What is UX Design?

What is UX Design? UX Design is all around us and is a huge factor in why we choose certain items over others. To understand UX Design let’s start with UX.

UX is the name given to user experience and it refers to the way we interact and use any product, app or website.

Think of a door handle – this has been designed so that it gives you the most efficient and intuitive way to open a door. It makes your experience of opening a door easy, It allows you to achieve what you want to achieve in the least complicated way. It removes problems for you. Someone at some point designed the door handle this way in order to make it simple and effective for us to use. And this leads us to answer the question:

What is UX Design?

UX Design is the process of creating and designing that door handle! It is all about ensuring that the door handle using experience is the best it can be.

UX Design is an essential part of creating digital products that are easy to use, easy to access, easy to navigate and easy to interact with.

It uses research and testing to design and create a website or app, as usable, enjoyable, and accessible. It is required to ensure that when you use a digital product it does what you need it to do in a simple and accessible way. It also is required to encourage users to complete specific actions that owners of digital products want – for example: sign up for a newsletter, add items to a cart, make an online purchase. Even clicking a link is the responsibility of UX Design to make it as easy and attractive as possible for the user.

UX Design is everywhere and these days when everyone spends so much time online, effective UX Design is much sought after in order to attract and retain customers /consumers / users of digital platforms.

We live in a world where people have a vast amount of choices and alternative products and platforms that provide a service – more often than not it is the most efficient, easy-to-use digital platforms that will attract and retain customers /consumers / users and as a result be more successful for businesses and brands.

UX Design is often broken down into stages

Plan
Research
Design
Test
Analyze

Each stage is carried out by the UX Design team before the product is ready to launch into the real world of users.

Great UX Design is all about making sure that the user doesn’t have to spend time and energy working out how to make something do what they want it to do. Ultimately, it is problem-solving! A great brand, business or product will always aim to provide a positive UX that will have the desired effect of keeping users loyal.