User Experience Design: What does it mean?

Striving for positive user experience is a desirable goal, but when you ask what it actually means, the opinions differ quiet a lot. Fortunately other people did already try to come up with a definition as well. In this article I am going to reiterate the lessons learned working on large scale UI project for over a year.

 

A formal model

There are several way to look at the problem. I think the best way to explain user experience and the confusion it creates is by looking at the stakeholders and the lifecycle of a product.

First and foremost you have a user: The users needs are derived from the goals he/she wants accomplish using the product. Users needs are expressed in some form of functional specification. Discovering the needs and deriving the required feature set for a product happens in preparation to the actual implementation phase.

Implementing the features requires you to further decompose the work that needs to be done: You need to define how the user interacts with the functionality. You need to provide appropriate presentations of the information at hand.  And the product requires an appealing look & feel that assists the former two.

A more formal definition would probably refer to these terms instead: Interaction-, Information and Visual design.

Building user experience

Some of terms above directly imply skill-sets, but most of them don’t. I know the UX professionals out there will probably claim everything for themselves, but looking at their resumés shows that they have emerged from different careers as well: graphic designers, programmers, etc.

I think the heterogeneity of skills and people it requires to design a successful user experience is both beneficial to the overall outcome but the major source of confusion when people speak about UX. Graphic designers tends to borrow too many visual terms when explaining their point of view, whereas interactions designers might think too much along the lines of flashy navigation elements.

According to Jesse James Garrett we are looking at a layered approach: the Interaction- and Information Design build on the Functional Specifications. The Visual Design assists these two and does itself layer atop of the Information Design. Everything is baselined on the Users Needs.

(Image does lean on an explanation by Jesse James Garret)

Value proposition

Now while the above explanation helps to understand the elements of user   experience from a practitioners point view (people that build the solution) it provides a very formal approach to capturing the user needs.

Frank Guo describes a conceptual model that complements Garrets main elements quiet well. His model builds on four main questions:

• Does the product provide value to the user?
• Can the users tasks easily be accomplished?
• How hard is it to start using it?
• Do people like to use it?

He has reduced the formal description Garret is using to four key elements: Value, Usability, Adoptability and Desirability.

 

(Image does lean on an explanation by Frank Guo)

What I like about this approach, especially in conjunction with the formal, layered model, is that allows us to stay focused on the user needs, but to “prioritize UX efforts based on their business impact”.

Conclusion

Explanations of what constitutes user experience design still come in many flavors. To me the two approaches [1] outlined here have proven to be quiet valuable. The formal model is useful to categorize work within a company that is working on a product. It offers a clear structure that facilitates discussion around possible solutions.

But looking at the overall business value that’s associated with user experience design   (and maybe to explain the benefit to you manager) the second, user centric approach seems more reasonable.

 

[1] References

• http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/04/more-than-usability-the-four-elements-of-user-experience-part-i.php
• http://www.jjg.net/elements/