After learning about Gestalt principles and Fitt’s Law, all the confusion I caused by my UI design, the lower or higher grade I received on Visual design class, and the particular result I observed from user testing on my design started to make sense. It reminded me once again that UI design is not only about how cool it looks but more about its functionality and convenience for the users. And in order to achieve that, it requires designers to go through UX aspects such as multiple researches and testings, and it would provide more efficient design process if we take an advantage of pre-researched human behaviors and cognitive reactions, such as Gestalt principles and Fitt’s law.
From my personal experience, I found it time consuming and harder to answer when the dropdown or accordions are too long in the digital survey. In the visual design class, I was very confused over the assignment which I had to reorganize components and modules in a specific website I chose and make it easy for users to interact since I had to come up with my own grid style and align the modules along with it. If I learnt about the Gestalt principles and Fitt’s Law beforehand, I could’ve analyze why the survey is inefficient and how I can improve the existing website’s UX and keep it in my mind for the future design project.
In this semester, I am taking Natural User Interface class. The current project I am working on deals with natural user interface using hands gestures that also requires proper UI elements and compositions, so that we can call the experience “natural” not only from the users’ gesture aspect but also the screen users are trying to interact with the gestures. In order to make my first natural user interface project even more effective, I will prioritize reducing the cost of interaction by creating interactive UIs on screen based on Gestalt principles and Fitt’s law, not only depending on the fact that the natural user interfaces are natural, less time consuming, and less cognitive process.
