable for mobile phones. This allows you to take control of the design and web development for specific, multiple viewports.

The number of viewports that you choose to design for is entirely up to you, your company, and your overall budget. It does, however, afford you a certain amount of control (for example over content and layout) that you won’t necessarily have using responsive design.

Generally, you would begin by designing for a low-resolution viewport and work your way up to ensure that the UI design doesn’t become constrained by the content, and that usability isn’t lost.

As mentioned previously, it’s standard to design for six resolutions. However, you can make a more informed decision by looking at your web analytics for the most commonly used devices and then designing for those viewports.

If you want to design an adaptive website from scratch, that’s OK too. Start again by designing for the lowest resolution and work your way up. You can then use media queries to expand the layout for higher resolution viewports. However, if you do UI design for different screen sizes, you may find that this causes the layout to ‘jump’ when resizing a window to a smaller or bigger device screen.

It can be extra work designing and developing a site with adaptive for multiple viewports so it’s usually used for retrofitting.

3 examples of adaptive web design

When looking for examples of sites using adaptive web design, you’ll likely find them on the websites of large companies and corporations. Since many of these organizations have been around since before the advent of mobile, it is far easier (and cheaper) for them to retrofit their enormous websites with adaptive web designs rather than more complex responsive re-design options. 

Here, we look at how some of the world’s biggest companies have employed adaptive web design solutions in giving their websites the contemporary design elements they need to meet Google’s mobile-friendly rankings factors.

Amazon

The eCommerce titan Amazon quickly found that its website needed an adaptive design overhaul. This would help them ensure that its global customer base would enjoy faster page load speeds (a critical Google rankings factor) and a consistent UX, no matter which device they were accessing the site from. 

Amazon’s adaptive web design approach aligns the full-site experience with its branded apps, allowing users to switch between the two and enjoy the same functionality and workflow arrangement, irrespective of the aesthetic web and app design differences. Powered by adaptive design templates that ensure this consistency across all devices, users get to browse, shop, and checkout without having to learn how to navigate differently. 

This approach allows Amazon to ensure that page load speeds are optimized and that users are just as likely to access the eCommerce platform from a desktop website as a mobile. With elements like the all-important search bar remaining the focal point of the design layout across all formats, despite various other features optimized for mobile, Amazon’s adaptive design approach is a successful example of how to keep things efficient and consistent.

USA Today

When America’s favorite daily newspaper chose to revamp its website to ensure that its online news source remained prominent, USA Today took a tech-savvy adaptive web design approach – one that responsive web design simply couldn’t replicate. 

The newspaper adopted a technology that allows its website and applications to identify the device, operating system, and screen size being used, and adapts the content accordingly. This innovative approach allowed developers to create an experience that isn’t limited to the six common screen widths, ensuring that users received a unique experience.

IHG

When considering adaptive web design approaches, hospitality companies wouldn’t usually be top of mind.

But once IHG realized that its customers were looking for a faster web and app booking experience that allowed them to make reservations faster, irrespective of whether they were doing it on mobile or their PCs, the hotel chain responded accordingly.

IHG employed an adaptive web design approach that took advantage of accessible GPS data and location services – features you find on nearly all mobile devices. This allowed the group to develop an adaptive website interface that encourages on-the-go booking with local hotels, allowing users to review reservations and access available offers quickly and with ease.

Why use responsive web design?

The majority of new sites now use responsive, which has been made easier for less experienced designers and developers, thanks to the availability of themes accessible through CMS systems such as WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.

Responsive design doesn’t offer as much control as adaptive, but takes much less work to both build and maintain. Responsive layouts are also fluid, and whilst adaptive can and do use percentages to give a more fluid feel when scaling, these can again cause a jump when a window is resized. For example, in the image below, which shows a fluid layout, the designer is using percentage widths so that the view will be adjusted for each user.

Photo credit: Smashing Magazine

With responsive, you will be designing with all layouts in mind and this, of course, can confuse the process and make it quite complex. This means that you should focus on creating a viewport for mid-resolution and you can then use media queries to adjust for low and high resolutions later on.

So in essence, it’s usually better to use responsive for new projects, and adaptive for retrofits.

Check out how to make your design responsive: 8 Steps to Responsive Design.

3 examples of responsive web design

Responsive web design is the go-to for newer sites that demand a more fluid experience among users or for Google to pay more attention to. It is also the design approach of choice for many of the leading technology and design firms around the world, owing to the ease with which developers and designers can create and maintain responsive sites. 

Next, we look at some of the best examples of responsive web design-based sites and how they affect their sites’ performance and UX. All while delivering on the demands of big brands operating within the eCommerce and messaging space.

Slack

One of the biggest reasons for Slack’s surging popularity among businesses is the ease with which users can adopt and use the messaging app. Boasting a straightforward interface coupled with a raft of integration and optimization features, Slack’s simplicity and ‘human’ feel are reflected in its impressive responsive web design.

The app’s famous adaptability between desktop and mobile is highlighted by how seamlessly the display transitions and rearranges its layout. By using a Flexbox and CSS Grid Layout, Slack’s responsive interface is a step above. 

All this means that Slack’s website needs to match the app, allowing users to experience the same simplicity and ease of use on their mobile devices as they do on their work laptops and PCs.

Shopify

Shopify has taken a different route to its responsive web design. It took the website and app in different directions and chose device-choice optimization over a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.

Designers at Shopify felt that no matter the screen size, their design elements should match the screen the user was using. So, in order to ensure that all users enjoy a consistent UX (even if that meant changing things up), Shopify designed their site to respond according to the device’s screen size. It also delivered different CTAs and illustrations in different sizes and at different locations on the page. 

While PCs and tablets display Shopify CTAs and images to the right of the form, on mobile, you’ll find those elements below it and in the center. This responsive design approach allows users to enjoy a more divergent UX while still being able to experience optimized interaction capabilities, no matter the size of their screen.

Dribbble

Anyone who uses creative design hub Dribbble will likely agree that the self-promotion and social networking platform has aced its responsive web design. The platform’s website represents an excellent example of a flexible space that enhances the browsing experience by actively responding to the device on which it is being viewed. 

Dribbble’s website employs a flexible grid layout that works in concert with the screen dimensions. It actively responds to the user’s interactions by adapting the layout into grid columns that shift according to the device. This means that designers can adjust the items displayed on the grid to optimize for visibility and item count. As a result, users can enjoy a balanced experience that doesn’t appear cluttered or disorganized. 

Users accessing the site on a 13” laptop or PC screen will see a 4×3 grid configuration, while those using a smaller screen will be able to see the same portfolio presented in a single-column format.

Adaptive vs. Responsive? Consider Site Speed, Content, and UX

As discussed earlier, responsive sites can suffer when it comes to site speed (if they aren’t properly implemented).

