The purpose of User Experience Design (UX) is fairly straightforward: UX design helps to solve a user’s problem and create the smoothest path to completion.
What does a UX Designer do, typically?
Define the problem
The UX Designer considers these four important things when they’re keeping the user in-mind: Who, What, Why, How?
Research
User experience design requires a lot of observation, understanding, and analysis. In fact, some UX teams have an entire team devoted to research. But, for many UX Designers, research is just one part of their process.
Experimentation/testing
Testing is a very important part of a UX Designer’s job. Prototyping showcases the design interactions in real-time and also allows for testing. Prototyping and testing help find weaknesses in the design and ensures that the final product meets projected expectations.
Work closely with UI Designers & Developers
UX Designers help ensure the integrity of the project by working closely with UI designers and developers on a project from start to finish. They rely on wireframing, prototyping, and usability testing to ensure that the flow of a project is the smoothest possible journey for the user.
UX Design is not UI Design
The intersection of UX and UI design can be very tricky because these roles are dependent upon the organization, resources/team size, and specified processes. However, it is important to note that UX and UI are two very different roles:
- UX focuses on structuring the user journey (blueprints)
- UI finds clever ways of presenting the information (creativity and voice).
This handy map can help explain where some of the terminologies might fall under each role:
