From the IoT to commercial drones to the growing demand for cyber security, there are hundreds of trends brewing in the tech world right now. What may surprise you is that one of the most popular online design and development trends isn’t based on technology but rather on the crucial—but often overlooked—human element.
When it comes to creating digital experiences, companies can no longer overlook the importance of Customer Experience (CX). CX is described as “the whole total of what your customer wants, does, sees, thinks, feels, and likes,” and we must apply its best practices to digital design and development in an increasingly digital environment. Now, Front-End designers are stepping in to bridge the user-creator divide.
User Experience (UX) Designers are concerned with how the product feels, whereas User Interface (UI) Designers are concerned with how the product’s elements are laid out. In essence, the UX designer’s goal is to ensure that the UI designer understands how to lay out the wireframe or arrange the buttons on a machine based on the interaction they want the user to have with that particular product. Because the two professions are closely intertwined, most CX-focused positions integrate UX and UI into a single place.
5 compelling reasons to hire a UX/UI Designer:
1. To Make Your Website More Organized
A solid Information Architecture is critical to the success of any website, as any skilled designer understands. Consider entering a grocery store without signs, aisle marks, or a visible exit. You’re more likely to become frustrated and leave instead of looking for the precise goods you came in for.
This is precisely what businesses want to avoid, particularly those with e-commerce sites that require a clear path to the checkout page. The UX/UI Designer’s role is to plan out a website, arrange material, and ensure that consumers locate precisely what they need.
2. Recognize the user’s desires
Every website should have a precise aim in mind. Visitors on e-commerce sites want to buy something, while users on editorial sites wish to read and discuss their material. The capacity of UX/UI to tap into the user’s brain in a measured way that can report directly to the designer, developer, and client is fantastic. It’s all about consumer involvement and understanding their path.
Google’s HEART Framework, which assesses Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success, is a beautiful tool for CX Metrics. UX/UI designers usually ask test people to try out a wireframe for the website, then report back on how they felt about the experience. Genuine humans with real-life experiences that can be measured quantitatively and qualitatively. That’s a lovely thing you have done there!
3. To Ensure That Your Product Is Usable By Everyone
We sometimes forget that not all users are 25-year-old developers working at a Brooklyn-based agency. Users are real people with a variety of requirements that must be considered. Keep in mind:
• Responsive Web Design: It ensures a consistent user experience across all sizes of desktop, mobile, and tablet devices. “If the site isn’t optimized for mobile, mobile users are five times more likely to leave the task” therefore, optimizing across all devices is nearly a prerequisite.
• Internet Connection Speed: Although slow dial-up modems are primarily obsolete, developers must still account for load times when users are not connected to their (presumably) fast home network. It’s critical to keep things moving quickly, with 40% of online consumers abandoning a page that takes more than three seconds to load.
• Browser Consideration: On a brand-new MacBook Pro, not everyone uses Chrome. It boils down to thinking about your audience and ensuring that your site is compatible with all browsers and older device models.
4. To locate the user
Let’s face it: not every website is suitable for everyone. Someone from small-town America is unlikely to visit a website that offers upcoming concerts in New York, just as a music fan in Manhattan is unlikely to look at restaurant listings in Ohio. And when it comes to design and development, different audiences have distinct wants and concerns.
Many web designing agency create “personas to better understand the target customer.” A phrase is “depicted as a specific person, yet it is not a genuine entity; instead, it is synthesized from numerous people’s perceptions, means of modeling, summarizing, and disseminating studies on individuals.
UX/UI Designers can identify the different sorts of users that a site may encounter by focusing on their wants, desires, and behaviors, which will be factored into the final site design and functionality by focusing on the different types of users’ site may encounter. For example, the concert-goer in New York City is likely to be on the go a lot, so he’ll want a mobile platform that’s easy to navigate.
Get to know the people for whom you’re creating! The following are essential factors to consider:
- Gender, age, and location
- Habits of daily living
- Hobbies, likes, and dislikes
- Requirements for accessibility
- Knowledge of your product/brand
5. Advocacy on behalf of the user
A website results from many minds working together, and everyone participating has a different aim in mind. The site’s designer aspires to make it as attractive as possible. The developer wants to ensure that all functional elements are working correctly. The project manager is concerned with keeping the client satisfied and ensuring that their expectations are met. UX/UI Designers are always there to advocate for the user!
The difference between web design and user interface design:
Creating for the Web differs from designing user interfaces for traditional software. Essentially, the designer must relinquish complete control and share UI responsibilities with users and their client hardware/software.
Of course, there are parallels between Web design and traditional UI design. At their most fundamental level, both are interactive systems, and both are software designs rather than physical object designs.
In traditional user interface design, you have complete control over every pixel on the screen. When you layout a dialogue box, you can be confident that it will appear precisely on the user’s screen. You know what system you’re designing for, what typefaces are installed, how big the net will be on average, and you have the system vendor’s style guide to tell you how to combine the interaction widgets.
All of these preconceptions are debunked on the internet. Users can use regular laptops or other mobile devices to access the internet. Any given Web design will look significantly different on this wide range of devices.
The more complex the requirements for Web content to morph into something suitable for the platform, the more specialized or low-end the device. The only way for this to happen is for designers to relinquish complete control and let the presentation of their pages be determined by a combination of page requirements, preference settings, and other client device factors.
Furthermore, in traditional user interface design, the designer controls where and when the user can go. However, on the Web, the user has complete control over how they navigate around the pages. Users can go down roads that the creator never planned.
Final Thoughts:
A skilled web designing agency will step in and remind the rest of the team that, no matter how cool the effect is, people become impatient. Abandoning the site in favor of a moving competitor is never a good idea, and everyone on the team understands this. By including ergonomics and human factors—also known as industrial design for people—you can avert significant issues down the road.
