What is UX design?

So, what exactly is user experience and UX design?

UX or User experience is what the customer feels when he or she interacts with a product. UX design is the process by which a designer molds the experience for the user.

The designer ensures all aspects of the product are appealing to the customer and that includes aesthetics, usability and accessibility while ensuring the products or services bring a feeling of delight to the consumer.

UX design is all about strategically tapping the emotions of the customer to empathetically solve their problems. The designer needs to understand the working of the product, its ease of use, its availability and think about how it can be improved to enhance the customer’s buying experience.

As Martyn Reding, the Head of Digital Marketing in Virgin Atlantic says, “User experience design is the fulfillment of a brand’s promise”.

A UX designer has to research consumer behavior, optimize the buying and selling experience, curate relevant content to assess the whole process to fulfill the needs of the customer.

The concoction of the frontend work by UX designers along with the backend work by the coders delivers a brands’ unique mix of User Experience.

Principles of UX Design

A UX designer needs to have a clear idea of what the design goal should be. The Design Thinking Process needs to be a well thought out assessment of the product from ideation to execution with a consumer-centered mindset.

So, where do you begin?

Start with Why.

No, we are not just naming Simon Sinek’s book but pointing out the fundamental aspect of its content. In this case, the core of UX design, which is starting with the ‘Whys’ of the customers’ problems.

This allows the UX designer to keep a focus on the peoples’ needs and provide them with the right tools to empower them; the product should always be what the customer needs over what the product or brand will force them to be.

This involves thorough competitor analysis and product assessment to understand what problem the product solves for the customer. This feedback will give the designer a clear idea about the customer’s pain-points, goals and needs.

Now that we know why, we can start building on the functionalities and features of the product keeping the objective in mind. This deals with the ‘Whats’ of the product – what the product does and what its attributes are.

And finally, we arrive at the ‘Hows’ of the product. This is where aesthetics come into picture. The accessibility of a product and the look and feel of it caps the final stage of the UX design process.

While doing so, the designer should also keep in mind the following principles.

• Hierarchy is key – Visual hierarchy is the designer’s best friend. The product should be designed in a way that is easy for the customer to navigate. Every button, tool, image should feel intuitive or natural for the consumer and align with current best-practices in interaction. 
• Product consistency – Customers will always trust the brand for products that are reliable. Drastic changes to a design risks alienating current customers who may end up abandoning the whole product altogether.
• Accessibility of a product – The full usability of a product should be accounted for and made easily possible by the largest portion of the target audience.
• Simplicity – Simplicity in design promotes user-friendliness.

So, how does a UX designer go about solving problems? Read on to find out.

What does a UX Designer Do?

Are you wondering how a typical workday looks for a UX designer?

The roles and responsibilities of a UX designer can vary largely based on the company and the product they are working on.

Despite the vast differences in job roles, a UX designer’s tasks can be broadly put under five different categories:

Product Research

This is the very first stage in a UX designer’s design thinking process. The designer needs to assess the market, conduct a competitor analysis and listen to customer feedback to understand what they need to tackle and why their product is worth selling.

This guides the designers to think of the product design that will map the customers’ needs to the product’s features and allow them to assess their existing products. Such research also provides an overview of industry standards and hence a platform to consider the USP of the product.

Creating Buyer Personas

Once the designers have done their research, the next step is to create a buyer persona which is a representation of one group of customers. It is a fictitious and generalized representation of one buyer that can be extrapolated to a larger customer base.

This helps them understand customer behaviour, needs, what and how they can accept as a product and details defining why. This information is derived from profiling a currently existing buyer group and/or supplementing it with market research.

Information Architecture (IA)

Information architecture is the process in which a UX designer lays out the structure of the product. For example, for a website, the IA includes the hierarchy, categorizations and in-page navigation.

Defining the website’s structure helps the designers to have a skeleton to work with, on which the next items are added.

Wireframing

Executing the IA is wireframing. This involves delivering a design template for the website under construction along with the headings, sub headings, menu bars, and other call-to-action (CTA) buttons, if any.

In simple terms, you will be putting your idea on paper that serves like an architectural blueprint for your website.

This is then passed on to the development team who will bring this site to life.

User Testing

This crucial step helps the designer to understand how the customer feels when they interact with the product, and in essence, is a test to check against the user research conducted before. This involves in-person interviews with the customers, listening to user sentiments, encouraging them to participate in surveys, assess bug reviews, and analyze their search logs to gather sufficient information against which further modifications of the product can be done.

Either one or a mix of several modes of testing can be considered, depending upon the use case and applicability. 

How can You Become a UX Designer and a Good One at That?

If you are looking to enter this creative field that throws open job opportunities, here is some practical advice on how you can pursue this as your career.

• Design cannot be taught, but needs to be practiced and learned from experiences. Setting reasonable design goals helps you to allocate time to deliver results efficiently.
• When it comes to customer interviews, active listening is key, which can be made possible with empathy. 
• Recycle older ideas. Ideas that have been shelved or exhausted should be resurrected. New problems can definitely call for old, but improvised solutions.
• Be a storyteller in the making to effectively build your design in a way that convinces people to indulge in your product.

Conclusion

If you like understanding and empathising with human problems, and using your creativity to craft sensible solutions, then the role of a UI/UX Designer and a Product Manager would suit you very well. 

Be sure to check out MAGES Institute’s Product Management with UX program, designed to turn beginners in tech into full-fledged UI/UX Designers and Product Managers in just 6 Months!