What Does UX Design Mean?

UX Design might sound complicated, but what it comes down to is making sure your website visitors don’t hate what they see. Here’s how…
When it comes to website or app design, a UX focused design is paramount. A website that puts the user experience at its heart will entice and retain users to your product. However, while the term UX is thrown around a lot—what does it actually mean?

What is UX Design?

The best way to understand UX design is to define it in the context of its complementary component, or user interface design.
As the Career Foundry put it:

“User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) are some of the most confused and misused terms in our field. A UI without UX is like a painter slapping paint onto canvas without thought; while UX without UI is like the frame of a sculpture with no paper mache on it. A great product experience starts with UX followed by UI. Both are essential for the product’s success.”

So, in other words, UX and UID focus on different things. You can’t have one without the other. UX is more analytical and technical and “encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.” Meanwhile UI is more akin to graphic design, though with a bit more complexity.

Getting To The UX Specifics

So now that we have the terms defined, it’s worth delving deeper into UX design to look at its core components such as:  

• Visual design
• Information architecture
• Interaction design
• Overall usability

While that may all sound abstract and far-reaching, think of it in terms of your role as a website user.
When you visit a website for the first time, is it clear how to make a purchase? Where do you find the information you require?
How easy is the content to navigate?
If you’ve ever found yourself aimlessly clicking around a website trying to make a purchase and thinking to yourself: “WHY is this so difficult?!” that’s very likely a result of poor UX design. Indeed, a sure sign of good UX design is if your website visitor doesn’t think of their experience at all—because it was so seamless.  
Here is a look at the components and how they each play a role in making UX design that your customers won’t notice:

Visual Design

This element of UX design has to do with the appearance of the site. Does the typeface, look and feel authentic? Does graphic design help or hinder the visitor from understanding what your website is about? An example of bad UX design in a visual design sense would be:
— A typeface that is too small,
— A font that’s massive for no reason
— Text that’s compacted and hard to read
— Fonts that are too brightly colored and headache inducing

Information Architecture

This is how the information on your site is organized and arranged.

• How do you group data?
• How are different pages labelled?
• Can the user find things clearly?

If the basic structure of your website is confusing, it can be a huge stumbling block when trying to get people to stick around.

Interaction Design

This is the most user-centric component of UX and involves thinking about the users’  expectations and desires when they arrive at your website or app.

• Do you know what your user wants?
• Are you putting that information or experience up top?
• Have you mapped out the most common patterns of how a user interacts with your website?

This component requires research and A/B split testing, so make sure you’re willing to do the work rather than just guess what your user wants.

Overall Usability

This is a whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts situation. If you get any one of the above components wrong, this can affect your overall usability. Equally, if you don’t think of the UX design process as a holistic one—that should include people of all abilities and levels of understanding—your usability will suffer.
Understanding the complexities of UX design seems complicated, but in reality it’s a matter of analyzing the websites that work for you. By identifying the individual components of successful websites, you can harness their strengths and use it for your own designs.

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