How to Overcome Design Problems with UI Design Patterns?

Many common design problems can be overcome with the effective use of design patterns. There are many problems raised in the web design communities and they have a common solution. Most of these can be solved with UI design patterns. Design pattern is not a trend; it is more about classifying the common designs under one big category.

How to Approach UI Design Patterns?

Design patterns are used by designers all the while, if you are unfamiliar with this then you have been using them unknowingly. What does a designer do when there is too much content to display? The designer automatically utilizes “Tabs”. This design pattern allows the designers to showcase a bucket load of content without drowning the users in a sea of link that they would be able to swim through.

Benefits of UI Design Patterns

Some of the other benefits of design patterns include:

• Teaching the newcomers on the best practices of web designing and how to achieve them.
• Helping designers adapt to the needs of the clients and improving their overall understanding as well.
• Allowing much better communication which reduces any risk of making unfamiliar choices.
• Reducing the time and cost of carrying out specific tasks as per the workflow.
• Wasting time on building something that already exists.
• Creating a design that the users are familiar with and thus it is easy to use.

Two Popular Examples of UI Design Patterns

The two most popular UI design patterns today, according to the experts, are:

• Navicon: It is also known as Site Navigation or the universal symbol for menu, it is a very popular pattern for modern web designers. The pattern is completely adaptable for the mobile devices as well.
• Parallax Scrolling: It is a very popular design pattern for the single page websites. The single page websites can use this scrolling mechanism to give the website a lively feeling.

How to Approach UI Design Pattern?

• Summary of Problem: Before using a design pattern it is essential that you find a problem and explain it. Try to explain the problem in not a paragraph but only one sentence. This will help solve the problem quickly.
• Solution to the Problem: The next step would be to search around to see whether such a problem has been solved by someone else or not. Some of the things to detail are: navigation, getting inputs from users, dealing with data and their integrations with other applications or services and displaying the content or information.
• Seeking Examples: Seeing is believing! So take screenshots or mockups to communicate clearly what you are intending to do. In certain situations you might need user flows and additional notes to clarify the process.
• Usage: You should clearly delineate when a pattern can and cannot be used. Some of the usage details that should be provided include the interface layout, product architecture, programming language, type of user, devices and primary use case.

Though IU design patterns help the designers significantly, yet they need a lot of practice and discipline to grasp and perform well. Keep all the documents ready at hand as it can help you through the process.