What is user experience design?

“User experience” encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.

- Nielsen Norman Group

Any time your customers interact with your company, they’re experiencing something. That may sound sweeping, but think of it like this: every interaction shapes their perception of you, and that perception directly affects the likelihood that they’ll spend money with you. That’s why it’s critical to make each touchpoint as positive as possible.

User Experience Design (UX) covers a lot of territory. What it might mean to your company depends completely on the kinds of products and services you offer. For your business, UX might include your phone menus (IVRs), your website, your mobile app, or even printed materials in your physical location.

For example, let’s imagine a bank that has a really great experience, and think through all the places where UX touches customers:

• When customers visit the website, it’s clearly organized and easy to navigate. They have no trouble finding the information they want, and signing up for services is a breeze.
• When the bank emails to confirm the customer’s account, the email is easy to understand and doesn’t make them read carefully to get the point. It has a link that goes straight to the relevant page.
• When customers download and login to the bank’s app, it’s well designed and doesn’t feel cramped or hard to use on the go. It clearly indicates account balances and recent transactions and offers quick access to common tasks.
• When customers call in to ask a question, they don’t have to go through layers and layers of voice prompts or touch-tone menus, and they quickly get someone on the line who is able to answer their question.
• When customers go to a branch location to make a deposit, the window they need is clearly marked and easy to find. The form they have to fill out is self-explanatory, and the fields on the form are big enough for anyone’s handwriting.
• When the teller takes a customer’s deposit, the tools the teller uses are fast, easy to understand, help prevent them from making mistakes, and allow them to quickly service the customer so they can go about their day.

End to end, this bank offers a great experience. Everywhere their customers interact with them, they make sure it’s easy to understand, and this leaves their customers feeling good about the service. They’re more likely to bank with this institution in the long term and recommend their services to friends and family.

When you take this sort of holistic design approach to your products and services, you’re practicing good UX design, and your customers will thank you for it.