UX is the envelope with which products are delivered.
Excellent UX is the package in which customer needs are met, on time, in place, and as expected.
UX is how the customer experiences the product or service. The entire journey from discovery to consumption to post consumption.
Brilliant UX includes brilliant UI, making the product or service intuitive to use and easy to engage with.
UI alone does not improve the UX of a product. Rather, the product MUST at first be capable of meeting a REAL need of the customer. Slapping a fancy UI on a dumb product, may make the product appealing when looked at, but will still be terrible when used.
Beyond exciting user interfaces, UX includes user journeys mapped to deliver the core product with as little intrusions, distractions or other barriers to seamless use of the product or service.
A pig is always a pig. Lipstick or lipstick not.
But a poorly orchestrated UX can make a good product suck!
Perhaps the foundation for an awesome UX is knowing the customer and putting their needs right bang centre of the whole product development process. Well, that’s right. UX is user experience. It will be extremely difficult to build an awesome user experience into our products (or make our products an awesome experience for users) if we do not consult with them (and no matter how much you think you know about the customer or how well you believe you or members of your team can serve as a proxy for the customer – you are not and you cannot, as you have biases towards your product built into your thoughts about the product and those will cloud your judgement).
And a second but equally important step is to deliberately orchestrate with the customer in mind how the product or service will be used by the customer – the user journey.
UX relies on what we know of the customer. Great UX relies on empathy – walking in the shoes of the customer with the customer. Knowing what the customer wants and meeting it, is the sure path to revenue.
Tool & techniques for crafting awesome UX
- Design thinking – putting the customer right in the middle of all of all product development initiatives;
- Agile – rapid prototyping and testing;
- I will come back to add more;
- Add yours!
