To be a successful and well-received digital product, functionality is not the only thing that matters. In a market where products that solve the same problem can be found in a handful, what differs your product can be the user experience. This was not the case a decade ago, but with the improvement of the development technologies, User experience or UX became one of the most important aspects of any digital product.

What Is UX Design?

The process of improving the usability, user satisfaction, accessibility, and the look and feel of a digital product can be described as User Experience(UX) design. UI is a design concept that shapes the digital product to suit the user’s daily needs. Some confuse UI with UX. But UI is a part of UX which handles how the product’s surface functions and looks. 

A combination of market and user research, product development, strategy, and design goes into making a solid UX. The fact that UX can attract customers even before they use the core functionalities of the product is why UX is so important to any digital product.  

User Research and User flow

A well-functioning UX design is developed with the user and his expectations in mind. To achieve a respectable degree of customer satisfaction, a company must collect user data. This is where user research comes in. Understanding a user’s needs, experience, and behaviours through research can be called doing User research. Data gathering can be done by suitable qualitative or quantitative methods to provide the developers with the means to solve the user’s problems. 

When talking about UX, User flow is a term that frequently comes up. In layman’s terms, user flows are diagrams that show the path a user takes while using the digital product. These diagrams map out the user’s movement in the product from the beginning to the endpoint. Figuring out the needed steps, the order they should take place, and the necessary components are the main objectives of creating the user flow.

The connection between User flows and User research is pretty obvious as successful user research could help develop more accurate User flows. When combined, these can improve the success rate of a UX on a grand scale. A User flow generated with the help of user research can help optimize the functionality of the UX, allowing developers to create intuitive interfaces and evaluate existing interfaces.

Define the end goal and work backwards

When approaching UX design, it’s always a good idea to define your goal at the beginning of the design process. This practice is a less used goal-setting method that is more impactful to the UX than the traditional approach. Starting at the end and looking back makes defining what needs to be done from a user experience perspective much easier and effective.  

On the surface, the backward working approach does not seem to be much different from the traditional way of doing things. But it functions differently and forces you to think from a new angle that is more customer-focused and help you see things that you might have missed when using the traditional way.

Best Practices

Crafting a well-functioning UX design is not as simple as it seems on the surface. There are many factors to consider and satisfy. The degree to which the UX design performs will dictate how successful the digital product might become. To help make it easier for anyone that aims to make a credible UX design, here are a few of the best practices to boost the quality of any UX design. 

User comes first 

The main goal of a UX designer is to provide a better experience for the user when using the product. This cannot be done without receiving any feedback from users themselves. Hosting surveys and interviews, using behaviour analysis tools, and analyzing product usage data with the help of techniques such as MVP can be quite useful here. By compiling all the received information, designing UX designs become much easier. 

Simplicity, Consistency, and Categorization 

Simple, categorized and consistent UX designs allow users to easily navigate the product and complete what they came to do. Simplicity and consistency allow users to become familiar with the product quicker and make them feel they are welcomed, while categorization allows easier navigation of the product. 

Functionality above Design 

The goal is to make it as easy as possible for users to do what they want, so functionality comes before design. No matter how visually appealing a product is, if it can't function well as the user needed it won’t be successful. So, when designing a good UX casting the spotlight on functionalities above design is always a good practice. 

Use familiar aspects 

Users, by default, are used to few kinds of usage models. It can be reaching the top right corner for the close button or using applications on a portrait mode, considering these types of small behaviour patterns is crucial. Using unfamiliar interactions may cause users to turn away from your product, and they mostly will not wait out the learning curve. 

Using Visual aspects cleverly. 

Usage of established visual aspect tricks can make an average UX into a good one. Good usage of white spaces, attractive call to actions, wise usage of imagery, and being responsive and mobile-friendly can be selected as some of the best visual aspect usages.

Always seek feedback 

The importance of customer feedback is immeasurable for any UX design. As the acronym stands, UX means user experience, and feedback from customers is what the success of the whole concept depends on. Collecting information from the customers provides valuable insight to the developers that they can use to improve the UX, thus improving the overall digital product. Besides this, it also makes customers feel heard. Another important fact to keep in mind is that never to make it mandatory to give feedback as it may annoy the customer and make them feel forced to do so. 

Conclusion 

It is easy to understand why UX designing is important to any digital product. So, it is wise to focus on UX as same as the backend development. The key to a good UX design is to make it easier for the user to reach their goal easily and quickly. These tips will help you create a user-friendly UX design and help you get to succeed in your digital project. 

At Xentury, we are well versed in all things related to UI/UX designs and can help you create the digital product of your dreams with very small effort. Contact us for more information.