What is User Experience (UX)? A definite guide to learn about UX.

Lets go back in time about 20-25 years ago. Let’s assume that you purchased a computer. (Remember the time when computers were bulky and giant?)

You try to get it into your car but Wait! The box is too big to get into the car. Well, after lot of efforts you do get the computer into your home and now you face a bigger task. There are so many components of computer that needs to be put together to make it work.

Now you think, ‘Why did I even buy the computer at first place’.

How would you rate the experience with the product? How would you tell about this experience to your friends who are excited to ask you about it?

So you see, this experience with the product is what encompasses User Experience . And it may be even before you have begun to use it and may be even before you are telling someone about it.

Don Norman once said, ‘User Experience is the way you experience the world. The way you experience the product or service. The way you experience the life.’

What is User Experience UX?

Let’s suppose I have gifted you a new iPhone. You have used it for about 1 month now. And now I am asking you to share your 1-month iPhone experience with me. You won’t just stop expressing your satisfaction and joy with me, How easy its interface is, How beautiful it is and so on.

These emotions, these feelings of joy, happiness, even sadness, anger and disgust is actually an experience of yours with that particular service or product.

User experience (UX) refers to the interaction a user has with a product or service and the experience they get with the interaction.  It is in fact a person’s feelings, attitude and emotions they feel while using any product or service.

A good User Experience firstly emerges by meeting the exact needs of the customer. And then it encompasses simplicity and elegance in its design which brings joy to the customer. In fact, a True User Experience is a seamless integration of engineering, User Experience Design, marketing and so on.

History of UX

The term “user experience” was coined by the Cognitive psychologist and designer Don Norman in the 1990s. However, Do you know that UX field is older than the term? And surprisingly it predates its name by quite some decades? and even centuries?

Well it is not uncommon to associate user experience UX and design with apps and websites. We usually refer to the experience with a digital or technological product or service. However, is it really so?

As explained above User Experience (UX) is an experience of a User when they interact with any product or service; or lets just say that you visit a Movie theater. What was your first impression as you walked in?

How about the seating arrangement there? How about the food counter? Would you like to go back again?

All this, encompass the user experience (UX) with the Movie theater.

UX as a Design Disciple is growing and evolving. It has an interesting history that can be traced all the way back to 6000 years—if not earlier.

Surprised? Lets take a look to the evolution of UX

4000 BC: Feng Shui 

History of UX can be traced as far back as 4000 BC to the ancient Chinese traditional practice of Feng Shui. Fengshui is an art of arranging buildings, objects, space and life in order to achieve harmony and balance. It works on the assumption that the world is driven by unseen forces.

In simple terms, Feng Shui is all about arranging your surroundings in the most optimal and user-friendly way to create a harmony. And it can be achieved by arranging everything; from the color’s layout to furniture so that the good energy flows around.

let me explain how this Chinese practice possibly has to do with UX Design.

Just as a UX designer applies UX principles to create a delightful experience for user while they interact with the product or service. Similarly using Feng shui principles the interior designer arranges the furniture and balances the elements of design with functionality.

It is done in a way that makes it easy for the inhabitant to navigate the room creating a happy experience. It incorporates a lot of cleanliness and order, “white space”

The end goal? To create an intuitive user-friendly experience.

500 BC: The Ancient Greeks and ergonomics

It is very interesting to see that UX can also be traced back to Ancient Greece. Back in the 5th century BC, Greek civilizations used ergonomic principles to design their tools and workplaces.

‘Ergonomics is a scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies theory, principles, data and methods to design and optimize human well-being and overall system performance.’

Greek physician- Hippocrates- who is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine in fact had a text written which discribed how surgeon’s workplace should be set up.

He played emphasis to the the lighting in the room, the comfortable position of the surgeon’s, the arrangement of tools such that it is in easy reach to the surgeon and so on,

Doesn’t it remind about UX Design where the product or the service is designed in a way that is usable easy and efficient?

Circa 1430: Leonardo da Vinci’s “kitchen nightmare”

Author Michael J. Gelb specializing in creativity and innovation in his book How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci talks about the instance when Duke of Milan commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to design the kitchen for a high-profile feast.

The great Maestro, in what is considered the first use of the technology, designed, and employed conveyor belts to transport food items to the preparers. Not just that, he built what is likely the first sprinkler system for safety measures. And mind you this was centuries before Industrial evolution took place.

Even though it was a disaster as the convener belts operated too erratically and comically the sprinkler system went off, ruining some of the food. However, the Design practice also bears the trace of user experience design in the renaissance time

Early 1900s: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Industrial Revolution

In 1911, Frederick Winslow Taylor – an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency through Scientific Management, wrote “The Principles of Scientific Management”.

Tylor asserted that systematic management is the solution to inefficiency. He was on a mission to make human labor more efficient. So he conducted extensive research about the interactions between workers and their tools.

Pejoratively known as Taylorism, it was widely criticized for the way it reduced people to mere cogs in a machine. However, focus of Taylorism on optimizing the relationship between humans and their tools is definitely a reminiscent of some key UX principles.

1940s: Toyota and the value of human input

Ist half of 20th century saw lot of research which became the field of human factors and ergonomics .

