Tag: software development

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Did you know that 94% of a website’s first impressions are due to its design?

There is no doubt about the impact a web or app design has on user experience. If you want to hook your potential customers, then you need to say goodbye to plain UI designs which cannot pop out in an already saturated digital market.

We have decided to list down 20 tried-and-true techniques that can spice up your designs to ensure a positive user experience for your customers.

1. Keep it simple

Having an easy-to-use interface can make or break your digital presence. Keep it simple, stupid (KISS) is a design principle that stresses on keeping designs and systems as simple as possible. If you want to boost the levels of user acceptance and interaction, your safest bet is to avoid complexity. After all the easier a design is to understand and use, the more likely it is to be adopted and engaged with.

2. White space is key.

White space, also known as “negative space,” is a portion of the web page that is left blank or unmarked and plays a pivotal role in communicating which features of the website need to stand out as vital aspects. Research also shows that white spaces are capable of increasing comprehension by around 20%.

3. Unity of elements

Visual unity is all about harmony. The idea is to create elements that support each other and work together to form a user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing design. Through ensuring this unity the viewers will first look at the whole and then the sum of the parts making that whole. It will improve your design’s balance, contrast, emphasis, and proportion.

4. Focus on content

When designs are built around content, they become unique. Content provides the designer with insight on how to properly present on devices of all sizes, with good navigation and calls-to-action, and for the highest conversion of customers. Good content blends text and media to help your visitors comprehend what you do, how you do it, and why they need your product or services.

5. Conduct design audits

UX audit provides data that illuminates why a product is encountering issues and offers actionable recommendations that can resolve the problems and improve the user experience. You need to delve into both your own business goals and users’ needs to get productive results from the audit.

6. Consistent Typography

Selecting a typeface and sticking to it will help you avoid creating confusing and messy interfaces. A good practice that we have incorporated into our user interface design process is to set up a hierarchy of typefaces (one constant font for headers, another for subheadings) and commit to it.

7. Shadows from one source

Shadows are a great tool to bring more depth and emphasis to your designs which enables users to differentiate between UI elements. However, they need to follow the rules of nature. You can create more realistic shadows by guaranteeing one common source. 

8. Darker text on light background

If the content being displayed on the user interface is important and lengthy, then it’s better to keep a light theme with darker text on it for greater readability and legibility. We incorporated a lighter background with darker text on our website to make it easy for visitors to get the information they need.

9. High Contrast for Text Over Images

What happens if you want to place text on a background image? You can make sure that the text is legible by providing sufficient contrast. Accessibility requirements for color contrast dictate that text should have a contrast ratio of a minimum of 4.5:1. Remember you don’t want users to strain their eyes due to unreadable text, and techniques like semi-opaque overlay, text shadow or outline, and blur can help you avoid this issue.

10. Irregular backgrounds

When it comes to designing a website or an app, it’s clear that the screen background is very important to the overall look of the UI. Irregular backgrounds can help you create truly eye-catching designs which leave a lasting impression on the users. 

11. Highlighted icons

Icons can speed up user interactions when they are easy to recognize and the meaning behind them is well communicated. By highlighting icons, you can add more style, clarity, and visual appeal to your user interface designs.

12. Subtle lines to break text

Visual dividers are handy in dividing pieces of content into groups, sections, or options. They help in setting up a visual hierarchy and make the design layout clearer and more digestible. For our website, we have used lines as a visual divider to break content apart, but you can also employ other dividers like color, negative space, shadows, and images.

13. Gradient borders and backgrounds

With the sheer volume of content in the digital world, businesses need to find ways to break through the clutter and get their target customer’s attention. Gradients can help you stand out. They are versatile and can be used as both the focal point of a design and a background element. They can be bold or subtle, the choices are extensive. One look at our website and logo, and you will know how much we love gradients! We have used this technique in our design to reflect our two major services: Software development and Digital marketing.

14. Solid shadows

This technique is for those companies who wish to stand out from the crowd and entertain their users. Particularly associated with Neubrutalism design thought, these shadows offer a sharp contrast and have no blur on them.

15. Layered text

Layering text and other design elements will add visual depth to your UI and your headings will get a unique characterful look. Notice how this technique blends text realistically into the background image shown below.

16. Use of imagery

Research shows that photos, icons and images are the top visual elements appreciated by consumers in a web design. An image’s ability to engage and communicate with viewers is enormous. Compared to text-based descriptions, complex concepts can be conveyed more effectively through the right imagery.

