If you are an entrepreneur working in tech, when you think about how you want your customers to feel when they interact with your service or product, do you want them to experience feelings of frustration, aggravation, or worse, make them feel kind of stupid or dumb? Of course not, and yet, it still happens with surprising frequency. Consider the following:
- Roberta is on a long flight from San Francisco to Buenos Aires for a business trip. While there’s plenty of in-flight movies, music, and games to choose from, the touch-screen controls are too finicky and she has to try three or four times just to select the damn one she wants.
- Martin and his startup team working on a legal learning app felt they deeply understood their end-users, because all his co-founders went to law school, just like their target audience. During development they decided they could save time and money by cutting down on the extensive focus testing, but now the app is underperforming relative to their initial projections. What happened?
- Vanessa spent a ton of time on a clean and responsive landing page design for her online trading site, but after looking at Google Analytics, she doesn’t understand why nobody is signing up for her newsletter.
While these may be three different people with different backgrounds and situations, the one thing they share in common (aside from being victims of first-world problems) is that they are all experiencing effects of bad user experience design practices. I’m sure none of them had the intention to cause this, but somewhere along the way, it still happened. Why?
| "In today’s high-speed, socially connected world, the distinguishing factor between business success and failure often boils down to who has the better UX. " | The good news is that 99% of the time it’s not the users’ fault, as all of these problems can be averted with a little dash of good user experience design practices, making these people’s lives more enjoyable, saving time, and hopefully making sure your company can keep the lights on! While almost all people would say good UX design is desirable, how exactly can you achieve good UX if you don’t fully understand what it is, how it works, or what’s appropriate to your situation? As an entrepreneur, you might be looking at job descriptions, portfolios, trying to find a solution, but sometimes you see so many terms and names and buzzwords it just makes your head spin - you just want someone who understands your problem to fix it! To help address these concerns, in this three-part blog series we’re going to take a high-level look at what UX is, explore some of its different components, demystify terminology, and explain both why and when it’s important for your business to leverage UX effectively. |
 "Good UX is clinically proven to help users like you grow arms!" | What Is User Experience?User Experience is the holistic experience of real people interacting with your startup's brand and software, encompassing the design, distribution, organization, and implementation of information and interactions to serve both the emotional needs of real people and an organization’s objectives. It’s a complex and fascinating field that touches a variety of disciplines, processes, and practices, including psychology, art, technology, marketing, business, finance, and more. All practices within the UX spectrum promote clarity and increased levels of positive user emotions (such as engagement and delight), strive to reduce negative friction, and increase the chance of building great products that reach audiences and fulfill business objectives. In today’s high-speed, socially connected world, the distinguishing factor between business success and failure often boils down to who has the better UX. |
What Are the Different Types of UX?
As a professional pursuit related to technology, UX can appear complex and ever-changing. UX is like a toolbox with many subcomponents that UX professionals apply judiciously over the lifecycle of software product development. Some UX’ers are specialists and provide one or two types of services really well, like Visual Design or Research, while others are generalists with less extensive but broader applicable skillsets who can follow problems and adapt to changing needs.
- In the first part of this blog, we will explore the concepts, practices, and processes of Usability, User Research, and Content Strategy.
- Part Two will go over Information Architecture, UX Design, and UX Prototyping.
- Finally, in Part Three we’ll cover Visual Design, Interaction Design, and Gamification.
If you are a start-up owner or entrepreneur, chances are you're strapped for cash or resources. If this sounds like you, then you'll may be best served by a UX generalist who can provide a variety of UX services. Although, after going through this blog series, you'll might come to the alternate conclusion that a specialist might best serve your business. This is cool too!
When thinking about your needs, one thing you should note is that the boundaries between the various UX practices are not set in stone! In fact, responsibilities, roles, decisions, actions taken in one UX phase or practice often overlap with other parts (this may be more true if you are working with a UX generalist) and this is ok! UX is a fluid, ever-evolving process of iteration and organic collaboration between many disciplines and individuals. Try not to get too hung up on it, and let’s get started!
