What is 'User Experience Design'?
While not a new concept, user experience design is a term that continues to be somewhat confounding, often leaving clients and stakeholders unsure of both the meaning of the term and the value of the process.
User experience design (UX, UXD, UED or XD) is the process of enhancing user satisfaction with a product by improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction with the product.
Or, to give it some real-world context, 'UX design is about making the user’s experience with the product the best it can be.' UX designers want to attract people to use a given product and, in the case of a an ecommerce site, 'make their journey from the home page to purchasing the product as easy and fun as possible.'
UX design focuses on business growth through design, and practitioners view digital products as an interaction between:
Or, to give it some real-world context, 'UX design is about making the user’s experience with the product the best it can be.' UX designers want to attract people to use a given product and, in the case of a an ecommerce site, 'make their journey from the home page to purchasing the product as easy and fun as possible.'
UX design focuses on business growth through design, and practitioners view digital products as an interaction between:
The People who will be using the product, and the Context in which they use it.
The Tasks and Scenarios users encounter when interacting with the product.
The Business Goals and Scenarios users encounter when interacting with the product.
The Technologythe product is developed upon.
The Tasks and Scenarios users encounter when interacting with the product.
The Business Goals and Scenarios users encounter when interacting with the product.
The Technologythe product is developed upon.
In practice, UX design focuses on 2 primary goals & benefits when developing the experience of a product, service, or event:
Goals
- To understand the goals and context-of-use of potential users or customers; and
- to use that understanding to design a product, service, or app within the constraints of business and technology.
Benefits
- It improves the experience of the user of that product; and
- A good user experience increases the adoption of that product.
Essentially, UX design focuses on creating good 'user experiences', which in turn improve the likelihood that a user will buy or return to a product and recommend it to their friends.
When a user buys a product, returns to a site, or recommends either to their friends, this increases the adoption, use, and sales of that product, or increases the traffic and conversion rate of that site.
The Design Process
The details of a given UX design process will depend on a number of factors, including the project, the client, the budget, the deadlines, and the skills of those doing the work. Additionally, UX embraces user feedback and testing, making it synergestic with Agile development principles and the Lean Startup movement.
Core UX values, such as communication, evaluation, and iteration create considerable overlap between phases. As the design team learns more about the problems being solved, the audience, the stakeholders, or the constraints, it is often necessary to revisit some of the research undertaken, get additional user feedback, or try out new ideas.
When it comes down to it, I break the UX design process down to 3 phases: Research, Design, & Validation.
Core UX values, such as communication, evaluation, and iteration create considerable overlap between phases. As the design team learns more about the problems being solved, the audience, the stakeholders, or the constraints, it is often necessary to revisit some of the research undertaken, get additional user feedback, or try out new ideas.
When it comes down to it, I break the UX design process down to 3 phases: Research, Design, & Validation.
Research
- Strategy articulates the brand, guiding principles, and long-term vision of an organisation. The strategy underpinning a UX project will shape the goals of the project, primarily goals and KPIs.
- Discovery activities involve researching, investigating and learning about the users and business goals, and and eliciting and defining clear product requirements to create a successful strategy.
Design
- Ideation is where you define a product's scope, features, functionality, and behavior.
- Iteration aims to put ideas in front of users, get their feedback, refine them, and repeat. These ideas may be represented by paper prototypes, interactive wireframes, or semi-functioning prototypes, all deliberately created in low-fidelity to delay any conversation relating to graphic identity, branding or visual details.
Validation
- Validation is where you identify whether what you came up with in the design phase actually works with its intended audience. This phase is typically followed by further rounds of design and testing to solve the problems you inevitably find when you test with users.
Each design project presents its own unique challenges and requirements, meaning that UX is not a 'one size fits all' appraoch to design. Therefore, utilizing a dynamic design process is essential to address specific project needs, both business and functional.
Who Benefits from UX?
In a perfect world, UX design would be utilized everywhere due to unlimited budgets and resources. Since we live in reality, where we must work with limited budgets and resources, its important to prioritize and identify the areas that stand to gain the most from UX design and UX designers.
Complex Systems
- The more complex the system, the more involved will the planning and architecture have to be for it. While investing in a full-blown multi-member UX study for a simple static website seems excessive, multi-faceted websites, interaction-rich Web applications and e-commerce websites stand to benefit a lot from UX design. Systems that involve a myriad of user tasks must be perceived as being valuable, pleasant and efficient. Designers risk big losses in revenue by neglecting the user experience.
Start-Ups
- Start-ups and smaller companies generally do not have the resources to hire dedicated employees for this. Training the principles and processes of UX, or contracting out the UX work as needed, might be more suitable than hiring a full-time employee.
Projects with 'Decent' Budgets
- Smaller agencies that work for small and medium-sized businesses need to keep costs low for the customer base and prioritize deliverables in order to stay on the budget. The focus in these situations is more on the build process and less on planning, research and analysis. Projects with small budgets will be driven more by the launch of the final product. That doesn’t mean that these projects wouldn’t benefit from the good UX — of course they would — but in practice, small or medium-sized companies often do not feel compelled to invest resources into something that is not necessary for the launch of the site.
Projects with Longer Timeframes
- By simple logic, adding a cog to the traditional website production process will extend the timeline. Time must be allotted for user experience design. UX designers could, in theory, shorten timelines by taking on some of the tasks traditionally assigned to Web designers and developers, thus potentially saving time and costs in revision phases by having addressed user issues.