The Pareto Principle of UX Design
Interior design process checklist is a vast field and is filled with creativity. Well, creativity knows no bounds and cannot be limited to just one person. However, when it comes to making your imagination saleable to a larger audience, there are things you must take care of. Some specific things or principles have been formulated over the years and continue to change as time moves forward. You may also check what is mean by integrated course here!
UX Design principles may seem a bit restricting to some, but they ensure that the designers reach the end goal. UX Design Principles like the Pareto Principle of UX Design are some widely acceptable and applicable guidelines that designers apply to ensure that their design is perfect for their audience. A group of people has created these principles from various fields. They made sure that the different aspects of design and how each affects human behavior are considered before the principles are finalized.
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The ultimate purpose of any design is to make sure that the masses are attracted to it and understand it. The idea is to grab the audience’s attention and eventually be interested in the content you have created. You may also enroll for the latest batch of UX Design Certification Course in India here!
What is The Pareto Principle of UX Design?
The Pareto Principle of UX Design is also called the 80/20 rule of the Pareto. It is kind of a productivity hack for designers. It means that 80% of the total project depends on 20% of the effort designers put into it. You may also check out what is the use of honours degree here!
Pareto Principle Examples
To explain the Pareto principle of UX design in UX terms follow the below example –
Talking about the 80/20 rule of the Pareto, 80% of the audience will likely use 20% of the features that you offer to them in your design. Similarly, in the coding language of UX Design, if 20% of the code goes wrong, it is likely to cause 80% of the whole function to go wrong.
Even though the Pareto Principle of UX Design is a design principle, and perhaps, an important one, it is not written in stone. It is like any other guiding principle. The idea behind the Pareto Principle of UX design is to inform the designers that a small number of things in their design have a much larger impact than they might expect. You may also read about what’s the difference between ui and ux here!
Why Should You Care About The Pareto Principle of UX Design?
Not Perfect
The first and foremost reason to keep the Pareto principle of UX design in mind is that it’s not perfect. As we have mentioned earlier, it is not a hardcore rule in the design world, but it does give a little edge.
For example –
Suppose you take the floor and notice that 80% of the traffic uses only 20% of the floor. It only makes sense that you focus on cleaning 20% of the floor more thoroughly than the rest. While it won’t give a 100% clean floor, it will ensure that the main area is perfectly clean.
The same goes for UX Designers as well in crafting user experiences. When you do notice that there are 20% of features that your audience focuses on the most, work on perfecting them. The entire experience does not have to be perfect, but you must make sure that 20% of the features give your users at least 80% of a flawless experience. You may also learn about who is the paypal mafia here!
Prevents Too Many Features
The Pareto Principle of UX Design’s idea is to ensure that the designers don’t focus on adding too many features within the design. Offering your clients too many elements within the plan will only confuse them further. It will do more harm than good. It is called “experience rot”.
Adding more and more features to your design will make it complicated, and the user might not even enjoy their user journey. Again, the 80/20 rule of the Pareto ensures that you focus mainly on the 20% of your users’ features that are likely to use more. You can also know more about why entrepreneurship is important for students here!
No Emotional Attachments
The Pareto Principle of UX Design prevents any kind of attachment of the UX Designer to the design they create. It is not uncommon for designers to face “design blindness” while creating a ux design principle. But this leads to them losing the objectivity of the invention, which can hamper the user’s experiences. Since the Pareto Principle of UX Design does not allow too many features in the design, it ensures that the designer focuses mainly on the user experience. Meanwhile, you may also check our blog post on what is the first step when building a high-fidelity prototype in figma or adobe xd here!
How to Imply the 80/20 Rule in Graphic Design?
Talking about UX Design with the Pareto Principle of UX Design, the 80/20 rule in Graphic Design also holds a massive relevance. Below are a few examples –
Tabbed Menus
The bottom and the top navigation bars in most apps are the widely used ones. And hence feature the essential functions. The top 3-5 features in these navigation bars showcase only 20% of the full features available in the app. But they are used over 80% of the time by the audience or the users. You may also check out how to write ux case study here!
Default Options
Some 20% of features are default in nature and are widely used as well. For example, when you are ordering food, once you have added the item you want to order to the card, the next step is to confirm the order. Then the application takes you to the address option and so on. The following step buttons are either placed as singles in one column or with either one/two features. The area is never crowded with too many buttons. Read what is user journey mapping in design thinking here!
How to use the 80/20 Rule in Testing?
So far, we have discussed the Pareto Principle of UX Design in terms of design and graphics. However, the next step after the design is testing. And the 80/20 rule in testing also holds equal importance.
One of the best ways to understand the 80/20 rule in testing is to check how the users work with the application overall. How to create a ux research plan which will give you a presumed list of things that the users are likely to focus the most on. And more often than not, those features could turn out to be true. However, as you launch the website or the application, you’ll understand that things could be a bit different. You might come across situations where a feature that you thought would be in 20% of frequently used features would turn out that it is not. So as a designer, you’ll have to make changes accordingly.
The Pareto principle of UX Design may not exactly show you the number of users that are using the features or not using the feature. But it will surely tell you about the one that is not really falling within the charts. Go to this website to know what is ux designer job here!
Conclusion
In the end, as a UX Designer, you must remember that the Pareto Principle of UX Design is not a hard-end rule. At the same time, it is said that it is an 80/20 rule, but it may not always be the case. Sometimes, it could be 90/10 or 60/40. In every way, there will be some features that your users use more frequently than others, and you’ll have to perfect them while keeping a balance with the rest. You may also know why will the role of risk managers increase post covid here!