UX: designing with people for people

Throughout learning and practicing UX design, I have always used the word user when referring to the target audience. However, after reading a short article on UX soft-skills by Dawid Tomczyk, I realized that that term means more than what it looks like. A User is described as “a person who operates something, especially a computer or other machine” and the keyword in that phrase is “a person”.

The overall goal of a UX designer is to solve for a user-friendly design that fulfills a business’s needs. The former, and most important, part of that goal is solving the problem of the user by letting them being apart of the design process.

Empathy: The forgotten tool

Within the story by Tomczyk, he mentions that empathy is one of the most important soft skills needed by a UX Designer, and I full-heartedly agree. The skill that every UX, and general designer needs, is the ability to empathize with people and try and understand why they are having issues with a certain design. ‘

But why do we need to empathize with users?

To design for the user, a UX designer needs to understand why and how people behave with a product or service; and empathy can give answers to those questions.

For example, say a client comes to you with a list of problems they noticed with their website and hire you to solve these issues. Yet, after looking over all the data and the site itself, you can only make assumptions on why these issues are happening.

To answer why there are issues with a product or service, you need to understand why people are having trouble, you need to use research methods using empathy. Some empathy methods used are listed here:

• User interviews
• Usability Testing
• User Journey maps
• Ethnographic studies
• Empathy maps
• Surveys
• Car Sorting (with the user sorting cards)

Users are People, too

As I stated before, the overall goal of a UX designer is to solve for a user-friendly design that fulfills a business’s needs, but our main goal is to solve issues by putting on our user’s shoes. Through empathy methods, the why’s & how’s of your problems will be answered and will lead you to the right solution.

I know it is weird to say that users are people too, but sometimes you forget that you are solving issues for people. To ensure this does not happen, use methods with empathy to ensure that the people have a voice that educates, informs, and guides the solutions we solve for.

When the users are involved and understood in the design process, the client’s goals and problems will also be met.

A happy user means a happy client!