How to Understand and Apply User Experience (UX) Design
User experience (UX) design is the process of creating products and services that provide meaningful and satisfying interactions for the users. UX design aims to make the products and services we use every day easy, efficient, and enjoyable. It can have a huge impact on the success of a business or brand. If you are interested in pursuing a career in UX design, you will need to learn a lot of skills and techniques. In this guide, we will give you a comprehensive introduction to UX design and show you how to get started in this dynamic field.
You can jump to any section of this guide by using the clickable menu:
- How to design for user experience (UX)
- What is the role of a UX designer?
- UX design disciplines: The quadrant model
- The value of UX design
- How to become a UX designer
- Final thoughts
UX design focuses on the elements that influence a user’s experience with a product or service, how these elements affect the user’s emotions, and how easy it is for the user to achieve their goals.
This could include anything from how a physical product fits in your hand, to how simple the checkout process is when shopping online. The objective of UX design is to create user-friendly, efficient, relevant, and enjoyable experiences for the user. UX designers use market research, product development, strategy, and design to create seamless user experiences for products, services, and processes.
They act as a bridge between the customer and the company, helping the company to better understand and meet their needs and expectations.
When discussing UX, you will often hear the term user interface (UI) design as well. However, it’s important to note that UX and UI are not the same thing.
User interface design is not equivalent to UX design. UI refers to the actual interface of a product, the visual design of the screens a user interacts with when using a mobile app, or the buttons they click when browsing a website.
UI design deals with all the visual and interactive elements of a product interface, covering everything from typography and color schemes to animations and navigational touch points (such as buttons and scrollbars). You can read more about the role of UI designers in our guide.
UX and UI work together, and the design of the product interface has a significant effect on the overall user experience. Learn more about the difference between UX and UI design in this guide.
UX design is everywhere: the layout of a supermarket, the ergonomics of a vehicle, and the usability of a mobile app.
UX designers aim to make everyday products, services and technology as user-friendly and accessible as possible. They use design thinking to balance the user’s needs with technical feasibility and business viability.
The following diagram shows the Design Thinking Process, adapted from the d.school. The Design Thinking Process can be divided into four different stages: inspiration, conceptualization, iteration, and exposition.
During the inspiration stage, the UX designer tries to understand and observe. To do this, they conduct thorough research and competitor analysis in order to fully comprehend the problem or challenge they are trying to solve. This involves interviewing those who are, or will be, directly engaged with the product.
The user experience designer then uses this feedback to identify the user’s goals, emotions, pain points, and behaviors. All of this information helps to create user personas. The next step is to think about what these personas want to achieve when using a particular product, and the journey they will take to do so. The designer considers information architecture and uses various techniques, such as card sorting, to map out user flows.
Once the user flows have been established, the designer knows what steps the user needs to take to complete their desired tasks. They will visually brainstorm solutions for each of these steps, creating wireframes and prototypes of what the final product might look like.
With prototypes in hand, the UX designer will then conduct usability tests to see how users interact with the product. This shows whether or not the user can complete their desired tasks or if changes need to be made.
UX designers not only come up with solutions to user problems; they also need to present their ideas and designs to key stakeholders as part of their day-to-day work.
This is just a general overview of the UX design process. In reality, tasks will vary depending on both the size and the specific needs of the company. Larger companies might employ a team of designers, each focusing on a specific aspect of the process, such as research or visual design.
In smaller companies and startups, it’s not uncommon for the UX designer to take on many different roles and handle the whole spectrum of tasks.
No matter what product or service they are designing or what stage of the process they are at, UX designers will ask themselves the following questions:
- Is the product usable? Is it logical, self-explanatory, and easy to use?
- Does the product or service solve an existing user problem?
- Is it accessible to different categories of users? You can read more about accessibility in design further on.
- Is the product or service desirable? Does it create a positive experience that the user would be happy to repeat?
UX designers use a number of different tools as they go about their work. At the research and inspiration stage, they will use survey and polling tools as well as video chat software to interview users and gather as much information as possible.
There are also specific programs for wireframing, prototyping, and usability testing, with Balsamiq, InVision, and UsabilityHub among the most popular in the industry.
In addition to design-specific programs, designers use communication and project management tools to keep track of their work at all times. You can learn more about UX design tools in our beginner’s guide.
As the tech industry grows, the field of UX design is becoming increasingly diverse. UX designers can work on a wide range of projects within various contexts. The following are just some applications for UX design.
- Website, app, and software design
- Voice design
- Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR)
- Service design
UX is a broad umbrella term that can be split into four main disciplines: Experience Strategy (ExS), Interaction Design (IxD), User Research (UR), and Information Architecture (IA).
UX design is not just about the end user; it also brings huge value to the business providing the product or service. Experience strategy is all about creating a holistic business strategy, incorporating both the customer’s needs and those of the company.
Interaction design looks at how the user interacts with a system, considering all interactive elements such as buttons, page transitions, and animations. Interaction designers seek to create intuitive designs that allow users to effortlessly complete core tasks and actions.
If you want to learn more about this discipline and how it relates to the other two main design areas, read our guide to UX, UI, and Interaction Design.
UX design is all about identifying a problem and designing the solution. This requires extensive research and feedback from existing or potential customers.
During the research phase, UX designers will launch surveys, conduct interviews, and usability testing, and create user personas in order to understand the end user’s needs and objectives. They gather both qualitative and quantitative data and use this to make good design decisions. Learn how to conduct user experience research in our article on it.
The short answer is that information architecture is the practice of organizing information and content in a clear and accessible way. This is essential in helping the user to navigate their way around a product. To determine the IA of any given product, information architects consider the relationship between different sets of content.
They also pay close attention to the language used and ensure that it is both persuasive and consistent. We’ve created an in-depth guide to Information Architecture if you want to learn more about it.
Within these four areas, there is a whole host of sub-disciplines. As you can see in the following graphic, user experience design is not just a matter of sketching and wireframing. It’s a multidisciplinary field, drawing upon elements of cognitive science and psychology, computer science, communication design, usability engineering and more.
Among the many UX myths and misconceptions is the wrong assumption that UX design is “just a trend.” But in reality, the value of UX design is immense, not only for the end user but also for the business or brand behind the user experience.
To understand the lasting value of UX design, it helps to explore its vast historical impact. There is evidence to suggest that, as early as the 5th century BC, Ancient Greek civilizations designed their tools and workplaces based on ergonomic principles.
Today, the definition of a UX designer’s role will vary depending on which industry or company you talk to. There’s a growing tendency for companies to hire for very specific roles, such as UX researcher or interaction designer, to cover all of the different aspects of user experience.
But one thing remains constant: From a user perspective, good UX
