User experience like an Apple
I often think of UX and compare it to an apple.
An apple you can eat with bare hands, or if you want to eat it in a more special way you can have it on a plate after you sliced it.
An apple if you are young with strong teeth (younger generations) you can take large bites or smaller ones, with no need of slicing it.
If you are nevertheless an older generation, that started a bit late, with not so strong teeth you should definitely need to slice the apple.
In this article I approach in a personal way why UX has to be like an apple.
Table content:
- What is UX;
- The importance of UX;
- How to prioritize UX;
- What is the benefit;
- Conclusion.
What is UX?
UX stands for User Experience. It is the process design that creates products with the intention to provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. Meaningful in a way of importance and relevance as per the interests of the user. This involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability, and functionality. Briefly mentioning these are:
- branding according to Cambridge Dictionary stands for “the act of giving a company a particular design or symbol in order to advertise its products and services;”
- design is a visual look or a shape given to a certain object, in order to make it more attractive, make it more comfortable or to improve another characteristic, simply put web designing is the process of planning, conceptualizing, and arranging content online;
- usability refers to how easy a website is for visitors to interact with;
- functionality is the particularity to serve a purpose in a practical way.
The importance of UX.
To put it simply, UX is important because it tries to fulfill the user’s needs. It aims to provide positive experiences that keep users loyal to the product or brand. Additionally, a meaningful user experience allows you to define customer journeys on your website that are most conducive to business success.
How to prioritize UX.
To prioritize the UX as a concept we could say that is like coffee to a developer that drinks it if the need exists. Likewise, it depends on what you need to prioritize with the UX. I will break this into four small parts:
- overall aesthetics-colors: I’ve seen a website where browsing thru it, literally my eyes were hurting, not in a sarcastic-arrogant way of saying, but in a real sense. Colors to UX are important. And what follows is just my take. User loves to interact with the website, if the colors are too strong or too pale-ish then it will become difficult to see what you have to offer;
- overall arrangement: From my experience, I know that eyes are used to equals parts of the elements, so, when elements in my website are not arranged in an equal space it brings in a way a dislike ness. There are isolated cases where the design is on purpose created like that, but will be another article to write about UI;
- less intrusive: I assume that you bumped in a website where you had auto-play videos and having 30 tabs opened you didn’t know which is the one guilty for the annoying commercial, or the popups. Making the user experience less intrusive is one of the important keys that I am looking for when I am building a website;
- buttons, forms, and dead links: The other day I was searching for a piece of replacement to fix something in the kitchen, imagine the relief when I finally found it… but I was discouraged thinking that the info is outdated as I have to go back to the front page so that I could see the phone number as the button of “more info” was redirecting me to a dead link.
According to Nielsen Norman Group, “the first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother. Next comes simplicity and elegance that produce products that are a joy to own, a joy to use. True user experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want or providing checklist features. In order to achieve a high-quality user experience in a company’s offerings, there must be a seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design” you can read more on this here.
Benefits.
The experience we have in the 21 century is that technology advanced a lot and we all want to benefit from it, but at the same not wasting any precious time. The same thing applies when it comes when we explore websites or using mobile applications. So in the following, I will provide 1 benefit that you as a creator can get and 2 for the user.
- increases your revenue;
- helps the user understand your business/product and take long term action;
- the confidence which leads to loyalty;
Conclusion.
As a 40+ person or Gen X, I needed to understand and apply a good visual experience to all generations of the new technologies when building websites. I understood, that contrary to what I’ve believed, the majority of people don’t have advanced experience in using sophisticated web applications, websites, or apps generally. We, as developers, should always have in mind that bringing simple and intuitive ways of browsing will increase the user experience.
That is all for this article and I hope you find it useful.
Happy coding and keep changing lives with your experience.