User Experience (UX) in Business changing digital expectation

We’re going to have a look at what user experience really means and why it’s so important for your business given the changing digital expectations. We going to look at what UX means, we’re also going to look at the elements of the process, and then we’ll look at why it’s so important. So user experience design is a process describing lots of different activities. And it can be applied to digital technology. But ultimately, applies to designing any sort of product or real life service with the user at the other end of it. Now, it’s called UX for short, but it’s often also referred to as UCD, which is User Centered Design.

And what it’s really at the heart of it is that you’re keeping your user at the heart of everything that you’re designing. So in order to be able to do this, you need to have a really good understanding of who they are and what they need. And it’s often confused with UI, but this is User Interface, and this is literally just how your user interacts with you on a screen. Whereas you UX actually covers a lot more than that. It’s every interaction that your customer would have with your business online and offline.

But it is really important to keep in mind that your user experience actually covers everything and every interaction that your customer will have with your business. So user experience design is something that begins at the very start of an idea and it goes all the way through the lifetime of your product or your site. Its starts with very high level concepts and understanding the problems and the opportunities that you’ve identified. It then goes on to researching your users, finding out who they are, what their needs are, what they like and don’t like, and how they interact with your business. The next key part is getting feedback from your users to constantly improve your design. And this is called ITERATING.

And what it literally means is to go around and find improvements and improve on them. So why is UX design so important? Well, there’s a lot of research out there which shows how important it is to design with your users at the center. The increase that you can get in terms of profits and in terms of engagement can be absolutely huge. A lot of companies are just starting to realize this, and they’re investing a lot more into their UX design, because they realize the amount of cost they can save for later down the line in being able — in having to redesign and redevelop all these sites and services. If they just focused on UX design to begin with.

A lot of this has to do with how customers’ expectations have changed over time. So say 10 years ago, it was quite normal for a customer to log onto a website or a system and find a very slow and clunky experience. And there was only a few companies, a few high end companies those days, that did delightful design. But nowadays, this is the norm. Customers expect to log onto a website and find an experience which is very efficient, very pleasing, and quite intuitive. And if they don’t get that, it’s incredibly frustrating. And what we can actually do is we can measure the drop off rates.

And these are the rates at which customers drop off from or abandon a website or an app at different stages of the journey due to poor performance. And UX is all about minimizing those pain points in the journey to ensure that your website has the most successful design possible. So here are some surprising statistics about UX design. First of all, 79% of people, if they don’t like what they find on a site, will go back and search for another site. 90% of users have stopped using an app due to poor performance. And 86% of people have uninstalled or deleted an app because of problems with its performance.

And what’s more, if a company can improve its customer experience score by 10%, and this is a score that a company gets based on various things, including how easy their service is to understand. Now, if they can improve the score by 10%, it can translate into over $1 billion worth of revenue, which is a staggering amount.

We’re going to look at the key stages of the process, and then we’ll be looking at iteration in design. So first of all, we’re going to look at the user-centered mindset. And what’s really important here is to keep your user at the center of your design at all times. So consider how your product would impact them. Now remember you’re not the user. So just because it works for you, it might not necessarily work for them.

And a key part of this is trying to understand your user. So ask questions like why and what if. Try and approach it with empathy and put yourselves in their shoes. And try and go in with an open mind. Now remember to consider all parts of the user experience. So it’s not just the UI or the screen that the customer would interact with, but it’s every single interaction that they would have with your business. So are they going into a physical store? Are they going to be receiving a delivery?

Are they going to be calling up? And think about what they expect from each of these interactions and think about how they would react to it. And this is how you would be able to keep your user at the center of your design. So now we found out about how important it is to keep the user at the center of your design, let’s move on to the key stages in the process. Now exactly how you design will depend a lot on what you’re trying to create. So whether it’s an app, or a website, or a product, or a service, but most of them will have the following five stages in common.

The Key Foundations of UX design are:

1. Discover

2. Describe

3. Design

4. Develop

5. Release/Launch

First of all, you want to discover more about your users and other relevant products. Second, you want to describe and define your concept. So what are you really trying to create? Third, you want to design the behaviour. So we’ll talk more about prototypes and principles for doing so later. Fourth, you want to develop your design. So this is where you add the details, the visual branding, and you test it on your users. And fifth, you release your product or your site. But it doesn’t finish there, because continually improving your design is a key part of the whole process.

Now design is not a one-off activity, and these steps don’t always come one after the other. Sometimes you have to loop around and revisit it in a more fluid way. But the really important thing to keep in mind is that continually improving your product is a normal and effective part of the process. And we’re going to look at prototyping and user testing a bit later on. Now it’s easy to get attached to the first idea of a design that you might have, but it’s really important to keep in mind that the best way to ensure success is to base your decisions around real data from real users. This is the best indicator that you can get to see how your product or your site will be received by a wider group. And it doesn’t finish there. Improving and iterating your product or your site is something that will continue throughout the lifetime of your site.