6 Great Steps - to Create Successful GUI for Apps & Websites

In web designing, great Graphic User Interface plays an indispensable role in helping the user to complete a given task as simple and effectively. All websites and apps have different design principles and different functions, but they have one thing in common – effective GUI design.

GUI designs create the background of any app or website which a web designer can’t create. So, if you are a web designer or want to be then you should understand the right meaning of Graphic User Interface before joining any web designing courses. But one has ever thought that how we create these great Graphic User Interfaces for the web.

There are 6 great steps that one can follow for creating a great Graphic User Interface for the Web which actually works.

1. Mind Map

It is a technique that issued for gathering information and organizing the related domain information using different combinations of radiating lines, keywords, pictures, images, symbols, and assorted colours to highlight the key points on a unruled sheet of paper.

Its main advantage comes from its ability to provide relevant information, with the main idea appearing right in the center, and the bulk of other supporting information, which is then highlighted via radiating lines from the center with keywords, and emphasized via images, symbols, and colours.

A design will turn out to be clean and crisp every time if you include in it- colors, typography and grid. It is a highly desirable phase of any design project. One should have a brief study of what to design, how to design, what is the feasibility, and how long would it take to complete it. Another idea in mind-mapping is that before implementing make a bullet note of series of steps that is required in the whole process.

Navigation consists of a series of choices:- Do you want to click or scroll? Read or watch? Enter data or hit the back button? Within the confines of two-dimensional space, we often must decide without seeing what will follow.

2. Sketches

Sketches are the most popular technique in GUI. It is a very efficient and speeds up the process of mind map. With the help of sketches one will be able to figure out how your app will work to get desired results. Sketches help to convey ideas, demonstrate functionality, visualize user flow, and illustrate anything that requires human interaction.

Before sketching, you should have a clear idea of the problem you are solving or the business objective for something new you are designing. Research is where the initial ideas begin to build, so that you can decide what you are designing. Sketching helps you extract different ideas quickly to start designing the look and feel you want to create.

3. Rough Userflow Sketches

Rough Sketches can be easily created using pen, paper, and whiteboard. Using something permanent like a pen or marker is best. Mistakes and messy drawings don’t matter. Consider doing this rough round of sketching for every feature or interaction you’re considering.

Sometimes we come across a stage when ideas are very complex and require more exploration, then at that time think for a couple of minutes to draw each of them on a separate sheet. Gradually adding detail to this sketch will raise questions about the feature that the group will be able to work on. It will save your time to work through concepts on paper before going to the computer.

4. Detailed Userflows

Sometimes you often miss high-level relationships and interactions within your system’s UI. User interface-flow diagrams also called storyboards or windows navigation diagrams which enable you to model the high-level relationships between major user interface elements.

When we start making the user interface-flow diagram, the boxes represent major user interface elements i.e. instances/objects and the arrows represent the possible flow between them.

In detailed userflows we decide the priority and place it on the web page. It is important because every part of a web page has a specific impact level. Whatever one wants to highlight should be at front and something that is of less importance should be placed accordingly.

User interface-flow diagrams are typically used for two purposes. First, they are used to model the interactions that users have with your software, as defined in a single use case. For example, it can refer to several screens and provides insight into how they are used. Based on this information, you can develop a user interface-flow diagram that reflects the behavioral view of the single use case. Second, they enable you to gain a high-level overview of the user interface for your application.

Because user interface-flow diagrams offer a high-level view of the interface of a system, you can quickly gain an understanding of how the system is expected to work. If there are many boxes and many connections, it is a signal to you that your system is too large for people for learning and understanding.

5. Wireframes

Wireframes means refining your ideas formed during the sketching process and dictating the finer details of a user interface. Sketching should always come before the wireframe stage. Wireframing is usually done in black and white showing all the ideas from the sketching phase laid out in a structured fashion. A wireframe is about functionality. It can be a really simple sketch that demonstrates what sort of things you can do in your design.

Wireframes is a representation of every important element of the final product. A wireframe of a website will give us an insight about the main buttons, the columns, the navigation and placing of different elements. You can also think it as a blueprint for a website. Wireframes are basic shapes or lines used to designate position and size only. Wireframe represents a “skeleton design”. The goal of any wireframe is to fit the elements into a layout, not indicate how elements may actually appear in a final design but use them where they will be located. A site with strong usability provides the user with organization and visual cues to aid navigation. Navigation Supports Content.

Menu – The first-place people look to understand what is included on the site.
Breadcrumbs – Like chapter headings in a book, breadcrumbs give situational context. Many users do not land it on the homepage, so orientation is essential.
Filters – Information-heavy sites can be made manageable with filters.
Links– Help users make connections between related content.

Wireframe should show:

The main groups of content (what to include?)
The information structure (where?)
A description and basic visuality of the user – interface interaction (how?)

6. Visual UI Design/ Mock-ups

It is a realistic representation of what the product will look like, in the case of a website. The final result can look exactly like a mock-up, or it can be a variation of different version revisions. Many people prefer to draw the mocku-ps using a graphic software like Adobe Photoshop, or do it straight in HTML/CSS format.

They are the backbone of your design and remember that mock-ups are built on top of wireframes and go further to show overall appearance aspects of a design including type choices, color choices etc. The main aim of a mock up is to how all final appearances will look like.

A mock-up is a middle-to-high fidelity, static, design representation. A mock-up/ visual design draft represents the structure of information, visualizing the content and demonstrating the basic functionalities in a static way and encouraging people to actually review the visual side of the project.

Hopefully, if one follows all the above steps; a great all round Graphical User Interface for the web can be created. We think, we have introduced you to some golden rules you weren’t aware. What are your thoughts? Do any of these rules have any strengths and weaknesses that weren’t mentioned here? In case you think there are others that should have been listed then let us know in the discussion below. You can also create such type of proficient GUIs for websites and app after joining our advanced web designing courses like:

6 Great Steps to Know to Create Successful Web GUI from Ravi Bhadauria