User experience design, what is it?

User experience design, what is it?

User experience (UX) design the process of creating user-centered products. The goals/aims are to provide the user with relevant meaningful experiences. This will involve the design of the entire process required to launch a product, including areas such as branding, design, usability, accessibility, information architecture and functionality.

 

“No product is an island. A product is more than the product. It is a cohesive, integrated set of experiences. Think through all of the stages of a product or service – from initial intentions through final reflections, from first usage to help, service, and maintenance. Make them all work together seamlessly.”

— Don Norman, inventor of the term “User Experience”_

UX design goes beyond UI Design!

The term User Experience Design is often confused or incorrectly associated with terms such as “User Interface Design (UI)” and “Usability”. Although I used the term confused, Usability and UI are significant areas of UX Design. UX design covers a vast array of areas as seen below.

Image source: usabilitygeek.com

 

 

“If the user can’t use it, it doesn’t work.”
— Susan Dray

Our process

5 Stages of the design thinking process

Image source: risual.com

Design thinking is the design methodology all about solving problems using a solution-based approach. By understanding the human needs, we can break down problems and re-build them in a user centric way. This is achieved through activities such as brainstorming, prototyping, and testing. There are 5 core areas to design thinking.

Read more here https://www.risual.com/2018/06/05/5-stages-of-the-design-thinking-process/

 

 

Testing one user early in the project is better than testing 50 near the end
— Steve Krug

Examples of poor UX

Confusing parking signs, can you work out if you can park on a Sunday?

Source: Author/Copyright holder: Jorge Gonzalez. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA 2.0

 

Redesigned parking sign, how about now?

Source: Author/Copyright holder: Nikki Sylianteng. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

 

 

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
— Douglas Adams

 

Learn More about UX Design

You can read and watch more about UX design from the inventor of the term, Don Norman,

Read more here: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/author/don-norman/ 

Medium.com  has a wealth of insightful, funny and inspiring material on UX.

Read more here: https://medium.com/tag/ux 

If you want to start learning how to work in UX Design, The Interaction Design Foundation’s online courses are a great place to begin.

Read more here: https://www.interaction-design.org/courses 

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