Amateur’s Thoughts on UX
The reason why I titled this article as amateur is because I hold no degree in design or any related subject. The closest I came to was ergonomics while doing a project during my undergrad, and God, did I love the subject. It wasn’t a formal subject like being part of the curriculum, but its theory was required to design the 4 wheeled buggy we were developing (I like the way I used the word developing here because it involves ideation, conceptualization followed by actually designing on software and then manufacturing, as opposed to manufacturing which is just the conversion of material from one form to another). And this is time when I really fell in love with the study of how humans interact with their surroundings, ergonomics being that of the physical surrounding and UX being that of anything digital. So while I am still judgmental about physical things like a door knob, a water tap, a carry bag, automobile seats not being designed properly my attention has also found another mistress (Not saying that attention per se is male, it’s just social conditioning here). It is UX or user experience that I now judge often, from how an app and my thumbs interact to the look and feel, the transitions, colors, text, in short the experience. And what I realized is that if you really start noticing these kind of things consciously you can differentiate the good from the bad. And that is where the psychology part kicks in, why we like a particular color or transition from one screen to another and not the other. Just like in the field of marketing there is the subject of consumer behavior which is the application of psychological theories (why a McD has high rise chairs with white light and a hookah bar has low couches with dim or yellow light), I am sure UX is application of some other psychological theories. When I first purchased my One Plus 3T that I currently own, I would plug and unplug the charger multiple times just to see that lightning bolt coming from the bottom part of the phone to the screen and then a message “Dash Charging” appearing below it and all this in the color similar to the light in the eyes of the Iron Man suit. That was delight!! That was the time when for me One Plus graduated from customer satisfaction to consumer delight. By the way, Dash charging was one of the USPs of the phone, it still is, but this attention to detail made me a fan, a loyal one. Also, they have now replaced the message “Dash Charging” to a more subtle “Charging Rapidly” in a recent update. The other day I was browsing PayTM, yes it is a thing I do often, it’s a part of my job, when I found they had a ‘Scratch and Win’ tile on the app. This got me curious, how would a digital interface do that. I remember scratching recharge vouchers and the back of caps of Coke bottle but something like this was only for games that require you to rub the screen with the finger-tip, like candy crush. And then I tapped on the tile and voila, the scratch tile felt like real, the silver (golden in this case) was being removed as I rubbed, following the contour of my finger tip. It is here, that any company has given the user something to smile about and my thoughts of appreciation go out to the designer who could execute what he knew would be liked by the user. There have been times when I have opened apps just get mesmerized by the user experience without giving regard to its functionality. It was during one of my projects that I came across material.io, a web site by google dedicated to UX design. And the more I absorbed knowledge about it, the more fascinated I became with the subject. So to contradict my first statement, sometimes I feel that I am better than an amateur on this topic. From websites, to apps, to wearable device, to any electronic device for that matter, the UX is indeed the most important thing, because UX affects convenience and ease of use which is why the device has been made for in the first place. Some might argue that it is functionality which is the most important, I would just say that UX is a part of functionality. And that makes the designers job all the more important. A good designer (UX designer) can make or break the success of your product. No wonder, it is one of the highest paying jobs along with data scientists in the US. But a designer does not only need technical skills, he/she also needs to be a keen observer. A shout out to all the good designers currently toiling hard to make us smile, if not smile, at least prevent us from being irritated, while we are interacting with the digital world around us.
