Applying human interface guidelines in UX design

Ever wondered how you can open a new app and instantly understand how it works? Right away, you recognize the various elements and know their purpose. It’s not magic — it’s the power of Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) at work.

Human Interface Guidelines are a set of design principles that ensure that apps follow familiar patterns, making them intuitive and easy to navigate. They cover everything from the layout and navigation to typography, color, and accessibility.

This guide will help you understand HIG. It will cover its definition, importance, key principles, and best practices for implementing it. We’ll also examine real-world examples and show you how to apply HIG in your design projects.

What are human interface guidelines?

Human Interface Guidelines are a set of design principles, standards, and recommendations that act as a framework for designers and developers, helping them create consistent, intuitive, and user-friendly interfaces. These guidelines, provided by platforms like Apple, Microsoft, and Google, define how things should look, feel, and work on a specific platform or operating system.

The HIG is a great place to start when making design decisions for your app. It outlines the design principles for the platform you’re designing for and gives you tips to help ensure that your design works as people expect.

Some well-known examples of HIGs include:

• Google’s Material Design Guidelines for Android and Web
• Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines for iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS, and macOS
• Microsoft’s Fluent Design System for Windows and other Microsoft products

Why do the human interface guidelines matter?

The main aim of HIG is to create a consistent experience across a platform (like an operating system or desktop environment) by standardizing design practices. This consistency reduces users’ cognitive load as they can quickly learn and adapt to new apps or features based on recognition.

But make no mistakes — these guidelines do more than just ensure consistency.

Here are some other key benefits of adhering to HIG principles:

• Better accessibility — HIG ensures accessibility by encouraging inclusive design and offering guidelines for designing with assistive technologies in mind
• Enhanced usability — By ensuring consistent design patterns, intuitive interactions, and responsive feedback, HIG helps create interfaces that are easy to use and navigate
• Faster product development — By adhering to HIG, designers and developers can save time on design and focus more on innovation
• Improved user experience — As HIG prioritizes intuitive design and accessibility, it helps create a more inclusive and seamless experience for a wider range of users
• Enhanced performance — By encouraging design choices that optimize app performance, HIG helps create smoother, faster, and more efficient apps
• Reduced error rates — HIG aids error prevention through clear instructions, reversible actions, real-time form validation, and error recovery mechanisms

What are the themes of the human interface guidelines?

Clarity

Present information in a simple, straightforward way that users can easily understand. This means using legible fonts in the appropriate sizes, a clear visual hierarchy, and concise language.

Consistency

Maintain consistency across the entire interface to help users recognize and understand how things work without relearning new actions in different contexts. This means keeping the navigation bar the same across all app screens and using a uniform button style.

User control

Give users autonomy while using an interface by allowing them to interact with a system on their own terms. This means ensuring they can initiate, adjust, or undo/redo actions.

Accessibility

Create interfaces that everyone can use, regardless of their capabilities or situation. This means keeping things simple and easy to understand while ensuring that your designs work for everyone, including people with disabilities and those who interact with their devices in non-conventional ways.

How to apply the HIG to UX design?

Here’s a step-by-step guide to get you started incorporating the HIG into your design process:

Step-1: Research and plan

Review your project goals and identify your target users. Understand your audience’s needs and the purpose of the app or interface you’re designing.

Step-2: Choose a design framework

Choose a suitable framework or design system (Material Design, Fluent Design, or Apple Human Interface Guidelines) based on the platform you’re designing for and familiarize yourself with its guidelines.

Next, align the framework with your brand’s identity and user needs. This means finding a way to express your brand while following platform conventions to ensure your app or interface feels familiar to its users.

Step-3: Incorporate HIG principles into your design process

• Consistency:
  • Maintain uniform layout, typography, color palette, and iconography across all screens
  • Keep the navigation patterns and interaction models consistent
• Clarity:
  • Use a clear visual hierarchy
  • Keep the language clear and concise
  • Ensure that the interface is intuitive and easy to understand
• User control:
  • Provide clear feedback for user actions
  • Enable easy navigation to return to previous screens or undo mistakes
  • Make actions reversible
• Accessibility:
  • Use sufficient color contrast
  • Provide alternative text for all non-decorative images
  • Use HIG’s recommendations to provide support for assistive technologies like VoiceOver, Assistive Touch, Switch Control, etc.
  • Test important user flows with accessibility features turned on to understand the challenges of interacting with a device in different ways

Step-4: Prototype and test

Create a prototype of the design and test it with users to gather feedback and identify areas for improvement. Focus on usability and accessibility to ensure that the design meets HIG standards.

