Simply put, UX is short for User Experience Design. It defines the process in which designers use to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to the user. Generally speaking, when you read a book on UX or look into research UX, you’ll find material that often focuses on development for some kind of interactive medium, whether that be an app, website, or even a game. However, from a purely conceptual level, every design has some level of interaction between the designer and the user. By understanding the motives of said user, you are delving into UX design.

For instance, outside of interactive media, UX is very important to branding. When we consider popular brands, the level of consistency of marketing, the experience associated with the brand and the general feel of the brand all aid in how we interact with said brand.

Oftentimes when you see the term UX, UI is not too far off. This is due to the inherent relationship between UI and UX. If the User Experience (UX) is about the overall feel of the product, The User Interface (UI) describes how the product is laid out. You may consider UI to be the elements of the design that are in some way tangible, whether it be an interactive design, visual form, layout, or branding. UX then would be the concepts that construct these forms, say like storytelling, engagement opportunities, objectives, and usability.

For the designer, UX considerations inform UI. Once a designer has considered UX, this will influence how the UI is constructed. For the user, UI informs the actualized user experience. It can thus be concluded that the UX/UI relationship is cyclical. A good UX/UI designer will use various tools and techniques to inform UI layouts using UX principles. Testing would then identify the weakness of the UI elements by how it affects the user’s experience. A well-engineered product might go through multiple cycles of planning, development, and testing before the product has been optimized for public use.

Direct Observation

Having direct observation of a user interacting with your site or responding to an interview gives the most tangible look into a user’s world. The designer can get a real feel for what the user cares about, their aspirations, and their patterns and behaviors. This kind of research moves the designer from conceptual thinking to having palpable results. The various forms of direct observation are considered qualitative data because they are more considerate on the richness of the data over the quantity.

Case Studies

As Tidwell describes ““Case studies give you deep, detailed views into a few representative users or groups of users. You can sometimes use them to explore “extreme” users that push the boundaries of what the software can do, especially when the goal is a redesign of existing software.” Case studies are a structured form of direct observation that give the researcher anecdotal evidence to support a frame of thought relative to a design decision. While it may initially seem unwise to consider anecdotes as part of a design decision, it is important to recognize both qualitative data with quantitative data when designing for a user.

Surveys

A less direct form of intelligence gathering, surveys are method of collecting information from a large assortment of users in a reasonable time period. Surveys offer statistical quantitative data; when partnered with various qualitative data, the designer gets a more holistic understanding of the targeted demographic.

User Personas

In Jon Yablonski’s book “Laws of UX,” Yablonski describes User Personas as a technique to help solve problems based on real needs. Yablonski states “Personas are intended to foster empathy and serve as memory aids, as well as to create a shared mental model of the traits, needs, motivations, and behaviors of a specific kind of user.” User personas move the designer away from “self-referential thinking.”

Yablonski leverages the user persona as an extension of Jakob’s law, which dictates “Users spend most of their time on other sites, and they prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.” User personas help us uncover what expectations and tendencies a user may expect.

Empathy Maps

An extension of the user persona, empathy maps allow the designer to consider pain points for the user alongside opportunities. By considered how a user may think, feel, say, and do, the designer captures a glimpse into what needs that user may have in his/her day to day.

This tool allows the designer a way to advocate for the user they are designing for. It also helps the designer understand the user on a more personalized scale, by going past simple consumption habits to the usability and productivity a product provides for the end user.

Journey Mapping

Journey mapping furthers the ideas considered in an empathy map by measuring the qualitative experience the user might have when interacting with the media in question. In regards to Journey Mapping, Yablonski states “Like all design exercises, journey maps can and should be tailored to the purposes and goals of the project and be grounded in research that’s been conducted with real users.”

Journey maps show the process in which a customer might take before being introduced to the app/brand and the onboading process a customer might take once he/she has discovered the app. Such analysis helps to dictate how the app/brand makes a meaningful impact on the users life. It also helps identify onboarding painpoints and opportunities.

Usability Testing

Due to natural bias, it is important to have a form of checks and balances to ensure the product best serves the user. Yablonski states “We’re much too close to what we build to objectively see it and understand how users will interact with it. The best user interfaces are those that have been shaped by observations of real users and their interactions with them. So how can designers shape their work to be more effective?” With usability testing, the designer can effectively capture user interaction. It allows the designer to break out of his/her own bias and develop for the customer and not themselves. It moves designs from serving conceptually to actualization.