The Importance of UX Design
UX is a big deal in today's business world. Some studies indicate that for every dollar spent on website UX, companies can expect an ROI of up to $100. That's not to mention how good UX can boost a website's conversion rate by 200%.
Of course, successful UX doesn't just happen by accident. Companies must develop and implement compelling user experience design to reap the maximum benefit from their efforts. In this article, we'll discuss what UX is, how it differs from UI, and how the design of your systems and sites plays a crucial role in achieving UX goals.
What Exactly Is UX?
UX stands for user experience. In simple terms, UX encompasses how users interact with a product and how they feel about the interaction. For example, flipping a light switch is typically a simple, intuitive interaction between user and product. The process is pain-free and usually taken for granted. However, if it takes a lot of effort to flip the switch, or if the light doesn't come on afterward, the user's experience could be very frustrating.
In the business world, designers constantly look for ways to improve the user experience. They want to develop simple, meaningful, and flexible products to meet the needs of a wide variety of consumers. Therefore, user experience design includes virtually all aspects of the design process, from branding to functionality.
Of course, from the user's point of view, good UX means that a product is easy to use, does what it's supposed to, and doesn't create unnecessary friction.
What’s the Difference Between UX and UI?
UX and UI (user interface) are close cousins but are decidedly not the same concept. UI design primarily involves optimizing the visual elements of a website or system (for instance, how a web page's content is displayed). You could think of UI as one specific aspect of UX or even the foundation for good UX. In contrast, UX deals with users' overall ease of use, including functional aspects of the experience that UI design may not cover.
Therefore, there are several key practical differences between UX and UI. The following items are just a small sampling of these differences:
UX deals with interaction design (how a user interacts with an element), while UI focuses on visual design (how an element looks).
Real-world scenarios inform UX design, while UI design is often limited to how a site or system behaves.
UX designers lean heavily on user testing and research; UI designers are more concerned with colors, graphics, and typography.
While UI is important, it can never replace a comprehensive approach to the overall user experience or design. Instead, it is one key piece to the more giant UX puzzle designers must solve.
How Bad User Experience Design Can Lead To Frustration
Unsurprisingly, when designers ignore UX principles and best practices, the result is often a lot of unnecessary and avoidable frustration. The Internet is full of UX-related cautionary tales, from overcrowded header sections to annoying pop-ups and autoplay videos. That's not to mention how poor user experience design can inadvertently contribute to scams and malware distribution.
Interestingly, poor UX design doesn't stop at the borders of UI. Since UX design encompasses the entire user experience, a website or system may have an A+ look yet still confuse and frustrate the intended audience. This is especially true of companies that target consumers in different parts of the world. Examples of this include:
Inappropriate cultural references. What is considered humorous in one culture could be offensive in another. Certain idioms just don't translate across languages very well. For example, "to kick the bucket" means "to doze off" in one Asian language. Of course, that phrase carries a very different meaning in American English.
Tonal missteps. Again, what's considered a socially acceptable tone in one culture may not be acceptable to people from a different background. Even a color scheme may convey very different meanings to each user, depending on their upbringing and cultural heritage.
Technical overload. In the web development world, good UX design includes designing for consumers with the latest, most significant, and fastest electronic devices and those with older legacy equipment. A media-heavy interface that requires a lot of bandwidth may effectively shut out consumers within specific markets and demographics from interacting with your business as they'd like.
The Key to Avoiding Serious UX Mistakes: User Testing
A typical UX design process contains four significant steps:
Gathering requirements: At this early stage, the objective is to identify the needs of the product's user and which UX goals to focus on.
Developing options: Once the basic requirements are understood, the UX team can design several options to improve the overall experience and meet the stated goals.
Prototyping: Prototypes are effective models for design options and allow for practical testing before the final version is released.
Evaluating: Finally, the UX team needs to analyze whether the new product as it currently exists will meet the users' needs as initially stated.
From the beginning to the end, user testing plays a crucial role in optimizing the effectiveness of UX improvements. Intensive user research and testing provide direction to the user experience design team on how best to adapt product features to serve real-world users' needs.
It may be easy to think that a design we find appealing will work for everyone else. However, it's dangerous to base design decisions on our experiences and assumptions. User research during the requirement gathering phase of the UX design process can help identify critical areas of opportunity we may never have considered on our own. Continuous user testing throughout all iterations of the product can highlight ways to refine specific design elements or even the design scheme as a whole.
Let's take web development as an example of how user testing can take UX design to the next level. Consider just a few design elements that could greatly benefit from user testing:
Is the page's call-to-action (CTA) button readily visible? Is it appealing to the user? Is the CTA copy appropriate and compelling? Do users understand what the CTA button will do once clicked?
Is it easy to navigate through the website? Is the navigation bar marked and free of clutter? How much time and effort does it take a user to navigate to a page that contains a specific piece of information?
Are clickable elements marked, or are users missing them completely? Do certain features seem like they would be clickable, even though they aren't? Are the clickable elements far enough away from one another that mobile users won't accidentally click on the wrong link?
The bottom line? User testing is, without a doubt, a key component of effective UX design. It's always better to begin and end with feedback from your target users rather than design a product only to give it a complete overhaul within a year or two.
Things to Remember About User Experience Design
UX best practices should be incorporated into most product design processes and not just from large, enterprise-level corporations. Up-and-coming startups will also benefit from incorporating a UX design methodology into their product development initiatives. By proactively designing with the user in mind, you'll be certain to see increased ROI from your efforts.