Design patterns
Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.
Jakob's Law
This law perfectly explain the importance of following design patterns.
A design pattern is a series of events, actions, screens that a user is familiar with.
One famous example of design pattern is the time picker
While designing new product, and flow you may be tempted to
- Create custom patterns
- ⚠️ Often more complex and less intuitive for the user
- Design complex solutions
- Always ask yourself if you could not simplified it by using common patterns
Benchmark
Benchmarking is finding inspiration from your competitors. It should be focused on a specific goal. Commun design reasons includes
- Understand how the competitor answers a specific problem
- Look for differentiation opportunities
I always recommend to create a dedicated page in your Figma project for this.
It doesn't have to be perfect, simply something you may want to leverage on your design reviews or as reference. Take it as a simple screenshooting exercice.
Next up
Aesthetics
