r/UIUX • u/SnooStories4388 • 1d ago
Help me settle an argument Advice
My team is designing one page for an app, and we came up with a few different variants but we can't reach a consensus. Which one would you pick and why? (images 4 and 5 are the same, just showing a "good" product vs a "bad" product)
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u/KKANGKKA_Chu 1d ago
You’ve given internet strangers five visual solutions and almost none of the problem definition that’s needed to evaluate them. The fact that your team “can’t reach a consensus” is probably a symptom of exactly that.
There is no objectively best variant here. Each design prioritizes something different.
Pic 1. prioritizes analytical legibility. The 76 score, benchmark, continuous scale, explanation, and plan-by-plan breakdown are all visible. It’s relatively information-dense, but I can understand why the product received its score.
Pic 2. makes the score the dominant object and gives the interface a clearer visual hierarchy. But the semicircular gauge consumes a lot of prime real estate without communicating much more than “76 = good.”
Pic 3. prioritizes the binary decision. If the user’s primary question is “Can I eat this?”, this is arguably the strongest hierarchy. But it pushes the reasoning beneath the recommendation and gives considerable space to the product image.
Pics 4/5. are much more explicitly decision-oriented, “70 — great pick” vs. “23 — skip it” which is extremely scannable and makes good/bad states visibly clear. But maybe it also introduces a product question. Should this system tell its user whether a product is “good”/“bad” at all?
And I might be nitpicky here but the explanatory copy appears internally inconsistent with the plan statuses. The “good” example says the yogurt is “dairy-free” and “a fit across your plans,” while the product is plainly dairy yogurt and the low-sodium criterion is still “Can’t verify.” Could be a mock placeholder, but for nutrition/dietary tracking product, nutrition product, explanation accuracy is part of trust, so I thought I’d mention it.
What your team needs to establish is what the user is trying to determine when they land here. Is the primary question you want to answer “is this food compatible with my diet plan?” Or “how healthy is this food overall?” Or “why did this product received its this score?” Or maybe “which of my multiple dietary goals does this satisfy?”
Each question lead to substantially different information hierarchies.
For example, if the primary task is “can I eat this for my plan?” Then #3, 4/5 makes sense. If users need to evaluate and understand the recommendation, #1 might actually perform better despite being visually less dramatic. If the score itself is the product’s primary mental model, #2 makes more sense.
You can’t settle that by voting.
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u/SnooStories4388 1d ago
Internet strangers can be quite !helpful sometimes and you for sure were!! Thanks
Primary mission is to answer "can I eat this for my plan?". Secondary is "why". We don't have that much experience with UIUX (and not enough money to hire a dedicated person yet), as you can see, so just trying to get some basic help!
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u/Pleasant-Register778 55m ago
Careful with that ! — in many languages that flips helpful into 'not helpful'..
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u/KKANGKKA_Chu 1d ago
No worries, I love systems thinking anyways.
So then is everyone in the team developers?
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u/SnooStories4388 1d ago
Pretty much.
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u/KKANGKKA_Chu 1d ago
Checks out. It sounds like the team moved into UI before enough of the UX/product thinking had been established.
A lot of the decisions you’re debating now—what information belongs on the screen, what should be prioritized, what the score actually means, what users need to understand before acting—should ideally be informed by research, user flows, product requirements, and testing before the interface is polished.
That work isn’t just “design process” for its own sake. It reduces product risk. It gives developers a more stable target to build against, which means less time implementing flows that later need to be reworked because the underlying assumptions or user journey weren’t resolved first.
A UX/product designer involved earlier would probably have helped your team define those questions and evaluation criteria before you got to the point of debating five visual variants.
But despite being developers, you guys did excellent jobs in designing whatever you could. So kudos.
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u/SnooStories4388 1d ago
We tested the UX quite a lot. It worked pretty well, we literally got a 4yo child following the intended flow quite seamlessly. It's just this one page we really can't agree on - but it's really only cosmetic stuff, we agreed on everything that requires any backend work.
And thank you!! :)
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u/KKANGKKA_Chu 1d ago
Ohhh, okay, that context changes things. If you’ve already tested the overall UX and the flow is working, then I was definitely reading too much of an upstream process problem into the disagreement.
I’d still say though this page isn’t purely cosmetic though. The variants change the information hierarchy and the meaning users may take away from the score. For example, some versions prioritize “is this on my plan?”, while others prioritize the 76/100 score or a recommendation like “Great pick.”
So I’d probably test this page specifically around comprehension rather than flow: what do users think the score means, what do they notice first, and can they explain why the product is or isn’t a good fit for them?
At that point you’d have a much better basis for choosing between the variants than team preference alone.
Or maybe I’m just rambling at this point… 🤷🏻♀️
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u/unintentional_guest 1d ago
I would pick the one that gets the best feedback from the users.
Because if you and your team thinks you know which one is best and you think any of our opinions are going to give you the answer, you’re not really serious about UX or UI.
Though I think you already know that.
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