Responsive also requires more in the way of coding in order to ensure that the site fits each and every screen that accesses it. However, the extra work is debatable (compared to adaptive design) since adaptive design requires that you develop and maintain separate HTML and CSS code for each layout. Modifying adaptive sites is also more complex since it’s likely you’ll have to ensure that everything is still working sitewide (such as SEO, content, and links) when it’s time for implementation.

You should, of course, also consider the user experience. Because responsive essentially shuffles the content around in order to fluidly fit the device window, you will need to pay particular attention to the visual hierarchy of the design as it shifts around.

According to Nielsen Norman Group, “Responsive design often turns into solving a puzzle — how to reorganize elements on larger pages to fit skinnier, longer pages or vice versa. However, ensuring that elements fit within a page is not enough. For a responsive design to be successful, the design must also be usable at all screen resolutions and sizes.”

So there are no shortcuts to whichever technique you decide to use – both require the work that comes with creating a site that’s essentially one-size-fits-all. Responsive has a slight edge, as you won’t, going forward, need to spend an awful lot of time in site maintenance.

Which is Better: Responsive or Adaptive Design?

When it comes down to it, the key is to consider your audience first and foremost no matter what design technique you adopt. Once you know exactly who they are and what types of devices they tend to access the site on, then it’s easier to design with them in mind when it comes to different layouts, content, and so on.

When it comes down to it, the key is to consider your audience first and foremost no matter what design technique you adopt. Once you know exactly who they are and what types of devices they tend to access the site on, then it’s easier to design with them in mind when it comes to different layouts, content, and so on.

It will also depend largely on whether you have an existing site to work with or you’re starting from scratch. Responsive design has become the go-to design technique and it’s thought that around 1/8 websites now use responsive (while there’s little to no data on how many use adaptive). Adoption rates for responsive are growing quickly too and have almost reached the same level as standalone mobile sites.

With all of that in mind, it’s safe to say that responsive is usually the preferred technique if only because of the ongoing work that adaptive design demands.

However, if a client or company has the budget, then adaptive might be a better choice, according to a test carried out by Catchpoint. They built two web pages in WordPress, one using the standard WP TwentyFourteen responsive theme and the other using a plugin called Wiziapp.

The plugin serves a mobile theme to users depending on the device they’re accessing the web pages from and also offers advanced configuration options so that you can further streamline the process.

The results in load time speak for themselves:

It should be pointed out that no optimization was carried out at all, but this does show that the responsive site is downloading everything that is required for the desktop computer. So right out of the box, the theme doesn’t offer a very good performance at all.

Again, this can be overcome using media queries, but the above serves as a good example of why responsive UX design – whilst being a popular choice – is not always the best for smartphones. Until something better comes along though, it’s difficult to know what we can do about it other than learn how to properly code and implement a great responsive site.

So the conclusion?

Responsive design will remain popular, but that might be because we have not yet found a decent solution to the heavy maintenance that adaptive demands. Adaptive web design hasn’t died out though, despite the web’s apparent love of responsive, so it’s possible – in theory at least – that we’ll see some improvements emerge yet that will blow responsive web design out of the water.

Responsive vs Adaptive Website Design – Common Mistakes 

Design is an iterative process, requiring some degree of trial and error before figuring out what works – and what doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean that mastering the responsive vs adaptive web design field requires designers to endure painful failures before nailing it. 

We can still count on avoiding some of the most common mistakes that tend to slow the process.

Too much focus on desktop versions

Mobile design is fast hauling in its desktop-based counterpart, delivering an optimized UX on smaller devices that oftentimes beats out design choices seen on PCs and laptops. But most things online began as desktop-based sites, with mobile versions only coming along later. This has left many platforms, tools, and sites leaning towards desktop origins, and mobile seen as a supplementary need.

Designers need to start adapting to a mobile-first work approach, moving away from their desktop-focused mentality and focusing on the potential that design has to work for mobile and how much more of an impact this can have on the evolution of design thinking. 

This means transitioning towards an approach rooted in designing for multiple screen sizes, uncoupled from the conventional six that have been touted as the most likely to require a dedicated design, and targeting percentages rather than fixed ratios. This doesn’t mean discounting desktop design altogether, but rather balancing it with mobile.

Not considering gestures 

With most of today’s mobile devices boasting touch functionality, it is only a matter of time before users can navigate a website without making contact with any hardware or surfaces. Gestures are an often overlooked responsive web design element with massive potential. 

From using gestures to zoom, swipe, scroll, and return to delivering instructions and executing complex commands, responsive design is fertile ground for taking these movements to the next level. Yet designers continue to bypass this potentially revolutionary aspect of design. Primarily, due to the complexity of developing a gesture architecture that allows for consistent navigation across all devices. 

One possible solution would be to ensure that a website follows a uniform structure that replicates on other devices and provides ease of use and accuracy.

Buttons are too small 

Anybody who has ever dealt with an app that has buttons too small to hit accurately will agree that this is one of the most frustrating design issues on mobile. While desktop versions enjoy the benefit of accurate mouse cursors, thumbs and fingers have a habit of missing their mark on smaller screens and mobile devices. 

Sometimes responsive design looking to optimize layouts and available space will tend to bunch clickable elements together or shrink them down as they scale with smaller screens. This can cause frustration among users and even cause a site’s accuracy, navigability, and UX to degrade.  

Developers must pay attention to how buttons will be affected by their responsive design approach, considering that not all thumbs, fingers and eyes were created equal.

Putting design over functionality 

While a website that looks good on both desktop and mobile is important, a website should, first and foremost, work. Users who access an attractive site will naturally assume that an equivalent amount of effort has been invested in its utility. So, one can imagine the anger at a website that doesn’t work as well as it looks. Anger that can lead to significant drops in traffic and reputation.

The same goes for the level of functionality between desktop and mobile. A desktop site that sets a benchmark for good design and operability only to fail miserably on the mobile front would be better off not even bothering with mobile at all. 

Go beyond developer perceptions by testing with different niches and using effective prototyping to ensure that the design matches its functionality.

Having a separate URL for mobile 

Making use of separate URLs between desktop and mobile website versions is a design killer, wasting precious time and damaging your search rankings. Aside from frustrating users by ferrying them back and forth between each version, using multiple URLs goes against SEO best practices and are often unnecessary.

In some cases, however, using multiple URLs can allow developers to create lightweight mobile versions of websites that perform better on mobile devices, though only in instances where the desktop version is very anti-mobile.

Not accounting for future maintenance and development costs

Development costs money, and oftentimes, design decisions are taken based on short-term financial considerations without thinking about what the future holds.

