What is UX design?
User experience design is the process of designing (digital or physical) products that are useful, easy to use, and pleasant to interact with. UX is all about enhancing the experience consumers have while interacting with your product to ensure they find value in what you’re providing. The goal of UX is to promote positive feelings in whoever interacts with your brand. Though in this modern era, it may sound trivial, UX, and taking the user into account in general, is a way to separate your company, product, and website from millions of others.
UX vs UI
User interface (UI) design is not the same as UX. UI is the actual interface of a product, the visual elements on screen that a user interacts with while using a website, app, or program. UI includes typefaces, color palettes, photos, and animations. Though UI and UX go hand-in-hand (in that every design element affects user experience), it is essential to note that user experience is entirely separate. User experience encompasses user interface and judges how successful that interface is for the benefit of the user.
5 Steps for Designing UX
1 Research
Designers are no strangers to researching their target audience, and UX is no exception to that rule. In fact, since UX prioritizes how a user feels about their design, it’s even more important to do some heavy lifting when it comes to finding out the needs, wants, and habits of a potential user. User research provides value for the people who’ll use your product and focuses on benefits instead of features.
2 Minimalism and UX design
Minimalism will significantly add to the overall UX of your site. When you search for something on Google, you aren’t bombarded with popups, scrolling sidebars, or animations. You expect a simple and easy-to-navigate search engine, and that’s what you get. By keeping the design simple, your user can easily find information from the site while reducing their levels of stress (another key in a sharp UX).
3 Consider the attention spans of users
According to a Microsoft study, the human attention span has decreased from 12 seconds to 8 seconds. Your UX design should take this into account. If you’re hiding useful information under either a pile of text or unintuitive layouts, you risk your user reaching their attention span limit. When this happens, they’re likely to search for a solution in a place that isn’t your website.
4 Always prototype UX design
Prototyping gives you a chance to test your design before your engineering team spends its time building the actual product. Always ask for UX feedback, though it isn’t something most can articulate, two good questions are: would you come back to this site, and would you share this site with a friend?
5 Anticipate issues and improve UX
Even after you’ve beta tested your site and spent hours ironing out bugs, the chances of something going wrong are high. Designing with potential pain points in mind (defensive designing) will prevent as many errors. The way you stay on top of error-prone conditions and react to problems when they encourage a positive UX.
Ready to enhance your UX? Contact GROWL today.
