What is UX? overview, tools and Resources

With the development of industry technology and methodology, Web site or Web application is becoming more and more complex. The original single static page, now becoming so rich, greatly enhanced the interactive experience.

But no matter how the technology or method changes, the key to the success of a Web site remains unchanged: how users see it. "What did I get from this site?" Is it easy to use? Even a very enjoyable user experience? ", users in the use of my product at the same time in the heart of such a question, this is the basis for creating user stickiness.

The User Experience Design (UX) task is to let users say yes. This article is designed to help you familiarize yourself with the rules of professional UX design, which will be based on web systems, such as Web sites or applications.

What is UX?

The sense of

people interacting with the system is the user experience (UX is abbreviated). Web sites, Web apps, and desktop programs are all so-called systems, and in the present concept it is called human-computer Interaction (HCI).

UX Designers study and evaluate a system's user experience, focusing on usability, value expression, practicality, and efficiency of the system.

Designers may also be concerned with the subsystems or processes of a system. For example, they might study an E-commerce site's checkout (checkout) process to see if the process is user-friendly. They can delve deeper into subsystem components, such as how users are more efficient and comfortable when filling out web forms.

UX is a relatively new concept especially in web-based systems. Dr. Donald Norman the term "user experience," a cognitive science researcher who first proposed the importance of user-centric design (the user's needs should determine how the product was designed).

Why is UX so important?

nowadays, with the increasing user-centered design concept, there are some questions and discussions about the importance of designing and enhancing the user experience. Simply put: "It is important because it deals directly with the needs of the user-which is enough."

User-centric, availability-centric will make our site unique, but before the customer and I understand the user-centric design, there are only two things that determine how we do the design: what we think and what the user wants to see.

We build our interactions in the way we think--we design for us. It's all about aesthetics and the spleen, no one will consider the user experience.

There are no ready-made scientific theories to support our design, and we design that we think the results are good because they are created (in our minds) and because this is what our customers want.

But this decade has witnessed a change in the web. It's obvious that web has at least 150 million users in 2008 years--but the web has become so complex and full of features that when the web wants to be efficient, it must have a good user experience design.

Furthermore, the way users browse the site becomes diverse: mobile devices, various browsers, and various ways of connecting to the Internet.

We are also aware of the importance of usability--for our web-based products--to meet screen readers and non-traditional input devices, and to meet those who do not have broadband connections or use older mobile users, and so on.

With these huge changes, those easy-to-use Web sites have come to the fore. How do I create a Web site? Giving users a high user experience is the main factor driving development.

Who will benefit from UX design?

all systems will benefit from a user-centric design, benefiting from a very reliable evaluation standard, of course, it's easy to talk, but the rebuttal says: It's hard to be completely user-centric. We don't live in a perfect world, we don't have unlimited resources, so we have to identify a range that can benefit from UX design.

Complex Systems (Complex Bae)

The more complex the system, the more planning and architectural design is needed. Simple static Web pages complete multi-user UX is not necessary, while multi-directional Web sites, high interactive experience of Web applications and E-commerce sites will benefit from UX design.

The user-scale system must be valuable, enjoyable and efficient. Ignoring the user experience can be a big loss.

Start-up company (start-ups)

Startups or small companies do not have the additional resources to hire professional UX designers for UX design, such as 37Signals, a lean start-up, and the development of strong, very successful software such as Basecamp and highrise, depending on a few generalists (can "wear different hats" People).

In this case, it may be more appropriate to train existing employees (especially web designers) to learn the principles and methods of UX design than to recruit a full-time UX designer, or directly outsource the necessary UX work. Providing a strong user experience in the initial version of a software or service can jump out of the category to gain the user's favor. But as a start-up, there are sometimes not enough resources to hire a skilled UX designer.

Budget-Restricted items (project with OK budgets)

Small agents working for small and medium-sized enterprises taking into account the user base and the priority deliverables must maintain low overhead to ensure budget. In this case, the developer is more focused on the development process than on the analysis and planning. Small budget products are more driven by the end products they launch. This does not mean, of course, that such projects will not benefit from good UX--but, in practice, small and medium-sized companies often think that the resource overhead of launching a Web site is unnecessary.

Longer-time items (project with longer timeframes)

In simple logic, adding a gear to a traditional Web site will increase its development time. Time must be assigned to part of the UX design. UX designers can theoretically take on a few tasks traditionally assigned to Web designers and engineers to shorten the time and potentially save time to fix the user's problems when necessary.

UX design must know (things to Know about Ux)

UX Design is a great rule, but it can't or won't do something.

UX designs are not one-size-fits-all (UX design isn't one Size Fits all)

UX design is not across, it can't solve all the problems, because everyone is different. It is possible to be a dead hole in someone else. The best we can do is design for actual experience and enhance specific behavior, but we cannot forge, assume or predict the actual experience of the user.

