When you walk into a house, how does it feel when the layout doesn't quite flow? When light switches aren't where you expect them to be? When hallways feel like mazes and you can't quite figure out where things are?
This is the same feeling you get when you're browsing a website or using an app that doesn't make sense. There are too many things going on, buttons you can't find, and a choppy flow.
What do you find most common about houses, websites, and apps you like most? Simplicity. There's a difference between using TradingView to analyze stock trades, and Uber to order a ride or food. But to make the user experience easy should be the ultimate goal.
Sometimes we get tempted to jam pack everything into what we're building because we can. It's even easier nowadays to think of adding that one more additional feature into your creation. Before you know it, you've created such a complex machine that people don't know how to use it.
With my project, I've been tempted to put every single feature of every real estate website that exists into it. But if I follow that route, it'll fail.
There are a lot of websites out there that already do what other websites do. A lot of apps that do what other apps do. But very few that are focused on sheer simplicity because they've made a decision not to be everything. They chose to focus on one or a few things and excel at it.
Two questions arise: what shouldn't I include in this, and what should I remove from this?
In tech speak, what something looks like is the 'User Interface.' This is sorta like placing doorways and light switches properly in a house so you can find them. For websites and apps, it's the buttons, forms, and navigation.
How you feel about using it is the 'User Experience.' It's how you feel when you walk through a house and you're like, "Wow, this is a great layout!" For websites and apps, it's how you feel when it did what you expected it to.
Build things that are simple, easy, and enjoyable to use.