Welcome to learn about User Experience👋. First and foremost, let me give you a small introduction and walk you through the agenda to get a narrow idea of what will be gonna covered in this article.

This article will give you a firm grasp of what user experience is, why we UX designers should care about it, how design thinking affects user experience, and last but least you will be introduced to what is meant by user-centred design as well.

Table of Contents

• Introduction to User Experience
• What and Why you should do a User Research
• Norman’s Levels in Product Experience Design
• Design Thinking
• Finally, What is meant by User-centred design

ARE YOU EXCITED? LET’S GET STARTED WITHOUT WASTING MORE TIME👇

Design is not just what it looks like and feel like. Design is how it works. ~Steve Jobs~

Firstly, Let’s Start with an Introduction to User Experience ⚡

What is User Experience?

User Experience can be defined as a person’s perception and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product system or service. In other words or in simpler terms you can say User experience (abbreviated as UX) is how a person feels when interfacing with a system.

The term User Experience is applied to all sorts of emotions such as positive, negative, and neutral which are felt whilst interacting with the computer system and user interfaces. Therefore the aim or the goal of UX is to bring the users to the centre of the designer’s thinking to ensure that the products meet the user’s needs.

What is User Experience Design?

User experience design is a vast, multidisciplinary and fascinating field that has the process that design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. This involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability and function.

User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-users interaction with the company, its services, and its products. This means User Experience could be anything from how a physical product feels in your hand to, easy and efficient it is for you to buy and save something online.

Why UX Design is important?

To put it merely, since User Experience satisfies users’ needs and also It aims to supply positive experiences that keep users loyal to products or brands, it is more important.

Additionally, a meaningful user experience allows you to define customer journeys on your website that are most conducive to business success.

Why should we care about user experience.?

Let me explain it to you with an instance, just imagine you are running an e-commerce website, therefore your business runs and depends on your website. Here the user experience plays a critical role in attracting and maintaining your customer base. And for most potential customers, you only get one chance to ‘get it right’. Most visitors decide in a matter of seconds whether to stay on your site or hit the ‘back’ button to look for something better. So the stakes are incredibly high.

Therefore user experience plays a huge role in designing and creating something that not only works well, but also creates and designs the product in a way that actually makes sense to your end-users, follows their thought processes, anticipates every need they might ever have at exactly the right time, and helps them get the job done in the most efficient way no matter what.

Benefits of UX Design

1. When the product meets the users’ needs not only it will deliver a more commercially viable offering, thus it will give a higher level of profit for the company.
2. It is cheaper and easier to tweak sketches, wireframes and prototypes, which enables a company to work out what doesn’t work and then abandon it before the development phase rather than after the launch.
3. When you release products that users love to use and that meet their needs; your business reputation will grow, which will lead businesses to faceless risks.
4. In the research phase of UX, you should know what competitors are doing and how your product will be “better”. Therefore UX Research would lead to design based on evidence not on the “gut instincts” of the development team.
5. It leads to better customer satisfaction.

Ways How User Experience Designers Bring Value to the World?

1. They support fast, easy and productive communication worldwide via products like various messengers, social networks, etc.
2. They support international collaboration working over successful experience for apps enabling productive work within a team scattered around
3. They support the everyday life of millions of people with digital products that solve actual problems (like to-do lists or apps for taking notes), inform (like news websites or different blogs), and entertain (like apps for listening to music and watching films as well as tons of games).
4. They support and improve core spheres of human life like health care, education, commerce, and self-expression
5. They support the concept of non-stop learning through life via educational and information resources.
6. They make technology more accessible which means closer to people of different ages and nationalities, levels of education and tech literacy, physical and mental abilities or disabilities.
7. They respond to the human need for harmony and aesthetic satisfaction by finding ways to make digital products both useful and beautiful.

Factors that influence UX?

There are 7 factors that describe user experience, according to Peter Morville

1. Useful
2. Usable
3. Findable
4. Credible
5. Desirable
6. Accessible
7. Valuable

Let's look at factors in a more descriptive way

🔸01) Useful:-

If a product isn’t useful and has no purpose to someone why would you want to bring it to market? It is unlikely to be able to compete for attention alongside a market full of purposeful and useful products. Therefore your content should be original and fulfil a need.

🔸02) Usable:-

Products can succeed if they are not usable but they are less likely to do so, which means usability is concerned with enabling users to effectively and efficiently achieve their end objective with a product. In other words, the site must be easy to use.

🔸03) Findable:-

Findable refers to the idea that the product must be easy to find and the content within them must be navigable and locatable onsite and offsite.

🔸04) Credible:-

It relates to the ability of the user to trust in the product that you’ve provided. Not just that it does the job that it is supposed to do but that it will last for a reasonable amount of time and that the information provided with it is accurate and fit for purpose.

🔸05) Desirable:-

Image, identity, brand, and other design elements are used to evoke emotion and appreciation. In a way, the user who has it will brag about it and create desire in other users.

🔸06) Accessible:-

Content needs to be accessible to people with disabilities

🔸07) Valuable:-

Finally, the product must deliver value to the business which creates it and to the user who buys or uses it.

NEXT UP.👇

Now you have a brief idea about what the User Experience means, now it’s time to move to the next main section which talks about the user experience design, user research etc...

Roll up your sleeves and let’s get into work

What and why do you do User Research?⚡

What is User Research?

User research or UX research is an absolutely vital part of the user experience design process. Which covers a wide range of methods. It can mean anything from doing ethnographic interviews with your target group to classical usability studies to quantitative measurements of return on investment (ROI) on your user experience design.

