What is UX Design?
Ux design stands for User experience design in other words, the design of experiences for users and experience is any interaction someone can have with a product and a user can be anyone, either a family member, a friend, or even a stranger.
A Brief History of UX Design.
The term user experience was first coined by a man named Don Norman. He was an electrical engineer and a cognitive scientist at Apple in the 90s. He developed and promoted a user-centred design process that placed the needs of the user at the forefront of product creation and with it came the birth of the UX designer.
What UX Designers do
UX designers act as advocates for their users as they research, iterate on and test various design solutions making sure the product is as easy to use as possible and solves a problem for the users. For instance, take an example of a bad UX design around you and think about how the users might want to use it and how if proper research of a large enough group of users was carried out, the potential problem could have been identified.
The UX Design process
The UX design process follows a product or product feature from start to finish and includes everything from design and implementation to testing and feedback. Interviewing users, creating personas, sketching up a new set of wireframes or testing a prototype are all part of the UX design process but can be used depending on what stage of the process you’re in.
User Research is a part of the process and can range from conducting an analysis of competitors to surveying and interviewing prospective users by talking with potential users. At this stage, insights into their pain points and problems, what is it they want the product to solve and what kind of features are they looking for in products are obtained.
User Persona: You can think of it as creating a fictional user/person in a way they’ll want to use your product based on research.
Wireframes: These are sketches of what the app will look like. Using data collected from research, sketches of various versions of what the screens will look like and what steps a user will take to accomplish a task are drawn. The sketches are continually iterated based on testing and feedback. More details are added if necessary and by the end, we’ll have a highly detailed mock-up that looks almost exactly like the final product.
Testing: These screens can be connected to form prototypes using software that allows one to click through the design as though it were a fully functioning app. Testing is a fundamental aspect of UX Design. Without testing a product, feature, or design decision with real users, you’ll have no way of knowing if it’ll meet their needs and it can be done at various points during the design process.
The Different Roles and Jobs of a UX Designer
The UX Design field is pretty big and UX Designers are expected to wear a lot of hats. A small start-up may only have funds to hire a single UX Designer but often, big companies have their teams of specialised UX Design that fall into four categories/quadrants. The four quadrants include experience strategy, Interaction Design, User Research and Information architecture. These quadrants are completely cut and dry as you’ll find some overlap between these skillsets involved and the roles required.