UX is the short name for User Experience. What is User Experience though? User Experience is how a user interacts with a product or service and the feeling associated with it.
Often times when UX is good, you may hardly notice the intricacies of the design, but when UX is bad you definitely will notice. Have you ever used a new app and thought why is this so difficult to use? That is an example of bad UX, the interface the design has is making the experience a difficult one for the user, making it harder for them and less likely to use the product or service in the future. Good UX however is an intuitive design that thinks about the user overall experience through each step of the process. What is that new app was instead so simple, you needed no explanation. I bet you would be more likely to use it versus that complicated and difficult app.
There are five elements of the design process in UX, the surface, the skeleton, the structure, the scope, and the strategy plane. Each element builds on the previous step of the plane to form what the user sees and experiences. If you design while thinking about the user during each step of the process, you end up with a design that has been focused on the user wants and needs through each step.
When you design using UX, you design each step around the customer, meaning that the product or service will be exactly what the user wants and needs. For instance, take two companies with the same product, one was designed using UX and the other wasn't. Company A designed their product using UX, it is easy to use and does exactly what the user wants, while Company B didn't, the user has trouble using the product and it doesn't do exactly what they need. Now the user needs to rebuy a product, which product are they more likely to buy? Ultimately a user wants a product with good UX, they will use it over the one with bad UX, leading to more brand loyalty for the company who has employed UX design.
Want to learn more about UX check out the book, The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garret
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