What Is UX?

UX, simply put, stands for user experience. You may be asking, “Why not UE?” But in the world of user interaction, X takes precedence over the letter E. User experience is the design practice that focuses on creating experiences — typically digital experiences like websites, for example — that are easy to use and satisfying for users. It focuses on a design practice that puts the user at the center of all considerations, so that the eventual experience provides interactions that are intuitive, helpful, and even enjoyable.

 Although user experience can apply to many different types of products and designs, the scope of this work is to focus primarily on digital interfaces. In this context, user experience design is changing all parts of our world, including:

Websites: Content sites, social media, and e-commerce
Mobile apps: Smartphone applications
Tablet experiences: Apps for tablets
Kiosks: Seen in airports, shopping malls, and so forth
Software: Standard software applications such as spreadsheets and word processing
Product Interfaces: GPS systems, interfaces in automobiles to control audio and climate, digital interfaces to common household appliances such as TVs, and microwaves

 From a business standpoint, UX best practices help to define how your brand or business will be experienced by customers through digital media.

Good UX can ensure that customers use and actually enjoy the experiences you design. If you’ve ever used a website, software application, or product interface that confused you, you’ve probably experienced a design process that did not leverage UX best practices. In addition, UX can be a key component in establishing customer loyalty and goodwill.

The Promise of Good UX Design 

Good UX design has three fundamental measurements, and they are widely known throughout the UX digital design industry. Any UX design should embody all the following components:

Useful: The solution provides content, features, or functions that meet common user needs; in short, the experience must be useful in all aspects. As an example, an e-commerce website could include the capability to see if a specific product is in stock or not — a simply useful feature.

Usable: The solution provides functionality that is easy to use and intuitive, for which basic functions do not require much active concentration to accomplish. Given the e-commerce example just used, this could mean that the process to purchase a product is simple and quick.

Desirable: Good UX designs enable experiences that are desirable, or even delightful. So not only does the solution provide useful features that are easy to use, but it also does so in a way that engages the user — often through great visual design, content, and copy. To continue with the e-commerce example, the capability to purchase a product online should be so compelling and enjoyable that users are likely to come back again sometime soon or even share the experience with others within their friends and family.

 If the user experience is not all these things — useful, usable, and desirable — it is very possible the shopper will find other ways to purchase your product or will purchase a similar product from another source. For example, if a user gets frustrated because your website makes her do all sorts of things she does not or cannot understand, she will quite likely jump to a competitor’s website to purchase a similar product. And if you are really unfortunate, she might post her experience in social media, such as on Yelp.com, Twitter, or Facebook, adding further insult to injury and informing others to not use your experience!

 UX Components 

UX design is a particularly multidisciplinary practice that integrates a number of components. The following sections highlight these components to help you better understand what makes up UX. In later chapters, you find out more about each of these areas.

Information architecture 

Information architecture is one of the most fundamental components to good UX design and refers to breaking down a solution, website, or screen into the most basic contents, including these:

Navigation: How a user navigates on a site

Content organization: How information is organized, into which modules or “containers” it is placed, and where the modules go

Visual priority of page elements: Where things fall or reside on the screen

Interaction design: What the interaction model is (defined later) Information architecture is most often brought to life during the design process through a wireframe: a black-and-white sketch of a web page or an application screen, much like an architectural blueprint that provides a basic illustration of a house under construction. Wireframes and information architecture also typically include technology and functional requirements, which help to define how the experience will change (or not) when a user interacts with it.

Content strategy 

Content strategy determines how, why, where, and when content will go into an experience. Content refers to any type of information that is recorded (video, images, copy, text, information). The content for the experience is another of the basic components to defining the user’s overall experience. Content strategy is similar to the overall editorial strategy for the experience, outlining the objectives and defining characteristics of all the content, whether that is written content or functionality. All content within an experience should have a purpose and must be meaningful in helping a user achieve a task. Digital content must be written for “scanability,” understanding that most users digest written content on a screen quickly, and oftentimes without reading the full page.

