Let me tell you a story about a college campus. Reed College in the US needed a total renovation. They hired a famous architect who did a stunning job with all the new buildings. The Provost was thrilled, but he had one question: “Where are all the walking paths? You’ve just left lawn everywhere.” The architect simply said, “Don’t worry. I’ll come back in a year.”
A year later, he returned. The paths weren’t drawn on any blueprint. Instead, he looked at where the grass was worn down from thousands of students naturally walking from one building to another. Those were the real paths. Only then did he pave them.
That’s the heart of User Experience (UX) Design. It’s the final pillar of web design, and it’s meant to be invisible. Good design can be about a bold aesthetic. Good UX is about getting out of the user’s way, so everything feels easy and effortless. Your website shouldn’t be a maze they have to solve; it should be the paved path they naturally follow.
So, how do you build that path? You focus on five things.
1. Embrace Simplicity.
Always choose simple over complex. Clutter is the enemy of a good experience. Look at Sina, one of China's biggest news sites. It’s so dense with links and information that it gives me a headache. My brain says “nope” and wants to leave immediately.
Now, look at Monocle, another news site. They chunk the content beautifully. A little text, an image, a video, some whitespace. It gives your eyes a place to rest and invites you in. With a consistent color scheme and typography, it’s delightful to read. The rule is simple: when in doubt, pare it down.
2. Demand Consistency.
This applies to both how your site looks and how it works. Take Xfinity, a major US communications company. If you look at their homepage, their TV page, and their news page, the navigation bar changes each time. Buttons move, the search bar hops around.
This means a user has to re-learn how to use the site on every page. For Xfinity’s audience, which includes many older users, that confusion creates a terrible experience. Keep your layouts, buttons, and logic predictable. Don’t make people think.
3. Design for Natural Reading Patterns.
Our eyes don’t scan a webpage randomly. They follow patterns, and you can design for them.
- The F-Pattern: The eye starts at the top left, scans right, then drops down and scans left again, like the shape of the letter “F”. This is common for text-heavy pages (like blogs or news sites). Place your most important info—headlines, icons, key buttons—along that left gutter. BigCommerce’s website is a great example of leading the eye comfortably.
- The Z-Pattern: The eye goes left to right, then diagonally down, then left to right again, like a “Z”. This is great for simpler pages or when you want to guide someone quickly to a call-to-action. Facebook’s layout famously uses this zigzag flow.
Think about how people look, then place your content along that natural sightline.
4. Think of All Platforms, Not Just Desktop.
A website is no longer just for a big monitor. It has to work beautifully on a tiny phone screen, too. A “mobile-responsive” design that rearranges itself is non-negotiable.
The worst is when a giant desktop site gets crammed onto a phone. The text is microscopic, and your fingers are too fat to tap the right link. But the opposite is also bad: a design that looks great on mobile but leaves vast, empty deserts of space on a wide desktop monitor (like Facebook’s recent redesign did).
Avoid my personal pet peeve: stacking so many banners and cookie warnings on the mobile version that your actual content shrinks to a postage stamp. Don’t go the other extreme either, making one massive image that requires endless scrolling. Find the happy medium. And that leads to the most important step…
Test, Test, Test.
You can’t guess your way to good UX. Get real people to use your site. Hire testers if you can. If you’re just starting out, bribe your friends and family with cookies. Watch where they get stuck, what they miss, and what frustrates them. This feedback is pure gold.
A Warning: The Dark Side of UX (Dark Patterns).
Some designers use their knowledge of psychology and UX to trick users. These are called Dark Patterns—design tricks that benefit the company, not the user.
- The Bait-and-Switch: Like a sandwich whose packaging makes it look huge, but you open it to find mostly air. Digitally, Amazon does this by highlighting the expensive “Express Delivery” button in bright orange, while the free delivery option you’ve earned fades into the background.
- The Sneaky Trap: A Snapchat ad for shoes once had a single-pixel curved line that looked like a hair on your screen. You’d try to wipe it off… and click the ad. They got paid, you got tricked.
- The Confusing Checkbox: “Click here if you would like us to no longer continue to stop not sending you special offers…” I have no idea what that means. And that’s the point—to confuse you into signing up for something you don’t want.
Good design helps people. Dark patterns manipulate them. Don’t be that designer.
Your Takeaway:
UX is about paving the paths people already want to walk. Start with your next project by asking: Is this simple? Is it consistent? Does it follow a natural reading flow? Does it work on every device? Then, bake some cookies, hand your site to a friend, and see where they naturally go. That worn path in the grass is your best blueprint.
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