An Overview of UX
Which is really just about eating cake.
What is UX?
To answer that, let’s look at:
Cake.
When a cake is placed in front of you, lots of things happen.
- You see the cake and it looks delicious.
- You smell the cake and it makes you hungry for a slice.
- You cut into the cake and the knife slides easily through, making you anticipate the taste of the creamy frosting and moist cake.
- You taste the cake & it’s delicious, matching its smell and appearance and you are happy.
The cake is not UX, it’s the UI.
But everything you experienced while interacting with the cake: the appearance, the smell, the texture, the taste… those are the user experiences you had with the cake.
The recipe to make that cake is the UX process.
The ingredients in that recipe are the UX methods.
The UX Designer is the chef, figuring out which ingredients are needed to create a seamless experience for the user when interacting with the product (in this case, cake.)
Which ingredients make the best product experience?
When baking a cake, there are some ingredients that are always used no matter the type of cake. When designing UX for a product, it’s research.
All projects start and end with RESEARCH.
Research on what you need to build and then research on how well your built product is performing. Without data from your users, you are just guessing.
Depending on the product, there are lots of other ingredients.
UX Designers select the right ingredients to create a process.
There are some challenges.
Challenges → Users (People eating the cake.)
Some challenges with users:
- Don’t know what they want. Remember to watch what listeners do, not listen to what they want.
- Cognitive Bias. Why do users not know what they want? Because they are trying to process lots of information in very little time. This leads to people making decisions without all the information. This means they rely on stuff they already know, or think they know to make decisions. You can see where this is going.
- People lie. Example: Once upon a time, users were asked if they discovered a website from an email, from word of mouth, or from the TV ad. A small, but significant, number of users answered, TV ad. There never was a TV ad. True Story. Why did they answer that then? Because when asked a question, people tend to want to give an answer other than “I don’t know”, even if they don’t.
Challenges → Client (Guy ordering the cake.)
Some challenges with Clients:
- Has own business goals. Your client has a job and that job is to make sure his business succeeds, that means he has his own goals such as sell more stuff. Meeting his users goals would help him sell more stuff, but sometimes it’s very hard to make him see that especially when he has a boss who is expecting him to sell more stuff in the next three months.
- Tend to speak internal language. Companies tend to over time, develop their own language when speaking about the company and its services and the performance of those services inside the company. Terms such as “Operational Excellence” or “SORM Leadership” This language becomes second nature to them and they use it to communicate to each other and want you to use it to communicate to the users.
- Thinks they know users. Companies spend a lot of time and money on brand research, market research, and product research. They are always talking about their client and how to connect with them. Yet when it comes to design decisions, they rarely think to ask them.
- Lead person makes all decisions. There is a term that is used in the UX Industry, HIPPO. The HIPPO is the Highest Paid Person in the room. Beware the HIPPO. He tends to take charge of meetings and decisions, even the ones that he is not present for! This person can sway a room, make people afraid to speak up and create design problems down the line.
Challenges → Your Workplace (Where you bake the cake.)
Some challenges with your workplace:
- UX is misunderstood. While the value of UX is catching on, there are some places that don’t quite understand what it is and use it more as a trend word. You will recognize these places when they ask for your “UX thoughts” or push back and try to deter you when you ask to do a survey or interview people.
- Hard to change existing process. Some workplaces have been in business for a long time and their process reflects its age. While the need for change may be evident and even wanted, actually changing the process is complicated and involved. Changing the process takes a long time because it must be done in tiny bites so as not to interrupt flow or upset internal teams.
- Siloed team structure. Speaking of internal teams, companies have a tendency to group teams by ways that they find easy to manage. This means that the creative team may be on one floor and the strategy team may be on another floor and the developers are located somewhere else in the building.
Luckily, there are some tools to help with these challenges.
- People who are making UX usable such as:
2. Blogs & Newsletters:
3. Online Tools:
4. Being You, The UX Designer!
Be empathetic. Be curious. Be creative. Be open-minded. Be objective. Be patient. Be flexible. Be a dreamer. Be analytical. Be a good listener. Be a problem solver. Be a team player. Be a storyteller. Be a facilitator. Be a sketcher. Be detail-oriented. Be a planner. Be a communicator. Be human.
Thank you and bake on, my UX friend, bake on.
Hey, you made it to the bottom! Awesome! Now if you could be so kind, please give out some applause. :)
