What Is UX Design? - A Full Overview

Key Takeaways

Hello, welcome everyone. In this video, you're going to find out what UX design actually is and what it's like to really be a UX designer. Really? [Music] I'm D, a senior product designer here at AJSmart, and I've been working in product design and UX design for over 10 years. In this video, I'm going to actually look through on my computer and show you some real examples of good UX and bad UX, what UX design actually is and how it's defined, and then look at some specific things of what UX designers actually do every day. So, as you're watching this video, if you have any questions about UX design or what it is, pop them straight in the comments under this video. Okay, so first things first, I want to look at what UX design actually is. It's a really misunderstood field. So, I found this great image online that shows the experience of eating cereal. And you can see here in this image that you've got a product, an interface, and a user experience. You've got the whole experience of actually eating a bowl of breakfast cereal is what the user wants to do and does. They want to eat their bowl of cereal. There's lots of factors in that. the crunch of the cereal, the size of the bowl, the spoon, and if it holds enough stuff. That's the user experience. The other things that we can design make that experience better for the user. The important thing to know here is that the experience exists already for the user and our job as UX designers is to make that experience better. A lot of people confuse UX design as we're designing what the user's experience should be. That's not what UX design is. There's already an experience there and we can look at the behavior and the patterns and the habits of people to make their experience better. So, I've just given you a definition of what UX design actually is. There are lots of uh factors involved with UX design, but the three most important ones are on my screen again that as we're designing something, it needs to be useful, it needs to be usable, and it needs to be desirable. And if we nail all of those three things, then we've designed great user experience. An example that I've brought to show you live is these two coffee cups. They're both designed to fulfill a purpose, which is putting coffee in them. and drinking them. But one has good UX design and one has bad UX design. Do you know which one? I'm going to tell you. Um so if we think about usefulness, usability and desiraability, these cups, we can analyze these um these things in these two cups. So this one for example, it's uh useful. Yes, I can put coffee in here. It's a vessel. It will hold the coffee. This one too actually coffee will go inside. But if we look at this one and think about usability, I've got a double layer of glass with air in between. So it's actually insulating my hand from the coffee. So my hand stays cool and the coffee stays hot. That's really usable. It's super easy to use. This one on the other hand, when I'm holding it, it's kind of actually a little bit difficult to hold by this tiny handle. Like I can get two fingers in there, but actually then it's not that easy to hold. And then maybe I'll hold it like this because that's easier. But now my hand gets burned and hot from the coffee. So this one is not actually so usable. And then if we think about desiraability, if I see these two products on a supermarket shelf or in someone else's home, which one do I think I'm going to be more attracted to and say, "Ooh, I think I want to buy that one. Which one is sexier?" Definitely this one. Right. So if we think about usefulness, usability, and desiraability, this one nails all three. And all this one is good for is the functionality of holding coffee. and it's not actually that great to use. Look at all the products around you in the world and think about usefulness, usability, and desiraability and see which ones have great UX. At the core of user experience design, before you get to methods and tools and processes, the first thing you need to know is that it's about the user. A lot of companies, organizations, and products make the mistake of thinking from the business perspective first. Probably that happened with the designer of this cup thinking, "Okay, we need to make a small white cup that fits with another dinner set that we have and it has to fit on the saucer and it has to have this kind of brand and and style." And they weren't thinking of how the user was actually going to experience their product. So rather than thinking about what you want to design, think about what will make the user's experience better. So, let's look at some examples of bad UX design. If you search for bad UX design, you will find a flood of articles and posts and examples. Here are just a few. And this is we're not going to look in detail at each one of these things, but this is to illustrate the real cost and impact it can have on organizations who don't think about the users's experience first. So companies really losing lots and lots of money because of projects where they started from the business side and didn't uh think about users at all. This especially is a great example where a nuclear power plant actually had a meltdown because a really small uh part of their interface that could have been made a lot easier to use. It all came down to a light on a control panel and the light showed that something was off and when the light was off it showed that something was on and it was just really poorly designed. The designer themselves probably thought it was obvious but they didn't consider the people using that light and how what their experience would actually be. So even something very small that where you're not understanding what the user is experiencing can have a huge impact on the whole product that you're trying to create. So now we've seen the really big picture of what UX design actually is. Let's look a bit more