what is UX design?
User experience (UX) is a set of experiences of all interactions that the user has with product or service. UX design refers to: each individual element that shapes that experience; how these elements affect the user’s feelings; how easily and efficiently the users of the product or service achieve the desired goal. Unlike the classic design process, which is mainly the result of personal visions of designers based on product owner requirements, UX design is a process of creating new products or improving existing ones that is primarily focused on the needs, expectations, desires and requirements of users. UX designers allow companies to better understand user needs and meet their expectations. By creating products and services that provide users with relevant, meaningful, useful and desired experiences, UX designers represent the bridge between the company and the users. UX design involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product or service, including aspects of branding, design, usability and function.
Copyright: IxDF
UX design takes place through five iterative stages:
1. Empathize: research users' needs;
2. Define: articulate the problem or challenge that need to be solved;
3. Ideate: challenge assumptions and create ideas;
4. Prototype: create solutions;
5. Test: try out solutions;
These five stages are iterating so that in the first cycle low-fidelity prototypes are made, in the second iteration high-fidelity prototypes, in the third iteration the product itself and in the eventual fourth or subsequent iterations the product is further improved.
Products and services created or improved by the UX design process meet seven key UX design requirements:
1. Usefulness - product or service should have a purpose for the target users. In addition to the practical use, that purpose can also be entertainment, aesthetic appeal etc.
2. Usability - product or service should enable users to achieve their end objective with a product or service effectively and efficiently. The safety and comfort of using a product or service, as a significant competitive advantage, come as a result of the high degree of usability of the product or service.
3. Findability - ensures that the product or service and its contents can be easily found.
4. Credibility - refers to the properties of the product or service that allow users to believe in the product or service. It also includes the brand reputation.
5. Desirability - is conveyed through emotional design, application of aesthetic principles, branding, image and reputation of the product or service.
6. Accessibility – the product or service should be designed to be accessible to persons with disabilities, users who are temporarily disabled in some way as well as in adverse environmental conditions such as noise, rain/humidity, too low or strong light, etc.
7. Value - product or service should bring value both to the user who uses them and to the profit of the company that developed them. For users, the value of a product or service is usually the sum of all factors of the user experience, while different users evaluate each factor differently, so for some the most important factor will be desirability, for others usability, for others usefulness, etc.
The success and competitiveness of a product or service in the market largely depends on the degree to which these seven requirements are met.
why UX design?
UX is one of the deciding factors, if not the deciding factor, whether a product will disappear without a trace or achieve mass sales. The UX design process, above all, ensures that the product being developed is something that users want and will have market demand thereby reducing the risk of developing the wrong and uncompetitive product. Furthermore, thanks to UX design, costs and time required for product development are reduced, the need for product changes and product maintenance costs are reduced, the number of customer errors and customer support needs are reduced, productivity and revenue are increased, opportunity cost is reduced, users are more satisfied, they accept the product to a greater extent and have a better opinion of the brand. Therefore, it is not surprising at all that UX design is one of the fundamental pillars of the business policy of successful companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, AirBnb, etc.
UX design is fully compatible with AGILE / SCRUM digital product development methodology.
The development of digital products using the UX design method, which has accessibility as one of the key requirements, eliminates the need for SEO because the requirements of e-accessibility cover and widely exceed all aspects of best SEO practice. The advantage of e-accessibility design over SEO is not only reflected in better results when it comes to ease of finding, but e-accessibility results in a far wider base of potential clients (99 million people with disabilities in the EU, 61 million people with disabilities in the USA, more than1/5 of the global population) and the product itself is more usable not only for people with disabilities but also for all other users. Also, e-accessibility is a legal obligation in the EU, US and almost all countries of the world including Montenegro. National Federation of the Blind received $6 million settlement after lawsuit against the company "Target", which didn’t fulfill the legal obligation of e-accessibility. Aside $6 million settlement and additional $3.7 million in attorney's fees and costs to the plaintiffs, Target also faced significant financial losses due to the boycott by customers, as well as the overall negative impact on the brand.