While adaptive web design requires higher upfront investment owing to the labor-intensive nature of its development, AWD maintenance costs generally remain stable down the line. 

Responsive web design, on the other hand, can lead to unexpected cost implications. However, the rewards stemming from an improved UX may offset those financial risks.

Design UI in UXPin

If you’d like to start mocking up your own adaptive user interface design, you can do so with UXPin. The collaborative platform comes with pre-set and custom breakpoints. Once you’re done, activate Spec Mode to automate your design handoff to developers.

Use UXPin to build prototypes for mobiles, desktops, and everything in between. Try various interactive prototyping features and make your design easy to understand for stakeholders and engineers. Start a free trial.

The post Responsive Design vs. Adaptive Design: What’s the Best Choice for Designers? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Figma is a great tool for creating beautiful mockups and collaborating in real-time with other designers. It is one of the best for building a portfolio and showing off your skills. When working in an enterprise-level company, Figma might not be enough, as it’s difficult to translate its design into code.

This is where UXPin comes in. It helps designers and developers communicate and use a shared library of UI components which can be copied from design to development workflow. No translation needed. That’s why we decided to build a Figma plugin and help you bring Figma design to UXPin for more robust prototyping. Sign up for a free trial to build your first UXPin prototype today!

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Design in Figma. Prototype in UXPin.

We get it. You love designing in Figma! But, you also prefer the higher fidelity and functionality you get from prototyping in UXPin. If this is you, UXPin’s Figma plugin gives you the best of both worlds–design your mockups in Figma, and copy your screens to UXPin for prototyping.

While this workflow offers the best of both worlds–and we encourage teams to implement solutions that work best for your product and circumstances–designers must use two tools when they can use UXPin for everything. UXPin is effective as a design and prototyping tool and comes packed with features to scale UX beyond what’s possible in any image-based tool.

Why does it make sense to prototype in UXPin vs. Figma?

Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch, and others render static vector graphics, meaning designers can’t replicate code, and when they do, it takes a lot of effort, workarounds, and additional tools.

UXPin is a code-based design tool. This doesn’t mean designers work with code; UXPin renders HTML, CSS, and Javascript behind the scenes to give designers the same fidelity and functionality as code.

These four features powered by code allow designers to create more advanced prototypes in UXPin.

States

UXPin States allows designers to create multiple states for a single component. For example, a button can have several states, which include different properties triggered by user interactions.

States also allow designers to create complex components like functioning dropdown menus, steppers, carousels, accordions, and more.

Interactions

Designers can create complex UXPin Interactions constrained by code rather than a design tool’s limitations. UXPin also offers many Triggers, Actions, and Animations to design immersive prototype experiences.

Conditional Interactions with “if-then” and “if-else” conditions allow design teams to create dynamic prototypes that respond to user inputs and triggers. This Javascript-like interactivity lets designers see how design decisions impact the user experience and pinpoint areas for improvement.

With these realistic interactions, stakeholders and engineers need little explanation making the feedback process and design handoffs more productive.

Variables

It’s impossible to test forms in most design tools, including Figma. Why? Because the fields are images rather than inputs. In UXPin, form fields function as if they were developed by an engineer. UXPin gives designers text inputs, checkboxes, radios, selects/dropdowns, multi-selects, and buttons ready to use out of the box.

With Variables, designers can capture user inputs from prototypes and use that data elsewhere in the application. For example, capturing a user’s information during signup and using the name field to create a personalized welcome message.

Expressions

UXPin’s Expressions enable designers to take prototyping far beyond the possibilities of any other design tool. Validate passwords and other form fields, design a functioning shopping cart that updates based on user interactions, create dynamic error messages, and more.

When combined with other UXPin features like States, Interactions, and Variables, Expressions enable designers to build prototypes, and user flows indistinguishable from code.

Learn more about these and other advanced UXPin features in this YouTube tutorial from UX design influencer Jesse Showalter.

5 Reasons to Turn Your Figma Mockups into Interactive UXPin Prototypes

1. High-Fidelity Prototyping

Figma: Beautiful-looking vector mockups that unfortunately don’t replicate real-like functionality or fidelity, making prototypes challenging to interpret for devs and stakeholders.

UXPin: Code-like fidelity and functionality allow designers to create immersive, dynamic prototype experiences indistinguishable from the final product–less documentation, smoother design handoffs, and faster time-to-market.

There is a big difference between a high-fidelity mockup (what Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, etc. produce) vs. a high-fidelity prototype that looks and feels like the final product. UXPin offers genuine high-fidelity results where prototypes need little or no explanation because they respond to user interactions like code.

2. Bridging the Gap Between UI Design and REAL Prototypes

Figma: Design and develop UI design ideas in Figma

UXPin: Push past Figma’s limitations to create advanced prototypes in UXPin

While Figma offers the features to create beautiful designs and mockups, designers hit a brick wall at the prototyping stage. UXPin’s Figma plugin allows design teams to leverage the best qualities of both tools to create high-fidelity prototypes in UXPin.

Make changes and iterate on UI designs in UXPin, or only use it as a prototyping tool using Figma for designing and editing–the choice is yours!

3. Enhanced User Testing

Figma: Testing limited to basic click/tap interactions, user flows, and navigation

UXPin: Immersive prototypes that accurately replicate the final product

Figma’s vector-based constraints and limitations prevent accurate testing. Designers must use multiple frames to achieve basic interactivity, and many components are impossible to reproduce.

As a code-based design tool, UXPin enables designers to build prototypes limited only by  the feasibility of what devs can build–without writing a single line of code! These complex, dynamic prototypes give design teams valuable insights to improve the user experience and identify business opportunities.

Designers also pinpoint critical usability and accessibility issues when testing with UXPin prototypes, resulting in less UX debt and higher quality design project outcomes.

4. Faster Iterations

Figma: Multiple frames and components to mimic end-product’s behavior–changes and redesigns are time-consuming

UXPin: Uses layers and states on a single screen allowing changes in a few clicks

One of the challenges with prototyping in Figma is that designers must create multiple frames and components to mimic code’s interactivity. These interactions feel awkward and non-intuitive. They’re time-consuming to design and make changes.

In UXPin, designers work with pages and layers. Instead of switching between multiple frames and pages, designers work on a single canvas, making changes via the Properties Panel. This workflow is more intuitive and facilitates faster iterations so that designers can solve issues much quicker.

5. Smoother Design Handoffs

Figma: Lots of documentation, back and forth comms with devs, videos/GIFs to mimic interactions, and links to other tools

UXPin: Prototypes replicate the end-product experience and interactivity, reducing the need for lengthy documentation and additional tools

Designers often use tools like After Effects and others to replicate motion and interactions. Why? Because design tools lack fidelity and functionality. Designers also create transitions and interactions that engineers can’t reproduce due to technical constraints. Switching between multiple tools and files is also confusing, time-consuming, and increases errors.

