Most Persistent UI/UX Design Challenges & Their Solutions

Let’s begin with a typical scenario that many in app development world encounter. You come up with a breakthrough app idea and do everything to shape it into a unique product. You are excited throughout about its success and overwhelming popularity and cherished in thinking about the raised eyebrows of industry friends when they see your app. But alas, nothing of that sort really happened! After a month, the app enjoys far less traction than expected. And you begin to think, what really went wrong with it.

When a product underperforms, we often end up questioning its viability or its strengths against the competition. But often we forget that most apps simply fail because of not being able to transport the idea and accompanying technical attributes through a befitting design. Well, this is why knowing the most persistent UI/UX design glitches is so important for any app project.

Let us bring you here some of the most persistent UI/UX design faultlines and their corresponding solutions.

Challenge 1: Deciding the Cognitive Load

Most apps irrespective of the industry niche face the dilemma between too thin and too heavy content and visuals. Since users these days are flooded with visuals and their attention span is steadily decreasing, you cannot hold their attention for reading large blocks of text or watching those heavy storytelling animations. Too much cognitive load will ultimately bring down their patience and push them to go elsewhere.

On the other hand, too thin content and visuals force them to connect the dots themselves. Minimalism going berserk can create a hollow impression. You cannot put your users in the middle of empty chairs and expect them to sit.

Solution:

What to do about this dilemma? Well, according to experts you have to decide the cognitive load as per the urgency, context, usability and characteristics of your audience. For a magazine app, long blocks of text can be still effective if you ensure easy readability. But for a Fintech app, it is more about streamlining information and functionalities as per user context and hence, cognitive load should be minimum.

Challenge 2: Contextualising in-app Interactions

It is well known that most app users love interactions and getting suggestions or options just when they delay in deciding something. “What to do next” moments are common in app user’s journey irrespective of the niche. This is when interactions play a good role in pushing users to the next step.

But in-app interactions often cause unnecessary distractions if not used diligently. On a smaller screen interface an additional pop-up message always shrinks the space making it difficult to move fingers. When searching, users often find interactions distracting and out of context.

Solution:

You can actually use interactions as a better tool to engage users when you give attention to user contexts. When interactions appear on screen precisely in the context of user search or navigating behaviour, it actually allows them to get things done faster.

Challenge 3: Conflicting Design Priorities

Before the development phase the UI/UX design only sets the trajectory of priorities for the app. But if you have several mutually conflicting priorities, it can negatively impact the user experience. For example, an e-commerce app interface for one specific screen in the user journey can have one priority. When you need to pull a user to checkout page, showing a pop-up for Newsletter registration will only add to the dilemma.

Solution:

User journey mapping with potential scope of interactions and deviations should be well planned for every screen. Set list of concurrent priorities for every screen and make sure the design language aligns with the respective priorities for that screen.

 

Read more from source: https://www.encodedots.com/blog/ui-ux-design-challenges-and-their-solutions