The trip from Graphic to UX Design
I always though I would like to improves people’s live — after coffee of course.
Hello World, it is me, Rocío — www.rociotomsic.com -. Who? Yeah, well in short words, a tireless energy who has enjoyed living and earning experience in different countries.
In order to start with good hand, there it goes my first free advice or work experiece — update your damn Linkedin and show your potential to the world outside! seriously, it´s been a really good networking tool, for work interesting articles and interesting people.
Now, first thing i want you to know, all my life I’ve been kind of obsessed with three things:
- Solving Problems.
- How just watching something, can make us experience the most hidden feelings.
- People.
I worked for a few years as a graphic designer when I had the first proposal to work in UX. I remember when I read the first time about User Centered Design, I started to understand that this is what I wanted to do. To design based on the user, in humans, so I found that all my obsessions where coming together. I was going to be able to solve problems, to make people experience things, and I was going to learn from people, what they want, what they need, and what could make their lives better.
Take 5 minutes, this is a short film based on the work of neuroscientist and writer David Eagleman I would love to improve the potential of your web and the ux, here is my contact information!.
When I saw this video I was wandering two things, how important is to understand that life is a sum of experiences, and how much time would we see ourselves using devices.
Everything is about experiences, so let’s try to design best experiences for people. Let’s get to know them thoroughly and see what we can do to work better and better.
UX
The first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother. Next comes simplicity and elegance that produce products that are a joy to own, a joy to use. True user experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want, or providing checklist features. In order to achieve high-quality user experience in a company’s offerings there must be a seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design.
It’s important to distinguish the total user experience from the user interface (UI), even though the UI is obviously an extremely important part of the design. As an example, consider a website with movie reviews. Even if the UI for finding a film is perfect, the UX will be poor for a user who wants information about a small independent release if the underlying database only contains movies from the major studios. (from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/definition-user-experience/)
The look of a product is all about creating a product that has visual appeal and which, in particular, harmonizes with a user’s values and captures the spirit of what they expect in that product. In other words, it has to not only look nice, but look right too. In doing so, it establishes a bond of trust and credibility between the product and the user.
Next is the feel, which is really about developing products that are “a joy to use”. That is, whether you’re interacting with them or reacting to them, products should provide a pleasurable experience and not just a functional one.
Lastly, usability is the cornerstone of user experience. If a product isn’t usable, the experience of using it can never be good. UX designers want to create products which can, ideally, be tailored to meet a user’s specific needs, but which provides functionality that is predictable.
Graphic design
Graphic design is a combination of problem-solving and visual communication. Graphic designers use color, imagery, and typography to communicate an idea or feeling through print, web, and visual design, following conventions, guidelines, and briefs. As graphic designers, we get a lot of our direction from marketing, and from our clients. But, for the sake of this particular conversation, it’s important to understand that graphic designers “polish” a product and don’t get too caught up in what’s going on beneath the surface.
We, as graphic designers, are probably going to feel more comfortable with UI at the first sight. There are a lot of components to which we feel familiar. But when you find that is in UX where you understand how user research, information architecture, human factors, and, yes, graphic design come together, the story changes.
We have to take into consideration what exactly the user is trying to accomplish and in what environment they are trying to accomplish it. And the design has to reflect that. Every decision that we do on the designs, is based on what user needs.
Business goal section — Of course
The business or client goal is always present. We as UX designers have to be the mediator between the business goal and the user.
For example, if the client wants to sell a new product online, we have to do research about who is interested in that product, why would they buy it, should we build an app? should we build a website? we have to really understand what the user think, feels, to know how to engage him. One way that a UX designer might do this is by conducting in-person user tests to observe one’s behavior. By identifying verbal and non-verbal stumbling blocks, they refine and iterate to create the “best” user experience.
UI
user interface designers are particular about how the product is laid out. We are in charge of designing each screen or page with which a user interacts and ensuring that the UI visually communicates the path that a UX designer has laid out. Our work starts since we start doing the first sketches, wireframes and start understanding the relation between elements. UI designers are also typically responsible for creating a cohesive style guide and ensuring that a consistent design language is applied across the product. Maintaining consistency in visual elements and defining behavior such as how to display error or warning states fall under the purview of a UI designer.
Design Thinking
Going into Design Thinking process of creation, is
Empathize, conduct research to develop an understanding of your users.
Define, Combine all your research and observe where your user’s problems exits.
Ideate, generate a range of crazy, creative ideas.
Prototype, build real, tactile representations for a range of your ideas.
Test, Return to your users for feedback.
You can repeat this process for ever. The outcomes never ends adding value.
Iterative problem solving
UX design is very much an iterative problem-solving process, and this approach can be different from the traditional linear process of graphic design. In the case of UX design, you don’t have a final solution for the problem, only the constant search for the better solution. The design process never ends. In fact, the design will be continually adjusted according to user feedback. That’s quite different from what graphic designers do and may require some mindset shifts for graphic designers who would like to make the transition.
If you are on this path…
You as a graphic designer already have a lot of the way already done.
Creative thinking makes design thinking easier because it requires our brains to continuously try to solve the problem using different approaches — which leads to innovative solutions.
Your already are a problem solver, you have attention to detail, you already know design conventions, you have seen and work with many different aesthetics.
In a world with so many shiny screens, what are you going to do?
I think I would be really surprised if you didn’t have to work in the digital world already. We live in a world of screens, devices and, having smart phones like extensions of our body, we can’t not fight that tendencies, what we can do is try to use all that technologies and all that tools to our profit, and to the world benefits. If you can not fight them, join them. If you have ideas to explore the ways UX can help to make a better world let me know!.
To infinity and beyond!
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