Designing Buttons
Buttons are an essential part of a UI design. You have to pay a lot of attention to their color, placement, text visibility, and the importance of the buttons.
When designing a button, the core aim of building the application has to be the focus, especially if the button ought to help drive sales, the call to action for sign-ups, or navigation between pages.
All of these put together will determine how the button will appear.
If a user has to spend more time trying to understand what a button is used for, then the user experience is not so great. Here are some factors to be considered.
Make it obvious
Generally, buttons look alike on the internet. Your button has to look similar to what your users are used to.
DO NOT TRY TO RE-INVENT THE WHEEL.
You cannot say you’d want to make your button a triangular one, well maybe in rare scenarios like designing a gaming application.
They can also come in a circular shape in the case of a floating action button. Buttons are usually rectangular. They may have shadows, rounded edges, outlines depending on preference, and your Call to Actions.
Sometimes, ordinary texts are used as buttons. Still, you have to make it obvious by using accent colors for such texts or underlining them to enable users to distinguish them from the other texts on the interface quickly.
Your buttons must appear clickable to users. Buttons with shadows and accent colors are easier to recognize compared to other forms of buttons. You understand the product you are designing more than the users, so you know what each element does. Your buttons have to be interactive.
Here are some different types of UX buttons highlighted below:
When designing buttons, you should note the following:
1) Position them properly
Your buttons have to be appropriately positioned to enable users to locate them quickly. You will have to consider the time it takes users to perform specific actions on a screen. If it takes too long for users to locate a button to act, then the button is not positioned correctly, except you are building a ‘find the button game.’
If it is a prominent button on a page, it has to be a floating action button, make it stick to the top, preferably so users can still see it when they scroll down a particular page.
2) Label them properly
Your buttons should be appropriately labeled to give users an idea of what it does. Do not assume your users will recognize a particular icon used on a button. You are more likely to have more users converted if you add a text to your buttons.
3) Design their interactive states
You should also pay attention to different interactive states of a button.
4) Pay attention to the size and text alignment
The size of a button depends on the position and the purpose of the button. You do not want your button to look out of place. It is also a general rule that the text is centralized.
5) Differentiate between primary and secondary button
Different buttons are created for a variety of purposes, and core CTAs should have accent colors, making them evident as we want the users to click them.
Conclusion
Buttons are essential in designing an excellent user interface. They can make or break the overall user experience. The bottom line is, great buttons are easy to discover and highly interactive.
