What is User Experience Design? An Overview of UXD and Why it Matters

TLDR;

A UX designer can help your business

• improve the quality of your product or service

• reduce the total cost to develop an exceptional experience

• provide useful insight into potential areas of business expansion

A UX designer understands the importance

• user research

• information architecture

• content strategy

• visual design

• interaction design

• usability evaluation

• accessibility

Introduction

User Experience design (UX design or UXD) is a growing field and becoming an increasingly important role. The field is broad and encapsulates a large set of sub-disciplines and design specialties.

Gaining an intrinsic understanding of the role is often a difficult initial task. There are many hand-wavy explanations, that only serve to confuse new learners.

...we are going to explain WHAT user experience design is and WHY it matters for your business.

In this post, we are going to explain WHAT user experience design is and WHY it matters for your business.

What is involved with UX Design?

UX design is a broad term. We consider seven sub disciplines of UXD to help clarify how user experience designer may fit in with your next design project.

User research

User research is at the center of all user experience design. Through research, a UX designer will gain insight and understanding into the behaviors, needs, and motivations of your target market.

gain insight and understanding into the behaviors, needs, and motivations of your target market.

There are various techniques and methods of user research. During project planning, a UX designer will consider user research in the user-centered design process.

Information architectecture

Information architecture (IA) is the design and organization of content. This involves a consideration of schemes, patterns, labels, navigation, and search.

This is an essential task in the early stages of any website or application design.

Content strategy

Content strategy is the plan associated with creating and delivering content. The 'content' is all consumer-facing information including social media posts, blogs, articles (or white papers), and advertisements.

Creating content can be costly and a strategy is used to determine what to produce, and how best to deliver it.

Creating content can be costly and a strategy is used to determine what to produce, and how best to deliver it.

Visual design

Visual design is essentially a form of graphic design applied directly to a product or service interface by a UX designer. Visual designers will often focus on the user interface of a digital product.

User interface design (UI) is often deeply associated with user experience design. However, visual design may include more than the design of user-facing graphical interfaces within an app or website.

Interaction design

Interaction design is the process of curating the experience of how a user gets from Point A to Point B. This curation of experience is essentially the output from a whole user-centered design process by a UX designer.

An interaction designer is concerned with how the user feels at different stages of their journey.

This includes messaging, visual associations, timings, and application or service response behavior. An interaction designer is concerned with how the user feels at different stages of their journey.

Usability evaluation

Usability evaluation is the process of capturing friction points and moments of delight as users interact with your product or service.

UX design is an iterative process and usability evaluation is a key component to creating an excellent product or service.

Accessibility evaluation

Accessibility evaluation is the process of understanding and making recommendations for the improvement of your product or service to be accessed by all.

Digital accessibility specifically refers to a set of best practices that remove barriers to disabled individuals created by bad design. This often requires specific design and development time to ensure your product or service works well with assistive technology.

How can a UX Designer help with business?

There are three distinct areas a UX designer can help your business: improve quality, reduce costs, and provide insights.

UX designers can improve the quality of your product or service

UX design is about understanding and anticipating the needs and desires of your clients. A good UX designer will help you make data-backed decisions about your product or service.

A UX designer can help create a plan to introduce meaningful changes and measure the effects of iterations.

The field is growing parallel to a shift in the mindset of producers. Consider asking "what do your clients want to buy?" as opposed to "what do you want to sell?"

The value of good UX is in the perceived excellence of your product or service. A UX designer can help create a plan to introduce meaningful changes and measure the effects of iterations.

UX designers can reduce the cost to deliver an exceptional product or service

Exceptional design will become apparent from focused creative iteration and testing. Consider the task "design the single most perfect chair" vs "design as many good chairs as possible and then pick the best one." Which do you believe will yield the best result?

...it is more cost-effective to design and test prototypes with real users than develop full products and get feedback later.

Making chairs is expensive, so is developing apps, websites, and printing marketing material. This is why it is more cost-effective to design and test prototypes with real users than develop full products and get feedback later. Think "measure twice cut once" for your next digital product or service.

Adding UX design to your project moves costs from 'development' into "research, design, and testing".

Adding UX design to your project moves costs from 'development' into "research, design, and testing". This may seem "extra" at first but in comparison is a cheaper route to produce an exceptional product or service.

UX designers provide insights into areas of future growth

The whole UX process involves measuring and interpreting users' desires, friction, and adaptive strategies. Meaningful user data can provide insights into new products or services that your business can expand with into the future.

Data generated from user testing can help to develop sub-niches, products, and services.

Perhaps a niche business aspect becomes a major revenue-generating arm. Data generated from user testing can help to develop sub-niches, products, and services.

If you plan to be in business for the next ten years what are the chances that you do not have to change a thing and remain competitive? A UX designer can help create a plan to collect user data for meaningful analysis.

References

• "What is User Experience (UX) Design?" The Interaction Design Foundation, https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/ux-design/. Accessed 5 August 2021.

• "What Is UX Design? [Fully Updated Guide For 2021]. CareerFoundry, https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/what-is-user-experience-ux-design-everything-you-need-to-know-to-get-started/. Accessed 5 August 2021.

• "Most Common UX Design Methods and Techniques". Medium, https://uxplanet.org/most-common-ux-design-methods-and-techniques-c9a9fdc25a1e/. Accessed 5 August 2021.

Summary

UX design is a broad term with many sub-disciplines or specialties. A good user UX designer will understand the importance and role of user research, information architecture, content strategy, visual design, interaction design, usability evaluation, and accessibility.

User experience design is a growing field and becoming an increasingly important role in product and service teams. A UX designer can help your business by improving the quality of your product or service, reducing the total cost to develop an exceptional experience, and provide useful insight into potential areas of business expansion.