With UXPin, designers don’t have to use additional tools because they can design components and interactions that accurately mimic code. No need for videos/GIFs, back-and-forth communication, and long-winded PDFs to explain what the prototype is supposed to do.

Designers can create documentation in UXPin with annotations on prototypes, so engineers and stakeholders don’t have to switch between multiple files–everything is in one place! Devs and stakeholders can use UXPin’s Comments on Preview to ask questions, tag team members, and even assign comments for edits.

With realistic prototypes, supporting documentation, and collaboration in one place, design handoffs are smoother with less friction in UXPin.

UXPin–An End-to-End Design Solution

While you can design in Figma and prototype in UXPin, it means using two tools when you only need one! UXPin offers a comparable design experience to Figma, including collaboration, wireframing, information architecture design, mockups, and designing components from scratch!

With UXPin’s end-to-end design solution, designers don’t need to switch between tools because they can do everything inside UXPin, including building, managing, and sharing a design system.

Reducing tools not only streamlines UX workflows but also reduces costs, allowing design leaders to reallocate valuable resources elsewhere.

Stakeholders have little time or patience to decipher image-based prototypes and the accompanying documentation. UXPin prototypes need less explanation, allowing stakeholders to enjoy a final product experience. This immersive experience elicits meaningful stakeholder feedback while increasing buy-in for design solutions.

Say goodbye to the limitations of image-based design, and hello to enhanced prototyping, collaboration, and design outcomes with UXPin. Discover how UXPin can revolutionize your product design workflows and deliver exceptional user experiences to your customers. Sign up for a free trial.

The post Turn Figma Designs into Interactive Prototypes appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Buttons are essential components in any digital product. While there are many ways to design a button, designers must follow principles and best practices to create familiar and intuitive user experiences.

Button design is more than choosing a shape and color. Designers must consider a button’s states, placement, size, responsiveness, consistency, icon usage, suitable text/labels, and more.

Design beautiful UI elements that look and function like code components using UXPin. Sign up for a free trial to explore the world’s most advanced design, prototyping, and testing tool.

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What is a Button?

A button in UI and UX design is a graphical element typically appearing as a clickable area on a digital interface. Its primary purpose is to convey a specific call to action (CTA), thereby directing user interaction within the system.

Buttons serve as interactive cues informing users that an action will occur upon activation. Through various visual cues such as color, text, and states, including disabled states when applicable, buttons effectively communicate with users, guiding them through the interface and facilitating desired interactions.

Despite its seemingly straightforward nature, the strategic implementation of buttons is crucial for ensuring intuitive and efficient user experiences across digital platforms.

Buttons vs links

Many digital products and websites use buttons and links incorrectly. There is a simple rule to follow when deciding between a button or link: Links are for navigation, and buttons are for performing actions.

Types of button UI

There are four types of buttons, and each button conveys a different message to users:

• Contained Button: Often used as the primary button for CTAs and important actions. Contained buttons use a background color with contrasting text.
• Outlined Button: Also referred to as a secondary or ghost button, and often placed next to a primary button as an alternative action, like “Cancel” instead of “Submit.” Outlined buttons use a transparent background with a contrasting border and text.
• Text Button: Also called a flat button and often used for low important actions, like date pickers. Text buttons have no background or border, with only the label colored and visible.
• Toggle Button: Designers use toggle buttons for two or more related actions–like switching dark/light mode on an app or bold, italic, and underline in word processors. Designers use states to indicate which option is active.

Modern mobile apps also use a floating action button (FAB) for important actions. Designers often place FABs at the bottom of the screen so that it’s a thumb’s reach from the user.

The basics of button UI design

Designers and engineers can modify several button properties:

• Background – The background of a button refers to the color or image that fills the area behind the button’s content. It’s essential for providing visual contrast and emphasis, helping the button stand out against the surrounding interface elements.
• Label – The label of a button is the text or symbol displayed on its surface, conveying the action or function associated with the button. A clear and concise label ensures users understand the purpose of the button and encourages interaction.
• Icon – An icon is a graphical symbol or representation often used alongside or instead of text in a button. Icons can enhance visual communication, particularly for actions with universally recognized symbols, and contribute to a clean and minimalist design.
• Padding – Padding refers to the space between the content of a button (such as text or icon) and its edges. Adequate padding ensures that the button’s content is visually separated from its border, improving readability and touchability on both desktop and mobile devices.
• Margin – Margin is the space around the outside of a button, separating it from neighboring elements. Proper margin helps maintain visual balance and prevents overcrowding, allowing users to interact with buttons without accidental touches or clicks.
• Border – The border of a button is the visible line or stroke that outlines its shape. Borders can be solid or dashed, and they contribute to the button’s visual appearance and hierarchy within the interface.
• Border radius – Border radius refers to the curvature of the button’s corners. Applying a border radius creates rounded corners, softening the button’s appearance and adding a touch of visual elegance to the design.
• Drop shadow – A drop shadow is a visual effect that creates the illusion of depth by adding a shadow beneath the button. This effect helps lift the button from the background, making it appear more prominent and tactile. Drop shadows can enhance the overall aesthetics and usability of a button in UI design.

What are typical button UI states?

Designers use states to provide context and communicate with users. There are six types of button states. We explain them briefly here, but if you want to read about them at length, we have a dedicated article about button states.

1. Default: How a button looks without any state. A default button could be contained, outlined, or flat, depending on your UI design and design system
2. Active: Tells the user they have pressed the button
3. Hover: Activated when a mouse cursor hovers over a button. Hover tells the user this is a clickable element
4. Focus: Used to indicate selection when using the keyboard or assistive technologies
5. Disabled: Indicates the user can’t click the button until completing another task
6. Loading: Communicates the system is processing the user’s action

What are the best practices for designing button UI?

Designers must follow certain principles for designing buttons and user interfaces. Use these button design best practices to guide your next project.

Button Hierarchy and Placement

Designers must consider button hierarchy and placement to provide users with clarity and highlight the most important action. Google’s Material Design recommends designers must create emphasis through color:

• High emphasis (Primary): Use a bright color, preferably a contained button, to show this button is most important. Avoid using more than one high-emphasis button on a single screen.
• Medium emphasis (Secondary): Use a lighter shade of your high-emphasis color to signify this button is less important. 
• Low emphasis (Tertiary): Use a text button or outlined button with a transparent background to show users its low importance.

By applying button hierarchy principles, users can complete important actions without much thought. If you use a single button for every action, users will have to examine each to determine which one they must press.

Correct button placement is also essential to guide users through a digital product. If you place two buttons side-by-side, always use a contained button as the primary action and outlined or text button for the secondary action. 

