Best Practices for Usability Within the User Interface (UI)

As covered in Chapter 1, The Fundamentals of UX, within the UCD process, each of the steps plays a significant role in creating a quality product that users enjoy to use. The research and concept phases are essential for laying the foundation, but the visual design brings the concept to life. Websites can be beautiful, but they also need to be easy to use, by using industry standard user interface best practices such as Google's Material Design and iOS Human Interface Guidelines the UI will not just be aesthetically pleasing, but will also tick all the usability requirements. The following topics in this chapter will lead the journey through best practices for UI design:

• Origin of UI and the birth of the Graphic User Interface (GUI)
• Color theory and the impact color psychology has on the user
• The relation between color and web accessibility
• Best design practices such as Google Material Design and iOS Human Interface Guidelines
• Best practices for effective iconography