Understanding User Experience
A problem well stated is a problem half solved — Charles Kettering
What is User Experience?
In simple words, it is how a person or customer interacts with a product, system, or service. It’s more or likes how easy it is for the customer to use a product.
Importance of User Experience
In today’s world having customer’s loyalty to a product for its success is important and for this, user experience comes very handily. It allows you to define customer’s perspectives on your product that are most conducive to business success.
Then what makes a good User Experience?
When it comes to the internet, the importance of user experience cannot be ignored. For example, a website that is hard to use is slow or poorly laid out, which will cause visitors to leave, along with degrading its brand value. User experience is different for everyone. Though you might be designing a website, you might not be its user sometimes or never. So, designing based on our assumptions definitely won’t make a good user experience.
The process of User Experience
Every new product, whether it’s a website, app, or any physical object, follows a specific set of steps that starts from framing an idea to the release of the final product. This is called the product development life cycle, and it has five stages:
Brainstorm
Define
Design
Test
Launch
Depending on where you work or on what you work, the names might change but the whole process involved is similar.
Let’s start defining each stage
Brainstorm
The first stage in the product development life cycle is the brainstorming stage, where you start thinking of an idea for a product. You might already know the user or customer problem that you want to solve but you lack the best idea. To come up with the best idea you put all the list of probable ideas on paper and discuss with everyone to conclude with the best idea.
Define
The second stage in the product development life cycle brings all the research of your idea and problems faced by the user or customer to the table that leads to defining the product. The goal is to define the specifications for the product by answering questions like:
Who is the product for?
What will the product do?
What features need to be included for the product to be successful?
Design
The third stage in the product development life cycle designs. This is when you, as a UX designer, get to show off all your skills and creativeness. Generally, you start by drawing wireframes, which are outlines or sketches of the product, then move on to creating prototypes, which are early models of a product that convey its functionality. The most common design tools used are Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch, Marvel, Axure, etc.
Test
Next, whatever you designed moves to the test stage. You work with engineers to develop functional prototypes that match the original designs, including details and features that fit the company’s brand, like font and colour choices. This also means writing the code and finalizing the overall structure of the product.
Or, if you want to test your designs earlier, another option is to test a functioning prototype of the product, using a design tool like Figma or Adobe XD.
At this stage, the designs go through at least three phases of testing: internal tests within the company you designed for, reviews with stakeholders, and external tests with potential users.
Launch
Finally, all your efforts get paid off, as you’ve arrived at the final stage in the product development cycle that is, the launch stage; when the product is released into the world! This might involve listing an app in the Google Play Store or Apple’s App Store, making a website go live, or putting a physical product on store shelves.
Learning User Experience with a banana
The colour of the banana says if it’s ripened or raw. Similarly, the colours or colour palette you use determines whether your design is ripened or raw
Like many fruits, banana can be carried anywhere and any place. Similarly question yourself if your design can be used anywhere or on any device.
Unlike some fruits, eating a banana won’t make it messy, you can eat it as well as stay clean. Make sure your design isn’t messy, it should be easily navigable by any user.
Everyone peels a banana skin with the help of a guiding line present on it. Similarly, ask yourself whether your design is guiding the user in an easy way or he has to go a long way to understand it.
Even a kid knows how to eat a banana which means it doesn’t require prior experience. Similarly, make your design simpler so that it will attract even first-time users.
Perfection is achieved not when there’s nothing to add, but when there’s nothing left to take away.