For example, if you have “Save” and “Cancel” at the bottom of a form, “Save” would be the primary action with the higher emphasis.

Button Consistency

Designers must use buttons consistently throughout a digital product. If you use a contained button for a primary action on one screen, repeat this choice throughout.

Designers must also be consistent with button sizes, fonts, icons, colors, border radius, whitespace, and other properties to create a familiar user experience that’s easy to navigate.

Button Sizing & Spacing

Size matters when it comes to buttons, especially on mobile applications where users use their fingers. Designers must use appropriate button size and spacing to ensure users don’t accidentally hit another element. 

Designer Taras Bakusevych recommends making UI elements a minimum of 48×48 pixels to avoid touch target errors. 

Button Labels

Labels should be as short and meaningful as possible. Designers must also keep labels on a single line for legibility. 

Button text language is also critical for conveying the correct message and action to users. For example, if you’re removing a song from a playlist, the correct phrasing would be “Remove” instead of “Delete.” Delete might confuse the user into thinking they’re deleting the song from their device or application.

Capitalization is also a critical factor designers must consider. Google Material Design recommends using uppercase for languages that allow it, while UX Movement says to use sentence-style capitalization.

The argument for sentence-style capitalization is better for users with reading disabilities like dyslexia. Google reasons that uppercase “is to distinguish the text label from surrounding text.”

The best option is to test your product with users. Color, contrast, size, UI layout, and many factors impact legibility, so there is no one-size-fits-all for capitalization.

Button Accessibility

Accessibility is a critical factor in modern UX design and product development. Designers must test UIs using tools and diverse usability participants to ensure buttons and other UI elements meet accessibility standards.

The color contrast between the label and background is one of the biggest considerations for button accessibility. With UXPin’s built-in accessibility features, designers can test color blindness and contrast on the fly–keeping them focused in UXPin rather than turning to external tools.

Label size, spacing, and padding can also impact accessibility. These properties are harder to test using tools, so designers must use usability testing to get meaningful results.

Devices & Screen Sizes

Recognizing how buttons look across different devices and screen sizes is crucial for designers. For example, dialog boxes look completely different on Apple devices compared to Android. The floating action button also looks different on iOS vs. Android.

Designers also need to consider how buttons will appear across multiple screen widths. For example, a button with a long label might not look the same on mobile vs. desktop.

Designing Buttons in UXPin

Designing buttons using an image-based design tool can be challenging. The static nature of image-based tools means buttons lack interactivity, functionality, and fidelity.

With UXPin’s code-based design tool, designers can create authentic user experiences with components that look and function like code. Here are some of UXPin’s advanced features to enhance your button design.

Components

Designers can build buttons from scratch and save them as Components to reuse throughout the design. Designers can also share these components through a shared design system to maintain consistency throughout the team.

States

UXPin States allow designers to create multiple states for a single UI component, like a button. For example, you can design the six-button states mentioned above, each with different properties that change according to user and system actions.

Designers can also use UXPin’s States for other components like carousels, dropdown navigation, accordions, and more.

Interactions

Create code-like interactivity using UXPin’s Interactions. Designers can choose from an extensive list of triggers and actions for desktop and mobile interactions. 

UXPin takes interactivity one step further with Conditional Interactions, allowing you to create dynamic, unique experiences based on user and system actions.

Variables & Expressions

With Variables and Expressions, designers can build high-fidelity prototypes with interactivity mirroring code.

For example, using UXPin Variables, designers can create a dynamic pay button that displays a variable total from a shopping cart, “Pay $25.”

You can also use Variables to create a personalized user experience during testing, like a welcome message with the name from user input or populating a profile page.

With Expressions, designers can validate form fields, like emails and passwords, and even disable a button until the user completes a form’s required fields.

With UXPin’s advanced prototyping features, the possibilities are endless. Designers can design prototypes that look and function like code, saving countless hours developing an identical prototype simply for testing purposes.

Sign up for a free trial and start building your first UXPin prototype immediately. Install one of UXPin’s free example apps to see how to create working buttons and other UI components.

The post Button Design – Get Site Visitors to Actually Click Your Buttons appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

There are many software and web development roles and responsibilities–from initial concept to design and delivery, QA, and lifecycle management. UI design and UI development are two crucial roles that impact how users engage and interact with a user interface.

This article compares the practice of UI design vs. UI development, the people behind these roles, and how they work together to deliver digital products.

Key takeaways:

• UI design is the process of designing user interface of a product while UI development is the process of programming this design.
• UI design and UI development appear on opposite ends of the software development process.
• UI designers and UI developers work together to create products that are feasible, desirable, and viable.

Build designs of user interfaces that can be quickly developed. Use React, Storybook or npm components in UXPin’s design editor and create production-ready prototypes on the fly. Discover UXPin Merge.

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What is UI Design?

UI design (User Interface Design) is the process of designing user interface elements, layouts, and interactions–everything users see and interact with. These elements include images, animations, sliders, text fields, buttons, etc. Like user experience design, UI design decisions are based on user needs and testing.

What does a UI designer do?

A UI designer is responsible for designing the visual elements of a digital product or application that users interact with. Their primary focus is on creating a user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing interface that not only enhances the overall user experience, but also communicates what actions are possible within a given user interface (clicking a button, navigating to the homepage, typing in text.)

What are UI designer skills and responsibilities?

UI designers are responsible for the UI design process. Their role includes:

• Product aesthetics: branding, visual design
• Research: understanding context of use and users
• Testing: making sure that design is easy to follow for the user
• Design: creating prototypes, mockups, interaction design, animations, viewport layouts (responsive design)

What are UI designer’s qualities and skill set?

• Visually creative
• Web design
• Graphic design
• Design principles and design thinking
• Interested in visual design
• User journeys and personas
• User research
• Typography
• Balances form with function
• Looks at user interaction and behavior
• Task orientated

What is UI Design Process?

UI designers follow the same design thinking process as other UX professionals but complete different activities within the framework:

• Empathize: focuses on the user’s environment, movements, and actions
• Define: focuses on each step users need to take to achieve their goals
• Ideate: looks at the elements and components users will need to navigate a product
• Prototype: designs mockups and interactivity for high-fidelity prototypes
• Test: tests how users interact with the product and ask practical questions

Further reading: UX vs. UI Design – The Differences You Need to Know.

What Software does a UI Designer Use?

UI designers generally use the same design tools and software as other UX designers. These tools allow them to design, prototype, and test user interfaces.

The goal for any UI designer is to create high-fidelity prototypes that look and function like the final product. Code-based design tools like UXPin have revolutionized how UI designers prototype and test digital products.

