How to Create a UI Design that Prioritizes the Best User Flow

If you are one of those people who often looks for UI design inspiration on dribbble or behance, you will find colorful UI designs, illustrations or other design elements that are very interesting to look at. Usually, the designer only makes one UI design screen whose purpose is to attract client interest.

In fact, a good UI design is one that has a good user flow and user experience. If we only see a design based on a colorful UI design screen or interesting elements, we do not know the performance of the design in terms of user flow and experience. So, we have to create several UI design screens that will tell us how the user flows from the design project.

Just like taking part in the UI design competition in the Topcoder community, you will be challenged to make several design screens from a website or application that naturally prioritizes user flow and good user experience. It’s better to make a design that is less visually appealing but gives the user a very good experience than to create colorful designs and illustrations but have a bad user experience and messy flow.

Basically the UI / UX design aims to convey information and is used to facilitate jobs such as shopping online, subscribing to the services you offer, or collaborating on work files with others. Therefore you must be able to make UI / UX design that prioritizes a neat flow so users can quickly remember all the processes or steps to do something through the design that you created.

The user flow is a number of steps that will help you to complete work on a website or application. If you make a good user flow it will increase the conversion rate of sales, subscription, registration and various things offered on the website or application. Creating a UI / UX design with a good user flow is a complicated process. Through various prototype tests by the target user the UI / UX design will be obtained with the user flow as needed.

In this article, I will provide information about some steps you can follow to create a UI design that prioritizes the best user flow to suit the needs of target users.

Who Are The Target Users Of The Website Or Application

You must research the target users who will later use the website or application. Research what features they want and what problems they often encounter when using websites or similar applications. This allows you to create a UI design from the same perspective as the target user. If you have done your research first, then you will easily design a UI that has a user flow according to the needs of the target users.

To create a UI design with good user flow also requires research on the persona of the target user, such as behavior when using a website or similar application, the purpose of using it, individual skills and the background of the target user. You have to ask all these things based on what the target users want now and not what they want in the past or the future. If there is more than one person who will use the design, it must be determined which persona is a priority and the user flow on the website or application will be adjusted to that persona.

Try to measure how long it takes the user from start to completion of all the steps needed to take action on the website or application. You also need to know whether there are steps that are difficult so that a lot of time is spent on them. From these measurements, you will know which steps have good performance for users and which steps need improvement so users can complete them better.

You must know how users enter or find information about your website or application. Usually, users enter your website through social media advertisements that directly bring them to your website. They can also get information about your website from other people so that users will directly type your web site address in the browser, through organic search engines, product advertisements on other websites and promotional emails that you distribute to those who are subscribed.

Do research on how users enter your website, see the behavior and how long users are active on your website. This will help you create a more optimal promotional strategy.

Make A Design With Content That Fit Your Needs

Creating UI / UX designs with content that is balanced with white space will make it easier for users to understand the user flow and experience. This is the importance of doing research to find out various things about the target user so that you will create a design that suits the needs of the target user.

If you make a minimalist design it will have an impact on the user’s ease in understanding the flow in the design. It will make the steps that must be completed easier and faster. On the other hand, if you create a design with excessive content it will make your design difficult to understand and also not interesting to use.

You need to reduce the useless features or choices for each step that the user must complete. Make each button or choice with clear commands so that the user does not need to think too much to choose the command. Don’t forget to include a call to action in your design because this has been proven to increase sales conversions, registration and newsletter subscriptions.

Inviting Target Users To Engage In Design Prototype Testing

After you create a UI / UX design based on the needs of the target user, then it’s time for you to test the prototype. Find groups of people who are indeed the target user of the design you created so you will get feedback about the performance of the design in terms of user flow and user experience.

If you need to, make a design prototype in a number of options. This will help to find out which option has the best user flow and the easiest and most pleasant steps. Make sure users who test the design prototype will provide honest feedback so you can make an accurate solution to the problem that still exists. Try to make more than one solution for each problem that still exists, because this will help you get the best solution for the problem.

Conclusion

Over time you have to keep updating the user flow of the design. This is useful to win competitions because competitors will always add the latest features and you must be prepared for it.

The above tips can be applied when competing in a UI design challenge and help you create designs that prioritize the best user flow so users will find completing every step in the design that you made easy and fast.