This is usually done at the start of the project. It encompasses different types of research methodology to gather valuable data and feedback. Moreover, User research helps to place people at the centre of your design process and your products by evaluating your solutions and measuring the impact.

User research has been done in two divided methods

01) Quantitative Research

These methods seek to measure user behaviour in a way that can be quantified and used for statistical analysis.

02) Qualitative Research

These methods are often more exploratory and seek to get an in-depth understanding of the experiences and everyday lives of individual users or user groups.

Why is it important to do User Research?

User research will make you understand the problem you’re trying to solve, it tells you who your users are, in what context they’ll be using your product or service, what they need from the designer and so on,

Therefore without doing User Research you are approximately basing your designs on assumptions, which is impossible for the designers to know what users' needs and pain points that should address.

Here are a few reasons why conducting user research is absolutely crucial:

1. User Research helps you to design better products that are truly relevant to the users.
2. It will help you to understand the Return on Investment of Your UX Design
3. User research will save time and money
4. It will help to create designs that are easy and pleasurable to use.
5. Additionally, User research can be done on a budget

Norman’s Levels in Product Experience Design⚡

Donald Norman proposes the emotional system consists of three different, yet interconnected levels, such as visceral, behavioural, and reflective. Each of these levels influences design in its own specific way while heavily connected to the emotional system.

The three aspects or levels are as follows

1. Visceral Design:- This level of design concerns itself with appearances.
2. Behavioral Design:- This level of design has to do with the pleasure and effectiveness of the use
3. Reflective Design:- This level considers the rationalization and intellectualization of a product.

Let’s dig deep into each level for further understanding, shall we?

🔹 01) Visceral Design

Visceral Design is the level that is responsible for the ingrained, automatic and almost animalistic qualities of human emotion, which are almost entirely out of our control.

Since Visceral design taps into our unconscious attitudes, beliefs, views, feelings, preferences, and dislikes with sensory information (e.g., visible, audible and haptic (i.e. touch-based) characteristics) which bypasses deep, conscious processing. It’ll be easy to capture potential users by tapping into the visceral level of cognitive processing

🔹02) Behavioral Design

The behavioural level refers to the controlled aspects of human action, where we unconsciously analyze a situation so as to develop goal-directed strategies most likely to prove effective in the shortest time, or with the fewest actions possible.

However, it would be somewhat misleading to suggest that by focusing on the behavioural design we are overlooking or ignoringemotional design. As a fact, much of our emotional experience is a direct result of how successful, enjoyable or efficient our interactions are with the things we come across in our everyday lives

🔹03) Reflective Design

According to Donald Norman, The reflective level is”…the home of reflection, of conscious thought, of learning of new concepts and generalizations about the world”.

Moreover, Reflective processing is the only conscious form of processing. This process involves the active consideration of a product, encompassing how it relates to us personally, its place in our wider environment, and how it reflects upon us to own and use it.

Reflective design is, therefore, concerned with how users rationalize and intellectualize a product according to highly personal and subjective factors

Lastly but not least, let us discuss how Design Thinking in User Experience Design⚡

In my previous article ‘ What is Design Thinking,’ I have walked you through a thorough knowledge transfer of the fundamentals of design thinking. So in this article, I will briefly walk you through how Design Thinking in User Experience Design.

Design Thinking is a design methodology that provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It’s extremely useful in tackling complex problems that are ill-defined or unknown, by understanding the human needs involved, re-framing the problem in human-centric ways, creating many ideas in brainstorming sessions, and adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping and testing.

Understanding the following five stages of Design Thinking will empower anyone to apply the Design Thinking methods in order to solve complex problems

1. Empathy
2. Define
3. Ideate
4. Prototype
5. Testing

01) Empathize / Empathy

In Empathize stage UX Designer understands what the actual user wants. This can be done by observing people, interviewing people or by Looking at the existing solutions. Moreover, to gain empathy toward people, UX designers often observe them in their natural environment passively or engage with them in interviews. Also, they step into the users’ shoes in order to gain a deeper understanding of their users.

02) Define

In the second phase of design thinking, designers will seek to define the problem statement in a human-centred manner. This can be done via narrative stories or using structures such as Use case diagrams and so on.

03) Ideate

In the third phase of design thinking, where you identify innovative solutions to the problem statement you’ve created. The best method to use in the ideation stage is to use the SCAMPER method. This SCAMPER refers to the series of thoughts sparkers of provocations that helps you to innovate an existing product by looking through different lenses.

S:- Substitute

C:- Combine

A:- Adapt

M:- Modify

P:- Put to another use

E:- Eliminate

R:- Rearrange

04) Prototype

In this stage, designers will aim to identify the best possible solution for each problem that has been identified in the first three stages. We need prototypes because we never get things right the first time, it’s about getting things better when they are not perfect and starting in a good place. So the prototype cycle starts from Design to prototype, then tests it with the users, and evaluates and learns. Afterwards, iterate the process until the problem is fixed and redefined.

05) Testing

The fifth phase of design thinking is where test solutions to derive a deep understanding of the product and its users. This increased level of understanding may serve to help designers to investigate the conditions of use and how people think, behave and feel towards the product.

WAIT ONE MORE THING.👇

Before ending, let me give you a brief intro to ‘User-Centred Design for your further understanding⚡

User-centred design (UCD) is an iterative design process in which designers focus on the users and their needs in each phase of the design process.

With that let me end this article hoping you have gained the relevant knowledge in User Experience, Thank you for reading this far. If you wanna know more about Design thinking check out my article on ‘What is Design Thinking’

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