Have you ever used an app for the first time and its easy-to-use interface as well as its sophisticated design clearly earned you admiration and recommendation? Or have you ever felt frustrated with an app due to its complicated navigation methodology or its lack of emphasis on design? We all arrive there, every once in a while. Well, either good or bad, this experience is exactly where the factor of UX Design comes into play.

UX Design

In order to understand in detail how these factors can affect the end-user and a published application, we will be analyzing some in-depth information related to UX Design and its core uses in this blog.

What Is User Experience (UX) Design?

The term “User Experience” primarily refers to the interaction of a common user with any service or product. UX Design is a concept that works on improving every aspect of this experience for the end-user. It considers every factor involved in a better interaction experience including an emphasis on how the UX makes the user feel, and how conveniently the user can fulfill their desired actions via the UX.

Precisely speaking, user experience deals with all the features of the user’s interaction with the company and its products or services. UX Design involves the complete process of implementing a compact and convenient design with factors like branding, usability, design, and function under consideration.

Importance Of UX Design

Saves Time, Money, And Resources

UX Design can prove to be a crucial factor in determining the success line for any new project that your business decides to take on. UX design focuses on proper research and analysis of the target audience.

It is significantly less expensive to prevent and improve design issues and usability problems than to fix all of them later through product redesigns and major design amends. Thus, investing in a reliable UX Design functionality can prove to be very important for your business’s profit.

General research states that only around 20 percent of issues and bugs detected within a product are development-related issues. All of the rest are common usability and design issues that could have been resolved at an initial stage while constructing the prototype. Thus, constructing an accurate UX design can help you save money in the long term.

Boosts Your Conversion Rates

UX Design helps you in boosting your sales conversion to new limits. Think of this as an example. You are surfing the web searching for a specific service and ultimately reach two websites addressing the desired issue. Which one do you choose to follow in case both possess the same content? Clearly the one with an easy-to-use platform and convenient usability features.

Thus, your target audience is expected to behave the same and they will gladly visit or bookmark your website for future purposes as well if it has an outstanding and fitting UX design flow along with some useful content.

Improves Your SEO Rankings

Most of readers would be surprised to know this but UX design is a major factor in Google’s SEO algorithms! Google emphasizes promoting the best user experience to its customers via its search results. Their aim is to guide the user to the best response to their search considering the design and other factors like loading time under consideration.

Thus, an appealing and good UX design results in a better SEO ranking. Moreover, Google’s PPC (pay-per-click) platforms such as Google Adwords work by calculating and scoring user reviews regarding your landing page user experience. It also helps you optimize these issues by providing you with appropriate suggestions for improvements in this area.

Game Changer For Mobile Apps

A recent study suggests that an average user in the US spends at least 5 hours each day interacting with his/her mobile. Moreover, a major portion of that time deals with surfing through websites and apps, and this is exactly where UX comes into play.

UX design is the core factor that differentiates between a bad or less recommended app and a good app. In this era of technology, an average mobile user expects and considers a variety of attributes while interacting with an app. The most commonly reflected factors include loading times, ease of use, timely support and guidance, and a well-crafted and comprehensive UX Design.

Therefore, in order for your app to achieve new levels of success, you have to prioritize UX as a compulsory aspect of your product strategy rather than just a part of the design.

Qualities Of A Good UX Design

UX designers design their UX Designs on basis of various principles and focus on some important factors in their design. These factors are necessary to ponder upon in order to constitute a quality UX design:

Clarity Of Design

The UX design should bring absolute clarity to things such as prices and important facts displayed.

Usability

Some important questions regarding the usability of the design need to be answered: Are new users able to start straight away with your site? Can they navigate easily without any required guidance? Are they able to accomplish their tasks on your site or app within a quick span of time?

Familiarity

When it comes to UX design, the use of some familiar icons, patterns, and guidelines is recommended for a better user experience.

Performance

Is your UX design consuming reasonable load times? Is your website/app responsive or not? Load times and performance is an important aspects in the mind of the end-user and thus, you should be focusing on maintaining a compact yet appealing UX design with the ability to take inputs and load quickly.

Accessibility

You need to have a good idea about your target audience for this one. Will your users visit your site via their laptops or cell phones? Or via Tablets? Or all of them?

If yes, your UX design needs to be compatible with all of these devices and should be able to perform all the core functions equally and efficiently on all platforms.

Appeal

Focusing on how to highlight your products or services in the customer’s eyes is necessary in order to provide a better user experience. You need to represent your services in a reasonable manner emphasizing how they can benefit from it and how your service or product is the BEST for them in the market!!

