In a nutshell: What is user experience?
User experience (UX for short) describes the experience users have with physical and digital products and services. A positive user experience has a positive impact on customer ratings, brand awareness, the generation of new customers and sales.
User experience plays a particularly important role in e-commerce. This is because positive user experiences boost conversion rates and sales figures.
User experience: definition and areas of application
User experience (UX) is a term used to describe the user experience when using a product, system or service . An important component of UX is user experience design. UX design is a specialist field that aims to design products in a user-friendly way .
A good user experience has numerous advantages for companies. First and foremost, good user experiences contribute to greater satisfaction. This results in numerous other benefits such as better customer ratings, an increase in brand awareness, more new customers and higher sales.
The user experience can be measured using several methods. How this measurement is carried out varies depending on the area of application. There are numerous areas of application to which the user experience can be applied as a qualitative criterion.
- Products: In order to increase the satisfaction of product buyers, companies can adapt both the design of the products and their usage characteristics.
- Services: The services provided by companies can be improved in terms of communication, efficiency and other criteria in order to optimize the customer experience.
- Systems and apps: Digital products, such as systems in companies and software for end devices, can also be optimized in terms of their usability and flawless functionality.
- Web development: For web designers, the user experience is important for the conversion-promoting structure of websites and the user-friendly structure of the website menu, among other things.
This list shows that although user experience is often referred to in connection with physical products, it can also be used as a criterion when evaluating a system or service. The evaluation criteria and measurement methods vary depending on what is to be evaluated in terms of user experience.
For example, questionnaires are often used as a measurement method when evaluating services. Users answer the questions and thus provide feedback on the service. The quality of the service can be improved on the basis of this feedback.
In web development and digital products, it is possible to evaluate the user experience much more precisely with specific data. For example, web developers and SEO experts can use tools to create heat maps to find out which areas of a website are of most interest to users and generate the most interaction.
The term user experience therefore describes the user experience with digital and physical products, systems and services. The better the user experience, the more interactions, perceptions and reactions it generates. Companies benefit from this in many ways, which is why they should constantly optimize the usability and user experience design of their products.
Components of the user experience
The user experience components are synonymous with the quality criteria. If the UX components are taken into account, the probability of a positive user experience increases. In theory, the components listed below are particularly important.
- Usability: Usability refers to user-friendliness. The more efficiently a product and all its functions can be operated, the higher the usability.
- Utility: This refers to the usefulness of a product. The more a product helps users to solve their problems or accomplish their tasks, the more useful it is.
- Information architecture: This is a component of usability. A good information architecture is characterized by the fact that users can find information in an app as quickly and intuitively as possible, for example.
- Interaction design: Interaction design is also a component of usability. An important task is the development of user interfaces that facilitate human-computer interaction.
- Emotions: The use of psychological methods can increase the emotional connection to a product . This plays a particularly important role in the marketing of the product.
- Design: The design of a product determines its aesthetics from the user's perspective. Aspects of information architecture and information design are incorporated into the design of products.
Depending on their business models, services and products, companies must evaluate the user experience individually. The central challenge in creating a positive user experience is to bring together the aforementioned UX components to create a holistically appealing user experience. In order to master this challenge, a human-centered design process is advisable.
User-centered design: How companies create a positive user experience
The human-centered design process pursues the goals of high user-friendliness, high usefulness and an appealing product design. In English, this is referred to as user-centered design - i.e. a design that is oriented towards the user. To achieve this, the following process is recommended in the DIN EN ISO 9241 210 standard:
- Planning the human-centered design process: methods & resources
- Analysis of the problem: Understanding and describing the context of use
- Analyzing the problem: Specifying usage requirements
- Draft design alternatives according to the usage requirements
- Evaluate design solutions together with users or at least from their perspective
If a product, system or service meets the usage requirements after the fifth step, the process is considered complete. If the product does not meet the requirements, the design process is repeated from the third or fourth step.
This is known as an iterative process. You repeat the steps and make optimizations until users are satisfied - or until you assume that they will be satisfied.
Quality user experience design needs good methods
Methods of modern corporate and employee management can be applied in the human-centered design process.
Innovation management has changed significantly compared to the last millennium. Digitalization has brought a large number of companies with disruptive business models onto the market. Competition is also fierce and users have a wide range of products to choose from.
It is therefore essential for the success of companies to focus on the needs of users.