Some of UXPin’s advanced prototyping features include:

• States: Create multiple states for a single component with separate properties for interactions and system changes.
• Conditional Interactions: Create dynamic user experiences with Javascript-like “if-then” and “if-else” rules that respond to user and system actions.
• Variables: Store user inputs and take actions based on that data–like displaying a customized welcome message from the user’s name input.
• Expressions: Write Javascript-like functions that perform complex tasks, like form validation, computational formatting, and more.

Discover these and more advanced UXPin features with a free 14-day trial–no payment details necessary!

What is UI Development?

UI development is the process of programming client-facing interfaces. Like UI design, the UI development process includes writing code for images, animations, sliders, text fields, buttons, etc.

What is a UI developer?

A UI developer is responsible for implementing the visual design of a website or application. While UI designers focus on creating the overall look and feel of the interface, UI developers bring those designs to life by writing the code that enables the interface to function on the web or within an application.

What are UI developer skills and responsibilities?

Depending on the product and organization structure, the UI development role might fall on a front-end developer, UX engineer, or full-stack engineer. Their responsibilities include (these will vary depending on the engineering team’s structure):

• UI component development
• UI maintenance
• Styling architecture
• Implementation
• Technical feasibility
• Backlog management
• Performance
• Query architecture
• Search engine optimization

What is the difference between Front-End Development vs. Back-End Development?

Engineers divide programming into two separate disciplines, front-end, and back-end development.

• Front-end development: Focuses on developing “client-facing” interfaces using HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
• Back-end development: Write server-side code to connect front-end interfaces to databases, APIs, authentication, etc. Some programming languages include Java, Ruby, Python, and Javascript, to name a few.

Further reading: Front-End vs. Back-End: What’s the Difference?

What Software does a UI Developer Use?

Like any engineer, UI developers use an integrated development environment (IDE) to examine and write code. Modern IDEs feature various extensions to interface with engineering tools like Git, package managers, repositories, APIs, etc.

Further reading: The 7 Essential Tools for Frontend Web Development.

UI Design vs. UI Development

With UI design and UI development defined, it’s clear to see these disciplines appear on opposite ends of the software development process. UI design happens during the design process, while UI development occurs during the engineering process. 

While these are separate disciplines, UI designers and UI engineers must work together to deliver a successful final product.

It’s important to note that not every organization has a UI designer and UI engineer role. Here are some positions that might fulfill these UI roles and responsibilities:

• UI design: UX engineer, visual designer, graphic designer
• UI development: Front-end developer, UX engineer/UX developer, full-stack engineer

How UI Designers and UI Developers Work Together

Here is a typical workflow demonstrating how a UI designer and UI developer would collaborate on a project:

1. UI designers start a design project with various forms of UX research to understand users, competition, the market, product, etc. They use user-centered design processes to understand the problem from a user’s point of view.
2. UI designers will meet with UI developers early in the design process to discuss technical limitations, design handoff procedures, and documentation requirements.
3. UI designers work with other UX designers to design, prototype, and test user interfaces, layouts, and components. In some instances, the UI developer might collaborate with the design team to build basic code prototypes to test complex UI components.
4. Once the design process is complete, UI designers prepare prototypes and documentation for the design handoff.
5. UI designers and UI developers might meet to discuss designs and ensure engineers understand everything correctly during the design handoff process. 
6. UI developers work with the rest of the engineering team to convert designs into functioning code.
7. UI designers work with the design and product teams to complete the QA (quality assurance) process to ensure the final release meets design specifications.

The Importance of UI designer and UI developer collaboration

Modern software development relies on exceptional UI design and development. 

Designers ensure the product meets users’ needs and thoroughly test user interfaces and UI components to ensure they meet usability and accessibility standards. Without this prototyping and testing phase, usability issues impact the product, resulting in a poor user experience resulting in avoidable costs on multiple fronts–customer service, rework, losing customers, etc.

UI developers also play a crucial role in delivering successful software releases. They must ensure the final UI meets design specs and test code for bugs and performance. They’re also responsible for managing code, including updates to packages, APIs, security, etc., to ensure the product maintains its integrity and consistency over time.

To achieve this, designers and engineers must collaborate throughout the software development process–which can be challenging in large organizations where silos and poor communication are common.

UI designers and UI developers often work with DesignOps and DevOps to help bridge the gap between these disciplines to improve operational processes and collaboration.

Better Designer-Developer Collaboration With UXPin Merge

The Drift Challenge

One of the challenges designers and engineers face is that they speak different languages. 

• Designers = image-based static mockups and prototypes
• Engineers = code, browsers, operating systems, databases, etc.

Without in-depth knowledge and experience of one another’s disciplines, it’s hard for designers and programmers to understand the other’s limitations, constraints, and other challenges. Bridging that gap is crucial for organizations to deliver products successfully, on time, and on budget.

The Code-Based Solution

UXPin Merge has revolutionized the traditional UX workflow with a code-based design solution allowing orgs to sync a component library from a repository to UXPin’s editor, so designers build prototypes using fully functioning UI elements and components.

Merge components retain exactly the same properties as those in the repository, including interactivity, so designers can simply drag and drop to build UIs. Engineers can also set various props (for React or Args for Storybook) to allow designers to customize components in JSX or via UXPin’s Properties Panel. Any changes to these props render JSX, which engineers can copy/paste to begin development.

This Merge-powered workflow enhances collaboration and understanding between UI designers and UI developers because they’re speaking the same language with the same constraints–a truly single source of truth for your org’s component library.

UXPin has also recently announced the upcoming release of Merge Component Manager–a tool that reduces developer involvement in importing and managing coded UI components. Less reliance on engineers means designers can get up and running with Merge much faster.

“It used to take us two to three months just to do the design. Now, with UXPin Merge, teams can design, test, and deliver products in the same timeframe. Faster time to market is one of the most significant changes we’ve experienced using Merge.” Erica Rider, UX Lead EPX @ PayPal

Discover how UXPin’s Merge technology can revolutionize your design processes. Get access to UXPin Merge.

The post UI Design vs. UI Development – What’s the Difference? appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

Many people underestimate the importance of a signup page and use a generic template to onboard new users. Signup pages are your organization’s first point of contact with a new customer, so designers should focus on the user experience just as carefully as they do with any other user interface.

We’re going to explore some of the internet’s best signup forms and why they matter. We’ll also show you how to build and test your signup forms using our code-based design tool.

Can your image-based design tool capture user inputs and validate that data? The problem with image-based design tools is they lack fidelity and functionality. With UXPin’s code-based prototypes, designers can capture user inputs, validate emails and passwords, create conditional formatting, and more! Sign up for a 14-day free trial and discover the endless possibilities with code-based design from UXPin.

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What is a Sign Up Page?

