[Last blog entry] Experience with " designing for UX"

Hi all,
Let me start by repeating the concept of " User Experience Design" that we mentioned in the first lecture. " User Experience" or UX is the quality of experience a person has when interacting with a specific design.
Okie, from the concept, we all know that different person will have different expectations/ needs/ feelings when interacting with a specific design, thus different person will have different experiences with the same design.
So, a question raised here is that what a designer should do to design for UX ?

Let me borrow a Chinese proverb that Mr Reddy mentioned in class. That is " Walking ten thousand miles of world is better than reading ten thousand scrolls of book". The implication of that proverb in UX design is that as a designer for UX we should go into the world of the user, stand in the user's point of view, try to understand what user wants and needs , try to predict user's emotion, etc because the UX design is ultimately for the user, not for the designer.

How can a UX designer can do that? How should a designer do to create a product for many people while different people will definitely have different tastes, needs and wants?

After doing a group project in designing a happy website, namely SHmile, I have accumulated some experiences in designing for UX. Let me share with you !

1. Defining your target audiences ( their profile, their need and appreciation pleasure, etc) will decide your product ( theme of product, content, appearance, functionality, etc)
2. Designing skill is very important in delivering your ideas to the audiences in asking their opinions. If you can't deliver your ideas perfectly to the users, your product won't be improved in an effective way.
3. Users' feedback are very important. No matter what/ how users feedback about your product, please listen and value all. There is no wrong or right feedback.
4. However, as a designer, you should have your own stand also. You can't satisfy every user. You can change this feature to satisfy user A. But what might happen if your change for user A will make user B dissatisfied ? Hence, as a designer, you should take into consideration every feedback. And at the same time, you MUST decide what change should be made based on the majority of users' opinions Plus your own stand. So, can we say designing for UX is quite intuitive in that sense?
5. Users' experiences are very subjective and unstable. At this point of time, user A might have a very good experience / emotion/ response with your product. But at other time, such response might change. As a result, good UX design will become bad UX design. Hence, I realize that creating a channel for users to keep sending their feedbacks ( these feedbacks might be how users' needs are changed , etc) is very important in improving/ implementing and sustaining the design. For SHmile website, I suggest that our group should enable a feedback channel for the users ( through sending email to the moderator, through voting, through ranking, etc). Then, based on that, our team will have some necessary improvements to satisfy users' needs in the long run.
   

All in all, in designing for UX, users are placed on the top of priorities. What users want/ need/feel/, users' feedback, etc ... should all be taken into consideration. As a designer for UX, you design a specific product for users out there, not for yourself.

Reflection on " User Research Smoke & Mirrors, Part 5: Non-Scientific User Research isn’t a Bad Thing"

There are many ways to do research in order to obtain a good design. Such research can be either scientific or non-scientific, can be either qualitative or quantitative or both. The reason is that " experience is experience, not fact" , hence every single opinion from user is considered as invaluable to improve our design.

While quantitative research allows the users to identify the trend of the users, the qualitative research offers much more information about the user experience to the designer. As a result, qualitative research allows the designer to go in to the depth of the issues, go into details of what users want/ need/ don't want/ don't need/ expect, etc, as well as go into insight of the future work.

However, no matter what kind of research methodologies that the designer adopt, users are always the last ones to decide one particular design is good or not. In other word, it is users to validate the design, not the designer him/herself. Therefore, every single feedback from the user is considered very important in improving the final product. The active users with different comments from both sides ( positive and negative) will help the designer more than the passive users who accept everything provided by the designer.

Generally, doing research is very important. We can not say which kind of research methodology is better than the other. They are complementary to each other in the reality. Hence, if time allows, the ideal method that the designer should consider is the combination of both the qualitative and quantitative research method.