Creating Easy User Interfaces

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Use of Space in Layouts

When building interface elements to ensure a high-quality user experience in your application or website, it is important to note that the work is not only technical but social as well.

This is because we are all used to navigating different kinds of spaces and environments in our everyday lives. We mind physical obstacles and react to them instinctively. We seek roads, paths or exits that we can trust and understand, and we feel differently about complex, confusing routes when compared to journeys that are streamlined to be simple.

There is a certain social intuition about getting from point A to point B that we use every day to deal with our surroundings. When we get asked for directions to a place, we typically try to come up with the simplest route possible to help the other person get there with the least amount of hassle.

Now think about navigating websites and the user interfaces of applications. As a user, you are trying to get to your destination by clicking on buttons and using various commands to control the program. This makes the experience technical.

On the other hand, your experience is also social because you are in a kind of conversation with the developer and the logic of the interface, constantly asking it for directions so that it can take you where you need to go.

This is not about using any kind of built-in help function, but rather the mundane use of an application and how it reacts to what you are doing.

All of a sudden it becomes critically important if the elements of the interface make sense as a terrain to travel. Do they provide the user with the tools they need to get them where they need to go in a streamlined, simple way?

When designing these digital spaces for users to navigate, it is helpful to think about it as if you were to give them directions to a hard-to-find shop in a busy part of town.

As completing each task is another trip around the terrain of the program, users will find their way best if the routes are simple, logical and focused on the task at hand.