What the %#@& is HX?

I’ve been a designer for almost 16 years now, worked with many different companies and on hundreds of projects, and back in those wild wild west days of the internet, no one really knew what UX is, nor HX for that matter… the big words in the industry were GUI and in some cases UI.

In recent years UX became a thing, a thing that seems to be widely known and somewhat misunderstood, I’ve spoken to dozens of people about this subject and got so many different answers on what UX is, but I got even more questions about what HX is… and this is why I decided to write this article and try to convey what HX is.

So here is what I think UX and HX are and what are the differences between the two.

Lets start with UX.

There are a lot of descriptions, diagrams and opinions on what UX is, some of them are confusing, some of them are too much and some of them are just overwhelming or simply incorrect.

In this diagram it shows almost every aspect of User Experience merging between virtual and physical worlds, it is somewhat correct and yes, absolutely, user experience is something we are experiencing everywhere, all the time and throughout our entire life.

User Experience is something that is being applied to physical products, digital devices, homes and offices, TV, radio, shopping, eating, and the list goes on and on.

In college I studied Interior Design and Architecture, we studied UX of Interior Design, it wasn’t called UX, it was divided into several subjects, such as Space Traffic Flow, Color & Human Psychology, Space Functionality and Comfort, these are essentially User Experience subjects but in a physical space such as homes, offices, industrial, hospitality, healthcare, etc.

Now going back to the term UX (User Experience) which was coined by Donald Norman in the 90’s and picked up growth and recognition by mid 00’s and today it is one of the desired professions in the digital space… Note that I mentioned “Digital Space” because this is where the term UX really lives nowadays, and I think always lived, it is being applied to anything internet, from websites, to web based apps, mobile apps and IoT (Internet of Things).

UX is a process of discovery, analysis, learning and improving user interaction experience with a product.

When people ask me what UX is… in my opinion UX is an Umbrella housing within it the following disciplines:

-User Research & Analysis (User Discovery, User Interviews, Personas, etc.)

-Competitive Research (researching the industry, competition, etc.)

-Behavior Analysis

-Feature Prioritization

-User Flows

-Site Mapping

-Information Architecture

-Wireframing

-Interaction Design/Planning

-Prototyping

-UI (Visual Design of the product interface)

-Usability Testing

-Advocating for UCD (User Centered Design)

-Acting as the cross roads between users, stakeholders, engineering, marketing, and product… and maybe other departments depending on your company/project.

But, UX is what it stands for, User Experience, and in most cases it is being applied to research, learning, understanding and improving products for company’s existing users in order to retain their loyalty, make them happier and be somewhat ambassadors of company’s service or product.

Years ago I was working on a project and conducting the regular process of researching the company’s existing users, understand their behavior with the product, learning and analyzing how to improve the product for their user to enhance usability and ease of use, and so on… one day I was at a coffee shop, having my coffee and working on the third iteration of a prototype for another up-coming usability testing when one of my friends walked in, grabbed a cup of coffee and joined me at my table.

As we were chatting about work, he asked me what I was working on, I gave him a quick intro of what I’m working on and said I’m preparing another prototype for the next usability test we’re having next week… He got curious and asked to show him the prototype… When he started clicking through the links and other functions of the product while I’m sitting right next to him, sipping on my coffee and watching what he is doing.

It suddenly hit me!

My friend’s learning curve was almost double of the average user we have researched, interviewed and tested with, it took him much more time to learn what the company is, what the product is about and how to use it… and he asked a bunch of questions about the product, that it made my brain wheels run faster and think about the product usability a bit differently…

It was one of those moments, when you realize that you just discovered something completely new that no one ever told you about, or talked about or even asked about… and the realization was that there is a big difference between Users and Non-Users when it comes to products, especially products that introduce some new interactions and functions that people who are not familiar with the industry/field/product/etc. might not even become users just because it might seem to them too complicated or too much to learn.

