Understanding UX: A Guide to Key Concepts

This article introduces you to User-Centered Design (UCD) and User Experience Design (UXD) as powerful strategic assets for your business.

Let’s explore these concepts in detail and understand their role in driving successful outcomes. We’ll also clarify other related concepts and address common misconceptions or terms that are often used interchangeably. This will provide you with a solid foundation for effectively integrating UCD and UXD into your company strategy!

Interaction: More Than Just Digital

Interaction is everywhere in our daily lives—not just between people, but also with the world around us. From driving cars or crossing streets to engaging with mobile devices, ATMs, and fridges, each interaction involves navigating systems designed by various people and governed by different rules. Some systems are well-suited to their context, while others rely on outdated or ineffective solutions.

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), like using a mobile app or website, is only a small fraction of the larger landscape of user interaction. This narrow focus was the primary concern of early digital designers. However, UX extends far beyond the digital realm, and modern designers should aim to create holistic, comprehensive solutions that integrate both the digital and physical worlds.

User Experience Design: More Than Just IT

UXD is often associated with IT, particularly software development, but it extends far beyond just the digital or technical realm.

At its core, UXD is deeply rooted in psychology, as it aims to create meaningful, human-centred experiences. It encompasses not only how a user interacts with a product, system, or service but also how these interactions make them feel and act. It takes into account emotions, perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, and responses (both physical and psychological) that users have throughout their journey with the product, from before their first engagement to post-interaction, every time. This process involves a holistic understanding of user needs and behaviours, which is why UXD plays such a critical role in designing products that are not only functional but also emotionally resonant and intuitive.

Ultimately, UXD focuses on making products relevant, efficient, user-friendly, and seamless, aligning with users’ natural behaviours and desires. Unlike purely technical design, UXD acknowledges the psychological impact of every decision, making it inherently subjective and heavily influenced by individual user perceptions and experiences. This renders UXD essential in building connections between users and products, promoting both practical and emotional engagement.

User-Centred Design: A Process of Continuous Improvement

UCD is an iterative design process that enhances and supports User Experience.

In this iterative approach to designing systems, the primary focus is on deeply understanding the users—who they are, how they interact with the product, and what their needs are. By gaining these insights, the goal is to ensure the product effectively meets those needs. This process integrates research and design techniques throughout the entire product lifecycle, from initial design to development, to guarantee usability and accessibility. As a result, User-Centered Design (UCD) plays a crucial role in crafting user-friendly experiences that resonate with users and are optimised for their needs at every stage.

Throughout each phase, UCD employs a range of research and design techniques to create highly usable and accessible products and systems. Gaining a deep understanding of end users’ needs is crucial and can lead to even better outcomes when the process is iterative. This ensures continuous improvement, with each iteration refined based on valuable user feedback.

Usability: Designing with the User in Mind

Jakob Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics guide designers to enhance User Experience through better interface design.

These principles not only guide the design process but also serve as tools to evaluate a system’s usability and pave the way for its refinement. Some of these key principles include:

Visibility of System Status

Users should always know what’s happening, with timely feedback.

Any digital product we design should keep users informed by providing timely feedback. For example, early versions of web browsers offered little to no indication that a webpage was loading, leaving users in the dark about whether or not the page would eventually appear. To address this, the loading circle icon was introduced. However, while it was a step forward, it had its limitations – the circle often rotated endlessly without offering any clue as to when the page would actually load.

A more effective solution came in the form of progress bars. These bars not only show that the system is working, but they also provide users with a visual cue of how much longer the process will take. By displaying the speed of the animated loading bar, users can gauge how close the process is to completion, giving them a clearer sense of when they can expect the page to load.

Consistency & Standards

Familiar patterns and conventions make systems intuitive.

In design, it’s essential to follow conventions and patterns that users are familiar with, ensuring they don’t have to think twice when performing a common action. This principle works well in the non-digital world, such as in shopping. When customers visit a store for the first time, their previous shopping experiences guide them. They instinctively know how to find and select items, locate a cashier, and complete their purchase.

Similarly, in the digital world, users come with a set of expectations. For example, if a website features four different buttons, users expect each button to lead to something distinct. In a recent usability audit of a website, however, I encountered a surprising issue: all four buttons on the homepage led to the exact same outcome—automatically scrolling the page down to a contact form. As a user, I tried avoiding the form and clicked each button, expecting a different action, but to my frustration, they all performed the same function. This disruption of user expectations highlights the importance of maintaining familiar and predictable patterns for a smooth and intuitive experience.

User Control & Freedom

Users should always feel a sense of control.

In both the non-digital and digital worlds, our ability to interact with the environment is shaped by underlying principles. In the non-digital world, we are governed by physical laws that we learn about early in life, often reinforced throughout school. However, in the virtual world, the experience is less tangible—there is no gravity, no defined past or future, and no inherent "up" or "down" (only what is agreed upon within a specific context). To help users navigate this abstract space, designers need to introduce guiding elements, or "handrails", to ensure clarity and control.

