Here are the principles that I always follow to ensure the highest satisfaction of my users:
1. Visibility
Important content should be organized to be discovered easily by users. I always use simple layouts with less clutters and emphasize the content so users can spot them immediately.
So when choosing any element to design, I try to avoid things like hamburger menu if it hides key content that users need to see instantly.
2. Consistency
Anything that has the same purpose, priority, or importance should be served with the same format, including font famliy, size, and color or icon.
Not only about the decoration, the feeling should be constent when the users interact with certain content and elements.
3. Familarity
The way I arrange the layout, design the workflow and choose the elements is always inspired from the common designs existing on the market. I use a bell icon for notification so users don’t have to guess, but just instantly have the confidence using my system because everything is so familiar to them
4. Affordance
I design components in a way that hints their function. A clickable element should be highlight some how automatically tells the users that you can click me.
By doing that, users know exactly what how they could interact with the system without any extra explanation
5. Navigation
Providing convenience to moving around easily is my reponsibillity when designing navigation. Users should be allowed to move to any where freely without no dead-end and can achieve that via just few clicks
6. Control
System should be designed to provide users the feeling of fully control. They have all options to do everything, ex: if they can receive a call, then they can also pending it or replay it later. This is not only about the abundance of functionality but also the mind set of design the system to let users control everything on their own
7. Feedback
Show effects on any action, ex: when users click a button or a toggle, change the color accordingly. I always design that way so users never wonder if the system actually received the request or not.
8. Recovery
To improve the user confidence in using my system, I provide all measures for them to recover from their own mistakes, ex: undo, redo, backup and rollback. The more confident the users, the more they will interact with the sytem
9. Constraint
Disable any irrelevant input is a good example for this. Users will not waste their time on wrong things, reducing their decision making and improving their experience.
10 Flexibility
I provide users many ways to do the same thing. Ex: to go to a page, they can click a link on the current page or they can type in the command palette to go. This give them the feel of freedom and personalization when using my system.
Conclusion
The list could be long but just keep in mind that our reponsibility is to reduce the cognitive load of users, help them avoid making too many decisions and improve their confidence when using our system.
