11 UX myths you need to know. The Comprehensive UX Designer Hiring Checklist
Are you the founder of the next big tech startup or the head of technology of an enterprise company who has just come to the realisation that great products are built with not just great technology, but also great product user experience. The need for an expert who can take a good product and turn it into a great product through exemplary user experience. Choosing an expert who fits right in with your team and product strategy is a hard task. This checklist will help you sail through the understanding what to keep in mind while hiring your rockstar UX designer and bust a few myths along the way.
1. UX is Driven by Technology
User Experience though making use of technology has and will always be ‘user’ centric. Great products have always kept their users at the center of their product. Technology however radical and cutting edge can only gain acceptance if they are able to be easily consumed by the intended users. A drastic shift in mindset from building a product first and fixing the UX as an afterthought to actively building the technology and UX simultaneously is the need of the hour. The work of the UX designer is best summed up by the popular General Electric slogan
“We bring good things to life”.
2. UX Design Is Expensive
You could go “the full monty” and use every available tool and method of the UX process in the hopes that more is better. Design is expensive, and no one really goes all in. The best UX designers have a toolbox of options, picking and choosing methods that make sense for the particular project and budget. Sometimes less is more and great design opportunities can be discovered with insights gained from doing user research with just five users.
“Majority of theUX problems can be solved by testing with 5 REAL USERS.”
The consequences of poor user experience adds up to friction which leads to frustration. Poor UX is much more expensive than getting a great UX created in the first place.
4. UX Design makes the product beautiful
UX design is not based on aesthetics alone to provide great usability. Aesthetics deals with how something looks. UX design consists of multiple overarching fields that together define how to make something that works well for the end user. Designs that focus on aesthetics alone and ignore the basic tenets of usability end up being useless by definition. Imagine buying a car with a killer paint job, leather seats and a convertible open roof with a bad suspension, tacky steering, underpowered engine. You would end up with a toy that is fit for display but unusable for anything else.
5. UX Design Is only for Digital Products
UX design is neither confined to the edges of a user’s screen nor is it a layer or component of a product or service. It involves making changes and defining the experience of what the product show look and feel like to the end user, by understanding what the end user is trying to accomplish and tailoring an experience best suited to his/her needs. It involves incorporating changes across different levels that affect the product, to accomplish the single goal of making the users experience better.
As Don Norman says:
“User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.”
Be it building a pin, a chair, a phone, a bike, a car etc., a UX designer helps the product by designing an optimal experience for the end user.
6. UX Design Is Optional
UX can make or break a product. Bad UX has even cost president’s elections. Many products have succeeded solely on the basis that they had stellar user experience and far greater number of products have failed for providing terrible user experience. UX design should not be an afterthought. Products are not all about features and functionality. UX design plays just as important a role in its success and now, is not merely an option. It’s an absolute essential for companies and products to succeed. An initial investment in UX during product development always pays huge dividends in the long run.
7. UX is making pages accessible in 3 clicks
One of the core usability tests that most people believe to be the benchmark for good UX is the 3 click-rule or the 2 tap rule, which states that if users are unable to find information in 3 clicks or two taps the users will leave your site or app. Recent studies have proved that this is not the case and that this neither affects user satisfaction nor the success rate. The myth that fewer clicks make better UI, is just that a myth that got turned into a benchmark of good UX. Fewer clicks does not mean happier users nor does it means that the page is perceived as faster.
What really matters is the ease with which users get to what they want to do. Providing information to the users that are both easily digestible and understandable to the user. Not making user think about the clicks goes a long way in enhancing the user experience masking the irritability associated with a few more clicks.
8.Anyone can do UX
There is a popular belief that anyone can do UX. Most managers and engineers think that by reading a book or two and subscribing to UX Magazine you know the ins and outs of UX. Working as a UX designer has a lot of intricacies to it. UX requires you to not only LOVE people but to be endlessly curious about why they do the things they do. If you’re not a people-person, and you have no curiosity about human behaviour then, your ability to build user experiences that engage and excite will be severely hampered.
9. UX has to be new and creative
“Users choose usability over creativity. STANDARD UI patterns will benefit the user.”
The web’s been around for more than 20 years, giving us ample time to discover user experience problems — in fact, to discover “user experience” at all — and invent solutions.
The more you use patterns, the more users come to understand them, making them more valuable for designers to use. This reciprocal relationship has persisted since the first days of web design. Trends come and go, but the underlying ideas remain timeless.
10. UX Designers work on their own
There is a common misconception that UX designers are lone wolves that work in isolation. Since designing the experience for a product is such a multifaceted endeavor most projects would require an interdisciplinary team of researchers, usability testers and project managers and business consultants. Designers rely on every member of the team to influence design to come up with an experience that is optimal and aligned with the business model and organizational goals of the company. It is important for designers to understand the environment and the technicalities in which their design will be implemented to come up with a user experience that is product defining.
11.UX is about asking users what they want
There is a famous quote by Steve jobs saying
“It’s not the customer’s job to know what they want”.
Though this quote may appear contradictory at first the wisdom behind this becomes apparent when you base your design experience around only what the user tells you. The user is looking for quick wins and temporary solutions to problems. It is the job of a UX designer to dig deeper into the source of a customers problem and come up with solutions to the root cause of the user’s problem and not just a temporary fixes that could prove to be product breaking later on the development cycle. Relying on users to articulate their needs, then running a business and being an entrepreneur would be a walk in the park.
A good UX designer never asks what the user wants upfront but instead probes with the following questions.
What motivates the user?
What makes the users feel good?
How do users form new habits?
How do users make their decisions?
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
― Henry Ford
A few questions that you should ask are
“What are problems you faced when performing this task?”
“What information helps you make an informed decision?”
“What is the goal of your task?”
“How does achieving this goal, contribute to your KPI?”
“Who do you rely on, to accomplish that goal?”
This helps steer the discussion from being feature-oriented to being user-oriented. After all, we’re not designing for a system. We’re designing for people.
Final thoughts
User Experience has countless myths and seemingly innocuous best practices associated with it. The rate at which technology is evolving has also contributed immensely to bring about rapid changes in UX. Best practices that were once the norm have now faded out into oblivion, giving rise to radical ideas and concepts that have become the new norm. A single rule of thumb when designing experiences for users is to figure what is right for your users and steering the development of the solution in that direction.
Finding the right UX designers can seem to be a daunting task and we at Dtale believe in keeping user centricity at the heart of the design experience. Reach out out to us at contact@dtale.io to kickstart your design journey.
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We are DTALE, a UX UI agency from Bangalore. We design digital experiences that tell a story. Here are some interesting UX Tips for your Startup. Download them for free.
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