What is UX Design?

It’s a question that I get asked almost every time I tell people what I do for a living; so what exactly is UX design?

Well, for starters, it seems to be something that people struggle to grasp initially, most probably because we as an industry struggle to define it, too. I once tried describing it to people who were not particularly web-savvy as ‘making sure that annoying moment where you’re on a website and you can’t make it work the way you want or need it to doesn’t happen again’.

I’m pretty sure all these people think I work in IT, fixing bugs all day long.

Even with those who should, in theory at least, be a bit more knowledgable struggle. I once came up against a scenario where I was talking with a new colleague who asked a question about the development cycle which I admitted I didn’t know the answer to yet.

‘I don’t know, call yourself a developer’, she laughed.

No. No I don’t. What is it that you think I do?!

So what is it then?

User experience is actually a fairly simple concept when you break it down; it’s the experience a person (the user) has when they interact with a specific thing, usually a website, an app, or something similar, although the term can be used to fit other definitions. It’s pretty much what it says on the tin; the experience a person has when they use something.

So far, so what’s all the fuss about then? Things tend to become a lot more complex when you introduce the D-word. User experience design seems to have a lot more trouble defining itself; probably because the industry spends a lot of time squabbling over determining what UX design is, and what it is not (and yes, I’m totally aware of the irony of penning this blog post in the first place).

Why do we struggle so much to define our own industry? Surely we as UX designers are best placed to comment and yet we don’t seem to be able to decide on a fixed definition or remit of our roles.

For me at least, that troublesome definition is actually becoming increasingly clear.

User experience design takes a product, or an idea — a new one or an existing one — and strives to put the user at the heart of it. It’s an approach that puts the user ahead of aesthetic choices; designing function over form.

It’s designing with an awareness of the fact that not every user is the same, that not every user comes from the same background or shares the same knowledge base.

It’s about predicting and anticipating the pitfalls and pain points that a user experiences every day and removing them from the equation, even the ones the user wasn’t aware of themselves.

When UX design is done well, it’s totally invisible, unnoticed by the user. When it’s exceptional it’s the thing that makes people smile; the thing that people tell their friends about.

It doesn’t matter what tools you use to get there; you use whatever you can to find the best possible solution for your user, whether that be a beautiful user interface or a more streamlined and easily navigable information architecture.

To me, that is user experience design. That is my job. That’s why I love it.

This article was originally published on uxandthat.com