Understanding the Components & Importance of UX Design

With this blog, we want to guide you, the lector, to know some basics of User Experience (UX) Design and to understand their purpose. Design is much more than making things pretty. In UX, the “U” indicates this has to do with computers and technology. The “X” stands for the experience a person is having when doing something with computers & tech.

Usability.gov defines User Experience (UX) as “having a deep understanding of our product users, their needs, their values, their abilities, and their limitations. UX considers the goals and objectives of the individual or group managing the project. It promotes the quality of the user’s interaction with and perceptions of our product and any related service.” UX design is an iterative, continuous engagement of design thinking around a customer’s interactions with a company’s services and product. It never ends.

User Experience (UX) design is about creating enjoyable experiences. UX is how things work. It is a process for creating an experience that meets specific goals for a defined audience. UX design is a multistep strategic design process that aims to create a product or site that customers/users are drawn to, find easy to use, and quickly understand. Through the UX design process, we arrive at the right user interface solution.

Understanding users is essential because:

It allows us to produce products that are more well-received by users and therefore more likely to be successful, profitable, and/or long-lasting.
It allows us to spend less money and time on development because we do not build things that are irrelevant or unnecessarily confusing. We minimize the need to abandon or rework solutions.
It allows us to prioritize and drive the development process by understanding what features are more pressing than others.
It allows us to discover areas of development we could not think up on our own. This is helpful in innovation, staying ahead of competitors, and pivoting the business towards activities that promote long-term survival.
It allows us to run ethical businesses and organizations. By understanding how users respond and feel, as well as taking into consideration related touchpoints beyond our own organization, we can build things that help people fulfill real goals.

User Experience (UX) design requires the involvement of different stakeholders and users with the design team. It’s important to understand that UX starts with research, followed by analysis and strategy. UX design should focus on empathy and the importance of understanding the people you are designing. UX designers invest their majority of time in finding solutions, documentation, dealing with wireframes, decision making, and more logical stuff. For UX, moreover to skills, attitude, and mindset is very important.

Basics things of UX:

Collaboration and Information Gathering
Analysis: Business, Product, and Competition
User Research
Solution Planning and Strategy
Sketches, Wireframes, and Prototyping
Early Testing
Iteration & Refinement
Visual Design
Code Development
Monitor and Evolve
Project Management

Designing for user experiences sometimes necessitates thinking about all those basic things at the same time.

Some elements to consider and to know about our product:

Form vs. Function: Design is not always about the form, beautiful color scheme, the fonts, the layout, and such. It’s also about functionality. Always go for function over form.

User Profiling: We must know who our users are and what they want to achieve using our app or website. We need to profile our users. We must do a few thinking exercises to understand our market. Narrow down the target/user audience. The main question to keep asking ourselves is: What is the core functionality of our app or our website? Profile the users and visitors to reevaluate that question continually.

Asking for permissions: If your app or website has push notifications, needs location services, integration with social media, email, etc., you will need to ask the users for their consent. Use the Benjamin Franklin effect. Before asking someone for a big favor, ask them for a small favor. Slowly nudge the user towards a direction. Make sure the app or website shows permission notifications only when the users are about to use a feature and not when they just launch your app or land on your website.

Consistency: Inconsistency in design creates confusion. Confused users are unhappy users. Think of consistency, not just in terms of appearance, but also in terms of functionality.

Simplicity: Humans don’t like to be confused. When we’re programming, we’re trying to make our code as lightweight and efficient as possible. When we’re designing, we’re trying to make the interface as clear and as least confusing as possible. And beautiful! Try to make your wording as clear as possible.

Here are two videos that can straightforwardly and honestly explain UX design: