DEMYSTIFYING UX! (2 min read)

Let’s go on a time travel for a moment. My words are your time machine and they shall help you reach 15 years back  Now imagine, you are in 2001 and I told you that there is a lifestyle store, which has hundreds of thousands of shirts, trousers, dresses, perfumes and so many things, and that store will walk with you and you can see the products anytime you want and buy anytime you wish. Sounds very bizarre right?

Or let's imagine you want to book a bus ticket from Bangalore to Hyderabad.  What if I told you that all the bus operators in the city will come to you and they will tell you how much the ticket would cost, how much time will it take to reach Hyderabad and all the details you require, and then you can book the ticket at your convenience. Would you believe all of this, if we were in 2001 ?
NOT AT ALL!!

Now let's come back to 2016. And surprise! All this sounds so familiar. Right!
In a very short span of time, we have achieved feats, which were nothing more than dreams in the last decade. The impact of technical advancements has been so profound, that you can get your favorite shirt on one touch without even moving an inch towards the store, or you can can get your groceries delivered at your house while you just lie on your sofa and watch India Vs.Pakistan live on your big screen.

Life has become very simple and convenient in contemporary times, as we have solved a lot of complex problems in a comprehensive way.  Those solutions are available through your computers, tablets and mobile phones in the form of websites and applications. They are available to everyone, without any discrimination of cast, creed, religion, location or any other way. The ultimate form of democracy.

All you have to do is, go to the screen of your desired app, a few clicks here and there and Voila! Done.

The screens or the user interface (UI) as we call them, are the medium through which these services/solutions are accessed, but the intelligence which has been put into them, is what we call the UX. To simply put it, imagine if you went to buy a shirt online and before you could buy the shirt,they asked you to pay, will that make any sense ? Or you wanted to book a railway ticket, you wanted the lower birth, but there was no option to do so, and you were randomly allotted a seat, would that make sense? No.

If UI is the body, UX is the soul and the brain of a system. The intelligence which is put up into interfaces, make them replicate the real life scenarios and make your whole experience of  dealing with them seamless without the rise of any bizarre situation. This is what constitutes the UX.

The rapid advancement in our UX understanding has led us create amazing systems, which let us achieve our desired goals without any glitch.

Yet, there are so many things still to do! So much yet to achieve. UX has made many things better, but a lot is left yet. For example, grocery apps are rapidly catching up. Many big players like Grofers, Nature’s Basket are doing well. But think for a moment, what is the process you take while grocery shopping? You make a list of all the things you want, you go to the grocery shop, you tell the grocer what is required, get it packed and come back home.

But how is it happening with these apps is a little bit different. Suppose, you want to buy a can of cold drink, you land up on one of these apps, - you have to select the store you want to buy from, you scroll through categories, you choose aerated drinks and then you scroll again to find the coke can and then you select it.

Instead, if you could land on a grocery app, type in what you want, your required item is displayed to you based on your input. You select it and pay for it. Done!

How does this sound? Simple right? And this is how you exactly shop.