What is User Experience?
When designing a site, you should pay attention to the fact that users who visit your site can gain a good user experience, which we will explain in detail below.
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8 minute(s) read
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Published on: Jan 22, 2021
Updated on: Dec 14, 2021
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User experience is a dynamic concept that is constantly changing over time due to the change of usage conditions and the expansion of the application field. Also, the user experience in using a service is different for each person; each user may gain dissimilar experiences according to his/her Different conditions and non-identical goals in using a service.
What is User-Experience?
UX stands for User-Experience, which means the experience of a user is using a service. It is actually something that sticks in users' minds after using a product or a service; Frederick Winslow Taylor was the first person who did research in the experience field. Simply put, after using any service you will definitely gain an experience, if you gain the good one, you may be enthusiastic about sharing that with your friends. For example, imagine a new application that you have installed on your mobile phone, and you enjoy using it; while meeting your friends, you keep complimenting the application, so they would also be interested in using it. Jesse James Garrett states the experience as evaluating product sufficiency from people's point of view in one of his books named "The Elements of User Experience."
Honeycomb:
To realize the way to keep the balance between the project goals and three factors, including context, the needs, and behavior of the user and content, three circle diagrams were used, which include all these needed factors. After a while, Peter Morville introduced the User Experience Honeycomb in order to give the opportunity of taking the most advantage of services to the users. Mutation from the three circles diagram to seven hexagons (Honeycomb) was a huge success. Peter believes that in order to achieve a valuable and meaningful user experience, the content must include seven characteristics. To make the honeycomb subject clear and not to leave any questions about each of its components, all of them are mentioned below.
Effective factors of Experience Honeycomb:
Useful:
Content must be useful to meet the needs of the user. In other words, they should try to make users satisfied as much as possible by using specialized knowledge as well as innovation in each section.
Usable:
The ease of service usage is still a necessity; even these days, all the aspects of a web design cannot establish a complete interaction between humans and computers. Briefly, usability is necessary but not enough.
Desirable:
Images and other visual elements should make the user enthusiastic; especially they should be able to evoke a positive feeling in the user.
Findable:
A web designer should design a website which is accessible and searchable.
Accessible:
Websites should have facilities that give a disabled person the opportunity of using them, like streets, shopping centers and etc., that have special facilities for disabled people.
Credible:
The site should be designed in a credible way that can be trusted by the user.
Valuable:
The website should be valuable to the site sponsors and improve user service satisfaction.
For all reasons mentioned above, honeycomb provides a great user experience.
What does a UX designer actually do?
A user experiences designer has to go through a long process to achieve success. He/She directly participate in the production process of a useful and applicable product for users. The task that user-experience-designers do is totally different and may vary from a project to another, but despite the variety in workload and type of experience designer activity, there are general functions that can be expected from a UX designer regardless of the project which he/she is working on.
user and market research:
An experienced designer must research the product in order to be able to realize the general standards and the features that the product must contain in order to make the users satisfied. He/She must definitely do researches that the most important topics that should be considered are the reason why they are using this product or service, the needs and goals that users intend to achieve by using it and etc. You may be wondering how an experience designer can receive this information; the answer is, by studying the interaction between users and released product or service and their feedback, interviewing users, Competitive Analysis, and Focus Groups can help us to access this information in the end, all the information obtained is examined and converted to quantitative and qualitative information.
Persona design:
Personas include archetypical characters which reflect the group of users that you have designed for; creating this kind of character is based on the patterns you identify from real users. Personas help you to realize users' needs.
Creating a scenario:
In creating a scenario, all the steps that the user is likely to take while dealing with a product are considered.
Information architecture:
Information architecture is a structural production for a website or product that allows users to realize where they are and the information they want in regard to their current location.
Wireframes design: Wireframes are used to display every important component of the final product; they are important guides to the way of professional development. One of the important points that an experienced designer should take into consideration at this stage is to use simple variables to display components; for example, cross rectangles can be used to display images.
Prototyping:
Prototypes are in between the wireframe design and the final execution of the product. The first feature of a prototype is that by using it, you are going to be able to find out how to react to a product, and it is better to use clickable prototypes; the second feature is that they can be fully used in user testing. Prototypes allow the user to take advantage of the product and give us an overview of the user interaction with the product. The important point is that the prototype is not 100% similar to the final product, but they are the same in terms of the final goal.
Product testing:
If a user-experience designer wants to know what the user is experiencing while using a service, he or she needs to test the product. Personal user tests are the ones which a website designer uses as a way to test a product so that he can notice the user-experience by observing the user's reaction and analyzing and examining his/her reactions while using the service, and if you were not satisfied with the answer, you could make changes in the website design.
Finally, it should be noted that the set of activities that should be done by a user-experience designer has no end; after launching a product or a service, they should always be up to date and learn the tools of updating regularly. As a result, they will own a high quality website, and the experience that user gets from using the website will be the best. The other point is that in huge companies, there is a specialized or professional person for each part of the activities of an experienced designer and the task is done as teamwork, for instance, one of them is Information architecture, and the other one is the researcher and etc., a user-experience designer can choose working in companies.
When is a great user-experience created?
To create a positive user experience, a positive user relationship must be established first; when the user establishes a good relationship with the service, he/she will eventually gain a good experience; we must take a point into consideration that if a user fixes at least one of his/her needs and high quality service can establish a good relationship with the product, and this is an important point that is considered by product designers.
Last word:
In the end, the user-experience is an impact that is created while using a service. All the efforts of service providers are to create a positive impact on the user and motivate him/her as much as possible to reuse the service and introduce it to others. If you want to be a user-experience designer you have to take all the points we mentioned above into consideration to create a great user experience, so you can be successful as soon as possible because if there is user satisfaction, you are on the way to success.