 This smartphone app is so happy because it's highly usable! | What is Usability?Let's begin with a definition. Usability is less of a process or phase of UX development than it is a fundamental quality that all UX products should strive to achieve and uphold. It is the measure of the utility and ergonomics of a product (ie - how intuitive or easy it is to use) and reflects the emotional appeal and end-user quality of a UX product. Nobody wants to deal with cumbersome tools, clunky interfaces, or confusing interactions. A product or service with poor or low usability is more likely to produce user frustration, confusion, or friction, which is when users struggle or are impeded or slowed down from fulfilling a specific goal. Why does this happen? Usually because one or more of the UX practices are overlooked, which, sad to say, can happen quite easily! Developers or entrepreneurs sometimes overlook good UX because they can be strapped for resources. Sometimes they can make inadvertently self-defeating UX design decisions because they’re thinking about what’s most efficient and easiest to implement instead of what's best for their users. |
In contrast, highly usable software promotes efficiency and user satisfaction, and when you have a product that is used by thousands or even millions of people every day, that adds up to big gains in the appeal and utility of your product. All practices in the UX spectrum are intended to generate and promote usability, but attaining it is easier said than done! Let’s take a look at the practices that promote and support this.
 "What I'd need is an app that helps me grow double jointed arms..." | What is User Research?User research is the process of talking to real people to collect data about the emotional needs and responses of your target users when they might interact with your product or service. Who are your customers and what makes them tick? What kinds of devices do they prefer to use? What are the problems they’re having that you could solve for them, making their lives better? These are just a sampling of questions that go into user research. A common goal of this process is to form a fictional model of a typical end-user, known as a persona. Another goal for User Research is to create a "user journey maps", which outline the emotional phases and actions a fictional persona might go through as they learn about and interact with a brand or product. |
User research and persona formation also provide guidelines for what types of real people your organization should recruit to participate in usability testing during development. This entails observation and analysis of how real users interact with your software product.
Why is User Research Important? User research should be the foundation of any UX endeavor, for how can you have great user experiences without really understanding your users? Without a firm mental model of who you’re really making a product or service for, how people react to what you’ve created, or how well it meets users’ emotional needs, you’re courting unnecessary risk. Unbiased user testing and research helps ensure that your organization or business doesn’t stray too far from its original purpose and stays focused on providing continuous value that speaks to genuine user wants and needs. | "User research should be the foundation of any UX endeavor, for how can you have great user experiences without really understanding your users?" |
Ongoing user research in development can moderate the influence of overly-subjective opinions and perspectives on the decision making process, using metrics and quantitative data in conjunction with written or verbal qualitative feedback to focus efforts on real user needs and emotions.
When Should I Use or Do User Research?
Research is one of the most important flavors of UX practice across the entire Product Lifecycle?
Ideally, all the time, if you can, but only if your organization is ready to put what you learn from it to good use. User research should be a "feedback loop" that's up and running through all phases of the software development lifecycle, not just up-front when you’re making a persona or a user journey. Some organizations bypass the persona formation but there is always risk that you or other internal stakeholders on your team may assume incorrect things, overlook critical user needs, or inadvertently make decisions about what is good for yourselves instead of your audience. And I've seen more than a few times when shortchanging the usability research during the middle or later phases of product development has resulted in self-defeating product failures. Don't do it!
| No matter when you apply User Research, it's important to "get out of the office" and talk to real potential customers who match your target market or demographic. Researchers have a lot of tools they use to achieve their objectives, including interviews, online & offline surveys, card-sorting, analysis tools, and much more. Another common misconception is that the research is expensive to do. This is not the case, as this great article from UXBooth goes into more extensive detail about how to conduct user research without breaking the piggy bank. | "No matter when you apply User Research, it's important to "get out of the office" and talk to real potential customers who match your target market or demographic. " |
Once you release your product out in the wild, also keep in mind you still need user research to monitor performance in the real world, understand user issues, and collect information for future releases and features. So no matter where you are with your product's development, get out there and talk to your users!
