It should come to no one’s surprise that we live in an ever-changing digital era. So now more than ever, it is important to place the needs of our users at the very center of our digital designs.
In her book Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services, Kim Goodwin believes User Experience (UX) encompasses “financially viable products, services, and environments that meet the practical, physical, cognitive, and emotional needs of a wide range of people.”
To simplify, User Experience is about bringing empathy to technology.
UX includes the emotions of people and their thoughts about using a specific product, system or service — highlighting the meaningful and treasured aspects of human-computer interactions.
When it comes to getting a tangible understanding of UX, many people distill it to just the deliverables of just an interface or visual design — it’s much, much more than that.
Think of UX as the capital letter ”T.” The top horizontal line of the “T” represents the broad range that is User Experience. The vertical line of the “T” represents the depth people can specialize and focus on within the broad UX spectrum.
UX goes beyond just interface and visual design. UX includes field research, face-to-face interviewing, product design, requirement writing, interaction design, information architecture, usability testing, prototyping, interface layout, taxonomy creation, terminology creation, content strategy, working tightly with programmers, and so much more.
Another misconception about UX is that it is specific to only digital experiences. UX is everywhere. Once you start to understand the philosophy of UX design, you will start to notice its daily impact on your life—for example, a sidewalk that suddenly ends or a door that takes a moment to understand if you should pull or push on it. In both cases, you are the user…and your experience has either left you confused and/or even frustrated.
A good user experience is one that is invisible to the user. So no matter the design, its function should easily be recognized and interacted with that the user doesn’t even have to think about it.
This same thought should be applied to our now ever-changing digital world. The best apps and websites are those that take users the least amount of time to understand its navigation and empower them to find the quickest path to the information they were looking for in the first place.
So, what are some of your favorite websites and apps that have a great user experience?