Toyota valued workplace efficiency through engineering and production. On his mission for workplace efficiency, Toyota developed their famous human-centered production system.

Toyota philosophy was ‘Respect for people’. The difference from Taylorism was that unlike Taylorism, Toyota valued and encouraged employees’ input.

To give you an example, workers at Toyota factory could pull a rope ‘Andon Cord’ to stop the assembly line if they saw a defect and then would give a feedback on it to improve the process. Toyota would use this feedback to improve Process.

Doesn’t it sound like Usability Testing ?

It isn’t wrong to say that Toyota brought attention to the role of human interaction with technology. Moreover, that’s exactly what UX design is all about.

1955: Henry Dreyfuss and Designing for People

As we know that Usability is a very important principle of User Experience Design.Henry Dreyfuss, who was an American industrial designer had lead the Principle of Usability in 1950’s.

In his book “Designing for People’, he described this Principle. He talked about only designing for a wider audience, so that people of different sizes and abilities could access all parts of the product or service without any trouble.

Dreyfuss was known for improving the look, feel and usability of some of a dozen of consumer products—the Hoover vacuum cleaner, the tabletop telephone, and more.

He was of the opinion that ‘’When the point of contact between the product and people becomes a point of friction, then the industrial designer has failed. if people are made safer, more comfortable, more eager to purchase, more efficient—or just plain happier—by contact with the product, then the designer has succeeded’

1966: Delight with Walt Disney

Walt Disney was a Magical person who brought happiness in our lives through his magical stories. He has an incredibly imaginative mind and seeded an idea that would later become Disney land.

Trip to Disneyland is like an unforgettable adventure of life time. Just Talking about it brings shine in your eyes and smile on your face. That is the charm of Disneyland and Walt Disney made sure to use Technology to delight our senses and create happy memories.

Walt Disney’s guiding principles for his team of engineers, was ‘know your audience, wear your guest’s shoes, communicate with color, shape, form and texture…’

Walt Disney described the project as “always in the state of becoming, a place where the latest technology can be used to improve the lives of people.”

And yes this is what a Good User Experience is about Isnt it?

1970s: PARC and the design of personal computers

PARC-research arm of Xerox, played an instrumental role to give form and function to design of computers for human use.

Bob Taylor, a trained psychologist and engineer, led his team in building technologies that compose a Personal computer – most famously the Graphical User Interface (GUI) which was the most important tool of human-computer interaction,

In fact. 70’s was the era when lot of psychologists and engineers worked together to focus on the user experience. And this led to several influential developments such as the graphical user interface and the mouse.

And in 1984 Apple released its first mass-market PC featuring a graphical user interface, built-in screen and mouse. Since then Apple is leading the UX design.

It is very interesting to note that PARC has been a hidden player in inventing and refining abstract concepts and paving a way for User Experience.

1995: Don Norman and User Experience

Don Norman, a cognitive scientist, joined the team at Apple in the early 90s to assist with the research and design of a Product lineup.

As this point still there was no label to the User experience yet, even though it was happening alot around.

He asked to be called as their User Experience Architect, thereby making him the first person to have UX in his job title. And this is how He came up with the term “user experience design.

In what he explained that “I invented the term because I thought human interface and usability were too narrow: I wanted to cover all aspects of the person’s experience with a system, including industrial design, graphics, the interface, the physical interaction, and the manual.”

2007- Ist Apple iPhone

History was written when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone at MacWorld 2007, calling it a “leapfrog product”. With its revolutionary Touchscreen and beautiful design, iPhone was the easier smartphone to use than any other smartphone on the market.

Infact it provided a superior user experience as compared to other phones. The Design and User experience catapulted position of Apple and led the way for future Mobile Devices.

Present and Future of User Experience

UX has evolved not just over decades but over centuries and the magical journey continues. From Artificial to Voice Technology to even Virtual and Augmented Reality, UX continues to evolve.

What will be interesting to see is how the digital technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), mixed reality (MR), brain-computer interfaces (BCI) can changes the landscape of human-computer interaction.

Undoubtedly, User Experience Design will become a stronger field that would influence different aspects of our lives.

User experience UX vs user interface UI

Now that you have understood about User Experience. Let’s understand what UI is?

While User experience (UX) is about the experience of the user when they interact with the product. A user interface UI is about the point of interaction between the user and a digital device or product.

Think of it like the touchscreen on your smartphone, or the touch pad you use of a microwave. If we talk about the UI in relation to websites and apps, it is about the look, feel, and interactivity of the product.

And the UI designer considers all the visual, interactive elements of a product interface including icons, buttons, typography and color schemes, imagery, and responsive design.

Furthermore, the goal of UI design is to visually guide the user through the interface of product or service.

In fact, user experience is about making the product effective and enjoyable to use. And user interface design about the look and feel, the presentation and interactivity of a product.  A Good UI complements the UX.

It is also important to note that Unlike UX which applies to all products and services, user interface specific to digital products and experiences 

Simply put UI design is about how the product’s interfaces look and function. What the user sees and How they interacts within the product.

 You can visit this Article to learn more about User Experience