The great UI is invisible.

An invisible and fluent interface that provides visitors with an interactive experience can be more efficient in focusing visitors ' attention on the core functionality of the product and directing visitors to the final goal of the product.

Many experienced designers are advocating the idea that a truly well-designed UI should make it invisible to the user. But what about the truth? On the contrary, many of the UI designers often force users to pay attention to the fancy interface, rather than the valid content you want to convey to the user. Users landing on a Web page most have a clear goal, such as he wants to buy a new book, Want to learn jquery technology online, want to go online to a sister, chasing a male God, or just want to share an article with friends and so on.

This time, the user will not spend time to watch your exhausted mind of the interface. In fact, users do not care about your interactive interface design! Well, a long time ago, the original web design lacked the new interactive technology, so the designers often wanted to add some interaction to make the page better: But, dear students, you do a bit of thinking, or to observe the small network age users around, Do they really care about these fancy things?

In recent years, web designers have often spent hundreds of hours thinking about the color of the button, whether to add some shade to make it more attractive, whether the margin size is appropriate or if the gradient is applied, so that the UI becomes more beautiful and practical. However, really good UI design should not be good-looking, but should be invisible!

Mobile terminals are becoming more and more important in people's life. The advent of multi-touch mobile devices has made people aware that the UI is a series of content controlled by clicks and sorts, allowing for more humane and natural human-computer interaction. There are many reasons why these natural user interfaces (Natural user interfaces, NUI) are more "natural", and most importantly, NUI can allow users to manipulate content directly and its desktop is not fancy, and users will find that the device usage is super simple because the UI is almost invisible.

But we still need to work on our desktops or notebooks, and we still need to surf the web and use Web apps, which are rarely able to use multi-touch and natural user interfaces like handheld mobile devices. So is it because of these obstacles that we are going to perpetuate the old interface? The answer is NO! The design concept of stealth UI is the goal that every UI designer or developer should want to achieve.

Is the user interface, not the barrier

The user interface should never be an impediment to users viewing content or achieving goals, nor should users have to skip UI traps or messy navigation to reach their goals. In the past few years we have often used some of the UI that we think can bring convenience to the user, but in fact, these UIs have put a greater burden on the user, Breadcrumb (used to indicate the location of the user's UI navigation) is a good example. We may think that breadcrumb is a very good way to navigate, but in reality it is just a cumbersome UI component that is not necessary to design a reasonable user experience.

Although breadcrumb does not directly burden the user, she takes up the screen space, which should have been used to show some content related to the user's goal. Our solution to the UI is often by adding new components, but overly jumbled components are bound to cause browsing barriers. So how do you add a lot of UI components, but your UI looks like it's invisible?

Solve the problem

Building an invisible UI means you have to fundamentally solve the problem, and you need to know exactly where the problem is. We often have problems with websites or apps, but we tend to give some solutions on the surface, and we don't think about the problem in nature. It's like we eat ibuprofen to stop the pain, but that doesn't change the nature of the pain.

In general, "painkillers" has become the best strategy for us now because we've learned how to fight with project managers, site owners, shareholders, and so on, and many times it may be because designers don't have enough time or simply don't want to do it because they're lazy. We often do some user experience, and then say, "Well, I know there's a little problem here, but let's show the user whether it's really a problem." "Obviously, using the above attitude to do the UI is not going to make the invisible UI." Making a completely invisible UI means you have to address deep design issues and user experiences, so that the UI does not become a barrier to users.

The design of tolerance

The invisible UI is designed to be very inclusive, the natural user interface is more open, and error-prone, or when the user is wrong, can give users a clear direction to guide.

These years is not a popular one of the interactive golden sentence? Before the operation can be predicted, the operation of feedback, can be undone after operation!

Tolerance refers to when the user is trapped (fall into a trap), the designer gives the user not to tell the user wrong. In fact, users are more likely to operate incorrectly when they don't have a clear goal, and the UI will show them a big warning and error message. and an invisible UI design will never show what's on the top. A well-designed UI can prejudge where a user has a high rate of error, and provide users with a way to solve the problem or lead them to avoid a trap.

Tolerance also means that Web pages or apps allow users to make errors on them. Because the user is wrong, they will learn more from their own mistakes, of course, when they make a mistake, certainly can not give them a big red Cross or complex people do not touch the mind of the text. (This kind of oppression and fishy red color they had had enough in reality)

Target First

The interactive design of the diagram (Cooper building block) is actually very simple, but it seems that we don't usually have this kind of design, so I think it's a goal-oriented design that's worth mentioning. The UI design should revolve around the user's goal, and the designer should tap into the user's needs and be able to perform or cater to the needs of the user through booting. Users have a strong sense of how they want to achieve their goals, but they have no idea what they need. So, the job of the UI designer should be to find the user's needs instead of giving them some kind of a way.

Finding goals and allowing users to quickly reach their goals will be the best user experience, so there is no need to design a very gorgeous interface to attract users ' attention. Don't use gorgeous UI design as a clear fix for the goal.

True unanimity.

In the UX world, we take it for granted that we talk about consistency. In fact, consistency is also important in UI design. If your UI components are in the same place, with the same color and functionality, your UI design will fade away from people's eyeballs over time ... Kind of like Marty McFly. However, just putting a function button in the same place on each page or using a specific action in the entire application to correspond to the same thing may not solve the problem of continuity.

In addition, we often tend to use UX design to make our own apps from other apps or Web pages that are connected to our design. I have written an article explaining that similar environments can make the interface seem more comfortable. But when we're trying to design an invisible UI, it's not enough to just be consistent. We want real consistency! This means that not only the composition, value, links, and data are consistent in the app, they should also be consistent in context content.

For example, you may notice that in many apps, the login button is generally in the upper-right corner, so you will automatically assume that the other app's login button should also appear in that position. However, this layout may not be appropriate in your app. So you don't have to do this, you have to follow the layout of your app, place your components in the right places for your app, and keep them highly consistent in your app.

Summary: Motivating users

Finally, a truly well-designed stealth UI should be able to inspire users. When the UI can direct users into what they want, users can focus on their goals when they use the app.

The interface should provide seamless interaction between data and content, which can inspire users to build a better relationship with the app. While users like to fiddle with a smart UI, stealth UI design is easier to stand out from.