User experience basis: about users, devices and interactions

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION

Welcome to the second video I made about the always difficult user experience design art. My intention with these videos is to help old fashioned organizations to see the light.  Because there’s few options for them today: come into the experience game or disappear in less than a blink.

And I’m recording them with all my modesty since I cannot consider myself an expert. Maybe I’m just a person with enough experience in UX process and other related issues, such as software project management or business development, to talk about this topic in an easy to understand way. So, a sincere word for the real experts in advance: forgive me for the intrusion.

Okay, without further delay, in this second I’m going to answer the question: What is the user experience based on?

Well, a good response could be in a very simple equation that begins with a person who wants to solve a problem or satisfy a need. As experience designers, we seek to create some kind of mechanism, service or product that perfect meets this person expectations through a process, tool or device.

Between both elements, person and device, there will be an interaction we must to analyze intensely to be able to generate the best achievable experience.

The way to do it’s through a group or sequence of disciplines that focus on each aspect involved in the entire experience. As you can see, the User Experience design is a complex science that unites many disciplines in a single one.

In this perfect relationship, the UX is normally focused on the study of what happens in front of the screen, about the user motivations and needs. The UI, or user interface design, focuses more on what happens on the screen like graphic elements distribution, colors or visual rules. And Interaction design is responsible for expected responses, the way the user works with the elements and navigation flows.

Many authors agree that User Experience fundamentals are based on:

• Interaction design by identifying the functionality

• Prototype and wireframes generation to truly understand designed applications navigability

• Information architecture to define its structure properly

• Information and content design to make our applications as intuitive as possible

• Access and usability engineering to get the greatest user-friendliness possible experience

• User research to determine which is the user need we are satisfying

Whereas, User Interface design wants to create a visual design composed of colors, typographies and iconographies to be reflected in different applications screens with the same visual language. For me gentlemen, that’s an art. It’s a very complicated task hundreds of designers are facing daily with lots of success. At least most of them. UI as a discipline deserves a post in my blog someday, but most probably I’ll never get something comparable to some art jewels published on the web.

Perhaps to understand well the difference between disciplines, we need to stop and analyze this Ketchup Heinz simple example. On the right side we’ve got a very cool jar of a brand that mainly considers design. On the left side, we’ve another cool design. But this time the same brand goes beyond what the jar looks like to analyze how the user is going to use it. That’s User Experience.

This exciting science seeks to understand completely the six hidden minds located into our user’s brain. First is the vision, allowing us to discover what and where their eyes look. The second one is spatiality that captures their space perception and proposed interactions. The third, memory, necessary to activate their learned mental models. The fourth mind is language that teaches us to learn their lexicon. The fifth is emotion or all we need to discover what attract, awake or dazzle them. And final sixth is decision making, the marketers holy grail. This is the point, closest to the reptilian amygdala, they would like to control to increase and stimulate their micro decisions.

In my opinion, User Experience design is understood better with a simple word and a Dilbert comic strip joke, coherence.

Likewise, User Interface design has its own word and joke, harmony.

Finally, every time we speak about User Interface and harmony, we need to remember one thing: Every time you use COMIC SANS ... a designer loses his wings.