The Elements of User Experience: Introduction
The job of a User Experience design has continued to gain more and more prominence throughout the years. Nearly every organization needs one, as a user’s experience can make or break a business. Despite knowing how important this is though, what a user experience designer actually does has become increasingly muddled.
Partially, this is simply due to the name. Not only is it similar to another design skill, user interface design, the term “user experience” is extremely broad. It causes companies to think that they just need a fancy tech guy to do all their design work. Beyond that though, another issue I feel is the lack of understanding of how user experience influences design.
Redefining User Experience
As mentioned before, many seem to think a UX designer must be able to efficiently do almost any task that may be possible of a UX designer, a.k.a a “UX Unicorn”. This trend I think shows the core issue when discussing user experience design. Nearly every single aspect of the product encompesas the user’s experience, which in turn makes people think they’re simply the jack of all trades type of designer. To better define what UX actually is, it may be better to look at it through a different lense. Rather than designing for the user’s experience, they are instead designing around the user’s psychology.
Whether we know it or not, psychology determines much of the products we interact with. Concepts such as proximity, spacing, color theory, and emotion design are all heavily based on psychological research. Now, with that in mind, let’s look at this definition of user experience form interaction-design.org
User experience (UX) design is the process design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. This involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability and function
If a user experience designer is focusing on areas such as branding, usability, and function, then they are also looking at the psychological implications of those features. For example, if they were making an app about mental health issues, the branding and function of the app need to be heavily based in research that shows what features and design choices users would find calming and empathetic. Since this affects everyone, it can often be a feel thing for a designer, but legitimate psychological research is often needed for a high quality user experience.
The psychology behind a user’s experience.
Nearly every aspect of design can be looked at through both the psychological lense and the user experience one. Over the next five weeks, I will be examining these five individual elements of user experience, attempting to synthesis the information with a combination of both psychological and user centric research.
Color
The most prominent of them all, an application or website’s color is often the first thing to jump out at you. If there’s a big, ugly green background on the first page, you’ll likely exit out immediately. On the other hand, seeing a brand’s colors properly represented can give a sense of comfort or familiarity, causing you to stay longer than you normally would. Color theory as a whole is quite complicated and subjective, but an in-depth understanding of color and how it affects user’s mood is integral for good user experience
Shape
After you notice the initial color, how items around the site or app are shaped will be another factor in how it’s perceived. Circle’s for example are often used for community pages or “circles of trust”. The consistency throughout the site is also key. If half your buttons are bright and bubbly while the other half are dark and sharp, your user is going to feel a disconnect throughout the whole site.
Space and Line
While technically being two separate elements, line and spacing are often associated. Lines are typically used to space out items, with the weight and shape of the lines also influencing the negative space behind them. In terms of psychology, spacing can often determine a user’s mood. If the site is cluttered with little spacing, users quickly feel stressed out and overwhelmed. On the other hand, for say a heavy metal band’s site, the sense of clutter or stress could potentially be used to their advantage in terms of branding.
Typography
Similar to shape, typography can often present even the average user with a good understanding of who your product or service is aiming towards. If you were using a special cursive font on a card, you may lean towards it being a more romantic type of card. Type is also heavily affected by layout, as even minor issues such as widow’s or orphan’s can alter a user’s perception
Motion
Motion is the most severe and probably most complicated aspect of design. For many, myself included, the second thing that starts moving is when the project difficulty raises immensely. As technology has progressed, how we implement motion has also progressed. It’s much easier nowadays to make sure small things like icons shaking or page transitions being visible are commonplace in modern design. This alone expands how precise we can design our user experience, with much of the limitations now either being creativity or corporate interference
Conclusion
This is just a small sample into the psychology of user experience. As mentioned, the next five weeks I'll be going into each topic far more in-depth, better defining what separates a UX designer from other design jobs.
