What Are Labels in UI Design?

A button without a label is about as useful as a pair of glasses on a man with no ears. 

Every product we use has a label, and labeling is a mandatory part of having an organized life. Imagine if you were to enter a supermarket and no items would contain a label. Tiring, isn’t it? The same process has to be applied to UI UX design where UI elements need to be labeled properly for a better and deductible user experience.

And labels make everything easier! Those UI design elements are capable of transforming a design and giving the whole meaning and purpose of each individual graphic design element. Labels also have the power to support the link between the design element and the action it can trigger. Even more so, the label helps add information to the UI UX elements. 

Labels are UI design elements applied to interface components such as tags, menus, text inputs, buttons, as well as other interface elements. They allow our users to understand the purpose of the field and should remain visible even after they finish completing the line. 

Labels have the special ability to guide the user through otherwise complicated processes. In a way, they are helpful both to designers and users. For designers, labels help us in the design process to purpose for our UI design elements. On the other hand, for users labels have a positive they make pages more accessible and easy to navigate, increasing the user experience. 

That’s why in UX design, multiple factors need to be considered when crafting labels – whether we are talking about the color, the typography, or the actual wording of the text. The system has to seem and look like a friendly entity to the user, and the dialogue between them must be clear and direct.

It is unlikely that a user has stumbled upon your page by accident. They usually have a goal in mind before searching for a website or app. Labels are elements that act just like real lid etiquettes. The difference is that we attach these labels to other elements such as buttons, images, icons, and so on.

When you succeed in labelling elements, you will help your users achieve their initial goal faster. As UI UX designers, we are faced with the responsibility of applying the correct labels to ensure that visitors reach the objectives that they have set for our product.

Labels come in various shapes and sizes and can be positioned in several ways. 

1. Plain Labels 

To begin with, we may see labels in their purest form which consist of one to three words that appear next to a text field. 

2. Images 

Another structure that these UI elements can take is that of pictures - we can format labels with photos in order to emphasize them.

3. Pointing 

Labels as such indicate the input field, which makes them suitable for drawing more attention to them.

4. Corner

These elements are positioned on the corner of a component. 

5. Tag

Applying tag labels can help with making them more distinguishable.

6. Ribbon

These will attach themselves to an element.

7. Inline Labels 

Also known as placeholder text, inline labels present an alternative to labels that appear above the box where the users can type. The most common and practical cases in which we would use inline labels can be observed for password and username forms. However, this option falls flat when we are dealing with forms that contain as a result of various reasons.

8. Floating Labels

A fitting substitute for these placeholder texts is a floating label - the primary inline text prevails, but when the user starts typing in, this disappears and the tag appears above the box.

In semiotic theory, the ability to determine meaning is called a sign, which is made up of two parts: the signifier and the signified. In order to understand this, let’s imagine a red flag that is placed at the seashore. In this case, the flag is the signifier, while the state of the sea, which is dangerous due to waves and currents, is the signified. 

We live in a world in which signs have been used for a long time to represent many things, ranging from objects to abstract concepts. However, a sign without a label can often become useless. To illustrate the importance of labeling, Steve McCarthy, a well-known publisher at the UX Collective news platform, launched a short UI design experiment in the form of a game. The rules were simple: participants had to assign the correct label to various icons belonging to 19 different popular iOS apps. 

The results were fairly intriguing! Out of a total of 119 subjects, no one was able to identify over 14 icons out of the 19. If people are not able to recall 19 icons without their labels, think about just how many icons we interact with on a day-to-day basis. Although as users we have been trained to recognize many icons from the get-go, it would be a rookie mistake to deny the necessity of labeling them in our UI UX designs, especially when dealing with more uncommon ones. 

We at uinkits understand the importance of labels in great user experiences and creating amazing UI designs. That’s why we’ve developed a Figma UI Kit with design components that include these essential UI elements that enable you to design intuitive and user-friendly interfaces effortlessly.  

“You press the button, we do the rest,” – Kodak.

Inspired by this iconic tagline from Kodak, we believe in simplifying the design process for you. Our Figma UI Kit, uinkits, is a complete design system with UI components that allows you, as a UI UX designer, to create your products as quickly as pressing a button.

Our design system includes components, icons, variables, cards, buttons, and everything you need for your design process. All you have to do is take your UI design component needed, and you’re ready to use it in your designs!