17. Dot grid designs

They are an easy way to add some visual excitement to your web or app designs. Grid designs add texture and can be used to fill out a space on the page. Note how compared to say a block of color, a grid of dots is not too visually heavy. 

18. Hand-drawn elements

Like many other components of web design, we have highlighted, hand-drawn elements are a great way to express individuality. Hand-drawn elements are ideal for creating an emotive and human design and can be a reminder for the users that there is a human behind the website.

19. Glassmorphism

As the name suggests, glassmorphism uses the properties of glass to enrich modern UI designs. A favorite approach of brands like Apple and Microsoft, it gives a translucent or transparent look to its elements and works well on vibrant, colorful backgrounds which accentuate the glass effect. This design style is great for visual hierarchy and emphasizes the content you want to highlight.

20. Darkmode

The dark mode user interface refers to designs where the light-colored text sits on a dark background. Dark UIs’ popularity comes from their sleek and contemporary visual appeal and their ability to improve eye fatigue. For products where users are likely to be engaged for a longer period, adding a dark theme to UI design is a must.

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UI Design is a link between customers and your website which helps ensure a positive user experience through visually appealing designs, easy navigation, and effective visual hierarchy. We hope these techniques can help you in creating a beautiful and successful UI for your brand. 

Also, check out our list of the latest UX trends to dominate fashion eCommerce. 

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Adobe Commerce, also known as Magento, has been a dominating e-Commerce platform for the past decade. It has reinvigorated itself with flexible communication by introducing complex architecture based on a combination of design patterns. Object Manager and Factories are noteworthy aspects of the design pattern. In fact, Magento 2 attributes a lot to Object Manager functionality. Diagram 1.0 shows the object manager workflow.  

Object Manager fulfils the following:  

• Object creation in factories and proxies.  
• Implementing the singleton pattern by returning the same shared instance of a class when requested.  

• Dependency management by instantiating the preferred class when a constructor requests its interface.   
• Automatically instantiating parameters in class constructors. 

Object Manager Interface is the part of Magento framework used for the implementation of method create, method get, method config.   

Create method creates new objects based on the parameters of “type” and “arguments”. The first is a string type value that contains the name of the object type. The latter contains the list of arguments required for the new instance of an object. This is initialized using the factory method to generate a new instance by its type. What the factory method does is identify a preference for the interface when $type parameter is used. In other cases, class gets generated directly.  

/**  
* Create new object instance  
* @param string $type  
* @param array $arguments  
* @return mixed  
*/  public function create($type, array $arguments = []) { 
return $this->_factory->create($this->_config->getPreference($type), $arguments); 
} 
Get method is particularly important because it retrieves the cached object instance. 
Through it, Object Manager provides part of the Object lifestyle configuration. 
What this means is that some types of objects can be either shared or not be it Singleton or Transient. 
In the di.xml file, the shared parameter is responsible for this:  
{typeName} 
Implementation of this method goes like this: 
/**  
* Retrieve cached object instance  
* @param string $type  
* @return mixed  
*/  public function get($type)  {      
$type = ltrim($type, '\');      
$type = $this->_config->getPreference($type);     
if (!isset($this->_sharedInstances[$type])) {          
$this->_sharedInstances[$type] = $this->_factory>create($type);      
}      
return $this->_sharedInstances[$type];  
} With $type the Object Manager class identifies a preference for the interface if it is declared, 
and returns a cached instance of the object if it is present in the pull of 
previously generated (shared) objects.  Method Config is an entry point for the whole 
application initialization during the HTTP calls and the area initialization. 
In this phase, the object manager works on collecting all preferences described in the
di.xml in one place – global configuration.  
/**  
* Configure di instance  
* Note: All arguments should be pre-processed (sort order, translations, etc) 
before passing to method configure.  
*  
* @param array $configuration  
* @return void  
*/  public function configure(array $configuration)  {      
$this->_config->extend($configuration);  
} Object Manager supports backward compatibility. 
For example, sometimes it is required to add a new parameter to the object constructor and to 
follow backward compatibility, a newly added object has to be declared via the manager.  
/**  
* @param ResourceConnection $resource  
* @param MagentoStoreModelStoreManagerInterface $storeManager  
* @param MagentoCatalogModelConfig $config  
* @param QueryGenerator $queryGenerator  
* @param MetadataPool|null $metadataPool  
* @param TableMaintainer|null $tableMaintainer  
*/ public function __construct(MagentoFrameworkAppResourceConnection $resource,      
MagentoStoreModelStoreManagerInterface $storeManager,    
MagentoCatalogModelConfig $config,    
QueryGenerator $queryGenerator = null,    
MetadataPool $metadataPool = null,    
TableMaintainer $tableMaintainer = null  ) {     
$this->resource = $resource;    
$this->connection = $resource->getConnection();    
$this->storeManager = $storeManager;    
$this->config = $config;     
$this->queryGenerator = $queryGenerator ?: ObjectManager::getInstance()->get(QueryGenerator::class);     
$this->metadataPool = $metadataPool ?:  ObjectManager::getInstance()->get(MetadataPool::class);     
$this->tableMaintainer = $tableMaintainer ?:  ObjectManager::getInstance()->get(TableMaintainer::class); 
}

