14 logic-driven UI design tips to improve any interface

Designing user interfaces is no easy task. With countless choices around layout, spacing, typography, and colour, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. And when you layer in considerations like usability, accessibility, and human psychology, the challenge only grows.

But here’s the good news, UI design doesn’t have to feel so complex. After more than 20 years as a product designer, I’ve found that most of my visual and interaction design decisions are guided by a clear set of logical guidelines. Not by artistic genius or gut instinct, but by straightforward guidelines.

Of course, creative flair comes in handy, but much of what makes an interface intuitive, inclusive, and visually pleasing can absolutely be learned. Having a structured approach allows you to make smart, consistent design choices. Without it, you’re essentially relying on trial and error to make things “look right.”

And the best way to learn? By doing. So let’s start applying some UI design tips. All design tips are from my Practical UI design book.

UI design tips to fix an example interface

The following design is for the profile page of a community blogging platform. The first example is the original design. The second is the result of quickly applying some logic-driven UI design tips.

Even if you don’t have much experience with UI design, you can probably tell that the original design just doesn’t feel “right”. That’s because it contains a bunch of design flaws that can negatively impact usability. You might already have spotted some of them.

Now, let’s walk through the process of improving the original design, addressing each issue step by step with these UI design tips:

1. Space elements based on how closely related they are
2. Ensure interface elements have a 3:1 contrast ratio
3. Use a single primary button for the most important action
4. Ensure buttons have a sufficient target size
5. Make sure important content is visible
6. Decrease letter spacing for large text
7. Don’t rely on colour alone as an indicator
8. Try to avoid using multiple alignments
9. Ensure text has a 4.5:1 contrast ratio
10. Consider removing containers to simplify an interface
11. Use regular and bold font weights only
12. Be consistent
13. Don’t confuse minimalism with simplicity
14. Balance icon and text pairs

1. Space elements based on how closely related they are

The amount of spacing between interface elements should depend on how closely related the elements are. More closely related elements should generally be closer together to show that they’re related. Unrelated elements should be separated by placing more space between them.

Using spacing in this way is one of the most powerful methods of breaking up information into smaller groups. If you think of each group as a rectangle, you’ll start to notice that interfaces are made up of many small rectangles within larger ones. Start by applying small spacing to the innermost rectangles and gradually increase the spacing between rectangles as you move outwards.

Deciding on the ideal spacing between interface elements can be a frustrating and time consuming task. There are endless options to choose from. Rather than using trial and error, one pixel at a time, create a simple set of predefined spacing options to make decisions faster.