The Basics of User Experience (UX) and its Seven Principles

User experience, or UX, encompasses all of a consumer’s digital interactions with a product and the business that made it. It is described by ISO as “human-centered design principles & activities (that) […] promote human-system interaction (through the life-cycle of computer-based interactive systems)” (ISO, 2010). What does that signify, though?

In plain English, user experience (UX) design concepts aim to make all consumer encounters with a business’s communication platforms (often a website or app) pleasant and stress-free.

What distinguishes UI and UX from one another?

When it comes to UX, this is one of the most frequently asked questions. User interface, or UI, is essentially the component of a computer system with which a user interacts, such as the home page of a website, a contact form, an online shopping cart, etc. The design decisions that give interfaces their appealing appearance and high level of interactivity are referred to as UI. This covers the use of typeface, color, and layout as well as graphic design.

UX, on the other hand, refers to a collection of practical design principles that are utilized to enhance user experience by making interfaces simpler to use and navigate. Wireframes, information architecture, and interface design are all included in this. The most important factor is that they work together; UI is typically preceded by UX. Beautiful UI and useful UX are essential components of an engaging and effective website.

Which Core UX Principles apply?

The fundamental tenets of UX design are supported by seven essential elements. Let’s go over each one individually:

Useful

Is there any use for anything on the user interface? The usage of pictures is a prime illustration of this. Although having a visually appealing website is essential to UI design, your website shouldn’t contain photos merely for aesthetic reasons. Your website’s images should all be helpful. Does your image illustrate or support a point made on your page? Are there any links to other pages? Has it been attached with Alt Text to improve the page’s SEO? Is the photo instructive? These inquiries can be used for all of your interface’s elements, including buttons, menus, and copy (text).

Usable

Is it simple to use every interactive component on the user interface? Are there any broken buttons? Does every link to an external website launch a new window? Are there any forms that permit the completion of check boxes, drop-down menus, or free-text fields? Most essential, can the consumer use these components without confusion? Not every piece on your interface needs to have written instructions, but is it obvious which elements are interactive (meant to be clicked) and which are not? This idea extends to responsive web design, which renders your website equally usable across a variety of interface gadgets.

Findable

The user interface’s interactive and educational components should all be simple to find. The information architecture of the website as a whole or little features like the placement of a checkout button can be considered. The sitemaps, menu design, and page structure are all parts of the information architecture. In other words, can users easily find certain pages on your website using the menu, internal links, or HTML sitemap? Additionally, can consumers readily access all the information they require on these pages? Not only is information architecture crucial for UX, but also for SEO.

Credible

Customers use credibility as a crucial sign of whether or not they can trust your company, and as we all know, trust is essential for both conversions and brand loyalty. You can establish trust in your UX design in one of two ways. First of all, your entire interface (or interfaces) should have a consistent UX and UI design. You must also have consistency in the interface design and information architecture, in addition to having consistent branding, colors, and font, etc. Do all buttons have the same appearance and behavior? Do all service pages have the same categories?

Second, confirm that your design decisions are in line with user needs and support them with reliable user testing. When you first design your website and after any significant redesigns, testing should be done. This testing could be card sorting, surveys, interviews, etc. Including a user survey pop-up on your website, which might trigger when the client converts and asks them to answer a few questions about their experience on the website, is one of the simplest ways to achieve this.

Desirable

Any business’s ability to succeed depends on the demand for the product or service it offers. In UX design, creating an emotional response is greatly aided by the use of branding, aesthetics, and functionality. A favorable emotional response will make a product desirable to the buyer who is just looking, who is therefore more likely to convert. Do you think anyone would find your product desirable on a website that only had a white background, black text, and no photos, interactive components, or information architecture?

Accessible

Making your website accessible for users who could have impaired eyesight, loss of hearing, a learning disability, or mobility handicap is a crucial yet frequently disregarded part of UX design. Among other things, the UX design step of making your website accessible should include adding alt text, providing options for alternative text sizes, and planning for keyboard usage. In many regions of the world, accessible web design is now not only required by law, but also something that every company should strive for in order to avoid excluding sizable segments of the population from their product or service offerings.

Valuable

The consumer should be able to discover value in the website itself, the browsing experience, and any products or services offered. The idea of value in user experience (UX) extends beyond monetary or material worth to encompass intangible advantages like joy and knowledge. Therefore, consider whether each page of your website offers the user something worthwhile, such as knowledge, interesting content, entertaining interactions, or a real product.

UX Jargon Decoder

A short jargon buster for all the terminology you might encounter when researching UX design has been put together because we realize we’ve thrown a lot of knowledge at you very rapidly.

• “Alternative Text” is the alt text. a succinct written description of a website image that improves accessibility and SEO value.
• Conversions – A consumer has converted when they accomplish the objectives you want them to. Buying a product, subscribing to a newsletter, or completing a form are examples of common conversions.
• Copy: Copy is all of your website’s written content. Copy contains headings, paragraphs, questions on forms, and policies in the website footer, among other things.
• Engagement: How visitors engage with the information on your website. Watching a video, clicking a link, navigating to a new part, or looking for a new page are all examples of engagement.
• Functionality: How well a website accomplishes its goals and the variety of tasks it can perform. For instance, a functional online shopping cart and checkout system are necessary for an e-commerce website.
• Visual components such as pictures, logos, banners, and borders are referred to as graphics.
• The organization of your website’s pages, starting with the home page and moving outward to specific product pages, contact pages, and policy pages.
• Design ideas called “interaction design” are used to promote user involvement with your website. frequently entails designing a user path through the website (from home page to conversion).
• Interactive elements include buttons, links that can be clicked, pop-up windows, and movies. The interaction design is influenced by these factors.
• Internal links are text links within your website copy that direct visitors to different sections or pages of your interface. These links are frequently associated with product names or text such as “read more” or “contact us.”
• Links on your website that direct users to resources or pages on other websites are known as outbound links (often used in blog articles to link to supporting information from another website).
• Product/Service Offering: The real goods or services that your company provides to customers.
• Search engine optimization, or SEO. a number of techniques aimed at increasing the quantity and quality of visitors to your website by enhancing where and how it shows in search results (such as Google).
• Sitemap: A written list of the pages on your website, both in code and copy form, that typically mirrors the site’s information architecture. Sitemaps are used by search engines to understand the organization of your website.
• The visual layout of your written material is known as typography. Font, size, spacing, and color are all included.
• User interface, or UI. the guidelines for designing appealing and interesting user interfaces.
• Testing the effectiveness of how effectively your website satisfies user wants and expectations is known as user testing.
• User Experience, or UX. the design principles that make it simple and pleasurable to use and navigate your user interface. plays a significant part in eliciting emotional reactions that result in conversions.
• Wire frames are a visual representation of the structure of a website, the location of each interface element, and the function that each element serves in the UX design.