6 Common UX Design Myths You Shouldn’t Believe

(Summary: Here are some popular UX design myths you shouldn’t believe anymore.)

Many web design companies highlight “WE CREATE UX DESIGN” in their USPs. After all, the aim of UX design is to improve the overall experience of a user with the design of a website or mobile app.

But seriously, how many web designers create a stunning UX design?

While lack of resources & tools are another things, there are some prevailing myths among the designers that stop them from giving their best shot.

For example, some designers believe that UX is all about aesthetics. Some designers fill the page with a lot of icons. But such practices are nothing but a huge misconception.

Here I have rounded such popular UX design myths.

There’s No Difference between UX and UI:

UX stands for User Experience while UI means User Interface. However, many clients or newcomers take them for the same thing. Or you can say that they are most confused and misused terms in the web design field.

But there is a huge difference between UX and UI.

Imagine a digital product as the human body. UX design is its organ to support the functions while UI design is its appearance or presentation.

UX aims to improve user’s experience by enhancing the usability, ease of use and their interaction with the product. The UI design is all about the look and the feel of a product. The aim of UX is to provide a better UI.

To make a successful digital product, it’s important that UX and UI work closely together.

UX Design is all about Creating Great Design and that’s it:

While aesthetics can make a product attractive, it is functionality that determines the success of any digital product.

Keep in mind that aesthetics are the final touch just like “the coat of paint” to any newly built machine.

What’s the use of an attractive looking product if it has poor usability? To be frank, such products are useless as they fail to serve the purpose. Therefore, the functionality of a product should be your topmost priority.

This quote by Jonathan Ive, the Chief Design Officer at Apple, says it all—

“A beautiful product that doesn’t work very well is ugly.”

Meeting Users Face to Face is Important for creating a UCD:

Getting user’s feedback or inputs are important when you are creating a product or about to launch it. This way, you can make your product close the user’s expectations as possible.

Should you meet the users in person for this purpose? Well, that’s not necessary.

You can still perform user-centered design activities remotely if you are not able to meet them face to face. For example, you can use remote user testing or conduct an online survey or webcam user interviews. Many mobile app companies use their app prototype to test user experience with their product.

People Don’t Scroll to See the Things Below the Fold:

Many designers assume that people don’t scroll the content. This notion prompts them to squeeze everything into the top of the homepage or above the fold (a part of a web page being appeared initially when the page loads).

Keep in mind that people still scroll. According to one study, “people used the scrollbar on 76% of pages”, with 22% being scrolled the way to the bottom. However, most users scroll to the bottom only when they find the page is interesting and can be problem-solving.

A Homepage is the Most Important “Estate”:

A homepage gets the most attention during the design phase. But that doesn’t mean designers should overlook the other pages of a website.

Although a home page is initially shown, users are likely to explore beyond a homepage as they land your website. Then, ranking algorithms by Google direct the users to your individual content pages than on the homepage.

If these pages are poorly designed with messy content, users will take no time to abandon the website. Instead of spending hours on improving the homepage, makes sure to enhance the design of other webpages.

Icons Ensure Great Usability:

That’s the great myth of our time.

Over the years, many studies have proved that icons are not easy to memorize and need a lot of testing. A team of design researchers found that people remember the position of an icon instead of their graphics function. There are a very few universally understood icons like print, close, play/pause, share, tweet and reply.

To make sure that users can understand your icons, place text labels next to the icons just like MS Outlook did.

So these are some UX design myths you shouldn’t believe anymore. Do you have more UX design myths to tell? Please share them by commenting below.

Guest article written by: Athar Majeed is a co-founder of Savah App, a product that helps teams with all-in-one platform for prototyping, design collaboration and workflow. Athar has a background in design and developing SaaS-based products. He’s learning tennis, photography and prefers audio books. You can contact him on Twitter and LinkedIn.