Being a UIUX designer, when involved in designing proposals (almost) on a daily basis, you may try to dig deeper in beautifying things day-after-day, proposal-after-proposal, mockup-after-mockup.
But, when you become more passionate on your job, you may go further - into nuances. Correcting, fine-tuning & refining your proposals, flow, colours, components..
The best part is when you fine tune a UI component, you may feel nice. The worst part is when you understand the best & bad practises of a component usage.
Why is this the worst part?
This is because when you focus on just the overall design & beauty of things - it's nice. In fact, the deeper you go on understanding what components are, what're their usage, you learn more.. that's the good part.. but..but, the 'arggh!' part is when you validate designs after you've learnt about component usage.
You validate & realise you've made a mistake or when you see a mistake some one has made in a mockup/proposal, your eyes start to cling onto every small, big, minor, minute, mega issues/mistakes on the proposal or the prototype.
This worsens, in fact, you develop an OCD. You grow an imaginary magnifying glass craving to validate every page, every flow, every design element, every component usage, every interaction, every state and on and on..
Uhhffffff...
This is not good..
It's not easy as it sounds.. But, you need to take a chill pill. Calm..
Ok, we've seen the bad & ugly parts, so now let's look at the brighter side of things..
The Good Part:
Actually speaking, there's no a specific 'good' part. It needs to be formed within you, as a UXD. Yup, So, take a deep breath, drink some water, may be take a break.. get back & turn now to forming the good part.
According to me,
"A good UXD, empathises & crafts intuitive, clear & digestible solution, with dynamic creative set of suggestions but with some strict abiding to rules, laws and/or usage practises.
What does this mean? Ok, let's break down the previous phrase.
"..but with some strict abiding to rules, laws and/or usage practises."
To explain more clearly, let's take an example of a screen with lots of data.
After empathising, understanding & a brainstorming session, the list of data can be displayed as:
a list view, or
as a graph/chart view, and/or
both combined in a single view
both that can be viewed by switching views
So now, when in this scenario, the designer suggests any of the above.
But when you dive deeper, let's take that component for example.
In the above image,
In suggestion 1: 'Switch', literally swaps the below list view into chart/graph view.
Likewise, in suggestion 2: 'Group Button' contains two evident options for the user to choose from - List view (as default selection) & Graph view (for user to select if needed)
This is where the 'best practise' of a component comes in.. Here's where a good UXD imbibes the usability scenario, priotizes the ease of use & keeps the usability issues at bay.
Let's prioritise the component usage for this scenario:
✅ Good & Highly recommended: Group button displaying both available options 🔶 An 'OK' option: A toggle switch for user to enable the graph view 🙅🏽 A 'No' option: A toggle switch with both options on either side.
This is where a good UXD comes into picture, seals the usage of non-recommended components, unnecessary design suggestions thereby also improving clarity of the details shown on the page.
The process seems too much thinking, it may also feel to be an exaggeration, well may be.. But, it's not.. balancing is an art, that is constantly mastered by a passionate UX designer..
