It’s the way you experience something, be it an app or a service – It’s a system, it’s everything.
UX Design is a broad term that is used to describe the practice of creating products and services with a human-centred approach. The practice encompasses all the activities and tasks that are involved in designing products, from user research, information architecture, prototyping, usability testing to interaction design and much more.
American psychologist Abraham Maslow developed the hierarchy of human needs. Maslow’s theory being that the most basic needs – such as food and shelter – must be fulfilled before needs higher up, like prestige and the feeling of accomplishment – can be considered. We’ve seen an example of this during the covid pandemic where the basic need for health across the globe is prioritised over economic considerations. When we apply Maslow’s theory to our products – the hierarchy of UX needs would look like something this:
Useful
Does your product solve the right problem for your user and help them achieve their goal?
Usable
Is it intuitive and easy to use with little or no learning curve?
Efficient
Can the user complete their tasks quickly?
Desirable
Do people want to use it?
Delightful
Do people love using it?
Why Bother?
Including a stellar UX process when creating products and services is the secret sauce for producing a successful product that stands out from the competition.
Product requirements should be informed by user research because innovation happens when we truly understand our users’ objectives and motivations.
The more UX boxes you can tick in the hierarchy the more successful your product or service will be. But the most important of these, and I can’t stress this enough, is usefulness. Nothing else matters if your product isn’t solving a problem or enabling people to achieve their goals, they simply won’t need to use it no matter how delightful it might be. People are willing to navigate a slow product or one with a poor user experience if it allows them to achieve their goal. That might work well until your competitor comes along with a few more UX boxes ticked than you.
There are many reasons to include UX in your product creation process, but the most important to consider is how it benefits your bottom line. 70% of projects fail due to lack of user acceptance but including UX processes reduces the risk of building the wrong thing.
- UX reduces development time by helping to improve decision making and prioritising development tasks
- UX helps to identify and narrow down your target user to find your ideal client
- Prototyping results in more accurate estimates for built time and cost, reduced requests for clarification by the development team and reduced rework and bug fixes post-launch
- UX help lower costs associated with customer acquisition and support.
Source: Experience Dynamics.com.
Get in touch to find out more about how KANDR Digital can help your product team can benefit from integrating UX Design into your processes.