Why ux design

You can help make technology accessible to everyone. Advanced technology requiring complex human-machine interactions is becoming essential for even the most basic aspects of living, from buying groceries online, through paying energy bills, to voting in elections. You can shape the future by designing the internet of things. We are buying an unprecedented range of consumer gadgets, whether for fun Snapchat Spectacles , for health and motivation FitBit , or even for better sleep Beddit.

Each of these devices has a distinct purpose, meaning that the user has different needs and goals when interacting with them. Although the commercial viability of any emerging tech is always uncertain, this uncertainty creates a great opportunity for UX designers to research, experiment, and innovate.

You can build value for your business. Good UX design can lead to happier customers, fewer complaints, more sales, fewer abandoned carts, and higher profits. These brand associations can have positive business effects far beyond individual products. As you would expect from a sector specialising in optimising product experiences, there is now a range of online training options available for the aspiring UX designer.

To round off this article, we've put together this set of learning resources into a Degreed learning pathway. Degreed is a site you can use to help track all your formal and informal learning. Here's a preview of what you can find in our Degreed pathway:. First, get started by reading up on free online content. Then read some books. If you need to learn design basics, check out these great courses and resources. Students work with expert mentors, selected for their design excellence and top-notch communication skills.

On the course, you will complete hours of training in total. Phase 2 is structured around three in-depth capstone projects, which are more comprehensive — they are a series of deliverables and case studies.

Towards the end of the program, you work with your mentor to put together a portfolio and start applying for jobs. You can find more details about the course, including how to apply, over on the UX Academy page.

Personas are key in the process of storytelling both during the design process and in presenting your designs to clients or stakeholders. A typical persona for Foodies might be Samantha, a go-getting something who likes eating artisan salads on her lunch break. An example task for her persona might be:. Another popular approach which might be used in conjunction with or as an alternative to user personas is jobs-to-be-done JTBD. You can find a full comparison between personas and JTBD here. User flows are basic flowcharts which visualize the complete path a user takes when using a product, from entry point right through to the final interaction.

You can learn more in this introductory guide to user flows. While user flows map out the entire user journey, wireframes provide a two-dimensional outline of a single screen or page. With the product layout mapped out, the UX designer will then create prototypes and run some user tests.

A prototype is simply a scaled-down version of your product; a simulation which enables you to test your designs before they get developed. Prototypes range from the simplest of paper models to the more realistic, high-fidelity interactive prototypes which closely mimic the final product. Testing your prototypes on real users helps to highlight any design flaws before you create the final product. Several rounds of testing could take place before the design is completely right.

While some UX designers will also specialize in visual design, it tends to fall under user interface UI design. So, the final imagery, color schemes , icons , and typography will usually be taken care of by a UI designer.

There will be refinements, small changes, new releases, feedback to gather and analytics to discuss with the team. The UX design process is highly iterative, and a career in UX is as much about collaboration and coordination as it is about design. With such a varied range of tasks, UX designers need to have a very diverse skill set. Adaptability, communication, empathy, problem-solving and teamwork are all essential soft skills.

Business knowledge also goes a long way in the UX design industry. This is especially true if you work as a UX designer in a startup. You can enlarge and open the infographic in a new tab by clicking here. The demand for UX designers has radically increased—and, as the tech industry continues to evolve, UX designers are more crucial than ever. This is especially true for UX designers who are on the cutting edge of their field, and participating in the trends that keep UX design so relevant and necessary.

This demand is also reflected in the overall increase in average UX designer salaries. In other words, the outlook for a career in UX design is excellent. The more desirable a product is, the bigger the following. The user who is using the desired product will most likely brag about it and create a desire in other potential users.

Think about school - we all knew that girl or guy in our year who had a cool new gadget, perhaps it was the latest model of a phone or mp3 player and it had us all crowding around and saving up to buy it ourselves.

Strong products should be accessible for a wide range of abilities. This means taking into consideration those who are disabled hearing impaired, vision loss, or motion impaired. Companies often pushed accessibility to the bottom of their priority lists as it could often be expensive and the physically impaired community was seen to take up such a small percentage of the customer base.

