4 Characteristics of Good User Designs

and why they even matter

3 min readMar 7, 2023

A term ‘designing user experience’ is a bit misleading. You cannot really design ‘user experience’- they experience it just like they do. However, there are some areas you can incorporate into your product and user journey. This will ensure that the product is just as you intended it to be.

However it is a lot more than fancy colours and flashy titles.

At a high level, the products should be user centred

Start with the basics. A while ago, a product was developed and assumed that users would adapt to it.

Then everything exploded with a lot of choices which made this approach obsolete.

If you do not put the user at the centre of your product, you might still get lucky. You could also already know your target extremely well. However, that’s not always the case.

When you start with what the customer wants you minimise the risk of making products that are not needed.

When That’s why large brands spend a lot of money on user and A/B testing — exactly to understand how the user responds.

If you want a product that sticks you need to understand

Who you are selling to
What are their pain points
How do you solve these

We will cover these in future articles but here is a high level take away

What does that actually mean?

Products should be usable- aka one will not sell junk

Imagine a situation:

You’ve just bought a wonderful new item. You either download it or take it all the way home. Assemble it and get into the groove to use. A few minutes later you realise that either

a) it does not work at all or

b) it does not work as you expected it to, or

c) you need something else in order to use which, which you were not told about.

What do you?

Most likely you will return the product at cost to yourself-even if that cost is an annoyance. Chances are you will never buy from the brand again and you will tell your mates. You might also leave a bad review.

Products should be equitable

This means that everyone should be able to use your product. In the US one in four adults identifies as having a disability. In the world, the number could be as high as 1 billion people.

Apart from disability, you might also want to consider how comfortable your users are with technology.

Some modifications might include:

larger fonts
colour schemes optimised for the colour blind
including names of what the icon does under the icons
utilising alt text under images to describe what the product is
specific modifications for the product — non slip mats or larger handles

Consider how will your customers access your product. If it is through mobile is your website optimised for this? What if they are accessing it with a slow/patchy internet connection?

As you can tell by the number of people, catering for all can be lucrative. More importantly it is also a right thing to do.

Products should be enjoyable

Life is too short for bad products. Make yours as enjoyable to use as you can.

This could mean fun fonts, colours or otherwise pleasing.

Products should be useful

Solve a real problem for the user. They will love you for it.

User design process starts with the problem and then finds the solution. Too often we start with a solution- because we want to make something- without actually considering if it is a problem at all.

TLDR: Characteristics of Good User Designs

Designs should start with a denied problem your user or user group is having- do not start with a product and the try to find a problem it is solving.

Good products are:

usable — ie they work
equitable- anyone can use them
enjoyable and fun to use
useful- they solve a need