5 Things You Should Know About UX Design
1. What Exactly is UX Design?
UX Design, short for User Experience Design is defined on Wikipedia as “the process of enhancing user satisfaction by improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction between the user and the product.”
This wordy definition can be a bit hard to make sense of so let’s take a look at how a few experienced UX professionals would describe what UX Design is to someone hearing about it for the first time.
2. What Are the Differences Between UX and UI Design?
You may often see job titles listed as “UX/UI Designer” when in fact, it’s common to see them split between two different professionals. UX Design is a more analytical and technical field while UI Design is more similar to graphic design (with more complex responsibilities).
Is one more important than the other? Not really, in fact both are crucial parts in the design process. As Helga Moreno wrote in her article The Gap Between UX And UI Design:
“Something that looks great but is difficult to use is exemplary of great UI and poor UX. While Something very usable that looks terrible is exemplary of great UX and poor UI.”
3. What’s a Day in the Life of a UX Designer Like?
A day in the life of Pamela Mendoza, UX Designer at Prolific Interactive
Current project: A lifestyle app built for users to purchase apparel and accessories, as well as educate brand principles while continuing to surprise and delight loyal customers
- 7:15AM — Getting #UXFIT: Catching up on articles and readings on Pocket
- 9AM — Catch Up: Read through emails and finalize materials for post-release user interviews
- 10AM — Stand Up: Recap with product team on recurring usability trends
- 11:30AM — Participant Data Collection Working Session: Organize user testing data collection
- 12PM — Lunch
- 12:30PM — UX Huddle: Weekly huddle with entire UX team to update each other
- 1:30PM — Design Team Meeting: Meeting with Product Designers and UX Designers to present new tools, kits, ideas, etc.
- 2:30PM — Internal Design Review: Presentation to the internal team to realign with user and business goals
- 3:30PM — Working Sessions: Listen to interviews and transcribe Lookback videos
- 5PM — Send Out Weekly UX Digest: Create a weekly UX digest with a summarized version of the main topics, quotes, and highlights from user research of the last week
- 5:30PM — Show and Tell: Bi-weekly event where teams can show off their projects, new designs, and new tech. Beer included!
- 6PM — EOD: Grab another beer from the keg to kick off the night. Great way to end the week!
4. What Type of Qualities do Great UX Designers Have?
Empathy —It is extremely important for UX Designers to understand why people behave the way they do! One way to develop this skill is to learn and practice putting yourself in other people’s shoes. An empathetic design approach will help you to design products that appeal to, support, and enable people.
Insatiable Curiosity — UX Designers should be curious and desire to know why people behave the way they do. Additionally, staying on top of technology shifts and new trends is important and requires an appetite for learning to stay ahead of the curve.
Clarity of Expression — As with most other professions, it is important to be able to clearly express your ideas and processes to others. If you have an effective method to explain your work, people are more likely to understand your thought process and judge in your favor. A great way to practice expressing yourself is to write blogs about new things that you learn!
5. What Tools Do I Need for UX Design?
Apart from your own wonderful mind, there are many tools and software available that can help you with common things UX Designers need to do like wireframing, prototyping, user testing, or analyzing website traffic!
Industry Standard Tools
- Photoshop — Pixel based program originally for photo editing. Great for screen interface design.
- Illustrator — Vector based graphic program that has the advantage of infinite element resizing without loss of quality. Great for creating logos and icons.
- Sketch — Powerful design tool similar to Photoshop, but geared more toward UI/UX Design. *Mac only*
UX Tools for Wireframing and Prototyping
- UX Pin — Wide range of functionalities, including the ability to create responsive clickable prototypes on your browser.
- Wireframe.cc — Open a new tab, create quick and dirty wireframes, and that’s it. Speed over pixel perfection.
- Invision — Upload jpgs and link them through to create clickable mockups and get feedback from your team and users.
- Axure — The most complete wireframing and protoyping software in the market. The Photoshop of UX Designers.
- Pen and Paper — Fast and simple way to draw out sketches and collaborate
UX Tools for User Research and User Testing Tools
- Lookback — Tool for recording users: simple to use and with all videos uploaded to the Cloud.
- Wufoo — Create any kind of online survey that you need. Very complete and easy to analyze results.
- Typeform — Simple, elegant, responsive and user-friendly forms.
UX Tools for Analytics and Metrics
- Google Analytics — Freemium web analytics service that tracks and reports website traffic
- Crazy Egg — One of the simplest and most affordable heatmap tools
- Good Data — Cloud-based business intelligence solution that can provide useful reports combining multiple data sources
I hope that you now have a better understanding of what UX Design is and what it’s like to be a UX Designer. Please comment below if you have any questions or anything you’d like to share about UX Design!
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