We’re fortunate enough to be working at an incredibly exciting time in our industry. Yes, the challenges are considerable, but the opportunities are equally transformational. It’s never been a more exciting time to work as a User Experience (UX) designer.

Great designers deliver wonderful, considered, and memorable user experiences. Doing that isn’t easy and — through this series of articles — I’ll provide a wealth of pointers to ensure you’re on the right track. In short, I’ll ensure we have all the bases covered.

When I first started working on the web right at the start (yes, I’m that old!), user experience wasn’t even something that was on the radar. Our primary focus was, “Just make it work.” The digital landscape has evolved rapidly, and ‘making it work’ is now commonplace. As a consequence, our role as designers has evolved to encompass delight — “Make it work. And make it delightful.” Delight is a skill, and we’ll explore its importance throughout this series.

Design has evolved rapidly over the last number of years and, as the field has matured, we have begun to see the emergence of what is ‘experience design’ as a focus. What is experience design exactly? This series of ten articles, which covers the breadth of the UX field, will build to encompass user experience design in the broadest sense. I’ll explore how UX has evolved and how it is changing as we accelerate into the 21st century.

In short, I’ll kick everything off and tell the story of where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going.

Apple iPhone, Apple Watch, Macbook Pro, speaker, iPhone
Apple’s products reveal the complexity designer’s need to consider. Image by Apple.

A human-centered approach

UX is an ever-changing field, and the discipline has evolved considerably over the last few decades. It can be a struggle at times to keep up as our deliverables have changed and evolved over time — desktop and mobile, mouse and touch, web and native, and the list goes on.

One aspect of UX remains consistent, however — users. Personally, I prefer the term “humans” to “users.” The former, “humans,” are complicated — living busy lives, eager for delight, yet, at times suffering from frustration. The latter, “users,” runs the risk of being a little too abstract and, as such, a little too easy to dismiss. Let’s design for humans!

Humans are people, and people have feelings. To design effective user experiences we need to factor in those feelings — designing for delight and alleviating frustration where humanly possible.

Of course, we need to design with functionality in mind, but equally, in our role as designers of experiences, we should include a focus on delight.

To build truly human-centered user experiences, we need to understand how humans work and that requires a degree of focus on psychology. Our remit as designers has broadened over the last few years, and we now need to understand not only the mechanics of how to build products and services but also why we build these products and services.

Consider two contrasting examples and I think we can understand a little more about how our role as designers has changed. I’m sure most of us have used online banking in our time and many of us will, no doubt, have experienced differing experiences using these services.

Recently I moved from my old bank (who shall remain nameless) to Monzo, a relatively new digital-first “challenger bank.” The experience was transformational. My old bank — a traditional bricks and mortar business — considered its mobile and web-based apps as add-ons, and it showed. The interfaces were complex, unintuitive, and downright frustrating. Monzo, on the other hand, had built a digital-first application. It was delightful; so much so, that I moved my banking to it.

When we consider the amounts of money — not to mention profit — that banks can make through everyday transactions, it becomes critical to shift towards a human-centered approach. It’s not just banks, either — all businesses can benefit from a human-centered mindset.

In an always-on, connected world the temptation to shift to competing products and services is always at our fingertips. If we don’t design for delight — putting experience design at the heart of our process — we run the risk of losing customers in what is often a cut-throat world.

Equally, if we position delight at the heart of what we create, we can ensure that our customers, humans, remain with us for the long haul. The bottom line? Invest in delight and the rewards will be indisputable.

Illustration of devices for mobile, desktop, and wrist
The landscape of devices is proliferating rapidly.

Building a UX primer

This series of articles will explore UX in the broadest context. I’ll be writing ten articles that collectively will act as a “UX Primer.” My goal is to help you as much as possible, collecting what I believe are timeless principles that will stand the test of time.

I’ll explore the entire process of designing great user experiences:

  • Starting by stressing the importance of a considered user research process that informs our design decisions.
  • Exploring the wealth of tools that we can use to design great user experiences, stressing the importance of a prototyping process that is fit for purpose.
  • Stressing the qualities, one needs to develop when pursuing a role as a UX leader, and that need to be considered when building a UX team.

Put simply, the user experience design process can be distilled down as follows:

Observation → Idea Generation → Prototyping → Testing

This is a cyclical process. The best work is often iterative, running through this loop multiple times to ensure that we test our assumptions and revisit our designs often.

Research is fundamental. To address our users’ needs we need to put ourselves in their shoes, we need to understand their goals and motivations, then design experiences that deliver these high-level goals. It’s important not only to ask those we design for about their needs, but it’s also important to observe. Often the most telling findings are the result of observation.

Prototyping is a process, which we need to consider at every step of the customer journey. I’ll explore the importance of using research findings to deliver both paper prototypes, visual designs, and, ultimately, high-fidelity prototypes, which we can build to communicate and test our ideas, before building finished products or services.

Finally, I believe it’s important to focus on the qualities one needs to develop in order to grow in this rapidly changing experience design industry. It’s an exciting time to be a designer, and I believe if we open our eyes to other industries’ approaches, we can improve what we do.

Google products
Google’s move into hardware results in even more devices to consider. Image by Google.

The ever-shifting context

We’re bombarded daily with messages — whether that’s in a desktop or mobile context. In this environment, it’s understandable that the people we design for can feel a sense of fatigue in the face of endless calls to action.

When our industry first came into existence, we designed websites, which were, more often than not, standalone experiences. Life was a great deal simpler. The launch of the iPhone a decade ago changed everything. Suddenly, we were designing for both desktop and mobile situations.

Technology has shifted once again as we witness an explosion of “connected products” that are starting to deliver on the promise on the “internet of things.” As designers, we now have a new set of challenges — to tie everything together and deliver seamless user experiences.

The good news is that we can learn a great deal by widening our frame of reference, learning from other disciplines that are a little more mature than our relatively new industry.

We can learn from the worlds of Industrial Design and Service Design, applying the lessons learned there to our own design industry. If you’re scaling up your knowledge (which I believe you should always be doing!), there’s never been a better time for you to open your eyes to disciplines beyond our own.

I firmly believe that the present (and the future) is multidisciplinary. To truly stand out as a designer, it’s important to have a deep understanding of your own discipline, but — equally, and importantly — to be able to communicate with others from related disciplines. The future will be dominated by what Tim Brown, CEO and president of IDEO, calls “T-Shaped” people. I’ll explore the importance of developing these qualities throughout this series.

Conclusion

The opportunities ahead are fantastic for designers working in this industry. It’s challenging, of course, to keep up with an ever-shifting digital landscape, but equally, it’s incredibly exciting.

Yes, the landscape is evolving fast, but it’s important to remember that fundamental design principles remain constant. I’m an optimist. Yes, the challenges ahead are daunting, but equally, I can think of no better time to be working as a designer.

Continue reading about UX in my next article, the Universal Principles of Experience Design.