UI Audit Edition - Working UI with Workspaces

Hello and welcome to the 2nd UI Audit Edition!

My name is Jesiah and I am a UI Designer at Nektic. I’ve been a UI Designer for over a year working on landing pages, website UIs, and branding, and I have been enjoying and learning the field so much that I decided to create a UI Audit series for the whole 3rd quarter of 2023.

For this week, let’s get started with our 2nd UI: Workspaces.

What is “Workspaces?”

Workspaces is a beautiful collection of desk setups from creative individuals that was created by Ryan Gilbert. It features a gallery of workspaces (hence the name) for others to see and use as inspiration, as well as getting to know the people behind those setups.

You can check out Workspaces here: https://www.workspaces.xyz/

Workspaces’ website is a delight to look at, utilizing minimalism to appeal to a soft and light experience for their users. However, there are some areas where we can improve and refactor their UI.

UI Observations

Reducing Abundance of Choice: I noticed that there are a lot of submissions to this showcase section of the website that may give the users some trouble navigating through it, but there's an opportunity to streamline the gallery. Displaying a limited number of items on a page can help prevent users from feeling overwhelmed.

Elevating Gallery Content: The naming scheme is straightforward and simple but lacks context for the browsing users. Implementing a thoughtful naming convention and incorporating tags will enable users to easily explore and find pieces that align with their interests and preferences.

Showcasing the Latest: This section uses excessive negative space and doesn’t entice users to click the featured showcase as it doesn’t give enough context to the user. Elevating the “Latest Issue” section with a few more pictures and adding the tags will draw users' attention, encouraging them to delve deeper and explore new setups.

What the UI needs

The Workspaces' website boasts a functional UI. Their gallery is fully packed with setup showcases that were submitted by passionate creatives. However, there are some improvements that their UI needs:

(1) The number of showcases it has could pose navigational challenges for its users.

(2) The "Latest Issue" section, albeit minimalist, risks being overlooked rather than captivating a user’s interest.

(3) Enhancing the website's UI layout and prioritizing their experience is a must.

Refactored UI

Now after those observations, here is what I came up with to help how Workspaces can be improved.

The improvements I made are as follows:

• Minimized the number of showcases shown on the whole page so as to not consume the whole page and let the user scroll too much up and down.

• Pagination was applied to the gallery so as to not overwhelm users with a lot of information on the screen.

• Did some improvements to the gallery setups by changing the numbering into a bolder font-weight and adding tags to it to give the user more context.

• Added a search bar on the gallery to allow users to look up specific gallery submissions and/or tags and not tirelessly scroll and look for them manually.

• Adjusted the layout for the “Latest Issue” section to give more emphasis and showcase the submission by adding a few more photos and adding tags to give more context.

What I learned

In this UI Audit, there are 2 things that I have learned:

(1) Always keep the user in mind.
(2) Any improvement, whether big or small, will have an impact on the design.

As UI designers, including myself, we often fall into the trap of prioritizing aesthetics over user needs. While crafting visually appealing designs is important, we sometimes forget the crucial step of considering how users will interact with and perceive our designs.

By dedicating some thought to their perspective, we can significantly enhance our UI. In this instance, we made minimal UI refactoring efforts, which gave noticeable results. Even the smallest adjustments and thoughtful considerations will show noticeable results. This proves that every improvement, regardless of size, is perceptible to users.

Picks of the Week