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User experience design (UXD, UED, or XD) is the process of enhancing user satisfaction with a product by improving the usability, accessibility, and desirability provided in the interaction with a product. User experience design encompasses traditional human–computer interaction (HCI) design, and extends it by addressing all aspects of a product or service as perceived by users. Experience design (XD) is the practice of designing products, processes, services, events, omnichannel journeys, and environments with a focus placed on the quality of the user experience and culturally relevant solutions.^[1] Experience design is not driven by a single design discipline. Instead, it requires a cross-discipline perspective that considers multiple aspects of the brand/business/environment/experience from product, packaging and retail environment to the clothing and attitude of employees. Experience design seeks to develop the experience of a product, service, or event along any or all of the following dimensions:^[2]

History

The field of user experience design is a conceptual design discipline and has its roots in human factors and ergonomics, a field that, since the late 1940s, has focused on the interaction between human users, machines, and the contextual environments to design systems that address the user's experience.^[3][4] With the proliferation of workplace computers in the early 1990s, user experience started to become a concern for designers. Donald Norman, a professor and researcher in design, usability, and cognitive science, coined the term "user experience", and brought it to a wider audience.^[5][6]

I invented the term because I thought human interface and usability were too narrow. I wanted to cover all aspects of the person's experience with the system including industrial design graphics, the interface, the physical interaction and the manual. Since then the term has spread widely, so much so that it is starting to lose its meaning.

— Donald Norman^[7]

There is a debate occurring in the experience design community regarding its focus, provoked in part by design scholar and practitioner, Don Norman. Norman claims that when designers describe people only as customers, consumers, and users, designers risk diminishing their ability to do good design.^[8]

Elements

User experience design draws from design approaches like human-computer interaction and user-centered design, and includes elements from similar disciplines like interaction design, visual design, information architecture, user research, and others.

Visual design

Visual design, also commonly known as graphic design, user interface design, communication design, and visual communication, represents the aesthetics or look-and-feel of the front end of any user interface. Graphic treatment of interface elements is often perceived as the visual design. The purpose of visual design is to use visual elements like colors, images, and symbols to convey a message to its audience. Fundamentals of Gestalt psychology and visual perception give a cognitive perspective on how to create effective visual communication.^[9]

Information architecture

Information architecture is the art and science of structuring and organizing the information in products and services to support usability and findability.^{[citation needed]}

In the context of information architecture, information is separate from both knowledge and data, and lies nebulously between them. It is information about objects.^[10] The objects can range from websites, to software applications, to images et al. It is also concerned with metadata: terms used to describe and represent content objects such as documents, people, process, and organizations. Information Architect also encompasses how the pages and navigation are structured.^{[citation needed]}

Interaction design

It is well recognized that component of interaction design is an essential part of user experience (UX) design, centering on the interaction between users and products ^[11]. The goal of interaction design is to create a product that produces an efficient and delightful end-user experience by enabling users to achieve their objectives in the best way possible^[12][13]

The current high emphasis on user-centered design and the strong focus on enhancing user experience have made interaction designers critical in conceptualizing products to match user expectations and meet the standards of the latest UI patterns and components.^[14]

In the last few years, the role of interaction designer has shifted from being just focused on specifying UI components and communicating them to the engineers to a situation now where designers have more freedom to design contextual interfaces which are based on helping meet the user needs.^[15] Therefore, User Experience Design evolved into a multidisciplinary design branch that involves multiple technical aspects from motion graphics design and animation to programming.

Usability

Usability is the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.^[16]

Usability is attached with all tools used by humans and is extended to both digital and non-digital devices. Thus, it is a subset of user experience but not wholly contained. The section of usability that intersects with user experience design is related to humans' ability to use a system or application. Good usability is essential to a positive user experience but does not alone guarantee it.^[17]

Accessibility

Accessibility of a system describes its ease of reach, use and understanding. In terms of user experience design, it can also be related to the overall comprehensibility of the information and features. It helps shorten the learning curve associated with the system. Accessibility in many contexts can be related to the ease of use for people with disabilities and comes under usability.^[18]

WCAG compliance

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible. This makes web content more usable to users in general.^[19] Making content more usable and readily accessible to all types of users enhances a user's overall user experience.

Human–computer interaction

Human–computer interaction is concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them.^[20]

Getting ready to design

After research, the designer uses modeling of the users and their environments. User modeling or personas are composite archetypes based on behavior patterns uncovered during research. Personas provide designers a precise way of thinking and communicating about how groups of users behave, how they think, what they want to accomplish and why.^[21] Once created, personas help the designer to understand the users' goals in specific contexts, which is particularly useful during ideation and for validating design concepts. Other types of models include work flow models, artifact models, and physical models.

