How to Make Your UI Text Super Easy to Scan

The Art of Visual Emphasis

Accessibility isn’t the only thing to consider when designing an interface. You should also focus on increasing scannability. What’s the difference?

When most designers try to make their interface accessible, they focus only on color contrast. That’ll make the text readable but not necessarily scannable. Scannability goes beyond that and involves the visual emphasis of key text.

Not all text need equal attention. Some text needs more emphasis than others so that users can scan them first. Without emphasis, the user’s eyes cannot gravitate toward important information first.

In the bad design, all text is accessible and has high contrast. However, it's not easy to scan. The user has to read everything line by line and work harder. However, important data is emphasized in the good design, and the less important is de-emphasized. This combination of emphasis and de-emphasis makes your interface super easy to scan.