Bad UX v/s Good UX – Things you need to Know and Do

UX stands for User Experience. UX design has two sub topics

1. Interaction design - user flow, wireframe

1. Visual design - more or less beautification of wireframe. Visual design means user interface design. 

 Here we shall discuss the major characteristics of good as well as a bad UX design.

Good UX Design

A good UX interface is not only characterized by appealing aesthetics but is also characterized by the following criteria.Decluttered Interface

Decluttered Interface

A decluttered interface help in increasing the aesthetic appeal of the application. It also helps the user in navigating through various pages of the application easily. By installing such an interface, you can display more information on each web page, thereby helping to reduce the footprint of the application on the RAM and storage of the device.

Limited Information Per Page

While creating a decluttered interface, you must limit the information that you display per page. Rather than using a fancy font, it is advisable that you use a simple font that helps you display the information without straining the user’s eyes. You must not fill every page with small fonts and a lot of information, rather focus on displaying limited information with legible font size.

Optimized Workflow Environment

Although the UI design focusses more on the optimization of the application, UX plays a considerable part. By making sure that you use compressed images as well as smaller resolution, you can make sure that the UX does not hinder the performance of the application.

Efficient Use of Device’s Processing Power

A good UX is carefully designed to harness the processing power of a device efficiently. A bad UX will often slow your device down by continuously running as a background process. You can make sure that your UX uses minimum processing power by reducing the number of unnecessary animations and graphical elements.

Bad UX Design

You can associate the following factors with a bad UX design.

Clumsy Design

When we talk about a bad UX design, the first thing that strikes the mind is a clumsy interface design. A clumsy interface points to a design that is both cluttered as well as slow. We do not associate a clumsy design with bad aesthetics necessarily. In case you are using the best available images at the cost of application performance, you need to reassess your goals.

Excessive RAM Consumption

An excessive RAM and processing power consumption is the biggest turn off that you can offer to a user. You need to focus on including elements that require a lesser processing power without compromising on quality. A simple example for this includes using a 480p image instead of a 1080p or a 240p image. Taking the middle road often helps in balancing the performance and aesthetics of the application.

Need for Frequent Updates

In case you need to provide frequent updates to your application’s visual interface, you are developing a bad UX web design. You can avoid the need for frequent updates by performing intensive testing before the launch of an application. You must also study the UX design of competitive applications to get a fair idea about the likes and dislikes of the users. Applications like WhatsApp and Facebook make minor changes to their UX design and set the trend in the application market.

Excessive Frame Refresh Rate

An excessive frame refresh consumes a lot of RAM at the cost of displaying appealing aesthetics. Unless until you are sure of the fact that users are willing to compromise on device heat up and performance, you must keep your frame refresh rate to a minimum. Games like Asphalt Airborne do not focus on device heat up and hence can easily focus on developing an application with higher frame rates.

By following the steps for a good UX design, you can make sure that your application performs optimally without compromising on aesthetic appeal.