Methods and learning

UI design: responsibilities and practical exercise

Define a readable interface, its components and their states.

These sheets describe activities and teaching exercises. They do not constitute job offers, certifying courses or recruitment promises.

All job descriptions
Laptop and screens in a workspace
Illustration

Missions and responsibilities

Make screens and components readable, consistent and usable through visual hierarchy, typography, colour, spacing and interaction states.

Typical activities

  • Adapt components to phones, larger screens and long content.
  • Describe loading, focus, error, success and unavailable states.
  • Specify components and check their implemented behaviour.

Responsibilities to agree with the team

A mockup alone does not demonstrate accessibility or feasibility. Check it against UX findings, development constraints and the working interface.

A first piece of work to demonstrate

Deliver a component with states, content rules and validation criteria instead of an isolated ideal screen.

This is an editorial description of common activities. Job titles and scope vary across teams; it is not a certification framework.

W3C: organising accessibility responsibilities across a team

An exercise to practice

Design the same product sheet with a long name, an absent image and a selection error.

Work on a copy or demo environment. Define the data used and the expected result before you begin. Keep your decisions and the difficulties encountered in order to be able to explain the process.

  1. Inventorate the components and their variants before drawing the screens.
  2. Set typography, spaces, contrast and hierarchy with real content.
  3. Predict loading, lack of results, success and error.
  4. Document the behavior on a narrow screen and the visible return of each action.

Deliverable and verifications

Screens, a component library, and integrating state specifications.

explicit rules and components that remain understandable in their less favorable states.

For each check, note the context, the action, the expected result and what has been observed. Distinguish a successful verification from a remaining hypothesis. Another person must be able to understand the deliverable without attending all its manufacture.

Use the Functional Validation Book

Points of vigilance and teamwork

A model with only the ideal case does not describe how the interface works. Translated texts and incomplete content should also be reviewed.

Collaboration to explore: Web integration.

Specify the sharing of responsibilities: who provides the information, who decides, who checks and maintains the result. A good handover retains the constraints and decisions, not just the final file.

Employment, trades and training
Learning scenario

Extended exercise and expected deliverables

Extended exercise: Design the statements of an application form, from the first entry to the receiving message. Plan the keyboard focus, an invalid field, an ongoing sending and a connection error. Work with realistic content and longer translation. Describe the role of each color and icon: essential information must also be expressed by text. The result to be delivered is a consistent state system, not just a capture of the empty form.

What to deliver with your work

  • Components and variants necessary for the course
  • Statement texts, errors and confirmations
  • Spacing and typographic hierarchy rules
  • Annotations for integration and behaviors

Acceptance criteria

These criteria are a working basis to adapt to the context. For each, note the action taken, the expected result, the observed result and the information remaining to be confirmed.

  1. All important states have a defined text and behavior.
  2. The visible focus remains identifiable on each background.
  3. The layout accepts a long translation without hiding an action.
  4. An error does not depend only on the color or an icon.

Record results in the acceptance test log

Ongoing management and handover

Deliver the components with their states, texts and constraints. Indicate what falls under a general rule and what responds to a particular case. Discuss behaviors with the person who integrates the interface, then check the result in the browser. A static mockup does not alone prove that the form is usable on the keyboard or that its errors are correctly announced.

Organize site maintenance

Compare two approaches

Compare changes to an individual screen with changes to shared components. Choose according to how often the problem occurs and which pages use the same elements.

Correction of a representative screen

When to choose it
Suitable for clarifying hierarchy or a form. Define the main task and required states before adjusting colours and spacing.
What to plan for
Include errors, loading states and long content. An ideal screenshot cannot show whether the interface remains understandable with real data.

Documented reusable component

When to choose it
Useful when the same need occurs across workflows. Specify structure, variants, states and conditions of use.
What to plan for
Check translations, keyboard use and small screens. Explain limitations to avoid extra variants being invented by each team.

A risk to anticipate

Contrast and font sizes alone do not establish accessibility. Check labels, states, relationships and interactions in the implemented interface.

How to decide

Show the screen before and after using the same task and content. Check that the improvement remains consistent on a second page.

Explore this decision further

Frequently asked questions

Does this exercise prove a professional qualification?

It allows you to show an approach and its limits. It is neither a diploma, nor a certification, nor proof of a production experience.

How to present the work in a portfolio?

Specify that this is an exercise, your role, constraints, decisions and checks. Use test data and media whose rights are established.

How to assess the quality of the deliverable?

explicit rules and components that remain understandable in their less favorable states. Add the difficulties encountered and what remains to be verified rather than presenting absolute validation.

When should a new component variant be created?

When an identified need cannot be met without making the existing use ambiguous. Document the difference and affected states. An isolated aesthetic preference does not justify a variant that is difficult to maintain across pages.

resources to deepen

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