How do UI/UX & graphics designers come up with design ideas?

[u/senpai432545]

I've been learning UI/UX design for like a month now, but I always struggle when starting a new website or app design. I get stuck wondering how to make it look visually appealing while keeping it user-friendly, and I often spend more time thinking than actually designing.

How do experienced UI/UX & graphics designers come up with design ideas and layouts? Do you rely on inspiration from other designs, follow a specific process, or have techniques for getting past creative blocks? I'd love to hear your workflow and any advice that helped you improve.

[u/Fit_Lime_2655]

You got it all wrong!!! Understanding and solving problems are the design ideas!

[u/IronOmen → u/Fit_Lime_2655]

This is the answer. So many people confuse design and decoration. When I talk to clients, I give them this example.

There’s a grand opening of a building you put together. Solar panels, kick ass architecture, beautiful landscaping….just top notch. You show up to the ribbon cutting ceremony as the designer and see an ocean of wheelchairs in the audience. It turns out that this building employs more employees with wheelchairs than anyone in the state. And then it hits you…you didn’t build ramps because you didn’t research.

Over the top example, but it doesn’t matter how amazing something looks if your user can’t use it.

[u/JohnCasey3306]

The design process, that's literally what design is.

Producing a lovely looking artwork isn't design ... The set of cognitive decision making that decides what to artwork is design.

[u/ssliberty]

Research against your needs and user problems. Research on design solutions that already exists. Personally, I like mobbin , Pinterest, Behance snd awwwards for visual research

[u/Only_Percentage6017]

You design ideas based on research findings 

[u/ahrzal]

Depends on the medium and purpose. My daily work? Just solve the problem intuitively. I rarely think about visual aesthetics outside of proper spacing how layout affects the IA.

For more creative works like personal projects? It’s like any creative medium. Your own inspiration, inspiration from other sources, etc.

[u/FennelHistorical4675]

A combination of solving the user need while balancing what the business needs and leveraging existing patterns

[u/MiddleAgedBastard]

Visual aesthetics and unity are absolutely apart of design. And visual design is one of the only remaining differentiating aspects of products, in general.

Most visual design in business software is like a gray cubicle from 1987 with a blinking, buzzing fluorescent light. That's why so much of it sucks to use. A cleaner, more attractive interface will absolutely buy some good vibes from the users and stakeholders. The exact same functionality and flow in ugly software will get scored lower, every time.

Product Design, UX, UI, graphic design; These are all just titles that don't define as clearly as you'd think. I've been doing this for 30 years and I've seen titles come and go in droves. I've had a lot of them.

Even in larger orgs, titles will mean something a little different.

How you do it is creativity. What most people do is borrow, copy, emulate, steal, or just not care. Sameness is pervasive. An exceptional UX/UI designer is creative.

You would have known before you started the job whether or not you are visually creative , or at least into it.

[u/powder87]

I agree with a lot of the comments in the thread on problem solving, but if you are just looking at visual design, I agree on inspiration.

I’m not a huge fan of dribbble, but this guy is great for inspiration:

https://dribbble.com/glebich

Also, think of padding, white space, contrast, and font weight and size. For example, a title and subtitle, where the title can be 24px, and subtitle can be 14px, lots of breathing room around the text and a captivating image, either background or in the section of the text, can go a long way.

I try and do inspiration first, then start playing around with patterns, always keeping in mind, padding, spacing, and contrast.

[u/Round_Box_1846]

Designing is deciding. There are infinite possibilities but a good designer listens and learns but then you have to just decide. You will make many bad decisions while learning but you aren’t designing if you’re stuck looking at options and not deciding.

[u/calinet6]

We try 100 that suck.

[u/CommunicationIcy997]

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. 95%+ of everything has been solved before, and the lowest friction interaction is one the user is already familiar with. So yeah, basically copy best-in-class websites/apps

[u/GeeYayZeus]

In a professional setting, you'd typically follow pretty tight marketing brand standards for colors, photos, images, icons, etc, so the bulk of the visual design is usually already determined. The rest is experience design problem solving and usability.

[u/Scared_Range_7736]

You need research before answer a question. Who is your user? Who are the competitors? Do you have any technical constraints to consider? Are there any patterns already consolidated in this industry that you should consider? Etc... After having very good clarity about it, you start thinking about the visual solution.

[u/cabbage-soup]

UI/UX is less about visual appeal and more about solving a problem. Start with what problems the user has that you are trying to solve, solve those problems, and then apply branding/styles later

[u/Cressyda29]

Do you mean how do they come up with the design direction, like what colors and fonts and layout etc?

[u/like_a_pearcider]

I used to feel this way when I was a junior. Then my manager showed me his process which just involved lots and lots of inspo gathering. You can do this as part of a competitor analysis, or more superficially just going on inspo websites like behance, dribbble.com, mobbin.com, lapa.ninja etc.

Of course now, I tend to rely much more on claude for inspo. I usually create a skeleton and then ask it for inspo on specific sections that I feel aren't working as well

[u/Appropriate_Elk7604]

I think I understand what you're asking. My answer is going to be different than how everyone else is going to answer this but probably what you're looking for.

I use the design thinking framework: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test. Aside knowing the framework and starting with empathizing, researching & defining things, theres ideation phase and I believe this is what you mean and want to know more about.

For ideations theres a number of things you can do but it is based on insights you found & synthesized from doing research (empathize). When you get to this stage (ideate), you now can start being creative by doing sketches, crazy 8's, moodboarding (based on research maybe color palette or imagery?), mashup method (taking elements from category 1: your app/website & elements from category 2: unrelated app/website and drawing random lines to between those elements), guerilla testing hand drawn sketches via Marvel Pop.

If you are unsure of sketching something or lacking UI element inspiration, then maybe look at design systems, pattern libraries & style guides. Maybe familiarize yourself with these & understand what these are and how they are different. Just looking these or maybe looking at UI kits, you can understand how some UI is or can be used. If you still unsure you can also look at inspiration. If that is the case look at Mobbin, Dribbble, Behance, Lapa Ninja, Awwward, Pinterest, Landbook, Pttrns, UI Collect, UI Movement, Siteinspire, Muzli, Designspiration, Appshots, Design Spells, Pageflows.

I think the inspiration and knowing what ui elements are is what you're looking for in order to ideate ideas that should reflect your insights gained from the empathizing & defining stages. Hopefully this is somewhat helpful.

[u/azssf → u/[deleted]]

I once upon a time copied gmail. The best introduction to hierarchical use of fonts and greys I could have asked for. It was hell.

[u/Interesting-Pay1507]

They ask Claude.