Why less is more in the realm of UX and UI design
In today’s world, we constantly engage with various apps to get things done. Some do exactly what they claim to do. They are intuitive, easy to understand, simple to use, and make our lives hassle-free. On the other hand, there are apps that overwhelm and bombard us with way too much information all at once. Some apps scream at us for attention by being heavily jazzed up but don’t do a good job of helping us achieve what we set out to do by using them. We’ve all had our fair share of good and bad experiences with apps and have decided to make them a part of our daily life or abandon them at the earliest.
What is it that makes apps effective, user-friendly and instrumental in converting a passerby to a potential customer? To a large extent, the answer is taking a minimalist approach, and delivering the crux of the information by keeping things simple. Apps designed on the basis of the ‘less is more’ philosophy get this right by stripping things down to the barest minimum in terms of content, functionality, and design. Minimalism is a modern design approach that prioritizes the essentials. As easy as it may sound, minimalism is hard to achieve. But when done right, it enhances user experience and results in a sophisticated design.
The ‘Less is more’ approach allows your users a whole host of unseen, yet significant, benefits. Read on.
Give users features and content that are essential to help them solve their needs. By cutting out the clutter, we make it easy for users to make decisions and ensure that they have fewer problems to deal with. Lesser number of elements on a screen would also result in apps that load faster and work smoothly.
The use of simple design elements, a limited color scheme, and clean and bold typefaces can produce aesthetically pleasing apps which delight users and heighten the user experience.
Minimalism is here to stay and will be timeless because businesses and agencies have understood how well it caters to better user experience. User experience is now the key agent that drives our decisions and is an important part of the design thinking process. Minimalism will always be a way to create amazing products with great user experiences.
Successful apps attribute a part of their success to having similar user interface designs across all devices. This familiarity brings a sense of comfort to users. When there are fewer elements, they can be organized into neat layouts across different screen resolutions easily and quickly.
Minimalism allows users to engage with the content or services completely and offers little to no scope for distractions. This allows users to complete tasks quickly and effectively.
Fewer elements on the screen reduce the chances of users getting confused with navigational elements and makes navigation intuitive for users.
If you feel this is all talk, just take a look at some world-famous apps that do it right by embracing minimalism.
The Apple design team is the front-runner when it comes to apps that have adopted the minimalist design approach. The first thing that users notice without a doubt is the clean and sophisticated user interface design characterised by the refreshing presence of negative space and a limited color palette of black, white, and red. They have taken this one step further by defining and designing motion that enhances this experience of minimalism.
In 2016, a lot of people reacted to the revamp of the Instagram logo but not many noticed that they had imbibed the minimalist approach for their user interface design. They treated their interface like a blank canvas which allowed users’ uploads and comments to shine.The negative space also allowed them to display new features like ‘stories’ without causing clutter. What they did with all of this was keep their users at the heart of the experience by making the app all about their content. It isn’t surprising that they are one of the leading apps for content creators.
When Airbnb revamped their user interface, they took the same minimalist approach by getting rid of unnecessary images and increasing the negative space. The predominantly white interface design allowed the content to become the focal point, and the functionality became crystal clear. They used clear bold headlines and clever icons to draw customers and this resulted in improved success rates. Again, a smart business move to put the hosts and guests at the center of the experience.
If you’re sold on minimalism being a great way to hero your app’s content without all the bells and whistles, here are some characteristics of minimalist design that will help in creating cleaner and functional user interface designs that your users will love using.
Miles van der Rohe's “Less is More” illustrates how minimalism is all about simplicity. It is about giving users what they need and coming up with designs that give them fewer choices. This in turn gives them immense satisfaction in getting the job done easily. From a business perspective, it is more about saying NO to items that do not enhance their user’s success.
When designing apps, we have an important responsibility of coming up with solutions that solve user problems and meet business goals. The design and execution of the functionality become crucial in terms of the problems you are solving and how users would interact with the product to satisfy their needs. These flows should be simple and intuitive and emphasis should be placed on the most important features right from ideation. As a business, think of it as getting the user from the start to the finish line in the easiest way, not the quickest way.
Flashy elements that don’t focus on content have no purpose and distract users. Use hierarchy and place important text content at the top in large font sizes. This will draw users to the content you want them to notice. Think about this as providing the most relevant content that helps user succeed on their own.
Identify the most important features and elements and place them on the screen at prominent places. Use icons that are universal and not too colorful. They should be relevant and easy to understand. Strong/ vibrant colors should be used for success or warnings. This needs you to focus on every detail. If you need someone to explain it to you, then you can be rest assured most of your users are not going to get it.
These design layouts are easy on the eye, bring a sense of order, are simple to navigate, and help users make the right decisions. Your users are going to come from a whole host of devices and cultures. Think of how you can make the design work for all.
In the minimalistic design approach, using the 60/30/10 colour rule in your user interface ensures that you are not overdoing it with colour. This rule allows you to play around with a palette of 3 colours in the proportions of 60% (dominant colour), 30% (secondary colour) and 10% (highlights and accents). Having a style guide or design system in place makes this easier to use and scale.
Allow the negative space to be abundant. It helps users focus and directs them toward elements and screens you want them to explore. Design as much for the whitespace as much as the content that really helps your users succeed.
To sum it up, a minimalist design approach aims to reduce complexity. It focuses on drawing the user’s attention to content by removing anything that isn’t essential. This makes it one of the few design trends that focus on problem-solving as much as aesthetics. Apps designed with minimalism load faster. Obvious right? And with mobile-first indexing being in wide use now, more and more businesses will soon be turning to the minimalist design approach.
At Kutung, we always advocate that you must focus on the success of your users. Give them only what they need to do what they want to do. We also believe that there is no singular approach to making designs minimalistic, it requires conscious and continuous practice to constantly weed out complexity from user journeys in an app. After all, when your user succeeds at the problem you help them solve, your app becomes their go-to constant every time they need to solve the problem.
You don’t need to believe what we say. All you need is to submit your problem to us here. We love the challenge and would love conversations.
Archana, UX Analyst
