How to fix an overloaded design

A cumbersome and heavy design is bad, because the user will be lost in a huge amount of information, buttons, links. Often, attempts to fit everything at once negatively affect the perception of information: the focus dissipates, and it becomes difficult to isolate the main thing.

If we are talking about information portals, the necessary information will simply be lost among the side ones.

The overloaded design of an online store distracts from the essence and “prevents” the purchase of a product or service – it becomes impossible.

A heavily overloaded design affects the performance of the site and its loading speed.

Imagine a photo gallery page that uses different fonts for titles, content, links. Images are added in their original size, their weight can reach several megabytes, and they will be loaded all at once.

In this case, the page load time increases significantly, and it can be inconvenient to use such a site due to the abundance of styles, styles, and elements.

Start analyzing the site from the header. If there are three phone numbers and e-mails of different branches and departments, several addresses indicating the proximity to the metro station and the opening hours of each, and there are also several menus (main and catalog), logo, motto, button to order a call – this site is definitely overloaded.

Despite the good intentions of providing all important information, we unwittingly prevent the user from using the site. The header from the example will take up 35% of the first screen and will prevent the completion of targeted actions.

The main rule is to use a grid. It depends on the location of the content, indents. By the way, you should not neglect the indents: there should be air between blocks, inside blocks, in text, in buttons and elements. This will help to focus on the important, prioritize the content.

In visual design, you should also adhere to healthy minimalism: ideally, this is no more than two fonts, a solid background instead of images, abstractions and illustrations instead of heavy photos.

It is worth adhering to minimalism and functionalism. This will help remove unnecessary content, get rid of redundant and irrelevant functionality. Sometimes it helps to hide less important information under the button, sometimes you have to think about processing blocks and content.

First you need to decide on the task of the site, for what needs it is intended and what goals it pursues. Next, determine the functionality of the site, understand which interface elements should be on all pages, and which ones can be removed. After that, we place this remaining content and navigation elements on a wide grid, set large indents – and a light, spacious site is ready.

There is a Yandex View service – a service for analytics of the UX interface, its USP “Make design decisions based on data. Test interface options at the prototype stage to choose the most understandable for users.

Useful literature:

1. Steve Krug. “Web Design: Steve Krug’s Book, or Don’t Make Me Think!”
2. Donald Norman. “Design of everyday things”
3. Alan Cooper. “Psychiatric hospital in the hands of patients”
4. Vlad Golovach. “User Interface Design 2. The Art of Washing the Elephant”
5. Jamie Levy. “UX strategy. What users want and how to give it to them
6. Russ Unger and Caroline Chandler. UX design. A Practical Guide to Experience Design”