User experience design (UX design, UXD, UED, or XD), upon which is the centralized requirements for "User Experience Design Research" (also known as UX Design Research), defines the experience a user would go through when interacting with a company, its services, and its products. User experience design is a user centered design approach because it considers the user's experience when using a product or platform. Research, data analysis, and test results drive design decisions in UX design rather than aesthetic preferences and opinions, for which is known as UX Design Research. Unlike user interface design, which focuses solely on the design of a computer interface, UX design encompasses all aspects of a user's perceived experience with a product or website, such as its usability, usefulness, desirability, brand perception, and overall performance. UX design is also an element of the customer experience (CX), and encompasses all design aspects and design stages that are around a customer's experience.
History User experience design is a conceptual design discipline rooted in human factors and ergonomics. This field since the late 1940s has focused on the interaction between human users, machines, and contextual environments to design systems that address the user's experience. User experience became a positive insight for designers in the early 1990s with the proliferation of workplace computers. Don Norman, a professor and researcher in design, usability, and cognitive science, coined the term "user experience", and brought it to a wider audience that is inside our modernized society.
I invented the term because I thought human interface and usability were too narrow. I wanted to cover all aspects of the person's experience with the system including industrial design graphics, the interface, the physical interaction and the manual. Since then the term has spread widely, so much so that it is starting to lose its meaning.
Elements
Research
User experience design draws from design approaches like human-computer interaction and user-centered design. It includes elements from similar disciplines like interaction design, visual design, information architecture, user research, and others. Another portion of the research is understanding the end-user and the purpose of the application. Though this might seem clear to the designer, stepping back and empathizing with the user will yield the best results. It helps to identify and prove or disprove assumptions, find commonalities across target audience members, and recognize their needs, goals, and mental models.
Visual design Visual design, also commonly known as graphic design, user interface design, communication design, and visual communication, represents the aesthetics or look and feel of the front end of any user interface. Graphic treatment of interface elements is often perceived as the visual design. The purpose of visual design is to use visual elements like colors, images, and symbols to convey a message to its audience. Fundamentals of Gestalt psychology and visual perception give a cognitive perspective on how to create effective visual communication.
Information architecture
Information architecture is the art and science of structuring and organizing the information in products and services to support usability and findability. In the context of information architecture, information is separate from both knowledge and data, and lies nebulously between them. It is information about objects. The objects can range from websites, to software applications, to images et al. It is also concerned with metadata, or data used to describe and represent content objects such as documents, people, process, and organizations. Information architecture also encompasses how the pages and navigation are structured.
Interaction design
Interaction design is an essential component of user experience (UX) design, that focuses on the interaction between users and products. The primary goal of interaction design is to create a product that produces an efficient and delightful end-user experience by enabling users to achieve their objectives in the best way possible. The growing emphasis on user-centered design and the strong focus on enhancing user experience have made interaction designers essential in shaping products that align with user expectations and adhere to the latest UI patterns and components. In the last few years, the role of interaction designer has shifted from being just focused on specifying UI components and communicating them to the engineers to a situation in which designers have more freedom to design contextual interfaces based on helping meet the user's needs. Therefore, User Experience Design evolved into a multidisciplinary design branch that involves multiple technical aspects from motion graphics design, animation. programming to even service design.
Usability
Usability is the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use. Usability is attached to all tools used by humans and is extended to both digital and non-digital devices. Thus, it is a subset of user experience but not wholly contained. The section of usability that intersects with user experience design is related to humans' ability to use a system or application. Good usability is essential to positive user experience but does not alone guarantee it.
Accessibility
Accessibility of a system describes its ease of reach, use, and understanding. In terms of user experience design, it can also be related to the overall comprehensibility of the information and features. It helps shorten the learning curve associated with the system. Accessibility in many contexts can be related to the ease of use for people with disabilities and comes under usability. In addition, accessible design is the concept of services, products, or facilities in which designers should accommodate and consider for the needs of people with disabilities. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) state that all content must adhere to the four main principles of POUR: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust.
WCAG compliance
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