The Basics of UX Design: 7 Factors Which Define User Experience

Although many people have heard the word "user experience," not everyone understands what it means. The field of user experience (UX) is rapidly expanding and revolutionizing. UX makes Google simple to use and how Facebook knows what article to recommend next to you. For this reason, the internet has progressed from Geocities homepages with blinking "Under Construction" signs to the sophisticated interfaces we use every day. UX designers and product managers, product designers, entrepreneurs, startups, and forward-thinking companies, practice user experience.

But, exactly, what does UX imply? Let's take a look at it in more detail.

To begin, you are a user if you have ever bought a product or benefited from a service. You are getting an experience when you communicate with a product, service, or company. In the end, most businesses want you to enjoy your experience with their product or service. To understand what makes a good experience, we must first identify what that means from the user's perspective.

User experience (UX) is concerned with understanding users, their needs, values, skills, and constraints. It also considers the group in charge of the project's business goals and objectives. UX best practices aim to improve the quality of a user's interaction with your product and any associated services and their perceptions of it.

According to Peter Morville, a pioneer in the UX field who has authored many best-selling books and advises many Fortune 500 companies on UX, seven factors define user experience:

• Useful
• Usable
• Findable
• Credible
• Desirable
• Accessible
• Valuable

1. Useful

Why would you want to put a product to market if it isn't helpful to anyone? It will be challenging to compete for attention in a market full of useful and purposeful goods if it has no purpose. It's worth noting that "useful" is a subjective term, and things can be considered "useful" if they provide non-functional benefits like entertainment or aesthetic appeal. In short, content should be original and should fulfill the user's requirements. 

2. Usable

Usability is concerned with allowing users to achieve their end goal with a product effectively and efficiently. For the time being, people only have two hands, so a computer game that requires three sets of control pads is unlikely to be useful. Products that are not usable may succeed, but they are less likely to do so.

3. Findable

The term "findable" refers to the notion that a product should be easy to locate, and in the case of digital and information products, the content inside them should be as well. You won't buy a product if you can't find it, and the same is true for all prospective users of that product. For example, if all products on shopping websites are placed randomly without categorization, you may feel frustrated to search for the required product.

4. Credible

Credibility refers to the user's ability to believe in the product you've got. Not only that it does do what it's supposed to do, but also that it'll lasts a fair amount of time and the information it comes with is correct and useful. It's virtually impossible to provide a positive user experience if the user believes the product creator is a liar with bad intentions – they'll go somewhere else instead.

5. Desirable

Branding, image, identity, aesthetics, and emotional design are all used to express desirability in design. The more desirable a product is, the more likely it is that the user who owns it will brag about it, causing other users to want it.

6. Accessible

Accessibility refers to delivering an experience that is accessible to people with a wide range of skills, including those who are disabled in some way, such as those with hearing loss, impaired vision, motion impairment, or learning disabilities. Companies often regard accessibility design as a waste of money because they believe people with disabilities make up a small percentage of the population. According to census data, at least 19 percent of people in the United States have a disability, which is likely higher in less developed countries.

7. Valuable

Finally, the product must provide value to the customer. It must provide value to both the company that makes it and the customer who owns or uses it. Any initial success of a product will almost certainly be undermined if it lacks value.

Designers should keep in mind that one of the most critical factors influencing buying decisions is the price.

The science behind the design is often referred to as "user experience." The rigorous processes that make up the UX process and provide human insights and complex data to support and validate product design decisions are referred to as "science." It's important to understand that, depending on the project goals and timeline, the UX process can be used as a path (from start to finish) or as a toolkit (select the tool you need). Humans are complicated creatures, and usability is intimately linked to psychology and behavior. Many of the digital product design habits are derived from things we used in our analog lives, such as buttons and sliders. As a result, even though there aren't the same physical or technical limitations, people come to expect things to behave a certain way.

UX designers

work with people to create simple to use (efficient) solutions and solve a real problems by learning about their habits and goals, defining needs and limitations, and aligning with existing behaviors (practical).

Designers don't prioritize business goals over people because the user experience is a human-centered process. To create an efficient and usable solution to a real problem, the best design solution should align both the business and customer goals. Understanding where an existing product or process can be improved and successfully communicating this to internal teams and external users through responsive design is also part of UX strategy. Design empathy, or translating user needs into actionable solutions, is at the heart of UX.

To summarize

Over the last few years, the meaning of UX has shifted from simply making goods to crafting perfect consumer journeys. For designers, the emphasis is now moving to a more holistic approach, in which empathizing with customer feelings is critical to creating an experience that intuitively meets all touchpoints of the customer's interaction with the product, and by extension, the brand. As a result, the notion of UX (User experience) comes into focus.