Sign up page is a page designed to collect information from users who wish to create an account or register for a service, website, or application. It is a crucial component of online platforms that require user authentication and personalized access.

Why Your Signup Page Matters?

Signup pages are a way for organizations to attract new leads or sales. It’s usually the first time a potential customer will interact with your brand, so it’s critical that you impress and delight new signups.

Signup forms are probably the least complicated UI element to design but the most challenging to entice people to take action. Designers must understand their target audience and UX psychology to overcome hesitancy and increase conversions.

There are no rules to creating the perfect landing page. A/B testing is crucial for registration form optimization.

Top 10 Signup Page Examples

Here are 10 excellent signup form examples to inspire your next landing page.

1. GetResponse

GetResponse is an industry-leading email marketing and lead generation software with landing pages, forms, and other tools. You would expect such a company to have an excellent registration page, and they do! 

GetResponse ticks all the boxes when it comes to UX design principles; it is consistent, accessible, easy to digest, uses simple language, and provides feedback, to name a few. The page only has three form fields:

• Full Name
• Email
• Password

Think of each form field as another reason why someone won’t sign up for your product or service. By reducing form fields, you increase conversion rates.

GetResponse also highlights its benefits on the signup page, reminding customers why they need this product and the problems it’ll solve. 

One feature you won’t often find on a signup page is an accessibility button to change the form’s background color marketing it more accessible for visually impaired users to read. GetResponse must know that their brand’s blue didn’t contrast well for people with visual impairments, so they added an accessibility button to fix it.

2. Flux

Flux uses a full-screen signup form to onboard new customers. This strategy allows the user to focus on completing a single task without distractions. Even though Flux only requires users to complete three form fields, they break these up into steps, with a separate page for name, email, and password.

Flux also includes a list of requirements below the password field, so users know what length and characters they must use. As they complete each condition, it turns from red to green with a checkmark, so the user knows they have fulfilled it correctly.

3. Leadinfo

The quickest way to get signups is to make it easy, which is precisely what Leadinfo does on its home page signup form. All Leadinfo require to onboard a new customer is an email address. While there is a risk that they might not complete the signup process right away, you have an email address to nurture the lead into a customer.

Leadinfo’s UI design uses typography and color to highlight a problem and how the product can solve it. The clever use of color draws a visitor’s attention to the effortless signup form or the live chat to engage with a sales representative–giving users options and making them feel in control.

4. Cleo

Cleo is an app-based product, so users can only signup via the iOS or Android apps. If a potential customer finds Cleo’s website using a desktop, they need to funnel that customer to download the app.

Cleo makes this easy with a dropdown animation revealing a QR code redirecting users to their preferred app store. They also provide links to Apple’s App Store or Google Play.

While Cleo’s example isn’t a signup page, it’s a great example of creating an immersive, on-brand experience for users to find your product and sign up.

5. Designmodo

Managing users’ expectations and providing context are crucial for good UX design. Designmodo does this well with a three-step signup sequence that displays a progress bar above the form.

Users know what each step requires and approximately how long it will take them to complete the process. Another intelligent strategy about Designmodo’s signup page is to first ask for the user’s email. If the user abandons the signup sequence, they can try to win them back through an email sequence.

6. Salesforce

Salesforce is the world’s leading CRM platform with an extensive suite of tools and products. The company requires a lot of information during signup, including company name, email, phone number, to name a few. Still, they offer a 30-day trial in return–with no credit card or obligation.

Salesforce uses compelling copy to highlight the product’s primary benefits and remind customers that they’re getting 30 days free. The CTA button even says START MY FREE TRIAL, so users know there is a reward for completing Salesforce’s lengthy form.

If you’re asking customers for a lot of information during signup, use value to incentivize the process. Most free trials last 7 to 14 days, so by offering 30 days, Salesforce creates a lot of value. They’re also an established brand with a lot of prestige, so customers are more willing to spend time completing Salesforce’s signup form.

7. Typeform

It’s impossible to have an article about signup pages without mentioning the master of the form, Typeform. Typeform’s immersive and intuitive forms make completing signups, or any form, an enjoyable experience.

Typeform only requires two fields to complete its signup sequence; email and password. The company also offers two social media options, Google and Microsoft. As Typeform is a business product, offering corporate-type social signup options makes more sense than Facebook or Twitter.

Typeform also offers users the opportunity to customize their data privacy with three options to opt in or out of specific communications below the newsletter signup. As this would create a busy signup interface, Typeform uses a dropdown menu to hide these until the user clicks “See options.”

8. Transmetrics

Providing social proof and testimonials on your sign up page is a fantastic way to tell people how the product or service benefits customers. Transmetrics uses a quote from a prominent European customer explaining the company’s excellent customer service and understanding of the logistics industry.

Transmetrics also uses simple language and bullet points to highlight the product’s key benefits. Lastly, the call to action button says “REQUEST A DEMO,” telling the customer exactly why they are filling out this form.

9. Glide

Glide’s email signup form is minimal and effortless. Users can signup using their Google account or email address. The product integrates with Google Sheets, so it makes sense to only offer one social network signup option.

The simple UI design uses a bright blue signup button, immediately drawing users’ attention to the center of the screen. Glide’s signup form can onboard a new customer smoothly and efficiently with two clicks.

10. PayPal

As a financial service, PayPal must collect a lot of personal information during signup. If PayPal had to create a single signup form for its onboarding, it might overwhelm customers, resulting in high dropoffs.

To overcome this problem, PayPal uses a step-by-step process of capturing personal data. The company asks for users’ mobile and email first to follow up if the person drops off.

If you have to collect a lot of information, consider doing it in a step-by-step process and use a progress bar to show customers how many steps they must complete. You should also consider offering the option to save their progress to return later.

Prototyping Signup Pages With UXPin

Prototyping forms in traditional vector-based design tools is impossible. These tools don’t offer the functionality to create working inputs users can interact with.

UXPin is a code-based design tool, which means designers can build prototypes that capture and process data like a website or digital product. Designers can create actual signup forms with inputs that check for conditions and provide error messages.

For example, UXPin lets you create email and password validation. If the user forgets the @ or .com in an email input, designers can program an error message for the user to fix the problem. You can also include password conditions, like character count, letters, numbers, and symbols.

Once a user completes signup, you can welcome them with their name on the next page and include their personal information on a profile page. No image-based design tool offers the fidelity or functionality to prototype signup forms like UXPin!

Ready to give signup form prototyping a try? Here’s how in three easy steps:

1. Sign up for a free UXPin trial.
2. Download our working example of a signup form prototype.
3. Drag and drop the .uxp file into your free UXPin account, and you’re ready to go.

Here is a preview of the signup form prototype you can edit and customize in UXPin.