User Assistance & Help

Suppose a user gets stuck on your site or app or an unexpected issue shows up regarding the UX design. What happens in that case? Is timely help and support available to the user? This is an important factor to be considered. Otherwise, users might be compelled to drive away from your site in such scenarios.

Differences Between UX And UI

UX is mostly confused with the term UI but there are some major differences between these two terminologies which need to be clarified as done below:

Different Process

UX design is basically a complete process through which a specific user requirement is identified. Once that’s done, a demo prototype is built which is further marked as validated or invalidated through proper testing. Once everything is validated, the product is finally built.

UI design, on the other hand, can be summed up as follows:

User Interface Design = Visual Design + Interaction Design.

UX designer designs the steps that a user is expected to follow for signing up for your business in the form of user flows. The user flow comprises details such as the steps that the user will follow and how are they going to be acknowledged if they are successful in signing up.

Next, the UX designer conduct tests to refine the product features for the market. As we can see, the UX designer is clearly focused on the value, features, and meeting the requirements of the end-user in an efficient manner throughout all stages.

Once all of that is done and dusted, the UI designer takes charge and works on developing an appealing appearance for the app, including images, links, buttons, and on-screen icons.

Different Goals

The core difference between the two is their set of goals:

A UX designer focuses on the users’ experience with the app and the features that the app must meet whereas the UI designer works on ensuring a smooth and handy interaction of the app with the user as well as an appealing design for the app.

When combined, both UI and UX work in collaboration in order to guarantee success for the desired product or business.

Different Roles

UI makes the interface beautiful while UX tends to make that interface useful.

This is, perhaps, the defining difference between the two terminologies. The job of the UX Designer is to perform a thorough and competitive analysis of the market concerning the product needs that the organization is planning to offer.

Once the UX designer is done with the prototyping, and user flows and completes testing, the role of the UI designer comes into play. The UI designer’s job is to select appealing color schemes and typographies that will make the concept of your product aesthetically more attractive.

The key point to be noted here is that the color and typography choices that are made here are clearly established on reasons that were lying around the personas and facts as developed by the UX designer.

UX is a general term across interfaces, services, and products; UI deals specifically with Interfaces.

UX design is undoubtedly a trending field these days and product, as well as service owners, are realizing the importance that lies in a fitting UX design for their business. These organizations are valuing the role of UX in understanding their users and building their products on the basis of this understanding, regardless of whether the company offers products or provides services.

UI design is a general term that is mostly restricted to only user interfaces. In most cases, this UI is commonly a feature of computers, tablets, or smart mobile devices. However, with the rapid pace of technology in this age, we are witnessing interfaces on a variety of other products as well such as washing machines, watches, car dashboards, and more.

How Do UX And UI Work Together?

Let’s suppose your organization intends to develop a fitness running app so the CEO hires both a UX and UI designer to tackle the issue. The initial task of the UX designer is going to be some in-depth research into the major competitor’s apps and how your app can deliver features that are non-existent in those apps.

With all this information gathered, the UX designer will now define the core functionalities of the app, create a complete site map, and finally the prototype.

UX Process – Stages Involved

Product Definition

The first step in UX design initiates even before the design process actually starts. You need to comprehend the context, background, and requirements for a product’s existence before you actually build the product.

This stage clearly defines the starting phase for the success of the product; UX designers perform in-depth brainstorming of the product with the stakeholders. This can include interviewing the stakeholders and arranging a meet up with them to gather an idea and insight into their requirements and goals.

Product Research

Once the idea for the product is defined, the product research initiates the second half of the foundation for a good design. This phase needs to be implemented with persistent accuracy and dedication as it can save a lot of resources including time and money in the later stages of UX design.

It involves extensive research into the available resources, the complexity of the product, similar products offered by the competitors, and many more.

Analysis

The motive of performing this analysis step is to draw meaningful insights from the data gathered in the previous research phase. UX designers protrude organized conclusions from the information regarding what users are thinking/ wanting and comprehend why they think/want or need that.

This phase usually involves creating hypothetical personas in order to represent the various user types that will be using the proposed product. Afterward, experience maps are constituted which define the users’ interaction and role within the service/product.

Design

An ideal design phase involves input from all team members that are included in the product development.

The design phase usually comprises:

  • Sketching: For visualizing a wide range of design ideas.
  • Creating wireframes: For creating a visual representation of the page structure and key elements involved.
  • Prototypes: For creating a simulation of the product/service, commonly through the use of clickable wireframes.

