A Powerful Way to Practice UX Design

An amazing exercise one can go through to practice their UX Design and UI Design is to put together some forms to collect data.

Data collection is un-sexy and seemingly simple, but it’s as important as it is difficult.

How many times have you tried to fill out a form on a website and felt frustrated? Either confused by the questions themselves, or thrown off by the interactions.

Think about all the small elements that go into it: required fields, error handling, instructions, progress, user paths, and more.

This will force you to work though some key points of UX Design and Research:

Empathy – How will the end user perceive this? Can I make this easier for them?

Research – What does the client want to get out of the questions? What’s the best way to get that type of data?

Clarity – does what I put together make sense? Will I be getting the data I want?

Usability / Design – how can I change the layout and appearance to support the completion of the form? How can I make it obvious what to do, what to do next, and what is correct. Not to mention making often ugly forms beautiful and enjoyable to use.

Review / Testing – when I put this in front of people, do they understand what I’ve done? Are they confused?

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Going through the process of putting together a form will stretch your core UI / UX muscles. And having it as a specific reference point and skill never hurts 😉

Cheers to your great UI / UX work!