The post Top 10 Signup Page Examples That Will Make You Want to Redesign Your Own appeared first on Studio by UXPin.

An app landing page is a dedicated web page designed to showcase and promote a specific application. Its primary purpose is to provide information about the app, highlight its key features and benefits, and encourage target audience to download and install the app.

App landing pages are an essential part of the marketing strategy for apps, serving as a central point for potential users to learn more about the app and decide to download it.

Are you an app developer? Create a beautiful and interactive app landing page design with UXPin Merge’s drag-and-drop features. Use React components that you can then copy to build a React-based app landing page. Try UXPin Merge for free.

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What is an app landing page?

An app landing page is a special web page made to show off and promote a specific app. It’s like a virtual brochure that tells you all about the app – what it does, its cool features, and why you should get it. The main goal is to help people decide to download and install the app.

These pages are crucial for marketing mobile apps. They act as a central spot where potential customers can get all the details they need before deciding if they want to download the app to their mobile devices or computers. Essentially, it’s like a one-stop-shop to learn how the app works and make an informed choice.

In simpler terms, an app landing page is like a friendly guide that introduces you to an app, explains what it can do, and invites you to give it a try by downloading it.

Key elements of an app landing page

Most app landing page examples use similar elements. These elements matter because they contribute to a positive user experience and makes the target audience understand what the landing page is for.

Standard UI elements are commonly used across various websites and apps. When users encounter familiar elements, they feel more comfortable and can quickly grasp how to interact with the content.

Certain UI elements have become industry standards. For example, having a prominent and clear CTA button aligns with users’ expectations. Meeting these expectations helps target audience find what they’re looking for without unnecessary confusion.

What are they? Let’s explore key elements of app landing pages in layman’s terms.

• App logo: Placing the logo in the top left corner of the landing page is a common and effective practice. This aligns with the standard layout of many websites.
• Hero image or video in the header: Eye-catching visuals at the top of the page help to introduce the app and draw the users in to scroll down for more information.
• App description text: A concise and compelling overview of the app, including its value proposition, main functionalities, and high-converting benefits.
• Feature highlights: Sections showcasing the key app features and functionalities of the app, often presented with screenshots of the app or icons to enhance scannability of text and boost messaging.
• Call-to-Action (CTA) buttons: Prominent buttons encouraging users to download the app with a download link or take specific actions.
• User testimonials: User reviews or any other form of social proof that describe typical use cases and opionions. Believe it or not, testimonials truly boost your conversion goals. Sometimes a great social proof is just showing the number of app downloads.
• Social media integration: Links or feeds to the app’s social media profiles to encourage visitors to follow for updates and engage with the app community.
• Compatibility information: Information about the platforms and devices supported by the app, such as iOS, Android, smartphones, tablets, etc.
• Contact or support information: Providing ways for users to get in touch with the app’s developers or support team for inquiries or assistance.

By incorporating these elements, app landing pages create a user-friendly environment that aligns with user expectations, enhances usability, and encourages visitors to engage with the content and ultimately get the app.

Best app landing page examples

We prepared a list of high-converting landing pages for mobile apps that you can find at Google Play Store, Apple App Store, or web apps sold by popular SaaS companies. Let’s analyze what makes those landing pages effective.

Headspace

Headspace is a meditation app and a great mobile app landing page example. It has a logo in the top-left corner, colorful app screenshots, and a value proposition as a H1. Its CTA button and pricing tiers are above the fold which definitely impacts conversion rates. What is above the fold? It is any content that is immediately visible on a webpage without requiring the user to scroll down.

What’s in it for you?

• Don’t fear bold colors — Minimalist design is still on trend, but it doesn’t mean that your website should be black and white. Experiment with colors to make your site a delightful user experience.
• Test if pricing is something that converts —SaaS websites usually highlight pricing on a dedicated landing page, but why not to try it above the fold. Run an a/b test to see if it works for your target audience.
• Give users a sample of what they can expect — A couple of scrolls down and you can actually hear the recording of one of the meditations. It’s a great hook that draws people in.

MonopolyGo

MonopolyGo is one of the best selling mobile apps. It’s landing page is simple and to the point. Even though it’s downloaded by millions of people, the landing page creators decided to feature only three testimonials. It seems that it’s not a lot, but each review has a candid photo of a smiling person and a high energy description. Way to go, isn’t it?

What’s in it for you?

• Boost excitement with an energetic animation — No header? It’s not necessary! Most people know what Monopoly is, but they don’t know how fun it is to play it. Encourage more interest with a high-energy animation of your product.
• Put links to social media — If social media marketing is important to you and your potential customers, feature the links to it in a visible spot. Notice that for MonopolyGo, it’s not the footer, it’s a left-hand side of their site.
• Chat option in the right corner —Give your target audience a possibility to reach out to your customer service. This way you’ll know what issues they have and what they expected to get from your site. Feedback matters!

WhatsApp

WhatsApp is a great example of website design that sells. It pairs great copy with heart-warming visuals to make you click the “Download” CTA. This is why aside from great UI design, you need to work with a copywriter who knows how to compose a high-converting copy.

What’s in it for you?

• Focus on your value proposition —WhatsApp differentiates itself from other communicators by telling their potential customers that they’re a secure app. What is your value proposition and why should it be important to your users?
• Use negative space to make copy sink in — WhatsApp makes a great use of whitespace and we think it’s because they want to make the text and visuals stand out. Let your copy breathe, so it can create the impact that you want.
• Doodles —Headspace used bold colors, MonopolyGo video, and WhatsApp uses doodles to make their landing page more unique.

Vinted

Vinted is a platform for selling and buying clothes from people. It took ecommerce space by storm. It works on a premise that when you’re using the platform you are giving clothes a new life, and it plays well with a sustainability trend so popular in 2024.

What’s in it for you?

• Candid photos — it uses photos from the platform on its landing page. Be careful with this one, because you need user consent to do it.
• Navigation with categories —Vinted is in ecommerce category and it features navigation to communicate what you can expect from the platform.
• Search bar — what happens when you type in what you’re looking for and click search? You get search results, and from this point you are one step away from buying an item and becoming a user. Since items are indexed, it boosts Vinted’s SEO rankings.

Create an app landing page design with UXPin Merge

You are one step away from creating a high-converting app landing page? Use our tips and log in to UXPin in order to use your knowledge in practice. Design a beautiful layout of your app landing page. Soon you’ll find optimized landing page templates in our app.

And if you are new to our site, we’re creating UXPin Merge, a drag-and-drop UI builder that helps non-designers assemble landing pages, apps, websites, and more 10x faster. Try UXPin Merge.

The post Best App Landing Page Examples and Why They Work appeared first on Studio by UXPin.