What About User Experience
When you are learning something there’s usually a standard curriculum or a set path, for Ex graphic designers learn about layouts, typography etc. a developer starts from basics like html, java script etc.
What about User Experience? Since every thing about the product in one or the other way is a part of UX, one cannot set a standard path to learn UX as it is a very vast field and totally depends mainly on who you are trying to create an experience for.
User Experience is a mixture of design, process and business goals. If the product is a digital app, first thing in the process is to think about why in the first place that app should be designed/developed, what is the problem we are trying to solve from that.
User experience is not just about delivering wireframes, No! it is not just that.
Its more about understanding the user needs and business goals, UX design is about finding that sweet spot where user needs and business goals overlaps.
The very first step towards creating a wonderful experience for the users is conducting User Research.
User Research is a method of pinpointing your users, target audience, gaining knowledge about them, learning about the way they interact with things on a day to day basis. A design that revolves around the users means, it should be built in such a way that when the users use the product, they should feel it’s easy to use it and should give them a feel of meaningfulness to what they are trying to achieve through that particular product. Here one should clearly understand that User Research is not the same as market research, Market research is more about segmentation of the market, how will you place your product in the market, how will you separate yourself from your competitors, User research is more about getting to know in-depth about your target users, their needs, how to make it efficient.
· Wants vs. Needs
· Reactive vs. Proactive
· Statistical Significance vs. Good Enough
· Incremental vs. Innovative
· Time Consuming vs. Quick
· Infrequent vs. Iterative
· Subjective vs. Objective
· Direction vs. Design
User research makes the difference in making and breaking the product. It gives a clear picture between what designers think should be designed against what actually users need.
Next comes the most important phase in UX that’s Interaction Design.
Interaction design is more about how users will interact with the system, the main goal of interaction design is to create products that enables users to achieve their task in the most effective way possible.
Interaction Designs basically is the core area of the product which defines the experience that the users are getting out of the product, differentiates your product from your competitors, interaction design involves many elements like aesthetics, layouts, sounds, motions etc. In simple words interaction design is nothing but building a digital system in a way that the humans can easily interact with it and feel so natural about it. It’s a bridge connecting human world and digital world. Interaction Design involves 3 steps basically Discovery, Ideation and prototyping.
Discovery
It is about understanding who you are designing for and what are the requirements.
Ideation
It is the process of researching and coming up with the best possible ways to solve the problem you’re facing
Prototyping
consists of high-fidelity mock ups of the best ideas that have the layout guides applied to them
Next phase is Visual Design
Visual design is the top most layer of the product, this is the part where you can make your users love your product and connect with it, it involve heavily on colors, typography, iconography, layouts and micro animations. Usability.gov defines visual design as “strategically implementing images, colors, fonts, and other elements,” in order to enhance a design or interaction, and engage users. In many ways, visual design is a mix of graphic design and user experience design.
Visual designing actually compliments the interaction design part of the product, interaction design defines the way how the product should be interacted with, what visual design does is, it drivers the users to use it in the way it supposed to be used. Rather than just bringing brands to life, it plays a key role in defining what goes into a brand’s unique style and voice.
Does Visual Design affect User Experience?
The form on the left is generally more readable than the form on the right:
· The text has consistent color (black)
· The contrast ratio between text and background is higher (vector distance in color space between black and purple is higher than between light grey and white)
· The form fields are delineated with more contrast
· The centered labels provide a clear indication of workflow
Yet, most users will report a better user experience with the form on the right, because it has better visual design:
· It has better grid alignment (labels are left aligned with fields)
· It has better layout consistency (fields and button are same size)
· It has a calmer color palette with less surprising/conflicting colors
· It has a more familiar appearance as a form
To conclude ‘What about User Experience’, as I mentioned before there’s no set path in the field of User Experience, it differs from requirement to requirement, project to project and designer to designer. The process that I talked about (which is explained very briefly and just a small part of the actual process) is just one of the many processes one can follow for UX. So it all depends on the individual perspective, about how they go about the UX process and find out what User experience is, in their own way.
