The essence of UI design

At Ergomania, UI design is closely related to the customer experience – one of the tasks of our UX designers is to ensure that the designs represented by the wire frame take the final shape that users like. The top four aspects are:

1. Compliance states and variations, i.e., whether the component complies with behavioral guidelines and covers all states?
2. Responsibility, i.e., is the user interface clearly visible and usable for minimum, standard, and high resolutions?
3. Content flexibility, i.e., does the layout fall apart if the content is too large or small?
4. Functionality, ie how do the buttons act, what is navigation, error handling, filtering, search, etc. like?

UI design is basically about designing intuitive, aesthetic, interactive interfaces, but it still cannot be considered graphic design per se because UI design is primarily used to access surfaces created for different online services (websites, mobile applications, touch interfaces).

UI design goes well beyond graphic work because these are just the elements we use in surface design. One of its main goals is to design a memorable digital image of the brand, expressing the company’s image.

UI design at Ergomania

During the UI design we come up with:

• User interface elements (graphics, buttons, icons, illustrations
• The color scheme, the typography (font types, text layout)
• The visual layout, final screen views, different variations

During the planning phase, we basically go through three main stages:

1. We organize user needs and expectations for the asthetics (the color scheme, graphics, etc.)
2. We create the overall picture and even the smallest element of it, in several versions
3. We finalize the plan and our client gets a UI design that can be implemented at the ready

The main methods of UI design

At Ergomania, we usually base our decisions on the experience that the majority of clients make decisions in a matter of seconds based on emotional impulses, and there are two factors affecting them primarily when looking at and using a user interface:

1. How attractive the design is and does it meet their brand expectations
2. How transparent and usable is the interface

A UI that meets their expectations and easily serves their purpose should therefore be “invisible”: the goal is not for the design to distract them, but to help them carry out their activities as efficiently as possible.

It is also important that the UIs designed by Ergomania always fit the image of our clients’ company and brand, form an organic unit and strengthen the trust of users towards the company, and strengthen brand loyalty.

In Ergomania’s experience, the three best UI design applications are Figma, Sketch and Adobe XD, although we prefer Sketch and Figma.

What do our clients gain from the UI design?

With UI design, our clients’ companies can gain four distinct advantages over their competitors:

1. Increased user satisfaction and trust
2. A good, consistent design can be transferred to new products, channels
3. Increase in brand loyalty and brand confidence
4. A good, consistent design is easier to maintain and expand

What is the role of our clients in UI design?

Our clients also have an important role to play in UI design because they have a lot of information that is relevant to successful design. There are three ways they can help our work:

1. Transfer of image elements, guides and expectations
2. Active participation in a regular weekly design critique
3. Quick feedback on plans

The result of a successful UI design

The result of the UI design process is a design ready to be implemented. Although there is a section in Figma that includes CSS assets, Zeplin or inVision is much more suitable for proper handover.

The result of the UI design implemented by Ergomania is a visual interface that is satisfactory both emotionally and functionally coming from the users’ side; and also fits perfectly into the image of our client’s company or brand and thus has marketing value in addition to the aesthetic experience and usability.