What is UX?

From a website to a coffee machine, anything that you can experience while using a product or a service is a part of your user experience.

For example, the interactive elements of a website, like the forms, animations, transitions, and search bars are an important part of the design. They are meant to make you feel something. How you feel while visiting a website falls under user experience.

User experience is sometimes confused with usability. While user experience is about how you feel when using a system, usability is about how efficient and user-friendly the interface is.

The most crucial requirements of user experience include meeting the customer’s needs exactly as demanded. It also means maintaining simplicity in the products so that they are a joy to use. A business or company must merge multidisciplinary services like engineering, design, marketing, and interface design to achieve this goal.

Key Factors of User Experience

Useful – Every successful product has a specific use, or solves a problem for the user. There's no use bringing a product to market if it doesn’t have a purpose.

Usable – Every product should have an end objective. If the user is effectively able to achieve that end objective, the usability of the product is said to be effective.

Findable – If the product is tangible, it must be easy to find. Similarly, if it’s digital, the content must be easy to find. Users will only buy a product if they are able to find it first.The information in a newspaper is organized into sections like politics, entertainment, leisure, and so on, which makes it easier for the reader to find what they are looking for. For example, in a newspaper, if you want to read about sports, you flip to the sports section. Similarly, if you want to buy yogurt, you will look for it in the dairy section in a supermarket, not the gaming section.

Credible – A user’s ability to trust the product reflects its credibility. For a business to deliver a good user experience, it’s crucial for it to make the user trust the business as well as the product.

Desirable – The desirability of a product includes its branding, aesthetics, identity, and image.

Accessible – Accessibility of a product refers to the fact that it can be used and experienced by everyone, including people who are disabled.

Valuable – The product must deliver value to the users who purchase and use it, as well as the business that created it. A product cannot be successful unless it creates value.

About User Experience Design

While the term "user experience" could apply to any type of product development, it's most frequently referenced in the tech world.

A UX Designer's goal is to optimize a website, app, or digital tool, and to increase customer satisfaction. The aim is to build customer loyalty to the product or business. UX design is a multidimensional concept, including different domains like human-computer interaction, visual design, and interaction design, among others.

UX design considers all of the elements that shape a user experience. For example, if you are at the checkout counter at a supermarket, the smoothness of the checkout process will be a part of the user experience. In this case, the UX designer will ensure that they design the elements that are a part of the checkout process.

Core Features of UX Design

UX designers come from varying backgrounds, ranging from programming to psychology. A UX designer’s job includes many things, but all of them are centered around the user’s needs.

It doesn’t work with the one-size-fits-all approach – Different websites will have different user experiences. It is not possible to replicate the user experience of one website to another. A design must be made keeping in mind some common parameters like goals, values, and production process. As we can’t predict or impose a user experience, the best thing that UX designers can do is design specific experiences.

It can’t be directly assessed by traditional metrics – Businesses and organizations use metrics and statistics to gauge data like page views, bounce rates, website clicks, and conversion rates. However, the effectiveness of a user experience design can’t be based solely on these factors.

What Does A UX Designer Do?

The job of a UX designer is to make products and technologies accessible and usable for the end-user. The most important part of a UX designer’s job is to support the customer. It doesn’t matter if they’re designing a new product or coming up with a feature in an existing product; UX designers must always be mindful of what’s best for the customer.

UX designers have to balance these requirements with the needs of the business. This includes factors like whether the product aligns with the vision of the business, or whether it meets the business’s needs. A common theme is that the user experience updates must also increase revenue and retain a company’s customer base.

Why is UX Important?

When a business launches a product in the market, its main aim is to fulfill the user’s needs. The user’s needs also include a pleasant experience interacting with the product or service. The goal of UX is to provide such an experience to the consumers. When consumers have a good user experience, they stay loyal to the product and the brand. A meaningful UX defines the success of a business.

Benefits of UX

•If a business invests in UX design upfront, it can significantly reduce costs down the line.

•User experience can aid a business in increasing customer conversions.

•UX design can help the business with Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO.

•UX design can increase brand loyalty.

How to Become a UX Designer

Considering the importance of user experience in today’s world, it's an incredibly stable and rewarding field to get into. There are two main ways that you can become a UX designer:

•You can get a traditional degree in the field. For this, you can enroll in a bachelor’s degree program that’s related to technology. Some common degrees from UX designers are computer science, graphic design, and web programming.

•The other way of learning UX design is to join an online UX design course and work with a mentor. This method has a high employment rate post-graduation, and sets you up with an interview-ready portfolio.

Regardless of which method you choose, we’ve gone into detail about our do’s and don’ts of learning UX design.