ui design

The Yin and Yang of UI Design Patterns

For every intent and for just about every purpose pertaining to the designing predicaments, the design patterns are resourceful. The web designing community always finds some issues floating around within its walls and for the same, the solutions also keep coming up the surface and seized with a keen desire.

The premium patterns are apparently grabbed with the keenest desire while those still under the stage of evolvement find enough buyers as well.

The folks who think of design patterns as a passing trend are widely off the mark, it rather happens to be a set of variable rules that dictate what direction a particular design is likely to take. Whether that direction takes them to uncharted avenues or makes them walk the familiar routes, the designers won’t be sold a dummy if they have a pattern in place.

There is a growing relevance when it comes to WordPress web design since here you have a platform that is being more widely understood and accepted.

What’s in the Patterns For the Designers

To begin with, if you are a designer, you have been using the designing patterns from as long as you remember. You probably just don’t know yet. Do you follow the example of print media while displaying content on your web pages and display it in multiple columns – typically half a dozen? No, you don’t.

You know it looks ugly and amazingly unreadable for the end user. You only structure the content based on three columns, which is made up of two sidebars and one column for the main content. So there you are, you have a pattern in mind and you are well and truly following it.

A preset designing pattern does swing at you a number of reasons to use it:

  • A newbie can get a clear-eyed idea of how to go about designing for the web while implementing the best approach.
  • Inject more surety in the overall implementation while taking all the risks in account.
  • Have a more open communication channel, leaving no room for discrepancies.
  • Skimping on time and efforts required to make the road maps for completing an exercise.
  • No longer dedicating resources to something that has already bee covered.
  • Making sure that users do not find themselves dumbfounded just because you are aiming for blockbuster innovation.

Now, various designing patterns keep registering their presence in the web designing ambit. While some are passing, others manage to stay. Out of the latter, navicon and parallax scrolling have made a considerable impact.

While navicon is more attuned to creating designs that are compatible with the mobile platforms so that they can be easily adaptable to the smaller screens. Parallax scrolling, on the other hand, is an approach that is similar to navicon in the sense that it prioritizes user-friendliness, but different in terms of how it displays the content.

Navicon keeps the structure of any website pretty much the same as compared to a desktop website, with some alterations to how individual pages appear on the screen. Parallax scrolling is an entirely different technique that promotes the single page websites.

It is used to create websites that have all the information on one page, all that a user has to do to scroll through an entire website is to scroll down on the landing page itself. For adding more life to the website, background sprites are injected.

But technical jargon apart, there has to be a method to an inherent frenzy of designing patterns. And this method has to be characterized by:

  • Are you clearing some doubts on your way ahead? Do it, and let your approach be user-centric and freely flowing.
  • Look up other’s work and evaluate their workflow.
  • Create some mock-ups that will prove to be the objectives for your pattern while solving the problem at hand.

Some Obvious Pointers

Now, there are ground rules with just about every sort of design. On the surface, these ground rules are way too straightforward, but most end up missing out on more than a few of them:

1. The Call to Action Button Has to be the Most Stand Out Element of the Page

You only turn visits into buyers once they hit the call-to-action buttons. Simply getting people to see your website won’t do the job, making them perform a tangible action would. And it is by no stretch a herculean task to place the call-to-action button at a position whereat it is easily noticeable.

Thinking out of the box is not what this is about. It rather has to do more with following the more traditional approach.

Don’t Make it a Task for Users to Register with Your Website

Unless you have had your eyes and ears to the ground, you must be aware of what purpose can a long subscription list serve and how useful can it prove for your prospects.

And if you have spent a considerable amount of time blogging and digital marketing alongside it, you know email subscriptions beings you much better and bigger numbers than the likes and followers on your Facebook and Twitter page. And that’s when you need to devise different ways to expand your newsletter list.

However, the “how to” behind it belongs to the genre of content marketing. We straightaway perch on a step where your users are entering their personal information, which is while filling out the registration forms.

Let’s face it, we are our laziest best on the Internet. Filling out long pages of text fields is the last thing on our agenda. And so is the case with an average web user. So, when you are asking them to be your subscribers, make things easier for them. And if you need more details than simply an email address, you still can have a short enough registration form.

The UI patterns will keep the reinventing wheel running, all the while reinventing themselves with it. In order to make sure that you remain on board, you got to realize that keeping up takes precedence over catching up. Be on the keeping side of things. And if you happen to inject something into the market that others find themselves keeping up with, you are certainly going to enjoy some fanfare.

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