Importance of text in user interface
If the message you want to convey is in text, we should take into consideration many factors which will improve the user experience. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for the user to follow. In this article, we will look at how alignment, colors and fonts of text plays an important role in user interface design.
The first thing we want to look at is text alignment. In digital user design, we want as few alignment lines as possible to make the application less confusing and messy. Alignment lines are when we draw vertical or horizontal lines at the beginning and end of every text. We reducing the number of alignment lines, we reduce the confusion of the user and that allows us to better guide the user. As humans, our eyes tend to focus on things in a straight line. Take for example, a child's writing; when the letters are different sizes, it makes it harder to read than one with even spacing and size and we consider it messy. We don't want users to think our applications are messy and haphazard so we need to reduce the number of alignment lines in our app.
In order to make our designs more user friendly, we also need to take into consideration the contrast between the text and the background. If we have a picture in the background, we don't want the text to be lost in the background. In some cases, like with picture backgrounds, we may not be able to contrast the text as much as we would like. In those cases, we have a few different ways to increase contrast. One of the ways is to put a boxed background for the text. If the text is too large or the boxed background will cover too much of the background image, we can make the boxed background more transparent to allow the background image from still showing. If we want a more elegant solution, we can add a graduated overlay which would become more opaque in the area we want to add the text.
After considering placement and color of our text, we have to consider the typeface. We can accentuate words by contrasting the weight of the text, the style of the text and the case of the text. If we are using big, bold letters in the title, we can add focus to a particular word or phrase by decreasing the font weight and making it italic. We can also use upper case letters to highlight text or vice versa. We can also change the distance between the characters in a word to add focus. Choosing a type will also help convey different moods. People tend to equate thinner weight with wider characters more luxerious. Using bold, lower case letters with sans serif makes things less formal and inviting for users.
User interface is all about designing a roadmap for the users as we guide them to where we want them to go. Carefully selecting and laying out the text will help users focus and make for a better user experience. We can use more contrasting types where we want the users to go. We can also use less contrasting types to help the user avoid getting side tracked by using types that require more attention. A typical example of this can be seen in car dealer ads where the model, incredible price are very easy to read and stick out but all the terms and conditions are in tiny, hard to read types that the reader has to intentionally look for.