What exactly is UX/UI? Beyond the buzz buzz figma design

All over social media and among friends, all I had thought about ux/ui was really just a display of a web page design made by Figma tool. I wouldn’t have thought about the broad range of definition of ux/ui and how it relates with our everyday activities. In this article, I decided to distill my learning into technical contents and help noobs understand the basics of ux/ui.

Here is a breakdown of what you will learn in this article.

• What exactly is UX/UI?

• Products and product development explained

• What makes a good user experience?

• UX/UI Roles

What exactly is UX/UI?

Imagine you just got yourself a new kitchen blender, it has no manual nor instruction on how to operate it. Its handle is slant downward. You find yourself stuck, trying to make it work. Alas! It worked but you can’t seem to control it in such a way you desire, the button is stiff and takes forever to press. Hehehe! Now you go on telling everyone how your experience with your new blender -

- Hey! How was the blender you got at the mall?

- I didn’t enjoy it. I couldn’t use it and it feels like it is just aesthetically pleasing without functionality

- Hehehe! That sure isn’t a blender, perhaps an home decor item

- Well, let’s conclude on that. LOL!

You ended the conversation with your friend, explaining how dissatisfied you were with your experience interacting with the blender.

User Experience, UX for short simply describes how a person feels about experiencing or interacting with a product.

The design of such an experience and its interface (UI) - its visual appeal in terms of colour and fonts – is known as UX/UI Design.

Products and Products Development Explained

A product is not necessarily a website, an application or software. It is the outcome of an idea. This encompasses the appliances in our home, the airconditioner, cars and bicycles.They are all products, the outcome of an idea. Design is only one among other stages involved in product development. There are five stages involved when building a product:

Products are birthed by brainstorming ideas generated from researching users' problems and possible solutions.

It is followed by the definition stage where the stakeholders involved focus on how the product is built. Questions involved here include “for what purpose are we building the blender?”, “how do we consider the diverse backgrounds of users?”, “what features will the blender need?” - the button, handle, and lid.

Design is close to the last stage involved in building a product. Here, the designer focuses on making a sketch of the product - wireframe; creating an hypothetical model of the product - prototype; features implementation.

The products we use were tested before they got released, otherwise we would have experienced numerous catastrophes interacting with them. Haha! Who knows, the world would have been quite more difficult than it is.

Testing is done by ux researchers and this involves three stages - internal testing, testing with stakeholders and potential users. These stages involve receiving feedback from users, making adjustments, removing or adding features.

The four stages are followed by launching - the release of a product to its end user. Product development is a cycle, Just like agile practices, it involves continuous improvements and iterations. This explains why we have differentiated updated versions of web apps, automobiles and other products.

What makes a product possess good user experience?

UX design isn’t just some aesthetically pleasing product design. A good user experience communicates satisfaction. It is functional, serves the purpose for which it was intended. It meets a user’s needs. Good user experience is characterized by usability, equity, usefulness and enjoyability.

A usable product is not necessarily useful. Usability describes the ease of access of a product. An equitable product considers users of diverse backgrounds, users with speech or visual impairment, users across different ages and cultural backgrounds need to be considered when designing a product. A satisfying user experience delights its users with aesthetically pleasing design.

However, what is a usable, equitable and enjoyable design without functionality? A good design is useful. Do you recall the kitchen blender analogy I used at the start of the article? Remember its handle is slant downwards? Well, such handle design is usable in the sense that it could actually be used to lift the blender content. But, how about when it’s time to pour the blended content elsewhere? Obviously, a slanted handle will only make it difficult for such a purpose. This differentiates a usable product from a useful product.

UX/UI Roles

Motion designer, Interaction designer, VR/AR designer, UX writer and researcher, Product manager, among others are the roles involving UX/UI. My focus here is on UX Engineering.

UX Engineering focuses on frontend engineering combined with ux principles. This is an intermediary role between design and engineering. A ux engineer’s role is T-shaped with the ability to create prototypes and wireframes, write frontend codes in Javascript, CSS and HTML.

In addition to the technical skills needed in UX/UI, empathy, communication and a good sense of aesthetically pleasing visual design with complementary colours are vital soft skills needed for a successful ux/ui career.

Summary

So far, in this article, I made a detailed explanation on the basics of UX/UI; product and product development (brainstorm, define, design, test, launch); the characteristics of a good user experience (usable, useful, equity and enjoyable); and the roles involved in ux/ui.

At this learning rate, I will definitely distill my learning into technical contents and get to speak at technical events.

— Arafat Abdussalam Zaheen (@Arafat_ssalam) May 26, 2022

Cherries and Berries

You could try checking the Google UX Design Professional Certificate on Coursera for more learning contents.

Design to me, is the ability to convey and communicate effectively, your idea to an audience and arouse a satisfaction which aligns with their purpose.

I am pretty sure you enjoyed the technical content. Do give your claps, shares and comments.

Reach me via: twitter.com/arafat_ssalam

See you in the next article. Cheers, bye!

Article Resource Google UX Design Professional Certificate