User experience is a broad subject. Anyone who practices UX design needs skills in several different fields. It’s impossible to cover the whole subject in one article, but there are some of the most important tips that every UX designer should know.
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UX Is Not Only UI
Swapping UX with UI design as though the two are the same is a common mistake. It’s important to understand the difference between the two. User Interface is the space where interactions between humans and a product happen, while User Experience is an emotional outcome after interactions with a product.
Know Your Audience
User research is the best first step in of the design process. One of the most important factors that you should take into account when designing your product is your audience. If you want to design something that your users really love, you will need to have some understanding of what your audience actually wants, needs, and can understand. This means that you need to do user research as an essential part of the UX design process. It’s essential to have your users at the front of your mind before you start designing. This will allow you to provide good value to people who will use your product and focus on benefits, instead of features. For example, if your audience is older and needs help converting docx to pdf, there’s no point in designing something overly complicated.
You Are Not The User
Testing with real users is an important part of the design process. Designers often assume that people who will use their interfaces are like themselves. As a result, designers project their behaviors and reactions onto the user. Thinking that your user is like you is a mistake. This effect in psychology is called a false consensus. This means we think others will share our beliefs and will behave in a similar way to ourselves.
The people who use your product will have different backgrounds, different mindsets, different mental models, and different goals. They aren’t you.
There is a technique that can help you overcome this, called usability testing. If you want to build products that your user loves, then you tend to test it. Testing with real users, not your teammates, friends, or family, will let you learn how to create products that are right for the people who will use them. This will be time-consuming, but it’s the only way to know you’re getting it right. You can follow this link to find more information on user experience design firms.
Adapt Design For Short Attention Spans
Don’t overwhelm users with too much information. An attention span is the amount of time that someone can concentrate on a task before they become distracted. The average attention span is only eight seconds, which has fallen from 12 seconds, giving humans a shorter attention span than a goldfish. Designers need to adjust their designs to cope with this change in attention span, and keep in mind the goal of getting people the information that they need as quickly as possible before they get distracted.
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