Ultimate Learning Guide To User Experience Design

In the broadest sense, UX can be defined as the overall experience you have when you are using or interacting with something – and that ‘something’ could literally be almost anything in the world! For many people, user experience comes to mind in the context of ‘technical’ devices like smart phones, computers, software, and websites.

“You cannot not communicate. Every behaviour is a kind of communication. Because behaviour does not have a counterpart (there is no anti-behaviour), it is not possible not to communicate.” — Paul Watzlawick’s First Axiom of Communication.

This is the first rule of UX.

UX, or user experience, focuses on the end user’s overall experience, including their perceptions, emotions, and responses to a company’s product, system, or service. UX is defined by criteria including: ease of use, accessibility, and convenience. It’s no secret that customers today want quick and simple ways to meet their needs and solve their pain points. That’s why UX matters so much.

A well-thought-out UX design process, spearheaded by a seasoned UX professional, will help you strike the right balance and keep users coming back for more. This multidisciplinary process involves a fair amount of user research, ranging from basic analytics and heatmaps to elaborate enterprise research efforts that involve contextual observation, diary studies, surveys, interviews, and focus groups.

“User experience is the net sum of every interaction a person has with a company, be it marketing collateral, a customer service call, or the product or service itself. It is affected by the company’s vision and the beliefs it holds and its practices, as well as the service or product’s purpose and the value it holds in a person’s life.”

When conducting user research, UX practitioners are careful to avoid leading questions and try their best to observe things as they are, not as what those things should be. In mentoring and coaching UX beginners, I find that 80% of problems arise not from a designer’s lack of skill. It’s from feeling lost and not confident in their path.

At the most basic level, the user interface (UI) is the series of screens, pages, and visual elements—like buttons and icons—that enable a person to interact with a product or service. User experience (UX), on the other hand, is the internal experience that a person has as they interact with every aspect of a company’s products and services.

Here’s a fresh set of quotes from the well-known book “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug. The first edition was published in 2000 and then it was revisited in 2014 making it relevant and useful nowadays. Steve Krug sets some basic principles on the usability of interfaces and shares them with professionals working in this field which makes the book one of the top essential resources recommended for UX designers.

Having written the article 53 Tech Terms You Need to Know as a UX Designer it made sense to add research terms into the mix. I’ve put together an A-Z list of research words with explanations in plain English.

An empathy map is a collaborative visualization used to articulate what we know about a particular type of user. It externalizes knowledge about users in order to 1) create a shared understanding of user needs, and 2) aid in decision making. This article is a guide to empathy mapping and its uses.

While web pages today have simple user interfaces with no more than navigation and contact forms, the rise of new technologies and standards will create a demand for more dynamic and customized experiences. This, inevitably, means more user interface work. So let’s see what you need to remember.

Due to the fierce competition for web traffic that has emerged over the last decade, website owners have begun investing considerable time into perfecting the design and usability of their online presence, ensuring that customers are provided a unique, engaging and rewarding experience right from the moment they arrive on a landing page. Although web developers have adopted several different approaches when it comes to luring potential audiences, one significant question remains on the mind of all aspiring business owners: “How do I maximize the usability of my web presence?”

Readability should be one of the top concerns when it comes to any design project. If text can’t be read, then why are you designing in the first place? Good design delivers content in a way that is understandable; readability is a big part of comprehension. Today we’ll be discussing how you can plan a design around the words, so that your projects are easy to read.

Whether we are aware of it or not, we have all encountered dark patterns. They are user interface elements that have been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things they might not otherwise do, like adding insurance to an order or signing up for reoccurring billing.

Before we get down to the details of user interface (UI) design and building interactive prototypes, it’s important to get the high-level flow of the design in place, establishing a skeleton around which we can build our design. At this point in the process, it’s important to use our research findings to inform the development of user stories, identifying different users’ goals.

Some of the biggest trends today are changing how consumers discover and share information and connect with one another. Technology aside, consumers are driving the rapid adoption of technology because of the capabilities that are unlocked through each device. From self-expression and validation to communication and connections to knowledge and collaboration, new opportunities unfold with each new device and platform.

