What Is UX Design?

What is UX design?

User experience design, or UX design, is the relationship between a product or service and its user. It considers every element which helps to form this experience, including how the product or service makes the user feel and how easy it is for a user to accomplish what they set out to do.

Overall, UX design’s goal is to create an efficient, relevant, and enjoyable experience for the user.

UX design disciplines

UX encompasses a multidisciplinary field, but can be divided into four main disciplines:

• Experience strategy (ExS): this involves devising a holistic business strategy that incorporates both the needs of the customer and the organisation.
• Interaction design (IxD): this looks at how a user interacts with a system, considering all interactive elements (like buttons, page transitions, and animations). Interaction designers create intuitive designs that allow users to complete tasks and actions quickly and with little effort.
• User research (UR): identifying a problem and designing a solution requires extensive research and feedback from new or existing users. The research phase will involve conducting surveys and interviews and usability testing to understand the user’s needs and objectives. Both qualitative and quantitative data will be collected for use in making good design decisions.
• Information architecture (IA): this is the practice of organising information and content in a meaningful and accessible way, which helps a user navigate around the product. To determine the IA of a given product, information architects consider the relationship between different sets of content and pay attention to the language used to ensure it is convincing and consistent.

There are many subdisciplines that come from these four areas, drawing on elements of cognitive science and psychology, computer science, communication design, usability engineering and other areas.

What is a UX designer?

This is the individual responsible for ensuring a digital product is learnable and usable for the end user. A UX designer works from the beginning of product processes to ensure products are built taking into account users, their needs, and their pain points. They work with branding, navigation, content, and product functions to ensure all elements are brought together to create a result that’s seamless and enjoyable for customers.

However, those with the UX designer job title are responsible for more than just the product experience and the product lifecycle. They are also key individuals in the customer lifecycle. The decisions that are made by a UX designer help to influence whether or not a user is attracted to a product, can use it, and is willing to pay for it.

Why is UX design important for businesses?

Justifying the expense for UX design may be difficult for some organisations, but there are several factors which prove its importance for businesses:

• It helps to improve the reputation of your brand
• It helps end-users to be more efficient by letting them complete tasks faster
• It allows you to define the customer journeys on your product or service that are most conducive to business success
• It improves customer experience, helping to create more loyal customers
• It fosters conversions and ROI
• It can significantly reduce costs at a later date

The value of UX design

There are two ways to consider the overall value of UX design: the business perspective and the human perspective. From a business perspective, the value of UX design is its prioritisation of the user experience, resulting in happier customers who are more likely to remain loyal and continue to make purchases. Over time, this results in higher conversion rates and increased revenue, leading to a stronger and more competitive brand.

From a human perspective, the value of UX design comes in that it provides solutions for everyday problems. It also ensures that those solutions are enjoyable, user-friendly, accessible, and inclusive.

What is the difference between UI and UX design?

User interface (UI) design is different to UX design in that it focuses on human-computer interaction. This may be anything from desktop web pages to the usability of an app screen on a mobile phone. User interface designers, otherwise known as UI designers or interaction designers, focus solely on the interface of the product. This disregards the flow between interfaces and the user’s experience when going through the journey.

UI designers work closely with UX designers to conduct user research, measure usability, and constantly test designs for any stand-out successes to replicate or errors to be fixed.

UI designers will ordinarily have some understanding of front-end development and graphic design, focussing on visual assets. UX designers, on the other hand, will focus on all aspects of the user experience.

UX designer skills

There are a range of hard and soft skills required to be a UX designer:

Hard Skills

• UX research
• Wireframing and prototyping
• Visual communication
• Interactive design
• Design thinking
• User flows
• Interaction design
• Testing designs
• Decision mapping
• Information architecture
• Mood boarding
• Visual design
• UI design
• Coding

Soft Skills

• A high level of concentration
• The ability to adapt and be flexible within an ever-changing industry
• Collaboration skills
• Curiosity
• Empathy
• Excellent problem-solving skills
• Verbal and written communication skills
• Visual awareness

Customer retention

UX designers can provide unique input to aid with app and product design. They often have specific data sets that can identify areas that need improvement to retain customers by reducing these points of friction.

Lead generation

UX designers contribute to lead generation with qualitative input and guidance, or even the actual design of a lead gen flow. Lead generation methods that should involve a UX designer include:

• Blogs, guides, and case studies
• Email flows
• Landing pages
• User research
• Website design

Internal processes and systems

UX designers can also help develop strategies that keep employees happy and allow an organisation to retain staff. Using their particular mix of hard and soft skills, UX designers can offer support, guidance, and technical design solutions for building new processes, systems, and communication methods.

Tools for UX designers

The tools available for UX designers are constantly evolving, in order to ensure work can be carried out as quickly, efficiently, and accurately as possible. A few of the most well-known tools for this include:

• Figma
• Adobe XD
• Maze
• Sketch
• InVision
• Webflow

Becoming a UX designer

If you are seeking opportunities as a UX designer, the following steps can assist in the process:

• Having or obtaining a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in:
  • Computer science
  • Digital design
  • Digital media
  • Graphic design
  • Media technology
  • Web design
• Taking a UX design course at an institute of education
• Taking on an internship or UX projects
• Building a design portfolio
• Build your UX network by following popular user experience designers, UX leaders, and leading brands on social media

It is also often recommended that an individual builds their social presence, showcases their work, and shares articles on a range of different platforms. Twitter is particularly popular for this, and there are many design communities available to join on Slack.

The future of UX design

Experts have defined the future of UX design as being “specialised”. As the expertise and capacity of UX designers increases at all levels, it will be more important than ever for designers to have a particular speciality or focused discipline. This is already being reflected in many UX design jobs and listings, and many companies are asking for individuals skilled in multiple disciplines.

Altogether, this makes the position of UX designer more competitive to obtain. Those looking for positions within UX design will therefore need to ensure their skill set is diverse and up-to-date with the latest trends and technologies. Expanding soft skills such as team leadership is also recommended to ensure you remain an attractive candidate at all levels.

Send in your CV to start applying

If you are a talented individual and interested in finding your next opportunity in a UX design career, send us your CV today. Our Technology Division is strategically positioned to work cross-sector within a range of Technological sectors and disciplines. This means we can match you with the Contract or Permanent position you want, one that will allow you to grow in your profession as you have planned.