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Step-5: Iterate and refine based on feedback

Revise your design based on user feedback, ensuring it remains clear, consistent, and easy to use.

Examples of human interface guidelines in practice

Instagram

Social networking giant Instagram does a great job incorporating Google’s Material Design guidelines into its Android interface.

For example, the guideline outlines five common button types — elevate, filled, tonal, outlined, and text:

This consistency improves usability and makes the app feel intuitive, as users can rely on familiar button behavior and visual cues throughout their journey.

WhatsApp

The popular messaging platform WhatsApp uses human interface guidelines to ensure clarity in its iOS app. The app provides a clear visual hierarchy by:

• Using visual groupings like separator lines, color, and negative space to group related content and organize information
• Positioning important items at the top and leading side of the screen where users naturally start viewing
• Keeping all items well aligned to make it easier to find information

But that’s not all. Another way WhatsApp ensures clarity is through effective tab-bar implementation.

The tab bar is highly effective for helping users seamlessly navigate between app sections. This is because:

• Each tab title is clear and effectively describes the type of content the tab contains
• The tab bar remains visible as users navigate through various sections of the app, making it easy for them to know where they are at all times
• The tab uses a badge, like the green circle in the screenshot above, to discreetly notify users of new information. This approach communicates the update clearly while keeping the user in control

Apple Photos

Apple Photos is a clear example of how to do accessibility right by sticking to HIG principles. The app offers several accessibility features, including:

• Voice-over support — When VoiceOver is enabled while using Apple Photos, the screen reader reads out key details like image descriptions, photo details, and dates, making it easier for visually impaired people to understand their gallery
• Face recognition — Apple Photos automatically groups photos of the same person using facial recognition. This reduces the cognitive load on users, who can easily find specific people in their photos without manually searching
• Haptic feedback — Tactile responses, like the slight vibrations when selecting a photo from the gallery, provide users with an alternative form of sensory feedback. This can be useful to users with visual or motor impairments, offering them an additional way to interact with the app

Best practices for implementing HIG

Using the human interface guidelines isn’t just about following them; the magic lies in correctly implementing them. Let’s explore some best practices to help you do just that.

1. Review HIG updates regularly — Human interface guidelines are updated regularly. Therefore, you should revisit them at least once a year to learn about any changes and keep your app up to date
2. Balance consistency with creativity — Consistency is important, but that doesn’t mean your app has to look generic. Don’t be afraid to inject your brand’s personality while following the guidelines to create a unique, personalized experience for your users
3. Less is more — Aim for simplicity while applying HIG. Don’t overload the interface with too many elements or complex features, as this can increase your users’ cognitive load. Prioritize clarity while focusing on what’s essential
4. Document your HIG strategy — Document your HIG strategy by recording essential design choices and guidelines and sharing them with your design and development teams. This will help ensure everyone is on the same page throughout the app’s lifecycle
5. Test with real users — It’s not enough to just follow Human Interface Guidelines; you need to ensure they have the desired effect on users. At the end of the day, the goal of any app is to make the user experience as smooth and enjoyable as possible. By testing with real users, you can identify what works, what doesn’t, and how to improve. Through their feedback, you can fine-tune your app to meet their needs and expectations

Wrapping up

By applying Human Interface Guidelines in your UX design process, you create digital products that look good and are intuitive enough for anyone to use. The guidelines provide a solid foundation for creating consistent and intuitive interfaces while still leaving room for your creativity to shine through.

If you’re a designer or developer, take some time to understand HIGs and check out how successful products use them in their designs. That way, you’ll be armed with the resources you need to create products that feel relatable to your users.

But remember, it’s not just about following the guidelines blindly — it’s about using them as a tool to create experiences that feel familiar and put the users first. Ultimately, what matters is your users’ satisfaction, not how well you tick some design boxes.

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