On inclusive design of UI design

In recent years, the mobile internet industry has been rapid development, and the Internet has become a regular use of people in the exchange of information and access channels. While mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets are being upgraded at a faster rate, however, most of the Web pages and applications at the beginning of the design actually did not take into account the needs of special people, so even if the equipment is more powerful, such people can visit the Web site or use the application may still encounter many difficulties. Therefore, the concept of "inclusive design" is introduced into the UI design.

So what is an inclusive design? The British Standards Institute (2005) defines an inclusive design as "the design of mainstream products or services that can be easily used by as many people as possible ... Without special adaptations or special designs. " Of course, I think some people will say, this is not to increase the cost of production? Of course, we can't expect a product to fit the needs of a wide variety of people. However, if there is such a concept in our design, then the product will have more audiences, so it may be able to produce greater benefits, and this is the embodiment of social responsibility.

In the design of more and more high-tech, luxury, conceptualized today, inclusive design may be the most popular and balanced design concept, it refuses to allow the minority to obey the majority, also do not want to allow the majority of the minority, it believes that the careful observation of the extreme population, coupled with the general public attention, can create a more inclusive, A good design that belongs to more people. Today we're going to talk a little about the containment design in UI design needs to be noticed and needed to be improved:

Language and Aesthetics

The main tool of human communication of language, its influence is infinite, and the expression of language is also important, but this is often overlooked, a Duke University study shows that no matter what type of job, if the recruitment advertising has a clear gender orientation, then the attractiveness of the job will be affected. This begs the question: how much does the language expression chosen at design level affect the number of newly registered users or the number of users who buy the product?

As we all know, all interfaces have more or less text on them. In the choice of language expressions, so that the text as far as possible colloquial, rather than the pile of rhetoric, because not everyone is a literary master. Users will appreciate this by providing clear and concise labels for their actions, as they are no longer dictated by other people-they are speaking as friends or even by themselves. You can say that if a designer is thinking twice about each pixel, every icon, every font, then he also needs to weigh each word.

Of course, the quality of language expression is only one of the criteria, in addition, aesthetics also plays an important role in UI design, the placement of elements, shape (angular or rounded corners) and the use of color, in different gender, different cultures of users, the effect is not the same. Take color, there is no color scheme to meet the appetite of all users, in the use of color to remember two things, first of all, the color of different cultures represent different meanings, so make sure that your target users can understand the meaning of your chosen color. Second, do not ignore color blindness users, in the distinction between different elements, to spend more time and effort, using some other techniques, such as a bar in the icon. If the user is color-blind, they cannot distinguish between specific colors, most color blindness are red-green blindness, so you need to use other methods, such as different shapes, different materials to distinguish.

User cognitive ability

The concept of the General people will be absolutely divided into fully competent people and disabled, based on the concept of the product is designed to be used by people with complete ability or for the disabled use, in fact, the value of human ability has a continuous range of changes, and this change is not the law to follow, for example, Quantum physicists may have difficulty using a mobile phone, and the same cell phone is in the hands of a teenage boy with an average IQ, but he can play it handy.

In the field of UI design, regardless of user's cognitive ability and level, should be the designer potential target user. Reducing the ability of a product requires more people to be able to use the product, and make it easier to use the people who used to feel difficult, which is also true for UI design, the more elements you add to the interface, the greater the complexity of the interface, and the more effort the user spends on using it. Someone once said: "The best design is not to see, is to experience." This means that your UI should allow users to experience, rather than put something flashy to the user. The simpler the UI design, the better the user experience, not the misuse of the design elements, the crowded interface, the crowded interface, no matter how powerful, it scares the user.

In some excellent designs, you don't see flashy UI decorations or design elements you don't use. In other words, the elements must be concise and meaningful. When you think about whether to add a new feature or element to your interface, ask yourself, "Do users really need these?" Or "Why do users want this small dynamic icon?". Are you just adding these elements for your own liking? Remember, never give yourself the limelight in the UI design.

Adaptive interface

Given that the user's cognitive abilities vary widely, in order to take care of ordinary small white users, we have to continue to simplify the interface, such as removing some features, but another problem with it, if the interface is too simple, it is difficult to make those who want more features or control of high-end users satisfied. For example, the shoot operation is simple, almost everyone will use, but can not meet the needs of some high-end users, such as photographers. As a result, the most common solution for synthesizing various factors is to allow users to customize the interface according to their needs. Does this approach really work? Research has shown that fewer than 5% of users change the default settings, which means that user-defined methods are not desirable in the interface design.

So, is there a solution that can adapt to the user's cognitive ability and use habits? Although there is no small difficulty in UI design, it should be a solution worth trying. Moreover, the adaptive feature has already set a precedent in other areas, and the intelligent thermostat nest invented by the father of the ipod, Tony Fadell, may be a good example, nest not only looks very hot, but also automatically senses whether someone is at home and adjusts the temperature, And according to user's custom will automatically adjust the temperature to the most comfortable state, and as the user uses it for a long time, it will know more about the user's habits.

Although Nest is only a special case, at least it shows that the adaptive technology is feasible, which makes the interface designer's mode of thinking more open, perhaps in the future to achieve interface adaptation is not impossible.

Conclusion

We have overcome a variety of technical challenges, such as the standardization of the Web, the introduction of a responsive web design concept, the introduction of various touch-screen devices, and so on. Perhaps we put too much effort into these technical problems, thus ignoring the importance of humanized interface design. We hope that the next change in the Internet industry will focus more on how to make more applications and products more inclusive, take into account the cognitive abilities of different users, make the user interface smarter, and serve the wider population more effectively, and let the storm of inclusive design blow more violently!

Finally, in view of the fact that the inclusive interface design is still in the exploratory stage, what is said here is only the opinion, if can cause more thinking, this article is the most utilized.