Design

When the designer has a firm grasp on the user's needs and goals, they begin to sketch out the interaction framework (also known as wireframes). This stage defines the high-level structure of screen layouts, as well as the product's flow, behavior, and organization. There are many kinds of materials that can be involved during this iterative phase, from whiteboards to paper prototypes. As the interaction framework establishes an overall structure for product behavior, a parallel process focused on the visual and industrial designs. The visual design framework defines the experience attributes, visual language, and the visual style.^[22]

Once a solid and stable framework is established, wireframes are translated from sketched storyboards to full-resolution screens that depict the user interface at the pixel level. At this point, it's critical for the programming team to collaborate closely with the designer. Their input is necessary to creating a finished design that can and will be built while remaining true to the concept.^{[citation needed]}

Test and iterate

Usability testing is carried out by giving users various tasks to perform on the prototypes. Any issues or problems faced by the users are collected as field notes and these notes are used to make changes in the design and reiterate the testing phase.^[23] Usability testing is, at its core, a means to "evaluate, not create".^[24]

UX Deliverables

UX designers' main goal is to solve the end-users' problems, and thus the ability to communicate the design to stakeholders and developers is critical to the ultimate success of the design.^{[citation needed]} Regarding UX specification documents, these requirements depend on the client or the organization involved in designing a product. The four major deliverables are: a title page, an introduction to the feature, wireframes, and a version history.^[25] Depending on the type of project, the specification documents can also include flow models, cultural models, personas, user stories, scenarios and any prior user research.^{[citation needed]} Documenting design decisions, in the form of annotated wireframes, gives the developer the necessary information they may need to successfully code the project.^{[citation needed]}

Follow-up to project launch

Requires:

• User testing/usability testing


• A/B testing


• Additional wireframing as a result of test results and fine-tuning^[26]
  

Graphic designers

Graphic designers focus on the aesthetic appeal of the design. Information is communicated to the users through text and images. Much importance is given to how the text and images look and attract the users. Graphic designers have to make stylistic choices about things like font color, font type, and image locations. Graphic designers focus on grabbing the user's attention with the way the design looks. Graphic designers create visual concepts, using computer software or by hand, to communicate ideas that inspire, inform, and captivate consumers. They develop the overall layout and production design for various applications such as advertisements, brochures, magazines, and corporate reports.^[27]

Visual designers

The visual designer (VisD) ensures that the visual representation of the design effectively communicates the data and hints at the expected behavior of the product. At the same time, the visual designer is responsible for conveying the brand ideals in the product and for creating a positive first impression; this responsibility is shared with the industrial designer if the product involves hardware. In essence, a visual designer must aim for maximum usability combined with maximum desirability.^[28]

Interaction designers

Interaction designers (IxD) are responsible for understanding and specifying how the product should behave. This work overlaps with the work of both visual and industrial designers in a couple of important ways. When designing physical products, interaction designers must work with industrial designers early on to specify the requirements for physical inputs and to understand the behavioral impacts of the mechanisms behind them. Interaction designers cross paths with visual designers throughout the project. Visual designers guide the discussions of the brand and emotive aspects of the experience, Interaction designers communicate the priority of information, flow, and functionality in the interface.^[29]

Testing the design

Usability testing is the most common method used by designers to test their designs. The basic idea behind conducting a usability test is to check whether the design of a product or brand works well with the target users. While carrying out usability testing, two things are being tested for: Whether the design of the product is successful and if it is not successful, how can it be improved. While designers are testing, they are testing the design and not the user. Also, every design is evolving.^{[citation needed]} The designers carry out usability testing at every stage of the design process.^[30]

Benefits

A great User Experience Design will ensure that the product, website, app or interface on offer is designed to make the lives of the users as simple as possible – which can lead to more sales and greater customer retention^[31].

See also

References

Further reading

• 
  Buxton, Bill. Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design. ISBN 9780123740373.
  


• 
  Cooper, Alan (1999). The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity. ISBN 9780672316494.
  


• 
  Cooper, Alan; Reimann, Robert; Cronin, David; Noessel, Christopher (2014). About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design (4th ed.). ISBN 9781118766576.
  


• 
  Curedale, Robert (2018). Mapping Methods 2: Step-by-step guide Experience Maps Journey Maps Service Blueprints Affinity Diagrams Empathy Maps Business Model Canvas (2nd ed.). ISBN 978-1940805375.
  


• 
  Moggridge, Bill. Designing Interactions. ISBN 9780262134743.
  


• 
  Moser, Christian. User Experience Design: Mit erlebniszentrierter Softwareentwicklung zu Produkten, die begeistern. ISBN 9783642133626.
  


• 
  Norman, Donald. The Design of Everyday Things. ISBN 9780465067107.
  


• 
  Tidwell, Jenifer. Designing Interfaces. ISBN 9781449379704.