Boosting Web Design with Accessible Design Patterns and Testing Methods

One of the most important design principles that may help you boost your next web design is having Accessible Design Patterns and Testing Methods. Accessible design patterns simply refer to Design patterns that can be easily recognized and used by a wide range of users, from casual visitors to professionals. When we talk about testing in web design, testing is a research method for assessing how easy it is for participants to complete the important tasks in a design. In this article, we will discuss what these design principles are and how they help in boosting our web design.

Accessible Design Patterns

Accessibility is designing products services (in our case, it’s designing UI/UX), and environments in an all-inclusive manner. In simpler terms, it means designing for everybody, keeping in mind the people who might have some special needs and taking care of those needs in the product experience and interface.

Accessible design patterns simply refer to Design patterns that can be easily recognized and used by a wide range of users, from casual visitors to professionals. The idea behind Accessible Design patterns is to have such design patterns that make the user feel comfortable and make them feel that the website or application is similar to most of the websites or applications they use in terms of interactions.

Testing Methods

Web design testing or Usability testing is actually a research method for assessing how easy it is for participants to complete the important tasks in a design. During a usability study, participants are provided with the designs/products, and researchers follow participants when they interact with the product/design. All the feedback from the users is then collected and worked upon.

Types of Testing Methods in Web design

There are two types of Testing methods in web design:

1. Moderated Testing: In Moderated Usability Testing, a person guides participants through the study in real-time. The person who guides participants through the study is known as the moderator. The moderator’s goal is to help participants interact with the product and collect their feedback along the way.
2. Unmoderated Testing: Unmoderated Usability Testing does not have a designated moderator. In unmoderated usability studies, participants test out the prototypes without human guidance. The study is generally recorded on video and is reviewed by the UX team later.

How to boost Web Design with Accessible Design Patterns and Testing

• Improves Accessibility of the design: Design while keeping in mind accessible design patterns is one of the best way to make sure that our application or website is user friendly and accessible to everybody. This not only increase the number of people visiting the website but also makes the design much more user centered. This conveys the user that the website has been build keeping in mind their needs.
• User Relatability: As we discussed earlier, the idea behind Accessible Design patterns is to have such design patterns that makes the user feel comfortable and make them feel that the website or application is similar to most of the websites or applications they use in terms of interactions. Since most of the websites are now structured and designed similarly, having a relatable and accessible design pattern helps in making the user comfortable and ensures that the website or the application doesn’t look oddly different then others.
• Iterative Design: Not even the best of the best designers gets it right in the first go. even they can’t design a good user experience without iterative design driven by observations of real users. This make testing an essential step in any good designer’s workflow.
• Fixing Design Issues: Imagine this scenario. Your team designed a website, and they asked you to create a new feature that will allow customers to place orders on the website. You have created a prototype of the website that includes this new feature to place an online order. But how would you know the imperfections and mistakes you made in you design, for that you will have to conduct a usability study, gather feedback and improve those aspects of your design. The earlier you realize your mistakes as a designer, the better the design comes out. And you can only know those mistakes by getting a review from another designer, which may be costly, or simply getting it tested by the people who will thereafter also use your final product.
• Giving Users What Users Want: During creating new features, you as a designer might have your best intensions for the customers but only they know what they want. No matter how great the concept or the design is, customers will only use stuff that they actually need. UI/UX testing allows us to find a balance between what the business want, what you can deliver as a designer and what the user wants.

Conclusion

In this article we discussed how we as designers can boost our web design using Accessible Design Patterns and Testing Methods. These two important design principles makes the design much more user-friendly, relatable, and user centered.

Make sure to follow the points we discussed in this article in order to boost your web design using design principles like Accessible Design Patterns and Testing.