Designing Simple For An Easy Experience
Design is an essential part of success in digital marketing and designing for the generation that was born with iPhones in their hands is part of that task. For those of us who can remember a time before having tiny computers in our pockets was a common thing, it may be hard to understand how important those little things are when it comes to designing for millennials. The theme you will likely find throughout is that designing simple makes for an easy user experience. Here are some of the most important things to review or utilize when developing a design for a website or digital marketing.
1) Keep it Simple!
Simplicity produces an aesthetically pleasing design and streamlined user experience. Users don’t want to be bombarded by visual stimuli or trapped in a labyrinth of poorly organized URLs. Simplicity is easy on the eyes and neatly organized for easy navigation. It is very important to utilize this when considering that the attention span of users online is less than that of a goldfish.
Making sure that a website isn’t painful to look at and easy to navigate is a very effective way to keep a user attentive. This is because they are easily able to get to where they are trying to go and find exactly what they are looking for, quickly. If you are browsing a website that features dated design choices like unintentionally pixelated graphics or subpar fonts and you can’t find what you are looking for quickly because the page structure is disorganized, how long do you think you will stay? Further, what are the chances that you will come back? Not likely in either scenario. The best way to avoid this is to strive to design simple for an easier user experience.
2) Designing with Details
To amplify the quality of your beautiful, simplistic digital design is to add micro-interaction details. These are often referred to as “designing with details” and they can be very subtle but powerful. Often users don’t even realize they are experiencing micro-interactions on more than a sub-conscious level but they probably notice something missing if these little design details weren’t there. Micro-interactions are like the little sound effects that accompany clicking, tapping or scrolling. They can also be tiny short animations that just make the sensory experience of interacting with a digital design a bit smoother and more appealing.
3) Prototyping
Increasing in popularity with the release of new tools this year that make prototyping more accessible. Free prototyping software like Origami for Mac can allow designers to create interactive design concepts. This can be an invaluable tool for a web designer’s workflow because it allows creative designers to quickly and easily generate mock-ups of a final product for clients to view. If you want to give prototyping a try here is a list of prototyping tools you can utilize.
With the introduction of even more modern cutting edge technology like virtual reality we can certainly expect the demands on digital designers to become more complex as time goes on. Some of these concepts, like simplicity of design have been pretty much commonplace for years now but are more important than ever as traffic continues to grow on the web. Newer things like the Prototyping tools are going to be playing a more and more important role in the design process as well. Whether these are familiar or not, there is no doubt that they will become an important part of the digital marketing and design process.
ABOUT DOYO Live
DOYO Live is a digital marketing and interactive design conference dedicated to the ongoing professional development of marketing, sales, business and design professionals. We accomplish this through our online marketing efforts, in-person workshops and annual marketing conference in Youngstown, Ohio.
DOYO Live was founded by Dennis Schiraldi, the event sold out in year-1 with over 200+ attendees—and we are anticipating the same this year.
DOYO Live is located in Youngstown, Ohio will be held on August 2 & 3, 2017. Early bird tickets are currently on sale for $150, but those prices will not last. We are expanding our conference in 2017 to have 2-hour deep-dive workshops on Day-1, August 2 and Day-2, our all-day conference on August 3.
Attendees can attend workshops only, conference only or get an all-inclusive pass to both events! Don’t miss out!
