Finding a simple answer to the question, “What is UX?” on the internet can be surprisingly difficult. Considering UX’s purpose is to make tasks easier, isn’t that somewhat ironic? If you’re ready for a simple, straight-forward explanation with minimal jargon, you’ve come to the right place :
UX / User Experience:
User Experience is the experience a user has when interacting with a “system.”
The “system” is often a software product, but can also include a physical product, business process, and even your branding and marketing campaign.
UXD / User Experience Design:
User Experience Design is the process of managing a user’s experience with your system.
User Experience designers strive to make interactive systems more engaging, easy to use, and generally better at what they were designed to do.
System + ☺ + Utility = UX
A brief history of UX
How long has UX been around? One could argue that user centered design has been around longer than many people would believe. Judging by the look of this prehistoric hand ax…Possibly even before 1970.
Introducing the iAx. "It just works."
Way back in the 20th century, before the term UX came into fashion, marketers and filmmakers focused on creating highly emotional experiences for targeted audiences designed to generate specific business outcomes. Disney even coined names for such professionals that created user experiences: “Imagineers.”
The application of the term “user experience” as applied to software user interfaces and other business processes, is generally credited to Dr. Donald Norman, a cognitive science researcher and former Apple employee.
With the recent success of companies like Apple, who have historically focused on good UX, an increasing number of businesses looking for a competitive edge are taking an interest in UX design. (Cough…Microsoft…cough)
UX in Action
User Experience Design overlaps in some ways with disciplines including:
- Human Computer Interaction,
- Gestalt Psychology,
- Ergonomics,
- Communication Design,
- Marketing,
- User Centered Design,
- Usability Testing,
- Information Architecture,
- Product Design and
- Human Computer Interaction.
So what is UX in practice? Depending on your intended business outcomes, user experience design decisions can vary greatly. So UX designers use tools like personas, user journeys, and task based design to help refine and focus their design decisions.
While a description of these processes is outside the scope of this article, the overall goal of the processes is to align your technology with utility and emotion, in order to increase value for the user.
System + ☺ + Utility = UX
How Can UX Help You?
There is increasing evidence that the better a product’s UX, the more you can sell it for.
- Apple was able to sell computers for %40+ than the competition
- The original iPhone sold out at $600 per unit
- Starbucks can sell coffee for $5 per cup
- Dyson products sell briskly for 5 times as much as competing devices.
What is UX ?
So what is UX? In spite of all the technical “jarg-o,” the main takeaway at the end of the day is that from a business perspective, UX = Value
UX = Value