How to improve your UX (even if you're not a designer)

I'm not a designer by trade but I love a good user experience. This is a growing list of UX principles that apply to the entire Loops experience.

Principle 1

All icon buttons should have a tooltip on hover that says the full name of the function.

Principle 2

Any button that has a keyboard shortcut should have the keyboard shortcut in a tooltip on hover.

Principle 3

Every interactive item should have a hover state of some kind. When you move your mouse over the app, it should feel have the same kind of feel as if you just moved your hands over a control panel full of tactile buttons.

Principle 4

One primary call to action on every screen. There should only be one way to move forward and it should be clear.

Principle 5

Primary buttons should always be in the same space within a flow. If you click a primary button in one place for 5 pages, the 6th page should have the button in the same place if it’s part of the same flow.

Principle 6

Color is a distraction. If you can’t get it to work in black, white and grays, color isn’t the fix, it’s a crutch.

Principle 7

Design for the primary use case first. Most users don’t access the site on mobile, so instead of wasting time refining the mobile view, we’re continuing to build features quickly for the desktop view. As of March 21, 2022, 0 users have asked for mobile.

Principle 8

Do the hard work whenever possible. If there’s something we can do for the end user, we should do it in the background automatically. Setting up a platform like ours can be a heavy lift, it should be weightless in our app.

Principle 9

Speed. No transitions longer than 50ms, no page loads longer than 100ms.

Principle 10

We don’t need to be bells and whistle complete, but every feature we launch should work as expected in all use cases. We want to make an excellent hammer instead of a cheap nail gun.

Summary

You don't have to be a designer to have a great UX. If you want to see these principles in practice, check out Loops and join the waitlist. ??