User Experience Design (UXD)

If you’re considering a career in UX design, you’ll be pleased to know that the demand for UX designers is on a continuous rise! As companies recognize how important great design is to the success of their product or service, UX designers are seen as a crucial part of any product team. Ultimately, if users have a great experience with a product, they’re more likely to continue using it. They might even recommend it to their friends and family!

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What is UX Design?

Let’s start by having an idea of who a user and user experience is. A user is a person who is trying to solve a problem and is looking for a product or service to help them solve it. User Experience (UX) is the journey that the user takes with that product or service.

User Experience Design (UXD) can simply be described as the process of creating products or services that provide meaningful experiences for users. Just as the name suggests User Experience, your goal is to keep the user at the center of every decision you make. As far as experience goes, users can have different experiences using different products or services ranging from a very good experience to a terrible one. For instance: ketchup came in a glass bottle. The user had to hit the bottom of the glass to make ketchup come out. Often, no ketchup or too much ketchup would come out of the bottle. Today, the ketchup bottle has been redesigned into a plastic squeezable bottle, which makes it easier to use and allows users to control how much ketchup comes out.

How to identify a good design?

As UX Designers, our primary goal is to consider the users and create a design that would leave the users fulfilled. For a user to have a good experience, the product needs to be usable, equitable, enjoyable, and useful. If a product is usable, it means the design and purpose of the product are clear and easy to use. If a product is equitable, it means it covers a range of cultural backgrounds, diversities or even abilities. If a product is enjoyable, it means the user has gotten some sense of satisfaction from the product. If a product is useful, it means it solves the user problem and the purpose of the product.

So as a UX Designer, you should empathize with users as your designs should be centered around them. You might be wondering; how to begin designing. Well, let’s get into it.

The User Design Process

The User Design Process can be categorized into 4 phases: Research, Design, Testing and Implementation.

The Research phase: Every design process begins with research and should be user-centered. This process is crucial as you need to understand what your users need, how they think, and how they behave. It helps you understand the user and the problem you are trying to solve.

The Design Phase: This is the phase where you gather findings from the research and make decisions based on the findings. You then use this information to make a design that meets the needs of the user.

The Testing Phase: After designs have been made, you test the designs on real users; this way, you get authentic feedback from those who might actually be using the product.

The Implementation Phase: This is the phase where you hand off your designs to the development team. It is important to involve the development team through the process as they are the ones who will bring your designs to life and turn them into functional products, after all!

In reality, the process is a cycle though we hope to create a perfect app for the users, we often come to realize that certain features are needed, or could have been used differently or not even needed at all, so the designs would require to re-iterations, testing, and implementation again.

Some skills useful in UX Design

Soft skills are a combination of personal attributes and social and communication skills.

-An important skill to have as a UX designer is communication! Whether written, verbal, or visual, UX designers need to be able to articulate their ideas clearly while also being an active and engaged listener.

-UX Designers should have empathy, this will allow you and anyone else you’re working with to make better design decisions, so it should be incorporated into your design process from the very beginning.

Hard Skills are the technical and functional skills required by a job. Unlike soft skills, they’re job-specific, and they’re usually measured by performance.

-User researching, can be the deciding factor between a good design and a poor one. As a designer having this skill grants you the ability to understand the users better and in so be able to design better to their needs.

-Another key component of the UX designer skillset: creating wireframes and prototypes. Wireframes and prototypes allow UX designers to quickly communicate and test their ideas, and can range from low-fidelity hand-drawn models to high-fidelity digital mockups. When applying for UX design roles, employers will want to see that you’ve mastered some of the most common wireframing and prototyping tools.

Putting Yourself Out There: UX Design Portfolio

A UX portfolio is a collection of your best UX project work.

The goal of your UX portfolio is to demonstrate your skills and abilities as a designer. It tells the story of who you are and what you do, how you do it, and the value you can bring to a company or client.

So get busy and start creating designs, that are more than aesthetics.

Thank you for reading through.

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