User Experience Design — A Head Start based on my view

UI/UX has been a buzz word among these days, especially among undergraduates sorting for opportunities in the industry as a professional. Well, most of them are in the preconceived notion that being a UI/UX engineer is the easiest to be and it requires little to no technical skills compared those which are expected of a candidate seeking an opportunity as a Software Engineer. Hence, this is quite a pattern that I been witnessing, where everybody is so fascinated and interested in UI/UX, but nobody seems to know what exactly is UI and UX (not to mention what the differences are) and what it takes to be a ‘great’ UI/UX Engineer. This has made most undergraduates, especially at the stage where they seek internships, get lost on – ‘is it good for me’, ’do I have what it takes to be a UX engineer ’,  ‘what do I get to do as a UX engineer’ and so on.

I may not be a designated UX Engineer, but had been having a keen interest in the area apart from my part-time designing which drove me to a lot of conversations with many experienced UX engineers, leads especially during my stint as a Trainee Software Engineer which were quite useful and enlightening – as it was on something that was very curious and fascinated about from a time that could remember.

So, what are UI and UX?

Well, both are acronyms – UI for ‘User Interfaces’ and UX for ‘User Experience’. It may sound very close as acronyms, but seems well apart when are expended, doesn’t it – at least that ‘Interface’ != ‘Experience’.  In simple terms, UI is just about designing the interface – the front face of the computer program that a user would interact with, buttons, icons, menus etc. Hence, UI is basically the visual aspect of the product where you try to make the product beautiful and pleasing. Simply put, it’s like wrapping a gift with a nice wrapping paper to make the gift look visually appealing.

Basic Differences between UI and UX

On the other hand, UX is all about experience – how the user relates to the product. In other words, UX is about developing a product that the user sees it as if his/her own – a realization of something that he/she desired for a long time. Compared to that gift been wrapped in paper, UX is all about all the magic that the user realize from the point of seeing it to using it – the so called ‘Value Realized’. So, unlike UI designers, UX designers works in a holistic scope of designing not just the front face, not just the actors ‘make-up’ but also the whole act of the actor as a performer.

UX Process

In that case, it is actually true that UI is a part of UX. But, most argue on that fact that UIs are designed first anyways with the mock-ups and therefore, UI supersedes UX. It’s much like the old school question – ‘Which came first – hen or the egg?’, but it’s obviously wrong. What if the product looks nice on the appearance but a total waste when it comes to usage?  So, designing a ‘great’ product doesn’t start with thinking of the visual experience – the UIs but with knowing your users, scenarios etc.; simply the 5Ws –Why, What, How, When and Where.

So, a UX engineer does research to start going about the job to identify the ‘Pain Points’ – an often used term in Marketing and starts building a product (here an application) upon a value preposition. 

A little more in to UX

UX is not just the colors, shapes, sizes, but actually a part of it. Another keyword in this aspect is Interactive Design – which basically means designing digital products where the user actively engages in a conversation with the system to perform the tasks. Simply, the user engages in a flow of activities where he/she could easily find the data/information while being able to achieve specific objectives along the way in each interaction – a click, typing, dragging etc. In this aspect, UI and UX have quite a day light among them as UI would simply mean a set of static elements only. Therefore, better interactive design makes better UX and lesser your application is interactive – there is no real difference between a paper form and web form – totally ‘lifeless’.

UX is sometimes ‘strange’ – an adjective often used with things related to psychology, things that normal people normally don’t understand and often seems to be crazy. But it’s often true or correct. Let’s take an example, the point of which is actually proven in an article which I read on Color theory. 

Colour preference by Gender

What if I use Pink as the prominent color in a web site that sells men’s’ wear or use Blue in a women’s one? It’s even sounds odd, right? Similarly, what if I use black as the primary color for an application that offers services for people suffering with depression? It would look further depressing, doesn’t it? So, UX embeds the personality of the user – a psychological aspect, in the application which it serves for, an aspect that novice designers often miss. But, one can argue – ‘How can I design for a specific user when I have thousands or millions of user?’ This is actually a problem, with not identifying your customers/clients properly – who they are and what they are looking for? The traits would be quite obvious when the target audience is properly identified through a good user research – an essential element in the UX process. So, no matter what UX embeds the fact of being business oriented.

Another interesting example which encapsulates all these aspects is the use of a progress bar. For example, think of the mentality of a user, who have clicked on a ‘Pay’ button and stuck in between 2 pages in transition without a clue what, happened to his/her transaction. It isn’t at all comforting, is it? Interaction wise, the user is absolutely dependent on what the system has to show him next. Psychologically, panicking and therefore, it’s least likely the user would ever use the service again – a loss for the business. On the other hand, a progress bar would still talks  to the user on ‘what is going on’ and ‘where am I at’ which provides some form of assurance to the user – a simple UX addition that makes a whole lot difference.

But, these are seriously simple example and UX is not just that nor simple as that.  

