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What Makes Good UX/UI Design?

March 26, 2020
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Our Senior UX/UI Designer Jeff Lee, provides his thoughts on what makes good UX/UI.

As designers, we’re reminded that good design means that user interactions don’t feel forced to the user, instead they feel natural and seamless. We like to think that we everything we create has this point in mind but, as I’m sure many other designers agree, it often takes A LOT of iterations to get it right.

In this blog, I’ll outline what I think makes a good UX/UI design, and show you how MishiPay aims to deliver it with the help of user testing.

Good UX/UI design aims to disrupt

The most important thing we need to remember is that good design starts well away from any app or mobile device. It starts with an aim to disrupt the current way we do things. Take Uber for example. For hundreds of years, when we wanted to go from A to B and we didn’t own a car, we called or even hailed a taxi. Once we got in, we told the driver where we wanted to go and how we wanted to pay. By taking this basic information exchange and digitalising it via an app, Uber have created an experience so seamless that we can’t picture any other way to get from A to B anymore. Can you remember the last time you handed over cash or card at the end of a cab ride?

Similarly to Uber, MishiPay is also on a mission to disrupt the current way we do things, but within retail. We want to change the norm of the in-store retail experience for shoppers by giving them the means to checkout using nothing more than their mobile phone. A lofty goal, but one that we think will resonate with today’s shoppers.

Knowing the true user journey

When we design, we may think we know what the ideal flow or user experience is but often when we present it to the real world, it isn’t the case. That’s why it’s important for UX/UI designers to know the true user journey. MishiPay is known for seamless and fast checkout, so when we’re building or creating anything, from our software to the UI of our apps, that’s our north star. However, something we’ve noticed is that when users input card details or pay with a saved card, they tend to slow down to verify their details and make sure they know where their money is going and what further steps they need to take. This is an interesting fact when you compare it to those users that use mobile wallets. We’ve seen those that choose to pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay during their checkout clock in at around 20 seconds.

This proves two things:

Users often feel more secure paying with a digital wallet.
Users effectively have two journeys when checking out: a longer, more methodical one, and an almost instant one, depending on how they choose to pay.

What this means is that the information we present the user must be succinct and address their chosen journeys in order to keep the flow as frictionless (and the experience as unforced) as possible, all the while ensuring the customer is at ease during the checkout process.

Clear and concise feedback through user testing

User testing is essential. It’s how we make sure our technology is the best it can be using you, the user. Recently, we held testing sessions to see what user reactions were to Decathlon’s Scan and Go app store visuals, Decathlon being one of our largest customers. This was crucial to us as many users see these visuals as a means to find out more about the concept of Scan & Go as a whole.

We presented users with two options:

A: The old Decathlon app store graphics.

B: A proposed new design.

We then asked users to provide feedback and choose which set they preferred. We found that 83% of users preferred Option B with feedback that included “It feels like I’m right there with them” and “Scan and go resonated with me”. With this almost scientific insight to back us up, we were able to change our graphics, as opposed to changing them because we thought the graphics were better.

As we progress, we will continue to change our designs for a range of things. That’s the exciting thing about design; we look for the gaps or the friction points users experience to keep whatever it is we’re designing the best it can be. If you’re starting your journey of UX/UI design, or you’re wanting to learn how to improve, these three steps are a great place to start.