Things To Know About UX Design Link
UX design is an amazing discipline, but it cannot, or will not, accomplish certain things.
UX DESIGN IS NOT ONE SIZE FITS ALL LINK
User experience design won’t work in every situation for every user because, as human beings, we are all different. What works for one person might have the opposite effect on another. The best we can do is design for specific experiences and promote certain behaviors, but we can’t manufacture, impose or predict the actual experience itself.
And just as we can’t design a user experience, we can’t replicate the user experience for one website exactly on another website. User experiences will be different between websites. a design must be tailored to the goals, values, production process and products of its website.
CAN’T BE DIRECTLY ASSESSED WITH TRADITIONAL METRICS LINK
You can’t determine the effectiveness of a user experience design based solely on statistics such as page views, bounce rates and conversion rates. We can make assumptions, and we can ask users for anecdotal evidence, but we can’t install an app (at least not yet) that automatically records user experience statistics directly.
NOT THE SAME THING AS USABILITY LINK
User experience and usability have become synonymous, but these two fields are clearly distinct. UX addresses how a user feels when using a system, while usability is about the user-friendliness and efficiency of the interface.
Usability is big part of the user experience and plays a major role in experiences that are effective and pleasant, but then human factors science, psychology, information architecture and user-centered design principles also play major roles.
Criticisms Of UX As A Profession Link
Not everyone sees the value of having a UX designer on the team. Arguments against hiring UX specialists revolve around the perceived associated costs, redundancy in skill set and fear of change.
YET ANOTHER THING TO WORRY ABOUT LINK
The traditional website production process, especially at small agencies and start-ups, whose resources aren’t as deep as they’d like, consists of one Web designer and one Web developer. The Web designer might be the one who develops the user experience, along with other tasks such as designing a wireframe and functional prototype, while the developer builds the production website as specified by the designer. A UX specialist only complicates this process.
TOO FAR REMOVED FROM THE PROCESS LINK
A few people in the business of building websites believe that UX designers are too far removed from the actual process. Ryan Carson, founder of Carsonified and a leading voice in the Web design industry, for example, has criticized UX professionals who aren’t “involved in the day-to-day process of designing, building, testing, marketing and updating a Web project.”
This view of the profession basically says that UX professionals with no background in the actual process of building websites can’t devise solutions as expertly as people who create the actual products.
However, many UX professionals do have a background in the build process; many were Web designers or developers who chose to specialize in this particular area of the production process.
ADDS EXPENSE LINK
Simple logic dictates that hiring a UX person costs money (unless they’re willing to work for free, and none are).
A counter-argument is that we should look at UX design as an investment. Although the benefits of UX are not as readily apparent as those of other parts of the website or application, it can lead to higher returns later on. For example, a simple improvement in the user experience design of a checkout process could increase revenue by millions of dollars.
RESULTS ARE NOT DIRECTLY MEASURABLE LINK
Evaluating the effectiveness and return on investment of a UX design using quantitative measures is difficult. This is because the field is subjective. UX deals with users’ emotions, and you can’t put a number on it the way you can with page views, loading speed or conversion.
Instead, we have to tease out the results indirectly by analyzing revenue levels, page views, before-and-after surveys of users and the like. However, saying that any positive effects are the result of a better user experience or aesthetics or some other factor, such as improved marketing or front-end performance optimization, would be inconclusive.
The difficulty is in trying to quantify effects that are subjective in nature. We have to rely on qualitative evidence.