Video services players, web services, apps and digital platforms are no longer add-ons to physical products, but an integral part of the offering itself. Whether it’s Amazon, Airbnb, Uber or Netflix, the service is the product. This service that can be used and experimented with digitally should win people over from start to finish with reliable and intuitive use. This compelling and inspiring user experience (UX) at all touchpoints is the task and goal of UX design.
Focusing on the user, and working closely with other disciplines, to design websites, mobile applications or Internet of Things applications will make people’s lives easier.
What is UX Design?
UX design is the process of creating products, web pages and applications that offer personalized and relevant experiences to users, to eliminate as much as possible all the barriers or points of friction that hinder conversion.
The user experience is something that permeates all stages in which a prospect meets a brand or product —from the search for information to post-purchase loyalty— and that involves aspects such as branding, web design, site usability and functionalities.
What is the difference between user experience and user interface? Although both concepts are very often confused, the user interface (UI) is one of the elements of the UX. The mission of user interface design is to establish in terms of design, graphics, and content on a website the requirements for an optimal user experience.
How Does UX Design Work?
The focus of the UX designers’ work is always the user, especially future ones, whose wants and needs are determined through observations and surveys, whether analogue or digital. The results of this user research are condensed into so-called personas, which represent potential users as examples in the design process and further development. With these customer or user models, scenes and storyboards are used to execute quickly and iteratively situations for new products and services. To do this, they do a lot of prototyping that helps visualize and understand the future behaviour of the system and test it on people.
The user experience includes users’ perceptions and reactions to a product or service during use, as well as expectations and anticipation prior to actual application.
The insights gained flow into the next round of design until the concept is compelling both in terms of people and in the business context. These steps are just a few of the many procedures in a UX designer’s toolbox, in which design thinking, human-centred design, user journey (experience) mapping, media storytelling crossovers or the design of business models also have their place.
These methods ensure that the UX designer has an overview of the user and the context of use of a product or service. This is the only way to create a proper and consistent offer because consistency across channels, platforms, and user interfaces is one of the core concerns of UX design.
Ensuring long-term business success, developing innovative new online services, or even thinking about new initiatives requires a holistic approach that includes all aspects of the user experience. In this way, UX designers create a framework for products and services that lead to a positive customer experience for customers, build trust in the brand and make them loyal ambassadors. UX designers always work closely with other disciplines such as developers, visual designers and project managers.
Stages in UX Design
- Research: This is the time to obtain all the information possible to carry out the project, both about the client and the users. The correct balance between demands and needs of each other is what leads to the path of success. At this stage, information must be obtained to help define the needs of the project, its true intention (disseminate, inform, raise awareness, etc.) and the objectives. It will investigate the context, content, and users. It will provide the data to be able to continue designing the end user experience.
- Organization: This is the moment to organize the information obtained in the previous stage and represent and structure the contents taking into account the context and the web users. An important task will be to propose the hierarchies of the contents and classify them by themes in several proposals according to the previous phase.
- Design: The product design is proposed through the previous organization of the information. The design stage includes implementing the necessary programming and design requirements so that the structured content is understood by the user who arrives at the content page or the web.
- Testing: As before, this comes from the previous stage. In this case, the objective is to test the established design. User tests are carried out to see if the objectives set in the first phase are really being met and the implementation of the other phases has been correct and successful. The main purpose is to establish that the identified needs have been resolved.
By adapting these stages, involving all the responsible actors in the process, and testing the results to see if the set objectives are met, we will get closer to the user experience for a successful project.
JUMP Data-Driven Video, a business data management platform designed specifically for video service players, works to improve the user experience and offer you a complete analysis of your audience that allows you to improve the UX design or test the different improvements that can be carried out.