One such example is the wide adoption of breadcrumbs, which have been used for over two decades to help users orient themselves within a system. For instance, in an online store, a breadcrumb trail might appear as: Shop → Products → Books → Fiction → Classics → 1984. This immediately informs users of their current location and how they can retrace their steps to previous pages.

Another crucial feature often included in web and mobile apps is the "Undo" and "Redo" buttons. These options allow users to reverse actions they may regret, providing a sense of control and freedom. When users know they can easily revert changes, it reduces the anxiety of making mistakes, ultimately improving their overall experience.

Error Prevention

Avoid errors before they happen.

It’s always a good practice to inform users about a problem within their user journey. But an even better practice is to prevent these errors from occurring in the first place. In other words, whenever possible, users shouldn’t have to encounter an error message at all. Why, you ask?

Let’s imagine users have a list of options on a website or in a mobile app. They choose the first one and... bum! An error message suddenly pops up across the entire screen saying, "Option unavailable". If the option isn't available, users shouldn’t even be able to see it. And if it absolutely must be visible, it’s better to grey it out, make it unclickable, and perhaps provide an explanation as to why it’s not available at that particular moment.

Another good example is webpages that are Under Construction. We don’t see many of these anymore, and for a good reason. Good designers understand that they shouldn’t promise content (such as items in a menu) that isn’t available yet.

Recognition Rather Than Recall

Reduce cognitive load by making information easily accessible.

Reducing users’ cognitive load is essential in design. In our fast-paced world, we all have less and less patience for unnecessary mental effort. With attention becoming the new currency, designers should aim to minimise the amount of thinking required from users—only asking them to engage their memory when absolutely necessary.

For instance, if a product requires users to make a decision, all supporting information should be visible on the same screen. If an online shopping process asks a question in step 4 about something from step 1, it would be more efficient to display that relevant information in step 4, rather than requiring users to remember it from earlier. Instructions should also be clear and located where users need them. Consistency in the interface is key: the more users interact with it, the more fluent they should become.

To summarize, a usable interface can be quickly recognised if it meets the following conditions:

1. First Contact: The user should become familiar with and competent in using the interface upon first interaction.
2. Objective Achievement: The user should easily achieve their desired goal with the product.
3. Easy Recall: The user should easily recall the interface and know how to use it on subsequent visits.

For example, when a user visits a hotel booking website, they should intuitively understand how to navigate through each step of the process, from start to finish, without having to learn how to use the website or seek help. The interface should be self-explanatory. Each element should communicate its purpose through its design and placement, following the principle of "form follows function".

Design Thinking: A Creative Approach to Problem-Solving

Design Thinking has gained significant popularity in recent years, offering a unique approach that complements other methodologies.

At its core, Design Thinking is a creative problem-solving process. Its primary aim is to help teams develop innovative solutions. As a side benefit, it also fosters the creation of common ground among team members. This happens by emphasising shared vocabulary—because teams can only move forward as quickly as they can communicate effectively. Rather than spending excessive time defining what to build (a process that can be resolved relatively quickly), the focus is on how the product will be built and how users will interact with it in specific scenarios.

Throughout the Design Thinking process, teams produce tangible artefacts, such as empathy maps, storyboards, wireframes, prioritisation matrices, journey maps, prototypes, low-fidelity mockups, and other visual diagrams. These artefacts serve as powerful tools for communication, often becoming key documentation for the project. They are more effective at conveying ideas than traditional text-based documents and can be easily revisited and amended as needed, ensuring clarity and alignment.

Another key benefit of Design Thinking is its ability to foster a trust-based team culture. In many traditional organisations, hierarchies often dominate decision-making, with the opinions of the highest-paid person or the loudest voice carrying the most weight. This can lead to poorly researched ideas, unclear goals, and wasted time on disagreements.

Design Thinking provides an alternative: equality. During brainstorming sessions, ideas are shared anonymously, typically on post-it notes, allowing everyone to contribute their thoughts without fear of judgment. This democratic process ensures that all team members have a voice, strengthening the overall team and fostering a sense of ownership and investment in the project. When people feel involved from the outset, they are more likely to believe in the final outcome.

This collaborative approach not only motivates employees but also enhances job satisfaction and retention. Over time, it transforms the organisation by cultivating high-performing teams committed to collaboration and long-term success.

Design Thinking certainly isn’t a new concept; it’s an approach that has been successfully applied in various industries for many years. However, it remains relatively underutilised in the field of software development. Given its proven ability to enhance innovation, creativity, and team cohesion, we can expect to see its widespread adoption in the years ahead. As a designer or someone managing design teams, you have the unique opportunity to accelerate this shift within your organisation. By implementing Design Thinking in your own environment, you can reap its benefits early, fostering more effective problem-solving and collaboration, and ultimately driving better outcomes for your projects.

With these foundational concepts, UX design can move beyond just satisfying user needs and into truly shaping user experiences.

References

https://www.nngroup.com