Victor Profile picture
Jul 30, 2021 20 tweets 9 min read Read on X
I reviewed 100+ user interfaces this year.

Avoid the most common 18 mistakes to make your UI/UX design better 👇
1️⃣ Poor contrast

It happens when your text is hard to read on background because you've chosen the wrong color.

Look at the attached example. 🧐

You might not even notice the "My Quotes" label at the top.

Related tweets

Example of poor text contrast
2️⃣ Many primary buttons

It's considered good practice to have one primary action per page.

You CAN have many buttons, but one of them should be primary.

In the example below two buttons stand out equally and it's hard to decide what button the user should click to. Two primary buttons at the same time
3️⃣ Small clickable area

This one is crucial on mobile devices. And important for desktop as well.

Add an invisible area for elements that is hard to hit.

Related tweets:

4️⃣ Poor paddings

Very popular mistake. Happens often when using cards.

Just give the content a little bit more room to breathe. Wrong paddings
5️⃣ Icon inconsistency

This one happens when you use icons from different collections.

You may end up with icons that are:

- Colored
- Black & White
- Thick
- Thin
- Flat
- 3D

Which will result in inconsistency and look clumsy.

Related tweet:
6️⃣ Text hard to read/scan

Nobody likes to read long texts. Especially if they are poorly formatted.

Few tips:

- Remove what should be removed, keep it short
- Use headlines
- Break text into paragraphs
- Use lists
- Supplement your text with RELEVANT images How to fix text that is hard to read
7️⃣ Wrong alignment

This one is easy to avoid. Just keep an eye on how do you align items.

Columns/Grids might help here. Wrong alignment
8️⃣ Not enough whitespace

This one happens almost in every UI. But this one is tricky.

On the one hand, you should have enough "air".
On the other hand, related elements should go together.

The key here is to keep balance and have some taste. There is are no strict rules.
9️⃣ Poor validation

This is a complex topic.

Good news is that you can avoid most validation problems by reading this tread



The thing is that there ARE some rules, and if you stick to them, you can eliminate most problems with validation.
1️⃣0️⃣ Proximity violation

The law states: "Objects that are near, or proximate to each other, tend to be grouped together".

Take a look at the attached image and how to fix that.

Related: An example of fixing proximity
1️⃣1️⃣ Long text lines

Remember that text lines that have more than 50-70 characters are hard to read.

It happens because when you return to the beginning of the text, you might start reading the same line instead of the next one.

Related: Long text lines
1️⃣2️⃣ Redundant text

This one happens when you follow some patterns like there HAS to be a headline, a description, a button. And all of them have the same message.

Or if you put obvious hints or too wordy messages. An example of redundant text
1️⃣3️⃣ Poor quality of screenshots

Quite often I see logos that are not in SVG but in PNG/JPEG.

It's alright but remember that they should be suitable for the retina.

If you put 50x50 jpeg as your logo, it'll look pixilated & low quality. High vs Low quality of images
1️⃣4️⃣ Small font-size

The minimum font-size should be 16px in my opinion.

Don't be afraid to enlarge text.

Some sites have one sentence that takes the whole screen.

And that's totally okay. Example of large font size on landing page
1️⃣5️⃣ Taking full width when it's not necessary

You don't need to stretch your form elements or text to the full size of your screen.

There is no such a rule.

Let it take just enough space. An example of taking full width when it's not necessary
1️⃣6️⃣ No hovering state

When users hover on some element it should react if users can do something with it.

The most common example is buttons.

Related tweet:
1️⃣7️⃣ Poor shadows

If you're not sure if your shadows are good or not, just take them from a popular site or from a collection of shadows in some of the CSS frameworks.

It happens quite often that they don't look good.

Related tweet:
1️⃣8️⃣ Layout shifts

This is more a usability issue. This one happens when the user does not expect any changes in your layout, but they happen.

Random popups, ads, and all that stuff.

It might be a subtle shift, but still a bit annoying.

Related tweet:
I didn't expect THAT traction here. 😳

Guys, I also have a newsletter. I don't sell any ads here, usually send more or less the same stuff as on Twitter.

You're welcome. 👇

user-interface.io

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More from @vponamariov

May 1
How to design almost any UI element.

A curated list of 61 articles 👇
Buttons
---

1. Button Design – Get Site Visitors to Actually Click Your Buttons by @uxpin



2. Designing button states: Tutorial and best practices by @edwche / @LogRocket



3. The Definitive Guide to Buttons in UX: Part 1 by Lauren Waage

uxpin.com/studio/blog/bu…
blog.logrocket.com/ux-design/desi…
medium.com/@lwaage2019/th…
Text fields
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1. Text fields from Material Design



2. Text Fields Design from Radek (this one is impressive!🤩)



3. UI Designer’s Guide to Creating Forms & Inputs from @molly_hellmuth

m2.material.io/components/tex…
thestory.is/en/journal/tex…
uiprep.com/blog/ui-design…
Read 22 tweets
May 24, 2023
Today I turned 34.

Here is an updated version of the most helpful tweet I've ever posted.

How to design almost any UI element?

A curated list of 34 articles 👇
Buttons.

1. How To Design Better Buttons by @101babich and @smashingmag

👉 smashingmagazine.com/2016/11/a-quic…

2. Desperately seeking squircles

👉 figma.com/blog/desperate…
Thanks @Southclaws and @figma

3. Designing A Better Back Button UX

👉 smashingmagazine.com/2022/08/back-b…

Thanks @vitalyf Squircled button
Text fields

4. Text fields & Forms design — UI components series

👉 uxdesign.cc/text-fields-fo…

from @uxdesigncc by Taras Bakusevych

5. Validate it. The right way.

👉 dev.to/vponamariov/va…

By me :) Input anatomy
Read 18 tweets
Nov 23, 2022
Five UI/UX tips to improve your landing pages 👇

#SketchDesignChallenge 🔥
1/5. Poor text contrast on images.

Make sure that

🔷 the text on images is easy to read
🔷 it doesn't cover any important objects behind it (e.g. faces or products)
🔷 text contrast is good everywhere, not only on images
2/5. Navigation.

Don't hide navigation under hamburger icons on desktop devices.

That will hinder users to find necessary pages.
Read 6 tweets
Oct 17, 2022
CSS Tip ☝️

I needed to make a pill component that should have had a 1px border.

But when on hover it should be doubled.

It wasn't that easy, and here is why.
If you simply make a 2px border on hover it will increase the height and width of the pill.

Since you don't know in advance what the width is, and probably the pill might be multiline, I don't think using fixed height/width is a good solution.
Instead, what I did is - I used shadows.

The first border is 1px shadow, and the second border (in the hover state) is 2px shadow.

And that's basically it.

A simple, yet nice trick.
Read 4 tweets
Oct 17, 2022
Some things designers should learn by themselves
by Michael McWatters (link at the end)

I SO MUCH liked this that I'm going to share some parts from the article 👇
🔸 32% of your time will be spent labeling buttons.

🔸 Blood will be shed over any question that begins, “Should designers…”.

🔸 All the research in the world is no match for your CEO’s opinion.
🔸 The design will fail on one platform, and that platform will be the one your boss uses.

🔸 The delta between what you designed and what gets shipped can be measured in light years.
Read 9 tweets
Sep 6, 2022
One UI/UX problem. Seven examples. One thread 🔥

Clickable area.

Do you make it right? Let's find out 👇
1/7. Sidebar menus.

Make sure that sidebar links have enough clickable space.
2/7. Vertical navigation.

A typical case is when the navigation links of a landing page don't have extra clickable space.
Read 8 tweets

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