User experience is how a person feels when interacting with a system. This includes a website, mobile application, desktop software and basically any form of human/device interaction.
Why UX design is important?
User experience is important because it tries to fulfill the user’s needs. It aims to provide positive experiences that keep a user loyal to the product or brand.
Additionally, a meaningful user experience allows you to define customer journeys on your product that are most conducive to business success.
User experience is different for everyone. The most important thing to keep in mind when designing a product is that though you have designed the product, you might not be a potential user who might be using the product. Hence we cannot assume what a user wants or How they need.
So how do you define a great experience?
Get close to your users, talk to them, watch them use your product, get inside their heads and question yourself about the decisions they make. You learn quite a lot from your users and customers, so pay attention! Listen, observe and question.
The UX Design process
Methods of the UX Design process
Here are some basic steps to start the user experience project.
User Personas
The first step in the process is getting to know your audience. This allows you to develop experiences that relate to the voice and emotions of your users. To begin this, you will want to create a user persona, which is a representation of a particular audience segment for a product or a service that you are designing. It allows you to create an example of the kind of person that might be using your product or your service
User interviews
Interview existing and potential users of the product or service to gain insight into what would be the most effective design. Because the user’s experience is subjective, the best way to directly obtain information is by studying and interacting with users.
Job Stories
A short, simple description of a product feature told from the perspective of the person who wants that feature.
Functionality map
Once you’ve studied the job stories, Start by building a functionality map for the pages you would like to create. A functionality map is a clearly organized hierarchy of all the pages and subpages within your product.
Creating a functionality map makes it easier to imagine how a user will get from point A to point B on your product, It is an effective tool for adding efficiency to the product building process.
Wireframes
The visuals on each page matter just as much as the site structure, so invest time into creating wireframes, which are visual guides that represent the skeletal framework of a product and provide a preview of your product’s look and feel. With a wireframe in place, you can eliminate usability issues before it gets developed. This can save your development time for necessary adjustments down the line.
Prototyping
A prototype is a “mockup” version of your final product, which is then used for user testing before a product launch. Its goal is to reduce the level of wasted time and money that can often occur when proper testing has not been carried out on a product prior to launch.
Usability testing
Usability testing is a way of testing how easy it is to use a product by testing it with real users in order to identify any roadblocks or friction they might face when interacting with it.
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” -Steve Jobs
By providing a great user experience for your users, not only can you increase the probability of them completing conversion tasks across your product, but you can change lives.
Think about it for a moment. By making your interactions as simple and intuitive as possible you are making your end users’ lives easier.
And if your product or service is able to help your users complete their tasks or solve their problems as quickly as possible, this will leave a lasting impression one of which they will happily talk about to their friends and family.
