What is UI Design?

What-is-UI-Design

What is UI (user interface) Design? is difficult to answer because of its large variety of misinterpretations. While User Experience is a mishmash of tasks focused on optimisation of a product for effective and enjoyable use; User Interface Design is its compliment, i.e. the look and feel, or the presentation and interactivity of the product. But it is easily and often confused by the industries that use UI Designers. To some extent that different job roles will often refer to the profession as something completely different (i.e.UX).

You will find perception of the profession that is alike to graphic design. Sometimes spreading to branding, and even front end web development as well.

If you look at an expert explanation of User Interface Design, you will mostly find descriptions that are in part the same to User Experience. Even mirroring the same structural techniques.

So what is the right answer? The conflicting answer is: Neither of them.

But both are close in minor ways. Like User Experience Design, User Interface Design is a all-round and challenging role. It is responsible for the transportation of a product’s research, development, content and layout into an appealing, guiding and responsive experience for a user. It is also a field that dissimilar to UX, is a strictly digital profession, as per how the dictionary defines it (as per below):

user interface
noun Computing
the means by which the user and a computer system interact, in particular the use of input devices and software.

Whether you choose UX design or UI design, it is important to understand how the other one works, and how to work with both of them.

Below are some of a UI designer’s key responsibilities:

Look and Feel:

  • Customer Analysis
  • Branding and Graphic Design
  • Design Research
  • Branding and Graphic Design
  • User Guides/Storyline

Interactivity and Responsiveness:

  • Interactivity and Animation
  • Implementation with Developer
  • UI Prototyping
  • Adaptation to All Device Screen Sizes

As a interactive and visual designer, the UI role is important to any digital interface and for customers a key element to trusting a brand. While the brand is never the responsibility of the UI designer, its translation to the product is.

A responsibility for “implementation” of the design with a developer is generally how UI have worked in the past, you should be aware that the lines are dim, as the term “Web Designer” (in short is a UI designer who can code) is being replaced by expertise of User Interface Designers. While UX has no need for coding, UI is a role that as time will  progress, will rely on it as part of building interactive interfaces.

September 11, 2017 Web design Comments Off on What is UI Design?

A quick guide in becoming a UX designer

UX-Designer

It seems more and more these days in a competitive market the importance of a UX designer is becoming more important and essential if any business wants to succeed.

The role of a UX designer is to be the voice of the user. The goal of UX designer is to make the experience of using the product or a service as easy as possible.

To achieve this UX designers must put themselves in the shoes of the customer, analyse the process they go through, and then come up with solutions to make the process easier by testing them with the end user.

Here is a a Four step process

UX design really is a simple process:

  1. Research  —  2. Analyse — 3. Design — 4. Test

Each step can be expanded on or each step can be bypassed depending on what the project is.

Step 1. Research

Start with the business

First, you need to understand what the business needs are, tip: Business needs rarely ever align with their user needs, and that’s good because our role is to fix that.

Start by asking key stakeholders what they want to achieve, and what metrics they are trying to target.

Hold a workshop and gather all the information you can.

Talk to the real users

First find out who the users are then divide them into groups.

Organise interviews with some people from each of the groups. Take notes and possibly bring along the designer who will be working on the project  so they get first hand experience of the users needs. Make it count, everything you say and do from now on will be based on this research.

Step 2. Analyse

This is where you take all your interviews and convert it into something you can use. Usually you would make personas or journey maps, but any kind of output can be used depending on what you need.

Personas

Take all your interviews and mark out the trends.

Take each question and mark it on a slider, happy on one end, and  frustrated users on the other.

You will see some trends on the sliders, the same users will possibly be clumped together. You can then create personas for all the users in that trend and write a story based on real stories.

Personas can be visual, you can use infographics to summarise their behaviour, wants and motivations.

A UX designer may often use personas to make lists of things they need, we call these ‘jobs to be completed’. The job to be complete is what we need to simplify to help the user achieve their goal.

Journey maps

Map out the whole journey the user will take, from before they even get to your site to when they leave the site and possibly someday return.

Take the user interviews and map them onto a timeline, use genuine quotes to show if they are happy or frustrated with the experience.

A bad experience can be named ‘pain points’. Your role is to fix those pain points.