The return on investment (ROI) of UX design is extremely high and ranges from 1:10 to even 1: 388. The following examples, studies, and research best illustrate the significance of UX design:
- On average, every dollar invested in UX brings 100 dollars in return. That’s an ROI of a whopping 9900%. (Source: Forbes, Good UX Is Good Business: How To Reap Its Benefits, 2015)
- The ROI of a great User Experience is 388:1 (3,875,069/10,000). (Source: UXpro, The Return on Investment of a Great User Experience, 2015)
- Better UX design could yield conversion rates up to 400%. (Source: Forbes, The Bottom Line: Why Good UX Design Means Better Business, 2017)
- UX design tweak: "Register" button on Amazon was changed with "Continue" button. The number of customers purchasing went up by 45%. The extra purchases resulted in an extra $15 million the first month. For the first year, the site saw an additional $300,000,000. (Source: UIE, Jared M. Spool, The $300 Million Button, 2019)
- UX design thinking saved the start-up AirBnb from bankruptcy in 2009 and led to an increase in the value of the company to the amount of tens of billions of dollars. (Source: First Round Review: How Design Thinking Transformed Airbnb from a Failing Startup to a Billion Dollar Business)
- After redesigning for usability, the average improvement in key performance indicators (KPI) was 135%. In the latest survey the average improvement was 83%. (Source: Nielsen Norman Group, Return on Investment (ROI) for Usability, 2008)
- Sensitivity to the user experience early-on has demonstrated a reduction in product development cycle by over 33-50%. (Sources: MITX: ROI of UX panel discussion, 2009 & James Bossert, QFD: A Practitioners Approach, 1990)
-The input of a UX designer reduces the amount of time developers have to re-work a product by up to 50%, and reduces development time overall by between 33% and 50% by improving decision-making and helping to prioritize development tasks. (Source: The Trillion Dollar UX Problem: A Comprehensive Guide to the ROI of UX, 2017)
- 1:10:100 rule of thumb: for every one dollar invested in User Experience research you save $10 in development and $100 in post-release maintenance. (Source: Clare-Marie Karat, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, 2009)
- 70% of projects fail due to lack of user acceptance. (Source: Forrester Research, Report: “Rich Internet Application Errors To Avoid“, 2008)
- 89% of consumers have switched to doing business with a competitor following a poor customer experience. (Source: Harris Interactive, Customer Experience Improvement Study, 2011)
- Average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate in the US is 69.80%. 18% of US online shoppers have abandoned an order in the past quarter solely due to a “too long / complicated checkout process”. 41 companies that participated in research had $260 billion worth of lost orders due to UX design issues which are recoverable solely through a better checkout flow & design. (Source: Baymard, Cart abandonment rate, 2019)
- Design-driven businesses have outperformed the S&P by a whopping 228% over the past 10 years. The bottom line, good design = good business. (Source: The Trillion Dollar UX Problem: A Comprehensive Guide to the ROI of UX, 2017)
- 90% reduction in support costs after usability testing for the MacAfee ProtectionPilot Software. (Source: Experiencedynamics, Making a Strong Business case for the ROI of UX, 2014)
- Iterative testing decreased support calls by 70% on Mozilla's support website. (Source: Nielsen Norman Group, How Iterative Testing Decreased Support Calls By 70% on Mozilla's Support Website, 2015)
- Walmart’s redesign of their ecommerce site resulted in a 214% increase in visitors. Bank of America increased its online banking registration by 45% after a UX redesign of the process. IBM’s report on User-Centered Design notes that “every dollar invested in ease of use returns $10 to $100”. (Source: UXPlanet, How To Calculate the ROI Of Your UX Activities, 2017)
- In the first year after its launch, the IIDS generated a 100% productivity gain in development teams and saved an estimated $30 million for the company as the result of good UX practice. (Source: Toptal, The True ROI of UX: B2B Redesign Case Studies)
- Projects with personas have an ROI of up to 4x more than projects without them. (Source: Forrester, Research: ROI of Personas, 2010)
- 93% of executives said customer experience is on their company’s list of strategic priorities with 28% stating it is their top priority. (Source: Forrester, Research: The State of Customer Experience, 2012)
- Nearly all consumers (85 percent) said they would be willing to pay more over the standard price of a good or service to ensure a superior customer experience. Of those consumers that said they would pay more for an excellent customer experience: 55% would pay 10% or more; 27% would pay 15% or more; 10% would pay 25% or more. (Source: BusinessWire Customer Experience Report, 2010)
- 52% of enterprise CEO's mentioned UX or CX as a competitive differentiator in the next 12 months (2018). *
Jeff Bezos invested 100X more into customer experience than advertising during the first year of Amazon. *
94% of the factors that affect a user’s 1st impression of your product are design-related. *
Judgments on website credibility are 75% based on a website's overall aesthetics. *
79% of people who don't like what they find on 1 site, will go search for another site. *
A single bad experience on a website makes users 88% less likely to visit the website again. *
67% of users say that a poor website experience negatively affects their opinion of a brand. *
80% of users abandon a mobile site if they have a bad user experience. *
95% of mobile apps are abandoned within a month. *
53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if page takes longer than 3 seconds to load. *
Fixing an error after development is up to 100x as expensive as it would have been before development. *
Since the year 2020, CX overtook price and product as the key brand differentiator. *
Nearly 3/4 (73%) of companies not currently conducting user testing will do so in the next 12 months. *
84% of companies expect to increase their focus on CX measurements and metrics. *
* Source: Intechnic, 100 UX Statistics Every User Experience Professional Needs to Know