How to Make Users Avoid Unwanted Cues in
UX Design

To create the best user experience, it is necessary to understand their behaviors and habits. The most important part of this process is to help users avoid existing cues that bring unwanted actions. As cues are signals or prompts that make users get specific behavior, the designer should identify those cues and mitigate them to create a better user experience that is more targeted and purposeful․

We at Milies, have gathered a list of strategies to guide users to avoid unwanted cues.

1. Find Out the Cue

   The most important part of this process is to discover and explore the cues that lead to unwanted behaviors. There are several efficient methods to accomplish this. The most recommended method is to conduct real-time usability testing and gather valuable information and feedback directly from your user. Usability testing can sometimes reveal cues and insights in general that are unknown to users themselves.

2. Remove or Minimize the Cue

   After identifying cues, the next logical step is to minimize or eliminate unwanted actions. Some effective methods are to redesign the interface, optimize the hierarchy, and make desirable actions visible. For example, if a user is not taking the right actions you need to provide clearer CTA elements, or if a user is permanently clicking on unintended objects, you can resize or reposition them, or simply make them less visible.

3. Change the Path by Providing Alternative Ways

   The best way to minimize or reduce unwanted cues is to provide your user with an alternative way that can change the path of action. The most important part here is to make the alternative way easily understandable, more accessible, and impressive so that users can easily remember and repeat the path. Good examples are intuitive paths where users are acting aligned with their primary goal without exploring unwanted paths and

4. Guide Your User

   Sometimes, removing cues and changing the paths are essential but not enough. If the product is less familiar or has newly added paths the user might need some additional help. This help can be provided by in-app guides, tutorial videos, tooltips, or an interactive onboarding process. Educated users are more likely to navigate effectively, as they have the initial knowledge and can significantly increase the inefficient cues. One good example is the character Loomie in Lootit website, who navigates and guides users through the whole experience.

   

5. Continuous Monitoring and Testing

   After all of the fundamental adjustments are put into place, the evaluation phase should then start. To keep the desired experience and to continuously improve it’s necessary to explore the user behavior and permanently gather feedback. The user testing process also should be constant. Conducting usability testing or doing A/B testing even for small actions can provide you with valuable insights which can lead to changes. These changes can greatly impact user behavior and lead to data-driven decisions.

Benefits of Avoiding the Unwanted Cues

The first and most important benefit for a designer is creating a user-centric and accessible user experience. Making the interface intuitive to the user leads to better engagement and retention rates as users can quickly reach their goals.

User-friendly interfaces increase the cognitive load, which also provides the ability for the user to focus on the primary goal. The latest makes users perceive the product as more valuable. Permanent improvements bring high customer loyalty and increased sales.

Milies' Recipe for User-Friendly Designs

We think of the design process as a tasty recipe. To create a user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) that are both elegant and useful, each step adds a vital component. At Milies, we've refined our formula to consistently dish up user-centric products that our clients love.

1^st step. Ideation and planning

Any creative process includes brainstorming and ideation, which is aimed at defining and solving problems. During the ideation process, new ideas are generated, discussed, and developed. Several design ideas can be generated during the ideation process, which are being filtered after and the good ones serve to find solutions for the UX problems. For example, during one of our latest projects, Bondit community management platform, we started from various ideas, and after many discussions and brainstorming we totally changed and developed the concept of the product.

2^nd step. UX Benchmarking

UX benchmarking comes after the ideation. The main goal of benchmarking is to measure the performance of the product, research and find competitors, and compare your product with the market competition. You should define what you want to measure and choose the method for measurement. There are many types of UX benchmarking, and the method you choose depends on your purpose.

In the process of creating Lootit, the most important part was to understand the current market and make a deep competitor analysis to understand user needs and pain points.

3^rd step. User Interview

Interviewing users can help you gather insightful data about their thoughts and emotions. This is the best way to define the pain points of the user and give them solutions. User interviews can be conducted through one-to-one meetings or online interview sheets. User interviews should take place at the very beginning of the design process as you don't know much about your user needs, product requirements, or design directions. But we should not forget that user interviews are one of the important parts of continuous UX research.

4^th step. User Persona

A user persona is a made-up character that portrays your intended audience. This can be conducted based on the insights you collect from the demographics, age, location, lifestyle, and problems of your user group. When you have united information about your audience’s behavior, interests, and pain points you can clearly understand what problems you are solving here. To create an effective user persona, you should gather data on your users, follow their everyday patterns, and collect feedback from them.

5^th step. Information Architecture

Information architecture is a practice to structure your content which can make primary actions easily findable. Through easy navigation, you can engage and keep your user as it makes complex information fun to use.

In his book titled “Communication Design. Developing Site Documentation for Design and Planning” Dan Brown, the founder of EightShapes, established eight principles of information architecture.

1. The principle of objects: Content should be treated as a living, breathing thing. It has lifecycles, behaviors, and attributes.
2. The principle of choices: Less is more. Keep the number of choices to a minimum.
3. The principle of disclosure: Show a preview of information that will help users understand what kind of information is hidden if they dig deeper.
4. The principle of exemplars: Show examples of content when describing the content of the categories.
5. The principle of front doors: Assume that at least 50% of users will use a different entry point than the home page.
6. The principle of multiple classifications: Offer users several different classification schemes to browse the site’s content.
7. The principle of focused navigation: Keep navigation simple and never mix different things.
8. The principle of growth: Assume that the content on the website will grow. Make sure the website is scalable.

6^th step. User Flow and Journey Map

Both user flows and user journeys have a purpose to explore how users accomplish their goals in a certain product. Both methods are UX mapping methods and are being conducted to optimize user activity. These processes aimed to improve user experience in reaching their goals. The difference is that user journey maps provide a high-level view of user interaction and demonstrate mainly the emotional experience, while user flow map concentrates on individual experience and is more about the physical journey.

We at Milies, have gathered a list of strategies to guide users to avoid unwanted cues

The rest of the steps will be described in the next article, which will be on the UX design process. Stay tuned!

Conclusion

Guiding users to avoid unwanted cues is e necessary component of the effective UX design. By finding out, mitigating, and reducing these cues, and also by educating and monitoring your users, you can reach a clear and accessible experience.

The user-centric approach is not only beneficial for the user who can smoothly reach the goals but also benefits the overall product. Such attention to little details can bring success and satisfaction.

To analyze your design needs and provide you with a consultation, you are welcome to contact the design team at Milies by sending a message to business@milies.net or filling in the form on our website.