You must have used an application on your phone or visited an amusement park. Do you know what it takes to create both of those two quite different user experiences?
Which is quite an experience simpler and more interesting, there is a greater chance that a sophisticated and well-thought-out design is hidden behind it.
To create an application, including a funfair, you need a whole team that deals with the creative process called UX design, i.e. user experience design.
But what exactly is UX design?
User experience design addresses the questions: What? When? Where? Why? And who?… use a particular product or service.
When we understand needs and wishes of users, then we can we design a great solution for them, but for it to be done really well, the mutual cooperation of several different creatives is necessary. Each of them contributes using their unique skills.
Take your cell phone for example. In the simplest terms, there are two very obvious areas of design. One is the design of the applications on your phone, and the other is the design of the device itself.
Let's start with applications. Look at an application that you use often, say the one for writing SMS messages. One of the first steps in creating an application is defining the problem. If the problem doesn't exist, there's no point in looking for a solution, right?
They usually define that problem user researchers. They are the ones who ask various questions and find answers by following users. For example. they could see that email correspondence is too slow and that people need a faster way to communicate.
User researchers will delve even deeper into the problem, asking who will use our solution, why, where and how. They start with the simplest questions and observe from there user behavior patterns, based on which they then draw conclusions about what the user needs and wants. That's how the problem is defined.
It's next in line interaction designer, who will take a problem and design a solution for it. They start by sketching the concept by hand, which they then turn into credible representations of the future design (eng. wireframe), which eventually grow into working prototype.
The prototype is tested, measured and analyzed on a large number of users. Based on those tests, the user researcher and interaction designer can conclude what should be in the application and what should not be. They test it and tweak it many, many times to get the final product just right.
But wait, it doesn't end there – another key step in the whole process is to fine-tune the solution so that it looks really nice. It's the job of a visual designer to create the look and feel of an app. Visual designer focuses on things like the logo, layout of elements, fonts and color scheme.
Now our solution is not only functional, but also beautiful.
We talked about the process of designing an application, and let's briefly touch on what is needed to design the phone device itself. Product designers such as a telephone, a car or a vacuum cleaner are called industrial designers.
Industrial designers also go through a similar process that we described previously. They start by trying to understand the user, define a problem, then solve that problem, and finally make that solution fun to use. They integrate all aspects of form and function to create the best possible experience for you when e.g. use your phone.
Those would be two examples of how designers create a product for the user and that's what we call user experience design or UX design.
You can find UX designers in practical every industry, from manufacturing, through catering, recreation, health to finance... And in each of those cases they follow a similar process of research, prototyping and testing in order to create a product that is useful and provides enjoyment to users.
If you're wondering why user experience is so important, consider whether you would use a particular product or service if it didn't fit your wants and needs. Would you use a messaging app where you couldn't easily find the send button or find it annoying in some way? Of course not.
When you custom design and it's done right, you win stable, positive relationships between your company that offers the product/service and the customers that use them.
So the next time you're in a restaurant, in an amusement park or simply sending a message to your friend - know that behind your user experience is a whole team that made it possible for you as pleasant and as easy as possible.
If you want the site that represents your company, association or event to be designed exactly according to the principles of user experience, be sure to read more about our services by clicking this link.
Source: youtube.com/sapdstudio
