What is UX?

User experience (“UX”) is about designing great products and services that are a pleasure for people (“users”) to use. In other words, designing great experiences for users = user experience. Although UX can be applied to the design of services and physical experiences, it is usually associated with the design of digital products, such as websites and iPhone apps.

User Experience is not computer programming, and it’s not graphic / UI design — it bridges the two. Think of an Oreo cookie: UX is the good stuff in the middle.

You’ve probably become aware of user experience in a bad way if you’ve ever become frustrated while online. Think of the time when you painstakingly filled out a long form, only to accidentally hit a ‘clear’ button when you meant to select ‘submit’. The discipline of UX would question the benefits of having a ‘clear’ button in the first place.

The funny thing is that people blame themselves for bad UX, eg, “My thumbs are too big.”

Your thumbs are not too big, it’s the design that’s too small.

Conversely, if you can accomplish what you set out to do online, for example, easily transfer funds using your mobile banking app, that’s good UX. Good UX ensures you can easily accomplish tasks. In fact, great UX is invisible.

If you are able to easily accomplish tasks, you can feel good about yourself. That’s why I think UX makes the world a better place.

What does it take to create great experiences? It starts by researching, understanding and empathizing with the people who will use the product or service, and in testing and refining your designs on actual people. It takes a deep, thorough understanding of people’s needs and their behaviour. Without this empathetic understanding, you may be a designer, but you’re not a User Experience designer.

Many people also confuse the visual design of the User Interface (UI) with UX. The UI may be the tangible manifestation of the UX ‘iceberg’ but there are actually many steps that must be undertaken before we think about the colour of the buttons or snazzy animations.

An analogy to describe this would be when creating a building:

1. Before we choose the colour of the drapes or the pattern of the carpet or the shape of the cupboard handles, we must first decide if we’re building a cathedral, a shopping mall or a skyscraper. (Business Requirements Gathering).
2. Once the purpose has been determined, we need to ensure it meets user needs by understanding our users. You don’t want to build a tall skyscraper if the majority of its users have a fear of heights. (User Research)
3. The next logical step is to ensure you have the right content and images, eg, the skyscraper is built from the appropriate materials. (Content Strategy)
4. Next, ensure that the structure and navigation allows people to accomplish tasks. For example consider wayfinding: can the users of the building get from floor to floor and room to room easily? (Information Architecture)
5. Once the foundation has been built and the structure finalized, you can decide whether to install stairs or escalators, whether windows slide open or out, the shape of casements, etc. (Interaction Design)
6. Next, consider the arrangement of elements so that they are ergonomic and allow people to accomplish tasks easily, eg the door knobs can be used by different sized hands, they are appropriately placed, etc. (Interface Design)
7. Then — and only then — should you turn your attention worrying about the type of metal for your door knobs, or selecting the colour of the carpet and drapes to make it look ‘pretty’ or adhere to brand. (Visual Design)

User Experience is actually made up of many different disciplines, tools and activities. This is why UX is fascinating to me — because designing great experiences means I get to wear ‘many hats’:

• Bush hat of an anthropologist when observing users;
• Beret of an artist when designing interfaces;
• Sequinned fez of an actor when presenting findings to stakeholders;
• Pocket protector hat (if there’s such a thing) of a computer geek to work with technical constraints;
• Deerhunter hat of a detective when gathering clues about user behaviour from disparate sources;
• Fedora of a writer when designing microcopy for button labels and navigation schemes.

On any given day, I also wear the hats of comic book artist, industrial designer, librarian, ergonomist, architect, psychologist, business consultant, inventor, storyteller and more.

Now you know what it takes to create great experiences, and that bad UX is not your fault. I encourage you to incorporate UX into your own life + work and make the world a better place.