User Experience: Clear About the Unclear
UX means User Experience. User Experience means that all development and design processes are performed considering experience gained by users previously interacting with websites and applications.
What Is the Beginning of the User Experience? User Experience development starts from goals selection, but not goals like getting a lot of money or becoming the most famous app. A goal answers the questions: what problem will solve the app and who is the target audience?
In other words, the goal is the purpose of the product.
Portrait of the User
One of the successful conditions of User Experience development is the portrait of the user. In a few words, one has to figure out a character who will use your product. And this isn’t just a man with an average+ income level and in the 18–50 age bracket. Instead, it is a middle-aged man who is competent in the technical sphere, has an active lifestyle, and works a lot. Someone even finds photos of typical representatives of user portraits and hangs it on a wall to see for whom the User Experience is developed. For example, we are developing a task manager — or to do list — for the previously mentioned types of users. In this case, we must understand the extreme conditions that face users of this type, and we have to make all the buttons bigger than usual as well as avoid functionality overload of the screen. These actions will provide maximum usage of the app for this chosen type of people.
User Experience, Animation, Website Logo and Car Brakes.
Let’s imagine we are planning an animation. We have to consider User Experience there too. If we are going to implement some extraordinary animation for ordinary functions, we have to reduce these innovations so they won’t overlap User Experience that the app will already have. When animation of the prototype or the whole product is ready, it has to be imposed based on guidelines of a chosen operation system.
If it is a website, there are no guidelines but there are still some users’ habits that must be considered. For example, a user expects to go to the main website page when clicking on a website’s logo. This user experience became a habit and is mandatory for all websites. If a user clicks on a logo and doesn’t go to the site’s main page, he will be surprised: just like if you push the brake pedal and instead of slowing down the window wipers start to work.
Maybe clicking on a logo that leads to the main page was made as an innovation as one more home button. Or it was made to replace the home button and to save more space on the page. However, no one was planning to use this transition for every website. This approach was found accidently and now became a UX must have for every site.
Good UX, Bad UX
In a few words, User Experience is everything that accompanies the user while using a product. Even if this experience is bad and uncomfortable, it is still a User Experience. Unfortunately, users remember bad UX for really long time. People are used to remembering things that caused negative emotions better than things that caused positive emotions.
When users see an interface with no trivial User Experience mistakes, they feel good. They think that in this app/site everything is comfortable and deliberately good. Only when users get everything about the UX of the product by their own or their friends’ experience, they check the UI. User Interface (UI) is the appearance of the user interface that has a goal, a unique identification. Or vice versa: a standard identification of chosen features. It depends on the purpose. A pair that consists of a unique UI and a standard UX isn’t possible. User Interface just can’t be custom if it wasn’t planned by User Experience.
A Windshield in a Car Is a Part of Its UX
In talking about a UI that wasn’t planned by a UX, we can’t deal without experience. It can be compared to a beautiful but non-functional car that can’t be driven even for half a mile. It looks attractive, but when you get in and start driving you understand that the steering wheel is square-shaped and has no booster. The pedal area is so small that it isn’t comfortable to push. These and other features that looked to be common and standard are changed or even absent, and it negatively influences driving comfort.
If the client requires a good car that would be easy to use and designer doesn’t hear it and removes the windshield of the car to reflect his vision of special appearance of the car. But he forgets that the windshield has wind\water\dust\bugs and other protective functions.
Components and Hierarchy of Good Design
Functionality, reliability, convenience and attractiveness. Designers have to keep in mind that they must achieve functional goals first, and working on reliability after it which lead to users’ convenience. They have to think about the attractiveness of the product only after everything mentioned above is done well. Developers and their clients have to keep in mind that hierarchy too because it is important to form requirements properly. We are not just looking for a good looking app, but an app that will have chosen features that will form proper work of the product. For example, choosing a technology is from our own experience. Clients choose Phone Gap as a cross-platform environment, but they lose the fact that this system isn’t reliable and won’t perform its functionality on all smartphones properly. There is a possibility of consistent app crashes. On different screen diagonals, it will look different and sometimes the interface will whimsically decay to pieces, etc. All these things show that the app isn’t functionally reliable. It means that some functionality works, but it is not stable and has actions that aren’t controlled. Reliability- it is comfortable to use this app on different platforms or with low-tech requirements. The user won’t need the latest and the most powerful device to run the app properly. Convenience- the app has a comfortable interface, and everything is in its place. And if it is something innovative or new, it is intuitive enough and easy to use. When all that is mentioned above is done and all requirements are satisfied — including aesthetic ones — it means that designers did really good work.
Written by: Artem Fedin on April 14, 2015.
Originally published at 111 Minutes Blog on April 14, 2015.