We can not create the user experience, similarly, can not directly copy the user experience from one site directly to another site, the user experience of different sites is not the same. The design must be tailored to the site's objectives, value, and production process of one of its other products.

Traditional measurements cannot be directly measured (can ' t be directly assessed with traditonal Metrcs)

It is not possible to evaluate the user experience design of a website based on basic separate statistics, such as browsing volume, bounce rate and conversion rate. We can assume that the user survey can be done, but we can't (at least not now) install a program that directly automatically statistics the user's experience.

And usability is not the same thing (not the Mahouve Thing as usability)

User experience and usability seem to be one thing, but they are very different. UX focuses on how users feel about using the system, and the friendliness and efficiency of the interface is a matter of usability.

Usability plays an important role as a major part of the user experience, it is embodied in a system of efficient and cordial experience, but ergonomics, psychology, information architecture and user-centric design principles also play an important role.

Taking UX as a career-induced critique (criticisms of UX as A prifession)

Not everyone admits that there is a UX designer's value in the team, and that there is controversy surrounding an additional expense for a UX designer, additional technical learning and integration, and fear of change.

There's one more thing to worry about.

In the traditional web site development process, especially for small departments or start-ups, there is not enough resources, generally composed of a web designer and a Web development engineer. The designer works as a user experience designer while sketching and functional prototyping, while the developer creates the site according to the designer's design. A professional UX designer will only increase the complexity of the process in this situation.

Castle

Some of the people involved in web development think that the real development of UX designers is too far away. For example, the founder of Ryan Carson,carsonified, who has a high reputation in web design, has criticized those who are not hands-on UX experts, should be involved in every aspect of each Web project, design, development, testing, sales and even after-sale upgrades.

The industry has a basic view that UX designers with no real development background are not skilled at solving solutions like those with actual development experience.

However, many UX experts have a real development background, and many web designers or developers choose this particular area of the product process.

Increased costs

The simple logic is that hiring a UX designer will cost more (unless they're free, but that's not possible).

On the contrary, we should treat UX design as an investment. Although the benefits of UX are not apparent, they are not like websites or other parts of the program. It is late, and in the days to come, a higher return. For example, a simple increase in the user experience during the checkout process could result in a millions of dollar gain.

Results cannot be measured directly

It is difficult to assess the effectiveness of UX design and ROI by quantitative methods, because it is subjective in itself. UX is a user's emotion and cannot be defined as data such as traffic, loading speed, and conversion rates.

Instead, we need to analyze the level of traffic, page traffic, or pre or post user surveys (similar) to tease out the results, pointing out that positive results from good user experience or aesthetics or other factors, such as improving marketing or front-end performance optimization, are inconclusive factors.

The difficulty is trying to quantify very subjective effects. We need some qualitative evidence.

UX Design tools and techniques

UX Designers use a variety of tools at different design stages. Here are some tools for you.

Systematic evaluation

If a system already exists, UX experts will comprehensively assess the status of the system and, based on the data from the analysis, they will report the problems identified and propose solutions.

A/b Test

UX experts can develop a scheme to compare the quality and efficiency of different user interfaces.

First, make a hypothesis (the green button is more appealing than the red button), and then set up a different design to define what is a "better user experience" (for example, the green button is better, because a lot of people click on him), and finally test.

User Survey

UX designers can interview existing or potential users of the system to gain insight into what is good design. User experience is subjective, the most direct and best way to get information is to communicate with users.

Sketch Design and prototype design

Based on A/b test or User survey findings, UX designers may create sketches of different layouts, or even highly realistic prototypes.

Use Process (userflows)

Another popular approach is to design the user flow of the system.

Tell a Story

Relying on vivid user emotions and familiar element drawings, UX designers tell stories and output information. You can view both articles "decoupled User experience with storytelling." Learn more about storytelling.

Design Patterns

Patterns provide consistent, known, and most efficient tools for solving problems. For an interface pattern, you can get a better user experience by choosing the right UI elements (such as module tags, breadcrumbs, slides) for a particular job. UX designers are not proposing design patterns that have been used for other sites, and more need to develop design patterns that fit the current project.

User interest model and user play

The first step in UX design is to know your users and make sure that your design responds correctly to the needs of your users. About users playing more developed using website data.

List of Contents

As the simplest term, the list of content is a Web site structure listing. Building a content Inventory directory is the first step to transforming the work into an information architecture, providing a better experience for the user (e.g. user action flow, visible and efficient).

Style guide

Design consistency is essential to allow users to gain a memorable experience of your brand. Content style guides can be an integral framework for authors and designers, creating content and design within this framework, and ensuring consistency in brand and element experience.

I Love New York ' s branding guidelines

There are many user experience design results, please refer to more.