 There's a whole lot of Wingdings going on in this image... | What is Content Strategy?I'm sure you've heard the phrase, "Content is King," right? If you haven't maybe you haven't been hanging around with enough marketing people! Content Strategy is another broad category of practice that can be hard to nail down. It’s the practice of looking at categories of data or information, such as text, images, graphics, audio, and video, across different delivery channels, such as blogs, email, social media, and online video sites. After you've categorized what type of content you're using, you initiate a high-level planning and analysis phase to strategize how to produce and use content and channels to best maximize appeal towards a specific target market or end-users. Examples of content strategy at work include: |
- An digital marketing agency might initiate an audit of all the videos on a client's Youtube channel to remove clips that convey an outdated or inappropriate message that is “off-brand.”
- A popular but old blog might need to revamp all the formatting of its articles to support an upcoming initiative to make the site look and feel better on mobile devices, or to be compiled into a format to support publication of all the blog articles as an e-book.
- Another site might need to rework the filenaming conventions and resolution of all its images to optimize loading times on mobile and improve Google search rankings.
Another way of looking at content strategy is this: if you think about empty screens and interactions in your app or website as a skeleton, content strategy illustrates how the "connective tissue" should be filled out to connect your startups service to your customers in an engaging way. Content strategy is also critical when you are thinking about how to initially acquire or retain your users or inform them of new developments in your startup's product or service. Analytics is an important component of Content Strategy as you have to monitor how different types of content perform and best serve your needs. This is where Content Strategy may overlap with User Research somewhat. UX Writing is also an emerging form of Content Strategy that emphasizes almost programmer-like rigor and consistency on how text and copy are used to support content strategy goals.
Why is Content Strategy Important?
| Consider what might happen if you have the wrong type of videos or articles on your site or in your app. While this is an extreme example, imagine if you went to a gardening blog, and found articles about car parts, or worse, the discography of Phil Collins. That might be a bad user experience for some people! An ill-formed content strategy (or none at all) can hurt the digital presence of a company online or undermine critical business performance metrics like conversion rates or sales (a real concern for e-commerce sites). Because of this, content strategy is one of the parts of the UX spectrum that overlaps the most with marketing and branding, and it’s crucial to deepen the appeal of a product or service to specific end-users. Good content strategy aligns the efforts of marketing and content teams to UX and business objectives, ensuring that you reach and engage end-users, fulfilling both customer and business expectations. This is why it’s important part of UX strategy to evangelize and inform who the end-users are so everyone in the organization, from development to marketing, feels invested and can align their efforts to support highly engaging user experiences. | "Imagine if you went to a gardening blog, and found articles about auto parts, or worse, the discography of Phil Collins. That might be a bad user experience for some people! " |
When Should I Use or Do Content Strategy?
Since Content Strategy governs and influences your marketing, (and you need to be selling all the time) Content Strategy is important through all phases of the Software Lifecycle.
Dwight Eisenhower once famously said that “plans are useless, but planning is invaluable.” And that’s what content strategy should be, a continuous cycle of planning, execution, and evaluation. Content strategy is effective before development, especially if you’re doing User Research on Personas and you want to learn about what social media, marketing channels, or types of content connect most effectively for them. It can happen during development when you need to produce content for your app, website, or product, which you can also use to build a community and anticipation for an upcoming release. And finally, it's super-critical during and after launch once your product goes live and you need to monitor the effectiveness of how your content is performing, or use new content to communicate changes or new features as they are developed.
If you'd like to learn some more handy pointers about Content Strategy (and why it's simpler than you think), check out this helpful article from the Harvard Business Review.
If you'd like to learn some more handy pointers about Content Strategy (and why it's simpler than you think), check out this helpful article from the Harvard Business Review.
WHAT UX PROBLEMS ARE YOU HAVING?
That’s all the time we have for today. Did this help you start to the about what kind of UX your startup might need? Feel free to comment below and describe a challenge you're facing related to one of the UX concepts we’ve gone over today. Or, if you have a different opinion or an interesting viewpoint or anecdote to share, let's hear it! And please come back for Part Two - where we'll go over Information Architecture, UX Prototyping, and UX Design.
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