detailed at what the process is and and what steps you actually take. So back to the screen again. If you would look up UX design process, you'll see some diagrams that look something like this. Usually with circles, I don't know why, but a lot with circles. And they always have these kind of steps. understanding, doing user research to understand more what the patterns and behaviors and needs of users actually are, sketching or ideulating, designing more, testing and validating, and then actually implementing and building a product. And you'll see lots and lots of similar types of um diagrams. But the important thing to note here is that even though a lot of these diagrams are linear, one step after the other, that's not actually how UX design happens. You might not start with uh doing a ton of user research. The project or the thing that you end up working on might start with a product that already exists and you need to tweak it or iterate it a little bit or you already have a lot of information about how users are using your product. you might find that you're actually starting from testing something and then going back into iterating designs. So rather than this linear process, you'll also see a lot of diagrams that are breaking away from that linear flow and making more kind of circular diagrams showing all the facets and all the different methods you can use. And you might in fact use them in lots of different orders. There's this great one here that has the linear steps, but shows that you actually can move around and jump back and forth between each one. What they all have in common is four basic key steps. Understanding, ideating, testing, and crafting. And there's no particular order that those can go in, but those are the really foundational elements of UX design. So, maybe you're wondering, what would I actually be doing every day in a job if I was a UX designer? I've had many different jobs over the 10 plus years that I've been in the UX design field. And you might find yourself actually doing a lot of different types of things. You might be creating wireframes to mock up how a user experience actually looks in a web interface or in a mobile app, something digital. Wireframes can look like this where you're really sketching out how something would flow for a user, what things should be on the screen, what they should click on to make it really simple and easy for them to know what to do at each step. You might find yourself doing deep user research where you actually uh observing users in their natural environment. Um, ethnographic research uh where you really go and immerse yourself in the field. I've been in projects where I've gone to airports and actually watched and asked questions of people traveling through airports. Um, I've had a project working on inside a car and understanding how people use the digital environment inside their car and actually going for drives with people and taking photos of how they're behaving and asking them questions. You might find yourself working a lot with developers and technical people and acting as a translator, helping to craft that experience, knowing what the users perspective is and what their needs are and what the technology can actually do. Another common thing for a UX designer to do is testing. Once you've actually got some ideas or concepts created, actually putting them in the hands of people and seeing how they react and how they respond and asking them questions to really try and validate your ideas and check that they're actually going to work before you go into a long process of designing them. There's two more things that you probably wouldn't guess would be a big part of being a UX designer. And these are some things that people don't know about before they get into the field and then they're surprised when it's a big part of their job. The first one is presenting and documenting and really pitching and showcasing your work. That might be you've just done a lot of user research and you need to present to uh management or the design team what your findings are and what direction you think the design should go in. Or it might be concepts that you've created and you need to present and show them to people or to other teams. So taking the work that you've done and being able to present and show your ideas to other people in a way that's really understandable is a huge part of being a UX designer. And lastly, being able to facilitate groups of people and run workshops to help others come together and collaborate and co-create and come to conclusions together is something that's really misunderstood and not seen as a big part of UX design, but it really is. So hopefully that's given you a good overview of what UX design actually is. I've given you the examples of good UX and bad UX with the coffee cups, the impact that bad UX design can actually have on organizations like the nuclear power plant example, and some examples of what a UX designer really does every day in their working life. Thanks for watching this video. If you have any questions that have come up during that about UX design or what a UX designer actually does, please put them in the comments below. If you enjoyed this video, hit like below and subscribe to our channel. We've got tons of weekly content that comes out and it's all really great. We've also got daily blogs on Instagram, a newsletter that you can subscribe to, and a great podcast that's all about product design called the Product Breakfast Club. Tons of things for you to do. So, thanks very much for watching and see you next time. Aie, can you clap? First and foremost, just once. Have you been wondering what UX design is? Oh, hi. Oh, hi. Wait. Oh, hi. In this video, we're going How do I start it for over 10 years? Actually, 11. Not funny. Over 10 years. Oh, that's great. 11. 11. That's 11. Okay, let's get you excited. Yeah. Excited. Excited. Excited. Excited. Woo! Woo! Okay. Your name is