Carousel - UI Element

What Is a Carousel in UI/UX Design?

The carousel is a UI design element that displays sets of elements that users can scroll through. It can be made up of images, videos texts, or a mix of these.

Carousel in UI Design
Carousels by uinkits

Types of Carousels in UI/UX Design

There are a few types of carousels that we can find on websites and apps.

  1. Image Carousels: One of the most commonly used types of carousels is the image one. The main reason for its huge popularity in web design is that it suits most website and app layouts. 
  1. Video Carousels: Video carousels are great choices when we are looking for a more complex design. They allow us to integrate more complex, immersive design elements which can create a more interesting user experience.
  1. Testimonial Sliders: Testimonial sliders have a marketing value because they showcase positive customer journeys. These carousels have an interactive aspect that can increase website engagement.
  1. Hover Galleries: This type of carousel provides web pages with a sleek module due to the effortless change between slides whenever a user hovers the cursor over an image. It works best with larger displays due to the powerful bigger images. 
  1. 3D Image Carousels: 3D Image carousels are one of the most effective strategies for giving a website or an app more dynamism. 
  1. Car Sliders: This carousel-type component is meant to showcase related blocks of content to users so they can simultaneously view different content.

When to Use - Website Carousel Best Practices

There are many cases in which carousels can be implemented.

  • One of the most common cases in which we would create a carousel for a web page is when we have multiple items to display. In this way, we can help users focus on singular elements at a time so they do not get confused.
  • Carousels are implemented for items that are related in one way or another, not for items that do not share common traits.
  • We use carousels for visual elements - that means, implementing a carousel for non-visual elements such as paragraphs would not be suitable.
  • In general, we should create carousels whenever we want to improve user experience by providing beautiful and intuitive visuals.

How To Use Carousels in UI/UX Design

  • Visibility and Accessibility. Carousel items should be visible regardless of the device the user is accessing the page from. Besides this, the images or videos must be adapted to the text so that it is easy to read.
  • Simplicity. A common design principle is simplicity - it is more important to get the message across than just presenting beautiful visuals. Carousels should generally be simple, yet impactful.
  • Limits. We should avoid overusing carousels per page, so it is preferred to limit the number of them and only keep the ones that really enhance user experience.
  • Clarity. It is important that users can easily distinguish where a carousel begins and ends, as well as how many carousels are we displaying per page.

Use the Carousel UI Element in Your UI/UX Design With uinkits

Our uinkits system is a Figma Design System and UI Kits that include UI components that allow you, as a UI UX designer, to create your design products as quickly as pressing a button. You can find carousels and everything you need to create the perfect product design in Figma – all in just a few clicks. All you have to do is take the UI design component you need, and you’re ready to use it in your designs!

So, get your uinkits package and start designing now!