Unveiling the Secrets of a Clutter-Free UI

Say goodbye to cluttered and confusing interfaces! In today's digital world, it's crucial to ensure that your app, website, or web app's UI presents information clearly and concisely. Did you know that 90% of the UI is text? That's why focusing on text presentation and reducing visual noise is essential.

Let's dive into an example of a wireframe of a podcast app screen.

The screen provides a list of episodes, the play button, and the remaining time for the episode being played. The most crucial information that needs to be highlighted is the user's location within the app and the available actions they can take. In this case, the "Episodes" tab and the currently playing episode are the most important indicators. The rest of the information, like the date and length of the episode, can be given less importance by

1. reducing the font size,

2. reducing the font weight,

3. reducing the color contrast (while making sure it’s accessible)

But it's not just about the text; even lines can add clutter to the UI. That's why it's important to eliminate lines where they're not needed and reduce their opacity when necessary.

To guide the user on what is clickable and what is not, use the primary color to highlight the current state and neutral colors for secondary actions.

By using this approach, you can help the user scan critical information and make informed decisions about the actions they should take.

Some key takeaways from this exercise-

• Avoid using the same color for both your primary buttons and non-clickable text, unless the button color is black of course.

• Emphasize by de-emphasizing. Highlight your important content, like headlines and bullet points, by using a dark color, bold font weight, or increasing the font size. On the other hand, keep the secondary content, like date extensions and extra information, low-key by using a grey color, regular font weight, or reducing the font size.

• Make sure your users know what they can do! The primary actions should be crystal clear, the secondary actions should be easily noticeable but not overwhelming, and the tertiary actions should be there for the user to discover but not take away from the main focus.

Get ready to create an interface that's both clean and intuitive!

Remember, it's all about using the hierarchy first approach to design the actions on the page and the result will be a much less busy UI.

And, as always, if you have any questions or need further guidance, don't hesitate to reach out.

Cheers,

Ankita

References-

The wireframe used in this exercise was originally provided by Arjun while doing the Visual 50 days challenge.

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