This is when I thought of Users vs. Others (General Public), and I couldn't figure out a term for it up until recent years of UX becoming widely known, accepted and applied, when I figured that if UX is User Experience than non-users are the general public and might be either PX (People Experience) or HX (Human Experience), and since I am a big believer of cross platform, unified experiences even between the virtual and physical worlds, Human as signifying the entire species of us, humans, HX made more sense as the proper term for this practice.

So the way I defined “Others” HX (do not confuse with medical term) the next morning to my team on the project and the client is that User Experience is your current and potential users, potential means future, but even future users are still being defined based on the current users that were researched and a specific persona profiles were built for the “User” we are designing for.

But no one ever talked about people that are not potential users but might become potentials if they got exposed to a product and that product answered their need and/or desire and was simple enough to understand and quickly learned… easily onboard the person and convert him/her into a potential or existing user.

Now we’re getting to the juicy part of what HX is and how to apply it to your products

So, as I mentioned above, HX is a bit different than UX, while UX is concentrated mostly on current and/or potential users, HX is mostly concentrating on overall public within a desired or targeted group who are not current users nor planning to become current or future users.

Think of Handy, Handy is a company that provides services such as house cleaning, handyman, furniture assembly, and so on… Handy has a product that delivers the service, its their website and mobile app for different mobile platforms.

Handy is designed for many users, I’ve never worked at Handy and don’t know their research nor am I associated with Handy in anyway.

I’ll try to make an educated guess that Handy was designed for Millennials and some of the Generation X population, filling in a need for people who are too busy to clean, assemble a table or hang something on the wall… but if you think about it, people don’t need Handy’s services, its not a must to have, so ultimately a lot of people are not users and not even potential users because there are many people who don’t even know what Handy is, sure we all see their adverts on the subway but I assure you many people don’t even care what those are and even if they read those, they forget it the minute they are out of the subway.

Now think how would you design a product, like Handy or any other, that if, shown to one of the above described people, will be easily understood, liked, and make them want to become a user…this is where HX crosses paths with UX.

Here are key actions you can perform if you are interested in designing a product not just for your users but for other people who are not your users but might be:

1. When you conduct user research, interviews, behavior analysis, and so on, try to identify people who are not your ideal user but you feel have a good potential to become a user at some point of their life and interview them as well.
2. When you create personas, create one out of the norm, a persona of a user who is not a user yet and might never become your user.
3. When you are planning usability testings, try to incorporate non-users and observe people who don’t know the product, never used anything similar and/or don’t know the company… see how fast they understand what they are looking at, can they use the product? what kind of questions they have? what kind of pain points they have using it for the first time? Ask them to verbalize every move and decision they make.

When you run usability testing with people who are not your users and not even on the list of your potentials, you find so much more about the product and usability issues that you might never find with existing users.

Word of advise: if you wish to observe non-users testing your product, try public places, such as coffee shops, bars, etc. or even just randomly approaching people on the street and asking some basic identifying questions to make sure they are not currently using your product or any similar product.

A few years ago I was working on an eCommerce website for a product that was a very niche market product, not everyone even knew what the industry is, some people heard of it, but never expressed any interest to learn more about it… So when I got to the stage of usability testing, I tested with some existing customers of the products, and I also went to a coffee shop, opened up my laptop and simply asked people who walked into the coffee shop if I could have a few minutes of their time, those who agreed to participate, I simply asked them to purchase X products and see if they understand what they are buying, how fast they understand how to buy, and how easy it was for them to add to understand the product and its values, add it to cart, add some accessories that they might need with the product and checkout.

This is how I validated that the site we are going to launch is not only answering the needs of our existing customers but also allows other people easily understand what it is, values of the products and evoke that desire to buy the product even if they don’t really have a need for it.

Granted, HX is not for every product and/or company, it very much depends on the product you are designing, but I do urge you to ask this question at the beginning of the process “Do we want other people who are not our target users be able to use it?”

I hope this is helpful and if any of you have any questions, or would like to express your opinion on the subject, feel free to reach out.

Thanks for reading and stay curious! :)