What is User Experience?
Jake Burdess
Brand & Digital Design for Scaling Startups for over 25 Years | Executive Director at Heroic
When you’re out having a drink on Friday night and you use the term UX or User Experience, most people just look at you with a blank face. And you know they’re probably thinking, “What does it mean?”, “Why are you telling me this?” or “Why are you using this wanky term?”.
And yep, I’ve been on the other end of it, so know how it feels. And even now, having worked in the digital industry for a long time and on user experience projects, I sometimes get confused by exactly what the term means, or, in most cases, what it does not mean.
With more digital design roles starting to appear these days and as more people begin to realise the potential value of UX in their business, it feels likes it gaining a bit of a ‘snobby stigma’. However, I don’t think it’s fair for UX or UX design to be branded with this pretentious brush because when you pair it right back it really is normal, everyday life – something we are all part of, day in, day out.
Take the last time you used TV on demand for example. How easy or difficult was it to find the website or app, and when you got there how long did it take you to find the right show or even episode you were last watching? What does the language or buttons say to you? Those feelings and emotions you felt about that company are all user experiences.
WHAT IS USER EXPERIENCE ALL ABOUT?
I think Wikipedia does a great job in defining UX.
User Experience (UX) refers to a person’s emotions and attitudes about using a particular product, system or service. It includes the practical, experiential, affective, meaningful and valuable aspects of human–computer interaction and product ownership.
It also goes on to say that UX is “dynamic as it is constantly modified over time” due to changing usage and that “In the end user experience is about how the user interacts with and experiences the product.”
This is great as it mentions people’s emotions, but doesn’t seem to touch on one of the points that is at the heart of UX – respect for the people using the product or service.
In saying that, I really like Laura Klein’s version of UX design as she talks about fulfilling the needs of everyone who uses that product or service: “Good UX Design happens when we make these decisions in a way that understands and fulfills the needs of both our users and our business.”
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6 年My conversations are usually as follows Person: So what do you do? Me: UX design Person: (Blank stare) Me: It's basically like a fancy web designer Person: Ohhhhh! I seee!
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