Who is the user? This is the biggest and probably the first question that needs to be answered when you are designing a UI or developing a UX. A lot of scenarios that I deal with are typically a flurry of features and functionality that can potentially drown to user to a point that users simply refuse to interact with the tool, software or application. Sometimes the client is to blame or some developer’s ego seems to be dominating the conversation in a project that the whole point of the design or development becomes nothing more than blur for all parties involved.

Being able to identify the target user or audience can establish a baseline for a designer that will tell the designer when something is “too little” or “too much”.  This factor helps determine how other factors will play into the equation which is key in delivering an effective UI or UX design.

Here is an example of a typical high level scenario when it comes to user interface design:

Client: We want to create an photo editing app.

Client: We cater to mostly parents or mom-and-pops.

UI Designer: Cool what kind of features or a feature set do you want?

Client: We want to give them something like Adobe Photoshop.

Adobe Photoshop is a very powerful tool but I can tell you that most parents or mom-and-pops will be overwhelmed by just looking at the Photoshop UI. If the user struggles to use that app or is simply wasting too much time trying to figure out the UI then the application has failed at the UI level. Most of the time the thinking “dream big” is the goal of a client but this approach will not only alienate your users but completely defeat the goal of designing an effective UI or UX. Your software or app may have all the tools, features or functionality that a you want but it is completely useless if no user wants to use it.

Once you’ve established the baseline for your user then you can check or validate your UI by asking simple questions around it.

• Did we put the proper labels that matches the target user or is our app talking on the same level as the user? Ex. Using a label “Image Editor” versus “Edit Your Photo” versus not having any labels at all.  You can have your app use fancy terminology for labeling controls or even have no labels at all but if the way you’ve set it up makes your users take a couple of seconds to understand what the labels are then you are simply confusing your user.
• Do we have the components or feature set that support the target audience? Ex. Having Zoom In, Zoom Out, Zoom Fit versus Zoom In, Zoom Out, Zoom Fit, Zoom indicator and Zoom level drop down. More features might look better but having two more features (Zoom level drop down and Zoom indicator) just means my user will spend more time on these controls. Also take into account that the Zoom level might be arbitrary because the user could be using it to a view a document in a mobile device or the zoom level has no real value to user because they are looking at a photo versus editing a document.
• Did we apply the right look and feel? Ex. Game UI vs a Corporate UI. These are two very extreme UI designs concepts and you simply can’t provide the edgy game UI look and feel to a corporate user base and vice-versa.