                

Misconceptions about UX

An often misconception comes in as an equation where UX = UI + Animation or UX = UI + Rich User Interaction or similar. Because of this case, is not rare to come across web sites, applications that are overwhelming with unnecessary animations, transitions, effects that virtually chase a user away. It is in fact just the glitter on the piece of art, I would say – too less, the piece is basic and unattractive, too much, you latterly can’t stare at it for long . This is a critical misunderstanding usually among novices where the tools of rich user experience are over used – that the usability reduces.

Example of a Seamless Experience

Let me take an example from my experience. I was engaged in designing UI and UX for one of our own start-ups based in the fashion industry where we adopted and introduced some fancy new technology. One interesting feature in the whole spear was an AR based fit on where you virtually pick-fit-and drop your appeal to a bin – same as we do a regular basis. To carry that forward to the website, I was so keen on developing a drag and drop feature to the cart which is floating at a corner of the website. But, that was never realized and the idea was virtually dumped because of several reasons. One – Users on a daily basis are so used to clicking on the ‘Add to Cart’ button which has being the norm when you enter an e-commerce site (knowingly or unknowingly you tend to find that button so often); Two – What if I need to buy couple of from the same product? That would mean a lot of drag and drops. Hence, this is quite cumbersome to do when the screen is smaller – like in a mobile device where your finger can sometimes be larger than the bucket icon. So, this can cause trouble.

So, let me take this straight. Even though, my idea seemed so innovative and out of the box (at least that such a technique is not used), the end user may not be quite comfortable with, therefore destroying the whole experience of the user. If this case is being observed closely, we based our business case around convenience (no need to go to the store, no queues to fit on and so on) and most importantly providing a vast collection of apparel where you can visit-search-checkout in a flash. So, dragging an item all down to the bin would be like ages for a customer in a hurry essentially making this feature a burden rather than an improvement to the User’s Experience.

So, the plot here is that UX is not about mastering how to use advanced user interaction tools and techniques but, using the right amount of it at the right place when it is the right time for the user, so that the user is rather engaged in an interactive dialogue with the system.   

      

What it takes to be a professional in UX?

I my self is not a UX engineer as I mentioned, but having experienced success and failures of our own applications and that I have used, plus the mere amount of observations and points been realized during the discussions, following are some of the key skills that I see are necessary.

·       Creativity – This is not the everyday creativity that I’m talking about – blending nice colors, designing round buttons instead of square edged, but the ‘out of the box imaginativeness’ to derive a unique element that brings out the ‘wow’ factor and consistently maintains that throughout the product. You need not be an Einstein for this, but should be able to see small details – things that distinguish the experience from the others.

·      Passion towards Design – In my view, UX engineer has to be a designer and some artist has to be within, someone who has serious drive to live a life dedicated to colors, shapes, gradients etc. So, I believe you have to find a Picasso or a Davinci within to start with at some point.  

·     Emotional Intelligence – The most important factor of a UX engineer is to ‘knowing your client’. As in the 5 factors discussed above, UX engineer has to be conscious and mindful of the user’s emotions, environment when designing a solution and strictly speaking, UX engineer has to be within the user’s brain at all times. Some argues it’s Empathy, that a UX guys needs to have. Yet, linguistically EI refers to the ability to identify and manage one's own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. If you’d been following Young Sheldon Season 2, the 2 twins differed in this aspect as one was more likely to understand the society better and easily. This might be why UX engineers by character are pretty much fun loving and pretty much distracted easily.   

·      Bit of knowledge on Design Theories – UX Engineers professionally mingle with quite a lot of theory even though most may appear to be intuitive. The 8 Golden Rules, Color theories, 60-30-10 Rule are some that I know to name a few and areas such as Ergonomics and principles from Human Computer Interaction (HCI) are quite frequently applied on a day to day basis. Therefore, it’s always wise to have some form of academic background on the area as well to start with. 

Hotspot of a mobile Screen. An ergonomic consideration.

·      Technical Skills – the basic stuff like HTML, CSS and some JavaScript at least to start with. There are actually quite a lot of tools that UX engineers use on a daily basis including much known Photoshop, Illustrator. 

Are only UX Engineers responsible?

Difference in responsibilities of UI and UX engineers 

Obviously not! It’s as if, UX engineers are actually the architects who provide the plan and guidelines for the builders and the engineers to construct a house where the moving family would feel homely. So, it’s not just the UX engineers, Software Engineers and also the QA Engineers should have some sense of UX. Hence, I’ve experienced QAs getting more excited over either not restricting acceptance of keystrokes when a warning already pops-up allowing 8 characters or the submit button not disabling from an invalid input state. So, it’s not just the UX engineer all the time.     

What about the future? 

UX engineers are actually the second most highest paid profession is the industry. Why? for a novice, who literally have no clue what so ever on front or back end programming, unlike we do, the experience the user gets off by going about and doing the intended work, interacting with the system is all you get to feel. Therefore, an application’s ‘make-or-break’ is UX. The application may be having the most optimized algorithms and features, but what if it has an endless number of forms for the user to deal with? What happened to MySpace when Facebook emerged?

In such sense, one could actually say that UI as a profession is actually dead – being just a good graphics designer won’t make a good UX engineer and as I have explained, its takes some other skills as well, especially Emotional Intelligence.