Tools

are some of the popular UX professional design tools available, but not just for UX design professionals, developers, designers and interactive designers, including more people.

Sketch Design and prototype design

Simple use of paper and pens can be used to sketch or prototype design. In particular, the paper prototype has many advantages, fast, simple, inexpensive, conducive to the design of the prototype group.

Common software for sketch or prototype design:

Omnigrafflebalsamig Mockupsmockingbird

A/b test software

A/b test (also known as a split or multivariate test) compares different versions of the page and supports multiple-scenario testing.

In general, A/b test software will be the site traffic evenly divided into two parts, corresponding to two different versions, respectively, to calculate the conversion rate and bounce rate. Split tests are based on statistical results to determine which design version is better. Google's website Optimizer is one of the most popular A/B testing software.

Content listing software

There are a number of ways to manage the content list. Using a live server program (for which you need access to a Web server) is the best way to make a Web site. These applications appear to be more efficient and natural than third-party software. You can use an Excel-like tool to create and manage a list of content. (Refer to Getuxindex () template).

WordPress and Drupal and similar sites have built Content management system, can display site map.

User Testing and feedback software

User interviews another popular UX design approach. The most efficient and cost-effective approach is to use a survey feedback program and remote user testing.

There are many user feedback tools. Such as Pooldaddy census tools can also be used for flexible solutions for other jobs. There are also special-purpose feedback tools Usabilla and feedback Army that provide remote testing services and management evaluator usability tests

and other similar software.

Analysis software

UX designers can guess from traffic analysis how to improve the user experience of site users.

For example, the data shows that Google Chrome is the most popular browser. Google Chrome is a very powerful browser (more mainstream than ie,chrome). Starting with this assumption, UX designers are designing a user experience that is more suited to their ability to attract skilled and skillful users.

Google Analytics is a powerful and free analytics software.

UX Professional website

has a lot of web discussion UX, listing a few below.

UX magzine

UX Magzine has a great deal of quality discussion about how to improve the user experience.

UX Booth

A user-Multiple author aggregation, UX Design Exchange community. It also includes usability and interaction design.

User Interface:stack Exchange

In the beta phase, UI stack Exchange (a subset of stack overflow) is a Web site for UI researchers and expert questions and answers.

Stack Overflow

A popular programming Q&a website that has a lot of wonderful discussions about UX and usability.

UX Exchagne

A community site where members can ask questions about usability, accessibility, and interactivity, and the user experience.

User Interface UB

Uie is the largest usability research organization in the world. Its website often publishes articles of this research.

Uxmatters

Uxmatters is a network electronic magazine. The article deals with user experience strategy, UX rule information, and so on.

Weeks of UX

Joshua Porter and Joshua Brewer created the site, related to the topic "True User experience design (the process of designing for real arranges)".

Boxes and Arrows

Boxes and arrows slogan is: Commitment to practice, innovation and design of the discussion. So there are a number of more top-notch articles on UX on the site.

Semantics

The founder of Semantic UBM, Peter Morville, has a leading position in information architecture, user experience, and searchable queries, and he writes some user experience-related articles in the blog.

Usabilitypost

Dmitry Fadeyev's Blog records some articles on functional design.

Things I learned in consortium design parochial

Interactive design is closely related to UX design, which provides some brief but easy-to-understand articles.

UX Quotes

Some references to UX topics

Outes from the User

User Experience relationships All users (why roles are important). The Tumblr blog tells about UX-related stories from different features or users of different systems.

Everydayux

Foursquare Blog,alex Rainert, a product director, often communicates ideas about information and interactive design.

Konigi

For UX design is to provide news, resources and tools

Percent of modifiable

With a user experience-led website, Brignull shares some articles about information architecture, user experience, and good design.

darkpatterns.org

Discuss some basic user experience design patterns to help UX designers find the right design patterns to make good user experience products.

Johnny Halland Magazine

Web Magazine on UX design and interactive design

UX Pand

Dedicated to providing UX-related search services

Re-use Path Blog

Re-use Path, a leading UI design UX design company, offers a blog, some useful UI and UX articles.

Putting arranges

Provides some information about UX and "user-centric" links, articles, resources and news, created by the Italian design company Experientia.

Nfrom Blog

Nform's blog publishes some excellent articles for UX designers.

Viget Advance

A Web Products company website, UX related.

Useit.com

Jakob Nielsen, a highly watched usability researcher, and groundbreaking writer, and a usability and UX major inscribed a column called Alertbox.

UX Array

Sara Summers, a Microsoft user experience disseminator.

UI and Us

UI and Us are "cognitive psychology behind user interface design, user experience design, and design."

UX Storytellers

Use one of the professional methods (storytelling) to tell a story to Ux,ui and IA professionals

Source Address: What is User experience design? Overview, Tools and resources

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