Refactoring UI keynotes (Part 1)

June 17, 2024

Detail comes later

It’s important that you don’t get hung up making low-level decisions about things like typefaces, shadows, icons, etc.

Limit your choices

When you’re designing using a constrained set of values, decision-making is a lot easier because there are a lot fewer “right” choices.

Size isn’t everything

Instead of leaving all of the heavy lifting to font size alone, try using font weight or color to do the same job.
For example, using a softer color for supporting text instead of a tiny font size makes it clear that the text is secondary while sacrificing less on readability

Labels are a last resort

When presenting data to the user (especially data from the database), it’s easy to fall into the trap of displaying it using a naive label: value format.
The problem with this approach is that it makes it difficult to present the data with any sort of hierarchy; every piece of data is given equal emphasis.

Separate visual hierarchy from document hierarchy

Don’t let the element you’re using influence how you choose to style it — pick elements for semantic purposes and style them however you need to create the best visual hierarchy.

Reference

https://www.refactoringui.com/