Validation (Testing)

This final stage comes into play once the final product design is completed. A series of different testing sessions are performed and the product is validated with end-users as well as the stakeholders.

This phase commonly includes usability testing, beta testing, and surveys conducted with end users. Reviews are collected from the users concerning details regarding their level of satisfaction with the app/product as well as how efficiently were they able to complete their tasks via your product.

Moreover, analytics tools also tend to provide valuable information concerning the loading time, navigation time and issues, search results and queries, etc.

Best UX Design Tools – Top Picks

Mockplus

If you are looking for a highly professional prototyping tool that offers quick interaction methods, then Mockplus is undoubtedly the deal for you! It comprises pre-defined features and components such as the stack panel, Pop up the panel, Image Carousel, and a variety of many more enhanced functionalities and options.

In total, Mockplus offers 8 different ways to test your prototypes on mobile, desktop, and browser platforms.

Fluid UI

This innovative tool comes in with 16 built-in wireframes and material design libraries that you can make use of. Over 2000 icons and widgets are available to customize according to your preference. You can also share your design idea with the client via the Live Video Presentation feature.

This tool, however, only seems to operate efficiently with Chrome as the web browser.

WebFlow

This state-of-the-art tool lets you use the power of Javascript and CSS animations at their best. Perhaps the most remarkable attribute of WebFlow lies in its “innovative carelessness” – this tool has been specially designed for users who intend to create a well-designed web or mobile app without having to deal with the coding part and not being restricted by any single platform.

The most striking feature of WebFlow lies in its easy-to-use interface which is built especially for designers to create sites in a short span of time. The interface is relatively quite similar to that of Adobe Photoshop.

Role Of A Good UX Design Company

Investing in a good UX Design consultant can help your business to excel to new heights and save a lot of time, and money as well as human resources. If you don’t use your resources well, the outcome could be a disastrous loss to your business.

For instance, if you are intending to invest in hiring competent sales managers and marketers in order to promote a product, you need to be investing in a delightful and appealing UX design first.

A good UX design solution helps you avoid a lot of hassle in the long term and targets your audience in a convincing manner as well. Organizations that lack the will to invest in UX solution providers will certainly find themselves lagging behind competitors that are prioritizing front-end UI and UX design at the top of their list.

According to a study published in 2016, the organizations that invested a major part of their revenue in good UX Design companies witnessed their increase in sales jump by 75%. Thus, the role of investing in a reputable UX design company to provide you with a captivating UX design is totally worth it for the product itself!

UX Designer Skills

A specific set of skills is necessary in order to become an effective UX designer, as follows:

Compassionate

You need to put yourself in the user’s shoes and understand their needs from their perspective in order to become a successful UX Designer.

Collaborative And Team Player

An important part of a UX designer’s job lies in dealing with other teams involved in the development of the product. Therefore, he needs to be a good team player and open to collaboration with fellow UI designers and people from other teams as well.

Adaptive To The Latest Trends

The UX designer needs to be familiar with the latest design trends and the innovative tools being introduced every day in the design industry. He needs to have the necessary skills and an adaptive mindset for pursuing success in this domain.

Dedicated And Passionate

A lack of interest can prove fatal in any field of career. Similarly, a UX designer’s job demands consistency and utter patience in order to craft an effective UX Design.

Any lack of interest is bound to have repercussions on the product’s design and ultimately, the success of the product. Thus, he needs to have a desire for solving issues, analyzing data, and repetitively testing new design strategies with patience.

Thus, we have provided you with some comprehensive in-depth knowledge regarding UX Design and its importance in this blog. We hope that this insight will certainly help you in employing UX Design at its best and ensuring a better user experience design for your end-users and your business!

Remember: A reliable and efficient UX Design ultimately leads to better profit conversion rates and an upsurge in the number of consumers for your app or product! Stay tuned for more tips and tutorials!

Why Origami Studios?

If you are planning to employ the services of the best UX Design solution provider out there or if you are unsure about the best UX Design choice for your website, you definitely require the services of a skilled and competent UX Design team to assist you in that.

At Origami Studio, our talented experts make use of all of these innovative tools and a variety of other UX tools such as Framer, Sketch, and UXP in order to provide our clients with some preeminently crafted user storyboards and UX designs. Please feel free to ping us or check out our services in detail at www.origamistudios.us. We look forward to hearing from you! We have the knowledge and expertise to deliver a fantastic mobile app. Please don’t hesitate to Contact Us Now

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