Ever heard of this term before? No it’s not some chemical on the Periodic Table but you’d be forgiven if you thought it was. I remember the first time I heard this term almost 4 years ago.
I was in a deep conversation with a graphic designer and he was talking to me about all the great things he could do and casually threw in the term UX… I just nodded in agreement as if totally in sync with his thoughts – all the good lawyers have a great poker face and then just make notes so they can look up what they didn’t know later.
This term really stuck with me though. I had heard most of what he was telling me before but this UX term threw me a little…so much so that I actually couldn’t bear to wait until later to look it up so I showed my hand and asked him “what is UX?”
Quick as a flash he said “user experience”. He actually didn’t judge me in any way for asking; at least his face said as much. He carried on jabbering away as if those two words meant any more to me than UX. This time I thought better than to interject so I waited until I could find out more about “UX” or “user experience”.
Oddly, I found myself on the other side of this conversation recently talking about UX and I could see the other person nodding away in agreement. Yet my experience a few years ago taught me not to be so assuming so I casually threw in the full term later on in the conversation and you could literally see the penny drop from the expression the other gent made as our discussion continued.
So to put in simply, UX is the usability, accessibility and pleasure of an interaction between the user and the product.
When it comes to mobile apps, UX is critical to its success. If an app is easy to use, easy to understand, easy to access and actually brings an element of satisfaction if not pleasure, then its chances of being successful are very good indeed.
Amazon has got this spot on. The Amazon app is one of the best apps on my phone. It is really easy to use and find a product…it even has a barcode scanning feature if I’m in a store. I can buy within a few clicks as it saves all my credit cards and delivery addresses.
On the other hand an app which I thought would be quite handy to save all my passwords securely, Dashlane, is just far too challenging. The idea is spot on but the way they have gone about executing the solution is very poor. As a consequence it’s of no use to me.
And UX is really important in today’s society. Consumers of digital media want information fast, with ease and with satisfaction. Pay little attention to this area, or worse still skip it altogether and any digital solution could be heading for a disaster.
With UX comes a real need to understand the consumer needs and their journey. In fact, there are even jobs titled “UX Designer” demonstrating the importance digital companies place on this aspect of their research and development.
Indeed, I genuinely believe in the importance of UX, so much so that we have a specialist that continues to review and enhance our UX to deliver more to the end user. It is one of the reasons inCase is as successful as it is.
The challenge is maintaining that level of UX. With the continuing rapid change of consumer needs, UX is an area constantly under review and scrutiny.