Designers are slowly moving towards making products inclusive for minorities too - but this conversation is far from being as widely discussed as with the physically impaired community. It is undeniable that inclusive design should be prioritised highly within the design community and steps in this sector are happening to make sure that inclusivity becomes a norm rather than an exception.

In general, when you design for accessibility you make products that are easier for everyone to use, not just for the disabled. The product must deliver value to the business and to the customer.

Where one step is more important to one customer - another step will be prioritized for someone else. Desirability might be more valuable for person A but will not necessarily be the same for person B. Person A might really enjoy that the television is super thin, sleek and minimal, that the brand is recognised and is overall desirable.

Person B might also want a desirable product but due to accessibility reasons will opt for a television that has options to make the text on screen bigger or the volume higher, prioritising a wider range of accessible controls over the minimalistic aspects of the product. These 7 principles are not to be confused with the 12 laws of UX which were created by Jon Yablonski and also detail a collection of maxims and principles that designers should consider when building user interfaces.

Instead of detailing the different facets in digestible bites as in the honeycomb method, the 12 laws is a run-through of how users generally interact with products and give immense insight into the general psychology of users. In the process of building this app the UX Designer, UI Designer and Graphic Designer would take on very different roles even though all 3 are design based. The UX Designer would research the audience.

They would gather information on what the user's needs are, how to best meet these needs and how competing applications are going about filling this space in the market. They would also uncover problems through this research and work out the best way to create the most usable interface, in a way that is both intuitive and fills the needs of the user.

The Graphic Designer would work on the branding of the application - creating assets that would create the identity of the product, this could be anything from the logo to the colours and font types etc. The UI Designer would work on all of the touchpoints of the app, this would include the buttons, how the screens transition, dropdowns and ensure that the experience is pleasurable for the user.

UX design differs from both UI and graphic design in that its focus is less on the aesthetic elements of the product but more on the logic, structure, and functionality of the elements that you see and interact with. The UX design process serves as a framework that enables a designer to define the needs that a user has and works to meet them in the most optimal way.

While a UX designer can seek to make this visually appealing in the process, the predominant focus is to make sure that the bones of the product are designed for an enjoyable user experience. If we take a look at the design thinking process we can get a clear overview of how a UX could design a product from start to finish. This is a clear and concise tool that can be reworked in a multitude of ways, that being said the empathizing stage must always happen first.

Graphic designers have one of the best-known job titles in the world of design and tech. These include posters, brochures, invitations, and business cards, and design assets for the web like logos and icons. Another differentiating aspect for Graphic Designers is based on the programs that they use.

A User Interface designer can be seen as building upon and expanding on the Graphic Design role. The role relates to aesthetics, building desirable touchpoints, and maintaining cohesive branding.

The role of a UI designer pertains to the design of interactive elements of products and software. These elements include drop-down menus, form fields, clickable elements, animations, and button styling. UI designers also need to have a working understanding of coding and should transfer the brand's strength through the interface of the product.

The position combines elements of programming, psychology, and digital design. Or ever downloaded a new app, only to be very confused, finding yourself entering into a tech forum to find many other confused users?

Good UX should feel virtually invisible, it should make a product feel natural. While there are a lot of reasons for bad UX none should be acceptable for your company, as good UX and UI can usually always be readily achieved. Bad UX can take the form of introducing intrusive features in order to persuade the user to take a certain action.

While this may get the user to the end goal, forcing them into actions might alarm them or be construed as annoying.

Here are 2 examples of some design flaws so you can see the potential frustrations users might go through and how they could have been avoided. If any product or software has you clicking all over the place, hitting random buttons or opening up another tab to work out how to use something - the UX has failed. Products should feel natural, make sense and feel pleasurable to handle. The UX of these menu bars can be absolutely awful, particularly when there is the added inconvenience of being from somewhere with multiple categories.

The standard fix for this is to organize the countries based on natural divisions - like Europe or Asia or even better, to filter the dropdowns to only include countries within one continent at a time. Duolingo is a leading language learning platform. Their prime goal is to make learning a new language - a big task - a digestible, fun experience with no hassle involved.