Hala ☺️,

The honest self-evaluation for whatever you are doing plays a vital role in your success as a designer.

I’m Mohamed Yahia, a Product Designer. and here I’ll be sharing with you how I’m evaluating my work before sharing it with my client or even my team!

Be adult. Avoid the beginners’ dummy mistakes. Don’t fall in love with your solution, fall in love with the problem, the KPIs, Measurements.

Let’s start with a simple yet efficient checklist, feel free to use it, edit it or ignore it ?

One to Three clicks

Set a clear goal, If your users were able to complete complex tasks, navigate to a certain part of the system/platform within one to three clicks, now we talk.

Pareto Principle

80% of the user time will be invested using 20% of the system. Make sure this 20% is simplified, transparent, and easy to be found.

5(+/-)2

Cognitive load plays a key role in the overall rating of the experience you gave to your target. keep it simple, don’t communicate more than 5 to 7 ideas at once, even if you are showing a “select list”.

I know you will find many people mentioning it as 7+-2, it’s fine. but try to raise the challenge bar!

Banner-Blindness

Based on the user previous experiences, he may deal with certain parts as if it contain “ADs”. Avoid falling in such mistake, specially when you are communicating important informations or CTAs.

Inverted Pyramid

First, communicate the overall. hook the user with amazing concepts in few words and give him the ability to explore in efficient yet easy way.

Care, this should be the same for the deeper layers as well.

The 600 Elusive

Our brains can deal with 750 characters at once. Even though we won’t be able to read more than 150 characters. Drive the user imagination through the 150 characters to imagine certain concepts through the rest of the 750 characters, The 600 Elusive

Nudge / Hooks / Etc ..

Long story short. Is there is an opportunity to use any of these concepts without over-using them!?

User satisfaction is not the same as yours

This might affect lots of things, you are not designing for your self, you are designing for the end users! just think about it.

Usability nightmares

There are many, many, many, many articles talking about this. Just avoid all of them.

Do you have KPIs?

You must have a list of KPIs from Business’ and user’s prospective.

Clickabilty

Make sure that every clickable CTA is visible, have enough space.

User Never Read – They Scan

Kind reminder, no one will read your 100 lines, simplify your messages.

Search-ability

Any, and I mean any website should have a search feature. smart one (who could classify the results and show it on the go is desired).

I don’t have it here on my website, but I’ll have it soon.

Forms, Forms and Forms

The most critical part of any experience is Forms. I believe that implementing the best practices is not enough here. You need to make it as humanly as possible.

Remember, You posting a tweet, is you filling a form.

Don’t make me think.

Initiative interface should be your ultimate goal. lowering the cognitive load to Its minimal limits.

Rethink your interface design

It’s Huge, and I will post a detailed article around this particular part and how it affects the experience. but till that happen, care about these elements:

  • Whitespace.
  • Colours (meaning behind each).
  • Typography (hierarchy).
  • User Modular grid system.

Readability

Just confirming that you know your target audience abilities, and you are using a good typography / colour-contrast strategy that covers this part.

Test it before you sleep, and right after you wake up

Just do it. For me, it is like magic! document everything even if you is not going to implement.

Conclusion

Here is a list of the points we mentioned so far,

  1. One to Three clicks.
  2. Pareto Principle.
  3. 5(+/-)2.
  4. Banner-Blindness.
  5. Inverted Pyramid.
  6. The 600 Elusive.
  7. Nudge / Hooks / Etc ..
  8. User satisfaction is not the same as yours.
  9. Usability nightmares.
  10. Do you have KPIs?
  11. Clickability.
  12. User Never Read – They Scan.
  13. Search-ability.
  14. Forms, Forms and Forms.
  15. Don’t make me think.
  16. Rethink your interface design
  17. Readability
  18. Test it before you sleep, and right after you wake up
  19. More to be added soon!

Salamat ?