Designing Better User Experiences in No-Code: Best Practices for UX / UI in ELWIS

Introduction

In our previous piece, No-Code Doesn’t Mean No Strategy, we explored how building apps with no code platforms still requires clear, strategic thinking. Strategy lays the foundation, but once we know what to build, the next step is ensuring the product feels professional, usable, and intuitive. 

This is where UX/UI comes in. Even in no-code, design decisions shape how users experience our apps. We have come up with a guide that shares practical principles to help Elwis projects look polished and perform like real products.

Start with the User, Not the Features

Before diving into interface design, it’s essential to define your target audience. This is the demographic your app is built for, and it should guide both functionality and design decisions.

For example:

• Students will benefit from education tools, study aids, or collaborative features.
• Business owners will appreciate booking systems, inventory tracking, and customer management.
• Healthcare customers will often need appointment scheduling, reminders, and secure access to information.

Correctly narrowing down a demographic not only helps determine which components to include, but also influences design choices such as color palettes, typography, and overall tone. An app for students might feel playful and vibrant, while a healthcare app should inspire trust with clean, professional visuals.

Keep Layouts Clean and Consistent

Come up with a layout template and stick to it. These templates act as a set of guidelines for your UX/UI design, ensuring the finished product feels clean, structured, and professional.

Things to keep consistent across screens:

• Spacing between components
• Margins
• Padding

It’s also best to minimize actions and steps per screen. This becomes especially important (and noticeable if done wrong) when the app is displayed on smaller screens, such as mobile phones. It also helps avoid overwhelming the user with too much going on at once – making actions feel more intuitive and reducing confusion.

ELWIS supports responsive design, but even with that in place, it’s important to remember that small UI elements can be hard to navigate on a phone. Keeping layouts simple, with clear spacing and larger touch targets, makes the app far more usable across devices.

Typography and Colors Matter

Just like maintaining consistent layouts, it’s also important to stick to a limited number of fonts and colors. Having too many different styles on one page can look overwhelming and unfocused, unless that’s the specific aesthetic you’re going for.

These visual choices are often influenced by the target demographic we discussed earlier, so pay close attention to your audience when choosing a color palette and typography for your project.

Guidelines to follow:

• Pick no more than two fonts: one for headings and one for body text.
  Maintain legible font sizes: around 14–16px for body text.
• Use a limited color palette: one primary color, one secondary, and a few neutral tones.

Tip: It’s perfectly fine to experiment with different shades or brightness levels of your chosen colors to create subtle variation without breaking consistency.

Test Early, Test Often, Collect Feedback

Testing is one of the most important parts of designing a great user experience. Do not wait until your app is finished to find out what works and what does not. Instead, share early versions with real users and gather feedback at every stage.

• Start by testing simple prototypes or unfinished pages.
• Watch how users interact with your app, note where they hesitate, get confused, or take unexpected actions.
• Ask direct questions like "Was this step clear?" or "What did you expect to happen here?"
• Use the feedback to refine layouts, wording, and flow.

Testing does not have to be complicated. Even a few rounds of honest user feedback can reveal issues that might not be obvious during design. By testing early and often, you save time, improve usability, and create a smoother experience for your audience.

For a deeper look into how to validate your idea before you even start building, check out our article How to Validate an App Idea Without Writing a Single Line of Code.

Get Inspired!

Before finalizing your design, take some time to gather inspiration. Browsing real examples can help you understand what works visually and give you fresh ideas for layout, color, and typography. Take a look at websites or web apps you enjoy and study what makes them work well. Pay attention to layout, colors, typography, and how interactions feel. Understanding why something is enjoyable to use can help you apply similar principles in your own designs. 

A great source of inspiration is Dribbble.com, a community full of professional UI and UX designs that showcase current trends and creative solutions. Use it to spark ideas, but remember to adapt what you find to your own brand and audience rather than copying directly.

As Austin Kleon writes in Steal Like an Artist, creativity often means studying, crediting, remixing, and transforming existing ideas. Creative work builds on what came before, so nothing is ever completely original. The goal is to make it your own.