What Is UX Design? // An Overview
UX Design Is How A Building Feels ... Wait What?!
“Wait…so it’s like what buildings are thinking?? Uhh dude, I think you need a new major”
That’s was my buddy Andy’s response when he asked what I was going to study for my masters.
I was one of this kids who hopped from major to major in college. I stumbled into something call UX that seemed to combine psychology and engineering, two things I enjoyed.
I didn't know what it was at the time and had a hard time communicating it.
So when my buddy Andy asked me "so what's your major this month", I stuttered and stammered through some incoherent nonsense about psychology and building things. In retrospect, his response wasn't too silly.
Fast forward 18 years, several companies, lots of shipped work and UX leadership under my belt I have a much better understanding of what UX design is.
Spoiler alert: It has nothing to do with what buildings are thinking!
Let’s sketch.
UX Design Is About The User Experience
Ok let’s start high level
UX stands for User Experience. It describes the quality of experience that a user has with a product. It’s often related to software - apps and websites. But really it can be anything.
User Experience Design describes the approach and process teams use to create well designed and crafted user experiences.
Ok I know, nothing ground breaking …yet! Let me get into it or, as the kids say, let me cook:
UX Design Starts With The User
You might have heard this one before. Or the term user-centered. Or some version of this where it implies everything is about the user.
The idea is simple, you begin with the user’s needs and work from there. You begin with understanding their pain points, needs, desires, etc and build out product to fulfill those.
As opposed to starting with only thinking about business metrics or what you think would be a cool ideas for a product.
UX Design Is An Approach
Going a little deeper and getting practical…
User Experience is how you approach a product and problem solving. It’s keeping the user at the center and focused.
In a nutshell it involves
Research
Solution Exploration
Testing
Delivery
Research
There’s a general flow of understanding user problems. This comes from research. Not online googling research, but real user research. Talking to your users, watching them , observing their behavior, digging into analytics.
Having conversations and connecting. Fostering a sense of empathy.
All these inputs are synthesized in a way that is shared with the broader product team. The goal is to get aligned on the user problems.
Solutions Exploration
From there solutions are explored. It's not simply coming up with one idea or the first idea you have. It's exploring the range of solutions and discovering what work.s
Testing
Throughout the whole process various forms of user testing are done. This is getting concepts, ideas, potential solutions, in front of users to see how well the potential solution perform It's used to identify needs, identify issues with the design, and assess overall what needs to be addressed.
Delivery
When product is shipped, user feedback is collected and the cycle begins again.
UX Design Is Problem Solving
At the root UX Design is solving the pain points for the user. It's not making things look cool for the sake of being cool. It's all about the user needs and solving for them.
UX Design Is A Verb
OK I cheated here, UX Design is not a verb, but design is a verb. And a (UX) designer designs to create a great user experience.
Design in this context is going through the outline above. More specifically it's around the actual solution exploration part.
UX Design Is Good Business
Now we’re really cooking.
Jeff Bezos said it best
“We’re not competitor obsessed, we’re customer obsessed. We start with what the customer needs and we work backwards.”
Amazon is a pretty big company, they figured something out here. Jeff and Amazon have figured out it’s good business to understand your customer’s needs and provide the best possible experience.
A business obviously would want to make more money and sales. It makes sense, a business needs and wants to make money. But if it’s at the expense of the users in the form of a bad product experience, it’ll be costly to the business.
Most business realized to a certain extent that if they focus on providing a great experience, that’s great for business.
Amazon realized this and I would say it worked out pretty well for them.
On Balancing UX and Business
This being a UX Design focused article, it’s skews a bit….well ux design. But obviously UX design is part of a business. And businesses need to make money.
Often you’ll hear about balancing UX design and business. I never really was a fan of this because it implies a level of tension.
In reality they can and should be aligned. Acting as one.
Aligning your UX approach/strategy with the business is where you get the most bang for your buck. Most companies have these at worst: at odds, at best: separate but together. United versus divided.
All your design efforts should be aligned to some sort of business goal. I think this is where most UX orgs fail. They see themselves at odds with the business. Or in some weird tug-0f-war with business goals. You'll hear terms like "balance users needs and business goals".
In reality they should be aligned. Designing great experiences that bolster the company do not have to come at the expense of your users.
UX Design Is Necessary
Going off the above, crafting a great user experience for your customers and users is almost a necessity.
I’m not going to say it has to win awards and knock their socks off. But there is a baseline level of experience a business needs to strive for.
UX Design Is A Great Career Path
I’ve been in the field for close to 20 years and I can tell you it’s a great career path. It’s not without its ups and downs and not everyone loves it. But overall it’s great. A few reasons that make it good:
Rewarding
There's something awesome about putting out software that solves people's problems. To go from "hmm this is a problem for our users" to an actual shipped solutions and watching your users enjoy that product is so great.
It's something I never get tired of.
Good Salary
In general, UX design careers pay quite well and are at companies with good benefits.
Growing
The field is continuing to grow which is always a good thing.
Now some reasons that make it not so great
Lack Of UX Leadership
Any job with a poor performing boss is going to suck. One thing I noticed in the field of UX is the lack of UX Design leadership.
Yes there are people who are promoted to manager and director and above. But they never really learn how to lead and manage.
They more or less stumble into it. Or they've been at a company for ling enough where you just grow into it.
But not having proper experience training and learning how to lead creates a poor experience for the individual contributors.
Not Sure Where UX Design Fits In
The other major problem I see with UX design is not always having a clear position. In some companies it's seen as integral to the product. In others, it's seen as decoration.
In many companies it rolls up to the Product Leader who probably doesn't have a deep understanding of UX.
UX Design Gets A Bit Messy
I know it can be fuzzy trying to nail down what UX design is. It's a term that gets thrown around in all sorts of ways and in various context.
It comes down to understanding the pain points of the user and designing a solution for those pain points.
// Coleman
SIGN UP
〰️
SIGN UP 〰️