For each pain point you come up with a small brief for what you need to do, we can call these ‘how might we’ and write down what we need to do in order to improve the experience for the user.

A journey map can be printed on and placed on a wall, and are useful for the entire group to see what areas the experience need improving.

Step 3. Design

Pull out some pens and paper, and start sketching experiences that would exceed the users needs. This is the most fun part of a UX design and ideas are best shared between people.

The quality of the sketches don’t matter. You need to do some sort of mapping, like a sitemap, storyboards, user flows etc. the idea is to show other people on the teams the experience users will have in a way they will understand.

Spend time talking through your work with anyone joining the project as it can be very hard to understand any outputs from a UX designer, keep it simple or else no one will use any of the research you gathered.

Step 4. Test

Last step, make a prototype of your answers.

Designer or develop the prototype to be as close to the real thing.

Test the prototype with users, this is called ‘user testing’. Use your personas to help you test if your new experience is better and what still needs fixing.

If you can, use the same users from the user research you did and conduct your testing, this will give you good feedback on your new solution.

Then make it real, and test it again when it’s live.

In Summary

The reason a UX designer can have so much say in a business and get paid really well is because they are responsible for connecting the users needs with the business needs.

UX design is still relatively new, there is no right or wrong way of doing things.

Keep sharp, most of what a UX designer does is pick the right processes for the right job.

August 1, 2017 Uncategorized, UX Comments Off on A quick guide in becoming a UX designer

The value of UX Design

the-value-of-ux

Any one can develop a website these days, what with platforms such as Squarespace and WIX it’s making it easier for any one even if they have no web experience to produce a website. However, whether that website works properly on mobile devices, looks professional is a different story. Yes, the internet is making it more harder for any one in their trade to compete with their online competition, but no matter how much cheaper your customers are getting their graphic or web design work done on an online site, there is no value like an designer who is experienced in their craft. Sure, making a WIX site is easy, but what happens when you run into a technical issue? Of course sites like WIX and Squarespace have online support, but how long do they take to get back to you? And they can’t always help.

More and more know because how easy it is to-do-it-yourself the importance of user experience and designing it correctly has been gaining more attention from businesses who aim to keep their customers happy.

In the past years many businesses have noticed the importance of UX design and are investing more and more into its research and development.

Whether it’s physical or digital, a product is should arouse both an intellectual and emotional response in its consumer based not only on the way it works but also how it feels and looks. Whether that experience is going to be a good one or a negative one is going to make a very big effect on your sales, and this is why UX design is so important.

Why does “X” mark the spot

UX is about two things only – the User and the Experience. It provides your user a positive experience, and they will reward you with their trust and their business. Businesses with highly effective UX have increased their revenue by 35%. This clearly shows the ROI of UX design.

If your product leaves your’e customer with a foul taste in their mouth, they will most likely take their business somewhere else. 95% of users reported that they stopped using an app due to poor performance, and 85% deleted an app as a result of having problems with it’s design or functionality. Studies show that 85% of online users believe that an remarkable customer experience is worth paying extra money for. With these figures like this, it is not difficult to understand why User Experience focused companies like Google, Apple, Adobe and Amazon are leaders in their fields.

Yes having a great product is important and necessary, but in today’s market it often is not enough to keep you ahead of the competition.

This is why UX design has proved to be a game changer. A good UX has been proven to earn the user interest. 50% of users say that arriving on a site that isn’t working well on a mobile is seen as a sign that the business does not care, and 55% said that a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with that same business in the future.

This principle extends beyond just mobiles; 40% of users will leave a web page if it takes more than three seconds to load, while 80% will then search for another site to complete their task.

Designing an experience

What about design? How important is the actual aesthetic property of your website when it comes to UX?

An experiment was conducted that tested relationships between a users perceptions of a computerised system’s beauty and then its usability. The outcome showed that the role the aesthetics play in design is a definitely a major one, and should be kept in mind at all times.

It seems safe to say that the business value of UX design is so important these days, you cant afford to ignore the importance of a highly skilled team of UX designers who use their expertise to craft the experience your users are going to transform and enjoy while pinned with your product.

With design being the focus on user experience, a business is forced to create for their customer. Then a relationship is formed and it grows, it bonds the customer with the product.

July 6, 2017 UX Comments Off on The value of UX Design
Recent Posts
Categories