Have you ever visited a website or tried to use a mobile app that left you scratching your head?
You felt lost and confused, not sure what button (or link) to click on, and then you landed up in the wrong place, which made you close the browser or app with a frustrated sigh?
The probable reason why you found yourself frustrated and confused is that the user experience was not up to par. There is a massive distinction between a cool design and a usable design.
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like.
Design is how it works.”
Technology is on a rapid growth upswing. Most people cannot even keep up with the updates and upgrades that come with our technological devices, let alone the new user-interfaces that are constantly morphing. One day you use facebook one day, and the next day the user-experience and user-interface have had a refreshment that left you bewildered on where to discover simple functionality.
So, what is User Experience?
In basic terms, user-experience or UX is how a person (the user) experiences a platform, product, application, or any human-operated device.
The importance of good User Experience.
Good UX leads to the fulfillment of a user’s mission. A positive experience leads to brand and product loyalty.
Due to the rapid growth of technology, ever-updating user-interfaces oft-times UX is overlooked. UX is becoming an essential process in the design and development process, companies that forego UX tend to fall short and lose valuable customer engagement.
What makes a good User Experience?
Good UX focuses on having a deeper understanding of your user’s needs and desires. Do you know what your user needs are, what they value, and what their challenges or pain points are?
A good UX leads to an improvement in the overall interaction with a product or service.
Important considerations for a good UX include:
Usable: defined as “capable of being used.” I will add capable of being used effectively.
Useful: defined as “practical to use and produces desired results”.
Findable: defined as “easy to locate or discover”.
Accessible: defined as “easy to use, obtainable, attainable”. The importance of having an accessible site means that people with disabilities can easily navigate and use your product or service.
Why is User Experience important to marketing?
These days, the marketing and UX teams need to join up. It is no longer acceptable that marketing is off doing their sales pitches, while a product or service is inadequate when it comes to the user’s experience.
As mentioned before, to keep a customer or user engaged with a product or service, it is necessary to ensure the overall experience meets the needs and desires of the target audience.
Together, UX and marketing can accomplish the goal of creating desirable products and services that translates to sales and conversion by crafting exemplary experiences.
So, what are User Experience best practices?
These UX Best Principles and Practices should provide you with a clear understanding:
Know your audience. Understand their needs.
The user-interface design must have a clear and concise foundation of user experience.
Discover how your users use your product. Users want a simplistic and clear navigable experience.
Every product must have a concise visual hierarchy with clear focal points of important elements that drive a user to where they need to go.
Consistency in design elements drives patterns that teach the user how to navigate the product with ease.
What does User Experience do?
To create a delightful experience for users, there is an involved process of gathering information through research that then is translated into understanding user needs. These needs are identified as pain points, the user experience drives the process of removing the challenges by providing meaningful and relevant delighted experiences.
The UX design process involves:
Research by interviewing users and stakeholders that pinpoint the core features needed.
Personas are developed to identify the typical user-profiles and how these personas perform and interact with the product.
Information architecture allows for a refinement of content and determining the site map.
Paper prototypes help gain high-level insights for team members and initial user-tests.
Wireframes begin the highly iterative phase of the UX process. Wireframes are what I call “grey-boxes”, which is another high-level prototype of the product which can be used in user-tests.
User-testing begins with the “grey-box” wireframes, which allows the UX team to witness how the varying personas interact and engage with the product. User-tests lend insights for further iteration.
The high-fidelity visual design process begins by taking the wireframes and translating them into high-fidelity user-interface mockups. Here color, imagery, and typography play a big role. This is a refinement of the look and feel, which brings life into the product.
Usability tests help to analyze the user-interface mockups, there may be iterations on the user-interface from insights gained in the usability testing. Once the product has been tested the development process begins.
User Experience Writing is an important feature too!
Alongside the UX design process is UX writing, which is a practice that builds the narrative that guides the user. UX writing seamlessly guides the user through words on the interface, which includes navigation, menus, buttons, links, messages, and labels.
Effective UX writing gives the user confidence to effectively and efficiently navigate the product and reach their end goal.
In conclusion to User Experience in your digital world.
A good UX leads to a successful product launch, and happier and loyal users that translate to an increased ROI.
As a UX Designer, I believe UX to be an essential part of all the design projects that I perform. UX is fascinating, I called it the “psychology of the web”. My UX career has taken me down many pathways where I have worked with topnotch companies who truly care about their user’s experiences, and so learned the best practices to design for delight.
If you are seeking a well-skilled and knowledgeable User Experience consultant, please connect with me.
May you find this article informative and inspiring.
Best,
Belinda K.