User delight refers to any positive emotional affect that a user may have when interacting with a device or interface. User delight may not always be expressed outwardly, but can influence the behaviors and opinions formulated while using a website or application. UI embellishments can only produce surface delight; deep delight can only be achieved in functional, reliable, and usable interfaces.

For crafting digital experiences that resonate with audiences, designers need to have the basic psychological understanding of the people whom they are designing for. Usually, we tend to ignore the basic scientific principles and directly land on working for our desired outcomes. Such as, “How can I get people to sign up for my product?”, “ How can I get people to stay on my website?” and so forth.

Alan Cooper, the father of Visual Basic, says that to be a good programmer, one must be “sympathetic to the nature and needs of the computer. But the nature and needs of the computer are alien from the nature and needs of the human being who will ultimately use the software.”

UX metrics are a set of quantitative data points used to measure, compare, and track the user experience of a website or app over time. They are vitally important for ensuring UX design decisions are made and evaluated using fair evidence rather than opinions.

KPIs (key performance indicators) reflect the overall goals of your business – such as revenue growth, retention, or increased user numbers. Metrics are all the measurements that go towards quantifying these higher goals.

Showing a series of inspiring, unusual and playful products, British branding and design guru Paul Bennett explains that design doesn’t have to be about grand gestures, but can solve small, universal and overlooked problems.

Facebook’s “like” and “share” buttons are seen 22 billion times a day, making them some of the most-viewed design elements ever created. Margaret Gould Stewart, Facebook’s director of product design, outlines three rules for design at such a massive scale—one so big that the tiniest of tweaks can cause global outrage, but also so large that the subtlest of improvements can positively impact the lives of many.

Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. Steve Krug returns with a fresh perspective to reexamine the principles that made Don’t Make Me Think a classic–with updated examples and a new chapter on mobile usability. And it’s still short, profusely illustrated…and best of all–fun to read.

UX Strategy: How to Devise Innovative Digital Products that People Want. User experience (UX) strategy requires a careful blend of business strategy and UX design, but until now, there hasn’t been an easy-to-apply framework for executing it. This hands-on guide introduces lightweight strategy tools and techniques to help you and your team craft innovative multi-device products that people want to use.

The User’s Journey: Storymapping Products That People Love. Like a good story, successful design is a series of engaging moments structured over time. The User’s Journey will show you how, when, and why to use narrative structure, technique, and principles to ideate, craft, and test a cohesive vision for an engaging outcome. See how a story first approach can transform your product, feature, landing page, flow, campaign, content, or product strategy.

User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play. In this essential text, Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant map the hidden rules of the designed world and shed light on how those rules have caused our world to change―an underappreciated but essential history that’s pieced together for the first time.

User Experience Research and Design Course by the University of Michigan. Integrate UX Research and UX Design to create great products through understanding user needs, rapidly generating prototypes, and evaluating design concepts. Learners will gain hands-on experience with taking a product from initial concept, through user research, ideation and refinement, formal analysis, prototyping, and user testing, applying perspectives and methods to ensure a great user experience at every step.

UI / UX Design Course by the California Institute of Arts. This course brings a design-centric approach to user interface and user experience design, and offers practical, skill-based instruction centered around a visual communications perspective, rather than on one focused on marketing or programming alone. In this sequence of four courses, you will summarize and demonstrate all stages of the UI/UX development process, from user research to defining a project’s strategy, scope, and information architecture, to developing sitemaps and wireframes.

User Experience Design Essentials – Adobe XD UI UX Design. This course is aimed at people interested in UI/UX Design. We’ll start from the very beginning and work all the way through, step by step. If you already have some UI/UX Design experience but want to get up to speed using Adobe XD then this course is perfect for you too.

Product Design: The Delft Design Approach. This course is an introduction to the Delft Design Approach offering a model and a set of signature methods from Delft to teach you how to get from understanding the user in context to defining a meaningful design challenge and – in the end – deliver a great design! The course challenges you to experience the design process yourself and reflect on your work with the help of students and excellent teaching staff from Delft, and industrial experts.