Understanding User Experience(UX)
User experience(UX) is the main ingredient design process. Without it, we can’t do a successful design. It is all about crafting a smooth, delightful and empowering experience.
What is User Experience?
User Experience(UX) deals with the interaction of users with the product, website or even a service. It is a combination of thoughts, feelings, behaviors etc that have impact on positive interactions. Learn more about the Introduction To UI/UX Design.
Key Components of UX:
- User Research: As the name clearly shows, doing research on user’s need, preferences, interests or behaviors. It is mostly the research work that we have to do the best so that we can get idea of what user exactly wants! When we get the idea, we can design better to meet the user’s needs. We keep in mind that what users expect from us and design accordingly.
- Personas: In user personas, we use some tools or just some papers to create a virtual model of users. It is not a true user or anything, we just use it as an example or fictional user profile to make design decisions. We assume them as users and imagine what we could expect or ask if we were in their place.
- User Journeys: In user journeys, we take points from the past experiences to take better decisions in future. We create a map basically, in which we list all the experiences that needed to be fixed or could be done in any other way and then we try to make even better products by learning from those experiences.
- Wireframing: In wireframing, we create basic visuals. We decide the layout, design patterns that we’re going to use, typography or everything just to have an idea that what we are going to make. We usually share the wireframes first to the customers, before we deliver the actual design. We can have an idea about how our product is going to look by just looking at the wireframes only.
- Prototyping: It is the most important topic. Prototyping deals with the interactions of almost everything that is on our product, website or service. It deals with how things flow. At initial stages we use these to develop interactive mockups for testing purposes. But, prototyping is more than that!
UX Principles:
- Empathy: Empathy in User Experience(UX) means, we design everything by keeping users in mind. As I said earlier, we try to think from user’s perspective. We assume ourselves or our personas, as we are the original users and try to think exactly like other users to get an idea about what user wants!
- Consistency: Consistency means following the planned design patterns. It has several meanings. We can also say that consistency means doing our work consistently. We should not give up all our work just because of a single mistake, we have to be consistent to make our product, the best!
- Feedback: It deals with informing the users about every step of the project. We can get pretty good help from the users through feedback. They can judge the product and give suggestions about what things we should include and ho is the overall product. By keeping the feedbacks in mind, we can make our products better.
- Intuitive Design: It means the product that we make should be easy to understand and easy to use. Our priority is to make the experience of our users, comfortable and smooth. User Satisfaction is the first priority so we design our product that should not create any unnecessary drama or hassle. That’s why product should be easy to use so that everyone can use it hassle free!
The UX Design Process:
The Design process mainly consists of four steps that we already discussed in detail. They are:
- Research
- Define
- Design
- Prototype
- Test
We can easily figure out by these names that what each step is exactly.
Let’s know some important terms that we use in product design.
- We should conduct user testing. In which we test our product before launching it. If the tests are all cleared, we can launch our product. Otherwise we need to work on it more before releasing it.
- We should Prioritize Accessibility, that our product is accessible to everyone. Every user should get benefits from our products.
- We should stay User Centered, by keeping user needs in our minds in each step of designing the product.
To wrap it up, we can say that User Experience(UX) is a mindset, that puts user first. By keeping the user needs in our mind and understanding their needs and behaviors, designers craft the best products for them that provide best experiences as well.
DON’T forget the three things I told you earlier,
- The simple the design, the better it is.
- A pen and paper is your best friend.
- Copy others to practice and be better in the design game!
