CRyder Design

        When you are designing and you have all of your finalized framework behind you, what’s the next step? It’s the FUN stuff! The next stage is the beginning of the design of all visual aspects. But where do you start? You look for inspiration! Try looking for things that you think will inspire your project. BUT! It’s important to have a few different styles in play because chances are the first idea that comes to your mind wouldn’t be as great as the one you’ve spent a bit of time thinking about.

        When you start searching for ideas and inspiration it’s important to keep an ‘interface inventory,’ a term coined by Brad Frost that basically means to keep all of your inspirations in one place together so you have the ability to look at them collectively. “It takes the idea that underpins content inventories and maps it over to the world of user interface design” (“A Comprehensive Guide to UI Design”). Interface inventories are significant because they allow you to see commonalities among your inspiration that you may choose to include in your own design. You’re also able to see things that really stand out and catch your eye among all others, and you may choose to also include something similar in the design of your own. “By using your interface inventory as a starting point to identify common design patterns, you’re one step away from establishing the components you need to create to establish a design system. This will help ensure your UI is consistent and scalable” (“A Comprehensive Guide to UI Design”). It goes without saying that inspiration plays such a significant role in the process of designing a product, app, or website.

        Once you have all of your ideas, you’re able to build around the groundwork created by all of the UX work that you’ve already completed. You’re able to start designing visual components for your product, but it is still important to keep the user in mind and make sure they are able to navigate from page to page fluently. “When designing for screens — inherently fluid media — it’s critical to consider how the user will interact with what you’re designing, considering how transitions are handled from screen to screen and providing valuable feedback within user interface components” (“A Comprehensive Guide to UI Design”). The screens you are designing are not stagnant, they’re meant to be interactive. Making a 2-D screen Interactive comes with a challenge, which is why it is so important to spend the proper amount of time on the development of your designs.

        Making your product look pretty is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to having a functional outcome. The functionality of your design can not be left on the back-burner, but instead, it is the highest priority before anything else. After all, an app or website can be aesthetically pleasing and beautifully designed but have extremely poor functionality that results in a loss of user interest and cooperation.