UX design is all about your user’s experience. Many people refer to it as user-centric design, which then translates to information architecture, but the simplest approach to grasp UX design is to imagine yourself entirely removed from the picture and focused just on your users, the individuals who engage with your business. Now, UX design is both strategies and creativity, or to put it another way, it’s a compilation of science and art. It begins with a carefully designed strategy and ends with the conversion of that strategy into a design, resulting in user experience design.
UX design is technically defined as the practice of improving user experience by enhancing usability, accessibility, and comfort in interactions between users and products. So, once again, remove yourself from the equation. Forget about your brand, company, and bottom line for a second and consider, “How can we be of value and benefit to our users?” How can we improve our consumers’ pleasure by enhancing these three areas?”
So, how can we improve user satisfaction in these three areas of usability, accessibility, and delight, while allowing our users to interact with whatever we’re presenting to them? Let’s find out:
What is the Importance of UX Designs?
Now, the importance of UX design is recognized because without users, there is no brand, and conversion SEO, or profit is a long-gone case. There is no brand if there are no users if we become irrelevant to our consumers; therefore, a brand is only as effective as it remains relevant to its people. When people no longer consider your brand to be relevant, you will begin to die as a brand. So, if brand identity or brand strategy is something you’re really concerned about or something that’s essential to you, you should take a step back and concentrate on your users.
UX Design Thinking
Now, when we’re thinking about UX design, we shouldn’t focus on conversion, SEO, or profit. These are commonly referred to as brand-centric or, I suppose, self-centered modes of thinking. This is a big challenge because when businesses come to a designer they say, “Hey, I need you to design a landing page for us since our present landing page isn’t converting leads, or I need you to revamp our website for SEO because we’re not being discovered in rankings, or we need to improve sales, so can you rework our online business because we need profit?”
So, when a client or an organization comes to a designer with these three challenges, they’re saying, “Rather than having a user-centric style of thinking, thinking about how we can provide value to our consumers, I judge success by conversion, ranking, and profit.”
In other words, if your landing page isn’t converting, “What piece of information are you lacking that your clients, consumers, or users aren’t recognizing the value in your brand?” What piece of information, feature, or material would you be missing if you’re not easily available because search engines don’t think you’re important to your users? And how fulfilling is the experience for your users if you’re not making a profit?”
So, after you’ve totally removed yourself from the equation, stop worrying about conversion, SEO, and profit; instead, “I judge success on how much value we can offer to our users, how accessible we can be to our users, and how pleased we can make our customers.” Then these things are natural byproducts, and you’ll convert more, have higher ranks, and make more money.
Byproducts of UX Design
Brand relevance
Brand relevance is one of the outcomes and advantages of UX design, and as you begin to become relevant to your users again, this is how you establish brand loyalty.
SEO
SEO is a natural outcome of UX design, because, think about it, Google, Yahoo, and Bing are all search engine machines that are programmed with algorithms to mimic what they believe a human wants to interact with, and the more pleasurable the experience is for the user, the machine or algorithm measures it, and then gives you higher rankings based on the delight or pleasure that a user would experience with your website.
Higher conversion
Designing websites that are attention driven and focus on a user’s experience and engagement make up a better infrastructure for higher conversion. So, it is important to focus on the landing pages and fill them up with highly engaging content.
Ways of thinking
When considering diverse ways of thinking, two primary characteristics must be considered: brand-centric and user-centric parameters.
“Who are we as an organization?” is the question that brand-centric design considers. As a company, who are we? What makes us so special? “What makes people want to work with us?”
Now, these aren’t terrible questions to ask, but when it comes to UX design (user-centric design), the UX designer isn’t as focused on the brand, despite the fact that it is an important aspect. They’re primarily concerned with the user, therefore “Who are our users?” What are their passions, and how can we help them the most?” And, once again, the natural outcome of addressing these questions will be a better user experience, as well as a better bottom line for the company.
Conclusion
UX design is now mostly used in the digital realm. When you work with a UX designer, they often think about websites, landing pages, and mobile apps, but you may include user thinking or UX thinking into any of your applications. Again, remove yourself from the equation and consider, “How can I help my users?” How can I make their brand experience even more enjoyable for them?” Then you can apply that thinking not only to your website, landing pages, and mobile apps, but also to how you create your corporate video, sales presentations, brochures, and pretty much every other touchpoint you have with a user. The results will astound you.
In a nutshell, UX thinking or UX design is removing oneself from the equation and focusing exclusively on your consumers in order to improve or enhance pleasure through enhancing usability, accessibility, and comfort. You can use what I wrote like “eat the meat, spit out the bones” (i.e., use whatever works for you; my strategy works for me; it might not necessarily work for you), so I hope this helps you glean whatever would be useful for you, incorporate it into your business, and then tweak where necessary to make it more relevant to how you operate your business. But the ultimate truth is that if you don’t think about your users, your brand will die.