Interaction design 

Interaction design defines the rules for how a user interacts with an experience: what happens when users navigate, choose buttons, and follow links, for instance. Interaction design helps to define the journey a user goes through to accomplish a task. Say a user wants to interact with online support on a website. What does the user do before, during, and after that experience? What types of interaction should the website include so that all the user’s needs are met? The area of interaction design is growing as the types of interactions with digital products increases. For example, most smartphones allow for touchscreen interactions, providing new models of interaction design that include touch, swipe, and pinch.

Usability 

Usability refers to how well the experience performs against users' interactions with it. For example, if Sheila wants to check on her prescription using a digital kiosk in her local pharmacy, can she quickly find the status of whether the pharmacist has filled it? Is the kiosk useful to her, or is it just an oversized gizmo unnecessarily taking up store real estate? Is the experience clear and intuitive to users, or does it require active concentration to complete basic functions or needs? Poor usability is an experience killer in today’s world of digital media. And an experience killer can mean a death in the relationship between you and your user.

You should know your users — those who interact with your product, service, brand, company, or all of the above via a digital interface — as well as you know your best friends (or even better). This means you need to get into their minds and understand how they think, act, look, and behave. This book explores how you begin to understand your uses, generally through user interviews, usability testing, and other techniques that are explored later in the book. You also have to stay on top of your users’ needs. Just as with friendships, user needs and behaviors change. The better you know your users, the more likely the experience you build will resonate with them, which translates into success for your business. 

Visual design 

The visual aspects to any user’s experience are the most visible components of the solution. Visual design not only helps to ensure a solution is aesthetically pleasing, but it also helps ensure that the solution follows brand consistency. In addition, though, visual design helps a user digest all the content on any screen, so it’s a key contributor to the usability of an experience.

 Of course anyone who pays a professional to build an interface wants it to look good. But sometimes, this becomes the main priority — color and imagery take the front seat to all other design decisions. Although visual design is the final icing on top of an effective UX, it’s imperative that the other aspects of UX are also represented in any final solution. A beautiful website that contains difficult or unintuitive navigation will impress no one and may ultimately compromise a business’s goals. 

UX Is a Big Deal 

Simply put, good user experience is good business. Many companies — as big as GE and as small as your local web design shop — are now focusing on the discipline of UX. It’s just as important for Tom’s Tavern in Eliva, Wisconsin, to embody good usability so customers can easily order food for takeout as it is for a Fortune 100 company to have a robust user experience to sell products online. Apple, for example, is known for simplicity in the UX of its products and software. Just how important is UX to the business bottom line?

Here are some areas in which good UX can have a significant business impact:

 Customer satisfaction and loyalty: The better the experience with a product or service, the more likely customers are to continue to use it, and to recommend it. The quality of the experience is becoming an increasing factor in overall customer loyalty. If you use online banking and recently switched banks, it’s easy to compare which bank has better online banking services, more useful tools and features, and is easier to use. Most consumers feel more loyal to the bank that offers a better user experience.

Revenue: Clarity and consistency in UX will help ensure shoppers can get through the online purchase process quickly and efficiently. For big box retailers like Walmart, Target, and Amazon, clarity in the UX of the shopping and checkout process can mean the difference in millions of dollars in sales on any given shopping day.

 Traffic: The better the UX on a website, the more likely users will spend more time on the site and are more likely to return at a later date. Increased traffic and dwell time have a direct correlation to rankings in search engines like Google, and the higher the rankings, the more additional traffic that will visit the site. In short, better experiences help deliver more customers.

Brand expression: and finally, the better the UX, the better the impression of the brand overall. A famous designer, Clement Mok, once was quoted as saying, “the Experience is the Brand.” In his words, the user experience is an active expression of the brand: a bad experience leads to poor brand perception. A good user experience leads to positive brand impressions and higher longer-term brand value.