A Confused Term “User Experience Design”

Are you sure that you really understand What User Experience Design is?

I am sure many people don’t. This is the very reason of writing this article and coming series. I intend to clear some clouds on User Experience Design(UXD) and elements of UXD.

People in Industry are confused about User Experience Design, User Interface Design, User interaction Designer, Visual Designer, Navigation Design, Content Design, Graphic Design, etc.

Allow me to clear the most confusing term first “User Interface and User Experience”.

User Interface

User Interface Designer are the designers who knows the guidelines in detail for any given platform they have to work on and lay down the ideas given by the User Experience Designers in the form of Layouts, Wireframes or prototypes. They are NOT EQUAL to the User Experience Designer as profession. They are part of UXD Process.

Key skill required:

• Deep Understanding of Guidelines laid by the respective Platform Organizations. Example – Android, IOS, MAC, Windows, etc.
• Deep Understanding of specifications and measurements of their target browser and devices.

These key skills will enable them in making better interface design decisions.

User Experience

User Experience is the way broader subject. User Experience Design is about every minute steps involved in the lifecycle of service provided to the users. User Experience Designers are the guys who can work on any day to day product issues users face. They are basically problem analyzer and to an extent problem solver.

A UX Designer in terms of internet product building must understand – the product he is working on, the revenue model, the technicalities of development, the marketing model, the after sales service and THE TARGET USERS. After research on everything about business and the user. They should have the capability to analyze the problem and solve them for the best users interest.

Key skill required:

• Knowledge on methods of research.
• Ability to understand analytics.
• Ability to identify the problems.
• Ability to solve the problem in given scope. (Don’t expect every damn problem will be solved)
• Most important they should ask numerous questions about everything about the product and users. They actually have question mark on their forehead 😉

Also, You cannot achieve 100% user satisfaction, specially when the target audience is big. That is actually misleading. You should be targeting 80% – 90% users and try solving their pain points in usability.

For example – Myntra recently became “app only” by shutting down their website. Certainly they lost 10% – 15% users but that move got them more “focused users”. Well it is debatable topic whether the move is good or bad but it is an intentional business move. Read more about this here – http://goo.gl/zXbXu2

There are more design subjects (i.e Visual Design, Interaction Design, etc) which I will be explaining in continuation of this series. So, Stay tuned.

“Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”

Steve Jobs

Thanks for reading