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Object Manager uses factory methods quiet a lot. Now we’ll take a look at the factories and the implementation.  

What a factory method does is defines an interface for creating an object but lets the subclasses decide which class to instantiate. The factory method lets a class defer instantiation to subclasses which is useful for constructing individual objects for a specific purpose without the requestor knowing the specific class being instantiated.  

In Magento the factory method gets applied to all layers of the application. The software application has a defined contract for object initialization and the method guarantees the fulfilment for different classes. So, in a nutshell, decoupling of both – objects and the construction takes place simultaneously.  

One of the core features of the Magento 2 is code generation and it simplifies data object factory generation. Data object is a part of the service layer of the Magento architecture and represent entities such as customer or catalog. As per interface declaration, factory method is ideal to generate new instances of those objects.  

Factory constructor consists of two parameters: Object name and class name of the data object entity and this is how it works. 

/**  
* Get default constructor definition for generated class  
*  
* @return array  
*/  
protected function _getDefaultConstructorDefinition()  {
return [         
'name' => '__construct',        
'parameters' => [              
['name' => 'objectManager', 
'type' => '\' . MagentoFrameworkObjectManagerInterface::class],              
['name' => 'instanceName', 'defaultValue' => $this->getSourceClassName()],  
],  
'body' => "$this->_objectManager = $objectManager;n$this->_instanceName = $instanceName;", 
'docblock' => [     'shortDescription' => ucfirst(static::ENTITY_TYPE) . ' constructor',     'tags' => [      
['name' => 'param',        
'description' => 'MagentoFrameworkObjectManagerInterface $objectManager',     
],      
['name' => 'param', 'description' => 'string $instanceName'],      
],    
]   
];  
}
Factories can also be auto-generated in the following way.  
/**  
* Factory constructor  
*  
* @param MagentoFrameworkObjectManagerInterface $objectManager  
* @param string $instanceName  
*/ 
public function __construct( MagentoFrameworkObjectManagerInterface $objectManager, 
$instanceName = '\Magento\Customer\Api\Data\CustomerInterface'  ) {      
$this->_objectManager = $objectManager;      $this->_instanceName = $instanceName;  
}
Factory method implementation needs only one public method – create. 
A $create array contains: Name of the method – create  Method parameters – a not required data 
array that consists of initialized class properties and their values Body – the core of the factory 
(code that is responsible for the new object instance generation)  Dockblock and tags – contains 
additional information  
/**  
* Returns list of methods for class generator  
*  
* @return array 
*/  protected function _getClassMethods()  {      
$construct = $this->_getDefaultConstructorDefinition();  
// public function create(array $data = array())  $create = [     
'name' => 'create',     'parameters' => [['name' => 'data', 'type' => 'array', 'defaultValue' => []]],     
'body' => 'return $this->_objectManager->create($this->_instanceName, $data);', 'docblock' => [                               
'shortDescription' => 'Create class instance with specified parameters', 'tags' => [                                           
['name' => 'param', 'description' => 'array $data'], [                                    
'name' => 'return',                                     
'description' => $this->getSourceClassName()                                     
],                                 
],                             
],                          
];                          
return [$construct, $create];  
}
Let's review body of the method and review it on the automatically generated example:  
/**  
* Create class instance with specified parameters  
*  
* @param array $data  
* @return MagentoCustomerApiDataCustomerInterface 
*/  public function create(array $data = [])  
{       
return $this->_objectManager->create($this->_instanceName, $data);  
} 

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In Magento 2, the core of the factory method is the object managers usage together with the create method. It takes an instance name and combines it with some parameters in order to initiate a completely new object. Factory method usage is aimed at the new object initialization by following a specific contract of decoupling objects. Like in all other software applications architecture52, Magento 2 uses an approach for handling object generations. The most frequently used aspect is the Data object initialization on the service layer. The factory method is simple to use and doesn’t have any negative effects on the application layers.