What is UX Design?
UX stands for User Experience which simply refers to the way a product behaves and is used in the real world.
A positive user experience is one in which the goals of both the user and the organization that created the product are met. So we can say that:
User/customer goals + User interface + Backend process = User Experience Design
UX Design (UXD) means studying user behavior and understanding user motivations with the goal of providing amazing experiences. It not only ensures that a product meets or exceeds user expectations, but also ensures people know how to use the product.
Think about it. Why do we use any product or sometimes, even get addicted to it? That's because...
We can easily figure out how to accomplish our task.
The steps involved in accomplishing the task seem simple.
Our own sense of effort is minimized and if we commit a mistake, we can recover from it quickly and easily.
Importance of UX Design
People have all different kinds of experiences while using a product. Good, bad, worst etc. However, no one wants the bad experiences to be repeated ever again.
When people talk and share their bad experience about a product you created, it does not lead to a great outcome. People will stop using your product and then, you won't get the community growth you expected while launching the product.
While focusing on the client's need, it is also important for a UX Designer to be aware of balancing business goals with ongoing technology constraints (or opportunities).
Though it is true that a product cannot succeed without a healthy business, one should remember that a business cannot succeed without a happy customer.
Therefore, UX Design is really important. It helps in creating products that give better, more fulfilling and more valuable experience to all the users out there.
Now that we know what is UX Design and about its importance, let us understand the five elements of UX Design.
The five elements are Strategy, Scope, Structure, Skeleton and Surface.
Element No. 1 - Strategy
The first element of UX Design is Strategy. Here, we explore and understand the reason for building a product or service. We find answers of certain questions such as:
Who are the users and what are their challenges?
What are the business objectives?
Who are the competitors, what do they do well, and where are they lacking?
Without a detailed analysis, you may end up building the wrong thing. Using a data-driven research approach in this phase will help to validate your design process as you move forward.
Element No. 2 - Scope
Scope helps you to define the requirements needed for building up a product based on user as well as the business needs.
The questions that arise during this time might be:
What are the proposed requirements by the business and how does this fulfill the user needs?
What are the functional and content requirements needed to address the challenges faced by the users?
Your list of requirements may change as the project evolves but outlining what is required at a high level will allow other team members in the project to begin planning ahead of time.
You should start listing out specific functional features and identify any technical constraints that may impact your design. The importance of each of the features can be ranked on the basis of their availability order. The level of detail included in the scope will depend on the project needs.
Element No. 3 - Structure
Questions that arise during this phase are:
What are all the user flows and interactions required that will guide the user to a useful outcome?
What information architecture is needed to provide access to all the essential information components?
Let's Create a Structure!
- User flows:
An ideal way to start creating the structure for your product is to map out user flows that describe all the key journeys. This will help the users to reach their required outcome.
Each flow should illustrate the details of varying paths which may include error messages to inform the user. This will aid in maintaining the interactivity and functionality of the product.
- Information Architecture:
Defining the information architecture for your product will create an organized, navigational scheme allowing user to move through content with efficiency and ease.
For this, creating a site map is a useful starting point. You can base your initial site map structure on your user flows. It needs to be simple, instructional and visible to ensure the right outcome for the users.
There are various types of information architectures:
Hierarchical Tree: This is a standard structure with an index page and a series of sub-pages. It is good for organizing complicated structure.
Hub-and-spoke: This gives users a central hub (or index) from which they will from navigate outwards. Users can't navigate between spokes and have to return to the hub.
Nested list: This pattern leading the user in linear path gives access to a more detailed content. Nesting provides quick and easy method of navigation under stress. It also gives the user a strong sense of where they are.
Bento Box (Dashboard): The dashboard displays portions of related tools or content on a main screen. This pattern is more suited to desktop or tablet due to its complexity. It allows the user to get key information at a glance but relies heavily on well-designed UI.
Element No. 4 - Skeleton
Ever wondered how users are able to interact with any interface? This is only because of the Skeleton element, the fourth element of UX Design.
Element No. 5 - Surface
The last element of UX Design, Surface, is the ‘skin’ layer of the product. Here, designers dive into the visual treatment of the product, including text, graphical elements, and navigational components to create the packaging, the final ‘look-and-feel’, of the product.
Conclusion:
To wrap up, I just list out all the crucial points that you all should remember as a UX Designer:
User Experience Design (UXD) as a process is about making sure that every human interaction that happens with a product has a definite purpose.
As we have discussed, on the lowest plane we are not concerned with the final shape of the site at all! We care about user needs and find out why we want to build a product.
By the time we get to the highest plane, we are concerned with the most concrete details of the appearance and packaging of the outcome. Plane by plane, the decisions we have to make become a little more specific and involve finer levels of detail.
Instead of moving ahead to the next step, it is highly recommended to let the work on each plane finish before work on the next plane can finish.
The more information and research that is conducted in the beginning stages builds a solid foundation for delivering a great user experience.
As a successful UX Designer, you should be agile and open to going back to a lower plane to update choices so that you can create a product that is attractive and efficient.
