The basics of user experience design

 

The user experience is how a person, the user, 

feels about interacting with 

or experiencing a product.

• A product is a good, service, or feature. 
  It might be a physical product, 
  like a video game controller 
  or a bag of potato chips, 
  or a technology product, like 
  an app, website, or smartwatch. 
  There are many things that can make 
  up a good user experience. 
  In this video, we'll highlight some of them.
• For a user to have a good experience, 
  the product needs to be useable, 
  equitable, enjoyable, and useful. 
  Let's break that down. 
  To begin, user experience is about improving 
  usability or making something easier to use. 
  This means that the design, 
  structure, and purpose of 
  the product are clear to everyone.

UX designers need to think about 

every person who uses the product. 

This might include 

people with disabilities, or people with 

very different life experiences from your own. 

For example, one user might find an app with a lot of text easy to use. 

On the other hand, a user with 

a visual impairment might want different features like sound.

Considering the unique needs of many different people is 

important work and thinking 

about equitable design is key. 

Being equitable means your designs are useful 

and marketable to people with diverse abilities and backgrounds. 

User experience is also 

about making things enjoyable to use, 

which creates a positive connection 

between the user and the product. 

UX designers foster that positive connection by taking 

a user's thoughts and feelings into account when making products.

Think about ordering takeout food online. 

When you search for a restaurant in Google or Yelp, 

you can see photos of dishes and 

read reviews from other people who have eaten there. 

This experience is enjoyable because you can 

make a more informed choice about what to order, 

leaving you feeling happier about the product. 

So, how do we figure out what makes a user happy with the product? 

That's where research comes in. 

To know how users feel, 

we have to collect evidence on how they're experiencing 

that product in real time and ask them about it, too. 

We'll discuss this in a lot more detail later. 

As humans, we want products that are useful, 

meaning they solve our problems.

• So now we know what it means for a user to have a good experience. 

  Why is it important to business? 
  When people like a product, 
  they use that product a lot, 
  and they recommended it to their friends. 
  And more people using the product 
  means better business for the company. 
  Plus, when users have a good experience with the product, 
  they're more likely to have a positive opinion of the company that made it. 
  A win-win for the user and the business.

Can you think of a product you loved so 

much that you shared it with a friend? 

If you did, that's 

a great example of user experience design in action.