Why UX matters
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When you take a closer look, user experience, or UX, impacts almost every aspect of your business.
“User experience design can sometimes be open ended, and that’s a real challenge.”
Local Peoples Lead UX designer, Iain Brown, is no stranger to the broad scope of UX. From User Interface (UI) Designers to User Researchers, the world of UX spans all facets of creativity, and takes various shapes and forms.
And as the lines of human interaction and design continue to blur, the principles of user experience are becoming indispensable for brands in how they interact and interface with consumers.
What is User Experience?
According to the Interaction Design Foundation, UX refers to the “process design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. This involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability and function.”
Iain describes it as the glue between design and development.
“It encapsulates so many things from research to animation to brand awareness – it has all these touch points where previously existed just development and design with a gap in between. That’s the space UX now occupies.
“It’s the glue that holds the pieces together.”
Beyond mere process, Iain believes User Experience and its core principles lays out a foundation for success. And it is within certain key factors that makes UX important to your brand and organization.
UX must be people centred
“If you want to build good products that keep people coming back, you have to get their value and buy in.”
Iain believes that UX is all about the conversation between the user and the brand or product they are interacting with. It is all about creating the opportunity and space for users to inform your process:
What do they like?
What don’t they like?
What do they aspire to have or embody?
By asking the right questions, you’re embarking on a creative journey in tandem with the user rather than without them. Your brand or product is there to service, with a particular need already identified.
“If you don’t delight them, don’t focus on their needs, don’t provide for them, you can lose customers. In UX because the human is represented, you can create much better experiences through conversation.”
UX is research driven
Centering your brand experience around people is important, but the frameworks that are built into your process need to accommodate for that too. From user testing to in-person interviews, the user must remain the central focus in the research.
“It is about doing the research to get to the hypothesis – designing based on that and then testing it. You must always refer back to how the user interacts. Keep it as a focus.”
As an example Iain cites something as simple as a button on a webpage. A button has numerous factors that impact its effectiveness; these range from colour, size, font and positioning. Without proper user research being conducted, the button is developed in line with what the brand’s designer, product owner or developer believes is best.
Who knows, the button mightn’t need to exist at all.
“If you don’t listen to the user throughout…you’ll have to work backwards.”
So you heard it here first: research, test, and research again.
UX builds trust
From seamless information architecture to concise copywriting, great UX gets out of the way.
It allows users to effortlessly interact with your brand and use your product intuitively and naturally. Great UX delivers on your brand promise to provide value when they want, how they want it.
“Without good UX, you lack the opportunity to provide value.”
Ultimately, people-centred processes with effective research builds trust. Positive interactions pave the way for improved customer loyalty, word-of-mouth shareability and overall business growth.
The bottom line?
Great UX provides value, and over time, your business will reap value in return.
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