User Experience and I.

I’ve heard it banded around for some time now, that naturally people fall into User Experience design, rather than stay as a production house for your bread and butter, website and logo projects.

Someone said the same thing to me once at a weekend hack event (hackathon) who was not just any old designer anymore; But a UX designer. At first, I didn’t quite understand what that was because I was still a design junior and learning my trade from the bottom upwards.

I was one of those designers who designed all sorts of functionality without any real thought into the relevance of it other than it looked visually nice on screen when showing people my work.

Working through the constant constructive feedback and the “why are you deviating from the wireframe, adding functionality?” questions during my early years, I soon come to realise, naturally through error and understanding, that designing, isn’t just about making something look nice.

Design is also in function, not just the look and feel.

I never thought I would be able to comprehend the idea of understanding a persons journey through a website, or app as I realised that people had many different needs and requirements that I had no idea that most of these scenarios had to be walked through before really starting any design in Photoshop.

I was used to just looking at a wireframe, opening up Photoshop and starting the design; from blueprint to colours and the little tweaks to make it pop at you. Someone else had already thought about why that button was there, and why that icon was bigger than the rest; Even where to put the first Call To Action (CTA) based on peoples behaviour when working through websites/apps etc.

I thought it would be really confusing and I was just so used to just designing away and not thinking about anything else; but it gradually all became relevant to me, through experience, failing a lot and first hand experience when going through the motions myself.

Understand your users problem and solve it.

If there is no problem, there is no need to design what your designing. Unless your in advertising and you literally want people to buy your product, making them ‘think’ they need it or ‘inventing a problem’.

Whenever I got the opportunity to work on a new project in my early years, I would often get into the habit of skipping the wire-framing and head straight into a blank canvas in Photoshop and start pixel perfecting straight away, for about 30 minutes then I would suddenly crash as I would be working through the user journey as I went.

I started asking myself questions, ones that I couldn’t answer, or ones that I answered and suddenly made that search bar I designed redundant and obsolete to the user, even though it looked quite nice.

Experience has taught me to figure out what a user wants to achieve and help them get there in as little clicking and tapping as possible so that they do not lose interest, get lost and come away feeling disorientated and dissatisfied.

I started to think about what they would see before having to scroll (before the fold) so that they ‘got it’ before making their next move (hopefully staying on the website/app). I began thinking about why they wouldn’t want to have this feature clouding their vision, or what purpose having this or that feature in their way, “would it help them?”.

I started thinking from a different perspective; With more clarity.

I began drawing on past experiences of when I have been in need of something quick, without all the rubbish in between and I wanted to get it first time, not after a few attempts.

For example; Looking at a McDonalds drive-thru menu, trying to decide what to order, knowing that any second someone is going to quick fire a question at you and ask you what you would like. Therefore, having the big bold offers in-front of you to help me make a quick decision is ideal, or having the relevant quick-turnover information in front of me, like the price and not the calorie count and sodium percentage. Your in a drive-thru so you want to have a simple set of choices and go.

So I stared to apply this thinking process into a user visiting my website or using my app and what they were looking to achieve and how I could make this easier for them. Guide their hand.

I’m currently putting together a project for fun, designing a Dribbble app because out of all the potential apps that are out there for Dribbble, they do not serve as an easy solution than if Dribbble just decided to make an official one. So I have set out to do my research, and wireframes in an attempt to showcase a design which I would think would help people and one that they would enjoy.

Although I am not very good at wire-framing with pen and paper, but digitally I am far more custom to. However I know that this skill of illustration and old school delivery is something I shall have to use at some point so I best start practicing.