What is UX design?
The discipline of UX design deals with the design of user experiences. User experiences are abbreviated as UX (=User Experience).
What does UX mean?
User experience refers to all aspects of a user's experience when interacting with a product, service, system or company. Their perceptions, emotions and reactions before, during and after the interaction play a decisive role. What expectations do they have, how do they experience the interaction and how do they remember it. A UX designer analyzes these interactions and finds opportunities for improvement, including in the graphical user interface (see UI design).
What are the tasks of UX design?
The task of UX design is to create the best possible user experience. The proven method is the user-centered design process. In this process, users, their requirements and behaviors are discussed first. For this purpose, several personas (user profiles) are usually created for which the product or medium to be developed must later function.
After comparing user needs with company goals and technical feasibility, a concept for form and functionality is developed. Wireframes (a schematic page structure and interactive process flow) and a graphical user interface are then used to create a prototype that must meet the various usage scenarios. The prototype must then prove its suitability in terms of UX through user testing. Only then is the product or application released.
UX design is particularly important for apps and websites, but also for physical products. UX design takes a holistic view of the application or product.
Differentiation from graphic design
It should be emphasized that the term design in connection with UX is often misunderstood as visual aesthetics. However, design refers to the entirety of all processes that lead to a positive user experience for solving a specific problem. UX design therefore makes use of methods from psychology, among others. Visual design, screen design or GUI (graphical user interface) are sub-disciplines of UX design and are referred to as UI (user interface) design (link). Other disciplines are IA (Information Architecture) and IxD (Interaction Design).
UX design for websites
UX design for websites encompasses several factors that can influence the user experience:
- Web design: are the colors, typography, layout, etc. pleasant?
- Information architecture: Can I find everything I want to find? Will I end up in dead ends?
- Performance: Is the application fast enough for the user to want to use it?
- Mobile use: Can the application also be used on devices with small screens and is this satisfactory?
- Functions: Does the range of functions cover all requirements? Are the functions self-explanatory?
- Purpose: Does this application add value?
An example of an award-winning user-centered app development with intuitive and playful UI design can be found at https://dart.work/projekte/yoyo-smart-ergonomics
Further information:
https://de.ryte.com/wiki/User_Experience_Design
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