CRyder Design

Once all of the preparatory work that you’ve gathered and created is complete, then comes the fun part… Designing! Although I refer to this as a fun part of the process, that does not mean that it is not challenging. Perhaps, designing can be considered one of the most difficult steps within the process of designing a product. There are multiple factors that need to be considered before a designer can even begin designing! Those factors include but are not limited to typography, color palettes and color studies, imagery, graphics, photography, inspiring artworks, and even exemplar works and designs. These are a few things that need to be narrowed down to only a few choices prior to putting pen on paper, or finger on trackpad.

As previously mentioned, preparatory work is essential for designing your product too! The first step into designing is creating what is known as an interface inventory. Designer, Brad Frost defines an interface inventory as, “…similar to a content inventory, only instead of sifting through and categorizing content, you’re taking stock and categorizing the components making up your website [or product]. An interface inventory is a comprehensive collection of the bits and pieces that make up your interface” (“A Comprehensive Guide to UI Design”). In other words, take everything that you consider inspiration or visual research, and stockpile it in one place. In doing this you will be able to identify commonalities that exist within things you find inspiring, and it helps you narrow down elements that you would like to incorporate into your own design.

After you have built up your interface inventory, you can step into designing! But where do you start? This is the time to develop a system that you will follow throughout the actual process of designing your product. “When designing your user interface, it helps to have a system in place. This ensures that whatever you build is considered and consistent” (“A Comprehensive Guide to UI Design”). It is extremely important to not lose sight of the end goal of your design, it is going to be used by the user, and likely on screens and this needs to be taken into consideration so you have a functional product as the end result. “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. We need to consider both macro-interactions (at the page level) and micro-interactions (at the object level)” (“A Comprehensive Guide to UI Design”). As you finally start to design, a good rule of thumb is to begin your design in black and white. This allows a designer to see a design for what the layout is, and how it will function without getting caught up in the mix of billions of potential colors and hex codes. “Designing in grayscale before adding color simplifies the most complex element of visual design– and forces you to focus on spacing and laying out elements” (“7 Rules for Creating Gorgeous UI”). Once you have a solid layout in place, then visual elements can be added.

Designing a beautiful user interface takes a lot of time and practice, and is a lot more difficult than it may seem, but practice makes perfect! Your skills are not going to improve at all if you don’t try. “You will not become a better designer over the night — it’s all about dedication, hard work, a lot of patience and practice — you need to keep learning and working hard every single day as that’s the only way you can improve. Take the time to read books, articles, listen to podcast or even take a course. All of those are for you and your brain as working out at the gym for your body” (“7 Simple & Effective Methods to Get Better at Visual/UI Design”). Get out there and create!