My experience with “designing for UX”

Initially, before I took this module, I had no idea what User Experience Design was all about. In fact, I’ve never heard of the term up to that point. During the first lecture when Mr Reddy was introducing the concept to us, it seemed like some mystical, tangled mess of many different ideas and fields of study. It seemed intangible and unattainable. How could one design for user experience rather than what we were all used to up to that point, designing for usability. Through the course of this module, it seems the answer can then be simplified to “understand the user’s emotional and psychological needs”.

Of course, this is harder said than done. Throughout this course, we have learnt many various frameworks, techniques and methods to try and achieve this. However, it seems all this is at best an educated guess of what your users really need and want. Of course, all this has still got to be balanced with not only usability issues, which is still very important but also the visual design of the product, which influences both usability and emotional value. A juggling act is thus needed when “designing for UX” but at the center of it all, it’s always about the users.

How then, does one figure out who one’s users are, what they want, why they want it, and how they want it? User research of course. However, as with all forms of research and testing, in my opinion at least, it probably works best in real world applications where a project team really has bosses and clients to answer to and clarify question with; potential user groups to conduct research and testing; and of course the resources to run all these activities. In a classroom situation and as students, we don’t really have access to these pools of subjects that we can turn to for research and testing purposes and as a result, our findings are understandably skewed by the conditions as well.

So do all these research and testing methods really help you develop THE killer product? I really doubt so and probably have to agree with Christopher Faheys’ rather cynical views of user research in his article, User Research Smoke & Mirrors. As he claims, how can research that is entirely qualitative and subject be transformed into something objective and quantitative? Are scientific “principles” and “correctness” really better than a designer’s gut feel, experience and talent? I think not! In my opinion, what makes a great product is a great idea, a great idea that is well executed. But how do you make sure it is well executed? From proper planning and knowing how your great idea can fit into your user’s lifestyle, needs and wants. How do you know this? Well, you can see where this is going…

But if there’s one thing I’ve learn in NM4210, it’s that everyone has their own opinion and point of view so assuming that you can pigeon hole your users is probably a very wrong approach to begin with. Through all the various classroom activities and assignments, one really does see how it really DOES depend on the user. For example, during the classroom RMA activity on the pair of sunglasses, I’ve already seen how a team of 3 people can’t even decide on which gender they are designed for, let alone the possible user profiles for marketing.

The final assignment gave us a chance to put into practice many of the research methods and techniques taught throughout the module in a long-term team-based environment, allowing us to get a feel of how a fully UX development process is really like. From conceptualization all the way through to implementation and evaluation, users were always the key. Being the only group with a physical product also gave us the opportunity to shape almost every aspect of what we wanted our project to be. We tried to appeal to our user’s emotions by using very visceral elements in terms of bold colours and striking designs because it’s always the first impression that counts. People are probably far more likely to be convinced to buy such a drink based on how it looks rather than expectations of how it could possibly taste or what kind of psychological or sociological benefits it might have.

In the final stages of our final assignment, we had to carry out User Experience evaluations. We choose to use the Circumplex of emotions and Reaction checklist methods via questionnaires. However, it seems very odd to me that one can even measure someone’s emotional reaction to a website in this way. As we have learnt in class, what users say and what they feel may actually not be the same due to their surrounding conditions, personality and even mood. In mapping out their supposed “emotional reaction” to the website on the circular graph, one really has to wonder how as Fahey has said, something subjective and qualitative can be recorded as objective and quantitative. Does this make the test and results any more valid? How then should emotional evaluations really be carried out? I suspect one way would be by observing the users as they experience the website and reading their body language and expressions. However, this is far less “scientific” and much, much harder to do than it sounds.

So if all this sounds very negative, have I learnt anything from my experience with designing for UX? Sure I have! Although many of the methods and techniques learnt and used seem to have questionable real-world importance, it is not unexpected considering how new and relatively undefined this field of study is. However, that doesn’t mean that designers should ignore UX altogether because I am convinced that it is the most effective way to capture the user. At the beginning of this course I showed one of my friends, who is running his own startup, writing software for the Treo and Mac OS, some of the reference materials from this module. As a hardcore computer science trained developer, he sees UX as a big bunch of “psychobabble” and impractical theories that don’t implement well. Maybe he fails to see the big picture but he is right to a certain extent. However, as the field of UX develops and the methods and ideas improve, many minds will soon change. I’m sold. ;)