UX Planet — Medium | Bastian Heinlein

During the last weeks I had the chance to supervise two design projects carried out by people without any experience in UI and UX design. This work tought me an important lesson: the average person has no idea of design, how it works and what it is. One of the voluntarily project leaders even were convinced that designers are the “guys playing with colors”. He not even had the misconception that our only task is to make it look nice, he truly thought designing a user interface is just fun. It’s not. It’s hard work.

Jony Ive, Chief Design Officer at Apple (you really should’ve heard of him), once mentioned what a truly tough problem for design is:

‘Design’ is a word that’s come to mean so much that it’s also a word that has come to mean nothing.

That’s probably the reason why many people have no idea what design is and especially what great design makes. To clarify, why a design is great design, I developed a measurement system, that maybe can help with your next design or programming project. At least it was truly important for my last projects.

First things first: The look isn’t everything!

A lot of apps have a look pretty good, but their design is only that and has nothing more to offer.

The bottommost layer in my measurement for how good design is, is a design with a nice looking user interface. That’s the kind of design many developer think of, I’m afraid, if they don’t have the at-least-it’s-working attitude. Maybe I’m wrong, please write in the comments and correct my picture about developers.

But really, a good look is only one of many parts of good design. It surely helps when you want to convince someone to buy your app through screenshots presented in the AppStore or PlayStore. Then, yes, a good look is important, but the reviews under the screenshots will be influenced by the usability of an app. Why? Every app exists for a purpose and that purpose shouldn’t be to make the developer rich, but to help the user with a problem. Then, maybe the developer will become rich.

Things can look great and be very bad at the same time. And the other way around. Example?

They might look strange but are awesome.

The Apple AirPods are one the most bad-looking pieces of tech Apple has ever produced. Prove for this claim are the many Twitter comments about their look. But are they bad? No, definitely not! The demand for them is not only much exceding the supply by far but they also have a consumer satisfaction rate of 98%. They are good because of technological advancements like longer battery life, better range than it’s competitors and more. Bad looking, but good.

Looks stunning, charges bad.

On the other hand Apple has produced some good looking and bad working products as well. One of them is the Magic Mouse 2. It looks great on your desk, so if you have free space and some money to spent, go for it. Charging it is a disaster on the other hand: You charge it through a Lightning Connector on the bottom, therefore you can’t use it while it’s charging. Good looking, but bad.

Making something ugly useable helps more than giving it a good look

Maybe not great, but better than focusing on the look. This is a foundation you can build on if you want to achieve truly great design. Ignore the look of your app at first.

You don’t have any sense for beauty in software design? Don’t worry, you don’t have to, or hire a designer. Like I already said, your app is there to help the user. Therefore your focus should be on helping the app to help the user. You want the user to do what he wants to do as fast as possible with your app, even the most beautiful look can’t help you with that. Instead: Do your best to help the user solving his problem, help him to achieve his goal as quickly and good as possible. Then, the reviews under your (maybe ugly) screenshots in the stores will go up.

Because the user has already downloaded your app because of your awesome reviews he probably won’t uninstall it immediately just because your app doesn’t look awesome. If your app is consistent in it’s look and good to use it’ll look pretty good.

If your app is useable, make it look beautiful!

You see, this is almost the best you can achieve with an app. It is founded on a great usability and extends it with a stunning UI.

Ok, ok, until now, this article was pretty much an aesthetic bashing. But the third layer combines usability and beauty in order to achieve a truly great design. Why? The first impression is actually an important part of your app, it’ll decide together with the reviews and your app description of potential customers will become real customers. But the look goes deeper: a smartphone is a social symbol, it’s a sign of who you are. That sounds maybe materialistic, but is true. If you value high quality you’ll probably invest in an iPhone oder Samsung S8 or whatever high-end smartphone, if you have a smartphone just to have one, a you’ll go for a cheaper option.

But it’s not only the look of your smartphone but also the look of its software. And your app is part of this software. If your app looks ugly, the user probably won’t show off your app as often as if it was stunning, because nothing says “I am somebody” as good as a high-value smartphone with beautiful apps. Before you begin to polish you app: Dieter Rams, Ex-Head of Design at Braun, gave some rules about good design and invented one important principle:

Form follows function!

This means that the aesthetics mustn’t restrict the function of a product. That’s especially true for apps that want accomplish a goal in as little time as possible. If the look limited the functionality, it would reduce the purpose of the app and therefore the app itsself.

Your app is great, when the design isn’t noticed, when it’s just natural.

The Holy Grail of design

If you make your user happy, irrelevant how unsexy the task is, you achieve with your app, you have a great design. But a foundation for this is a great UI and a great UX as well.

The heading sounds provocative, but I personally believe that design is at it’s very best when it makes the user happy. Not because your app tells jokes. But because the design makes the user wanting to use your app, to explore it. This doesn’t mean that you should send push-messages to encourage the user opening your app. That’ll encourage him to uninstall it.

The best apps are a pleasure to use!

They make the user happy while he’s using the app, not when he finished his task with your app, but while he’s finishing the task. You could even use gamification, but a good start is making the font readable, show pictures where it makes sense and having a self-explaining UI.

It’s all about making the small things unforgettable!

Great design surprises the user in a positive way

Again, I have to refer to Dieter Rams: “Good design is honest.” It doesn’t make promises that can’t be kept. Not keeping promises results in bad surprises, because the look of a product makes it seem much more powerful than it acutally is. A typical example is that many features are called “artificial intelligence” these days while it is just a very basic feature.

Instead, you want to surprise the user by what our app can do in a positive way. Don’t missunderstand me, you don’t want hide the purpose or core functionality of you app, but you want to have additional features that don’t restrict the clearity of your app. If done properly, you can active the impulse to discover the new. That’ll increase the use time of your app but not negatively effect usability of your app.

Lessons learned

Here you can see what I think are the market shares of apps measured by their design quality.

So, what should you take away from this article?

1. Designing the User Experience is more important than the look of your app. Even for a developer a good UX should be your primary goal of your app. Otherwise less people will use your app and therefore your innovation.
2. The borderline between great design and failure is extremely thin. Ever wondered why Apple’s designs are either overwhelming or overwhelmingly bad? Now you got the answer.
3. Great Design is hard work. It’s not done by guys “playing with colors”, but by experts understanding what a user needs and with an incredible persistence for designing the small things.

Just do it. Press the 💚 to help others finding my article and connect with me on Twitter.

Think Different: Software Is Part Of Great Design

What Makes Truly Great Design was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.