Unless they’re teenagers, people actually like being told what to do—or at minimum, where to begin. It creates confidence. It makes them comfortable.
Here’s one simple UX concept that will immediately boost your audience’s confidence and help them feel good about your website or brand experience.
Information Hierarchy
What do you want people to look at first? What do you want people to look at second? Third?
When everything is given the same amount of real estate or the same visual weight, it’s confusing for users. They don’t know where to look first, what to focus on, or what to do next.
Information hierarchy can be created using:
Visual Weight
The most important element or message on the page is given the most physical space or visual weight. The second most important is given the second most weight. And so on.
Font Size
More important messages have larger point sizes than less important ones.
Visual Flow
Assuming your users are English-speaking, they’ll usually look first at the top left corner of the page. Where do they usually look last, if at all? The right. Additional design elements such as graphics, colors, and empty space can help move readers down the page or to the correct next step.
Conclusion
When evaluating a wireframe or design concept, “information hierarchy” is almost always the first thing I look for. This concept applies to every type of communication: websites, emails, menus, point of purchase signage, infographics, and so on.
Related Article
- UX Word of the Day: Qualitative Coding
- UX Word of the Day: Hypothesis Map
- UX Word of the Day: Mental Model
- UX Word of the Day: Wayfinding
- UX Word of the Day: Scroll Stopper