The human-centered design process for optimal UX design fits perfectly into the modern business world and should be taken into account by companies when developing their products and services. The following modern innovation management methods, among others, are available for implementing the process:
- Design Thinking
- Scrum
- User workshops
- Jobs to be done (JTBD)
- Walt Disney method
- Kano model
- Open Innovation
- Dragon Dreaming
- Theory U
These and other innovation management methods are applied in teams. In order to achieve high-quality user experience design, close collaboration in teams is advantageous. As a professional service provider for digitization in companies, we at innobit provide expert support in creating good conditions for working on user experience design.
With our Intranet & Collaboration offering, we create the conditions that enable companies to work independently of time and location, as well as efficiently and with a variety of methods to optimize the user experience. We would be happy to advise you individually.
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Laws of UX: Laws for good user experience design
The US designer Jon Yablonski defined the so-called Laws of UX, which serve as guidelines for successful UX design. Although the Laws of UX do not provide user experience designers with specific advice, they do provide rules with creative freedom.
We have focused on five of these rules and explain them briefly:
- Aesthetic Usability Effect: Users often associate a product that looks aesthetically pleasing with high usability. The positive response to the design of the product can conceal minor deficits in usability.
- Law of Common Region: If elements in a common region (e.g. in a website element separated by a boundary) are placed together with other elements, users perceive them as belonging together. It therefore makes sense to place related elements next to each other in the user interface.
- Postel's Law: This law states that user experience designers should adhere closely and, to a certain extent, uncompromisingly to the guidelines when developing software, for example. They should be highly tolerant of users and program applications accordingly. Designers should therefore expect users to make mistakes.
- Tesler's Law: The use of products may have a certain degree of complexity. It is the responsibility of a UX designer to reduce the complexity for users and, in return, to accept increased personal effort if necessary.
- Von Restorff Effect: When people look at several objects, they are most likely to remember the object that has the biggest difference compared to the other objects. Good user experience design should therefore emphasize important aspects or features of a product.
These and other laws support designers in developing a UX design that is appealing to users. They can be applied as part of the human-centered design process and simplify the implementation of this process.
Some of the Laws of UX have been examined in psychological studies and experiments (such as the Von Restorff Effect) and are therefore highly regarded, especially in online marketing.
User-centered design: examples of implementation on a website
The starting point is a website for e-commerce: In the online store , every product should be presented in a way that makes it easy to sell. On the individual web pages with the products, care must therefore be taken to ensure that the most important features are mentioned at the top.
In our example, this is done with a list of product benefits:
- At the top right of the sales page are 5 key points about the benefits of the product.
- In the key points, care is taken to ensure that the most important advantage is mentioned in the top key point and the second most important advantage in the bottom key point.
- This order of benefits in the list follows the so-called Serial Position Effect, which is one of the Laws of UX and states that users tend to remember the first and last elements of a series.
In addition, the button for ordering and the payment methods (e.g. PayPal, KLARNA, VISA) are listed on the sales page with the product to simplify a quick checkout. The product images are shown at the top left and the path via which the category can be reached in the menu is listed above them. Both are done in the interests of user-friendliness.
The upper section of the sales page is followed by other sections, including the product description. Below the product description is a design element in which other suitable products are recommended.
This makes it easier for users to supplement the product they have purchased with additional purchases.
User experience as part of the customer journey
The user experience is part of the customer journey. However, it is not the same as the customer experience. Both terms refer to the experiences of customers, but in relation to different phases of the purchasing process.
Customer experience is a term that describes the user experience throughout the entire customer journey. User experience, on the other hand, only covers the user experience at a specific point in the customer journey, for example the user experience on the sales page. There, the user experience is to be evaluated differently than, for example, in the newsletter that is sent to users on a weekly basis.
The terms customer experience and user experience are therefore differentiated by the scope of the user experience. Customer experience refers to all customer experiences, while user experience describes the user's experience with a specific product or at a specific point in marketing.
Conclusion: Satisfy user needs and achieve success
A positive user experience goes hand in hand with a high level of user-friendliness, usefulness and functionality of products, services and systems. When companies accurately cover the key aspects of user experience, they achieve their goals all the faster, as brand awareness and sales figures increase.
To achieve the highest quality UX design possible, companies are called upon to observe the Laws of UX and to focus on the needs of users when developing their offerings. The use of modern collaboration tools and iterative innovation methods helps here.
