Going deeper into User Experience Design

In website development, UX / UI design web sites, primarily defines how they work, how users interact with websites, and how users perform tasks. In our profession, we have user-centered design methodologies to help us learn how to implement web interfaces that are usable and intuitive. There are countless articles and books written on these UX best practices, discuss the importance of design, personas, wireframing, design patterns, etc. .. which are all well and good.

But in my studies and personal practice of User Centered Design in many web development projects ... I often felt something missing in the UX field in general. Recently it occurred to me that what is missing is so central to design great user experiences ... I think that this particular attitude is what differentiates a professional UX against a craftsman. This ingredient is missing is to understand the "why" questions "because" there is a site and "why" someone will use it. Sounds simple, but in most cases, the UX methodologies, tools and only discussions revolve around the "how" ... as in "like" function of the sites and "how" users get from point A to point B. Without the context of "why" ... provide the "how" it just is not so effective.

I suppose it is argued that the "why" questions are more for the parties involved, the marketing team, or some other people in the development team ... not so much for developers UX. Maybe I do agree somewhat that ultimately, our job as UX professionals is to provide the "how" side of things. But, I think that a holistic understanding of "why" directly affect how the user experiences are delivered.

To illustrate, we are going to plan an essay! Long ago, in my college days as an English Lit major at Berkeley, essays was a daily ritual. I can not really say I enjoy writing essays these days, but I think that some of its disciplines are relevant.

When you start an essay, how to build a website, we always start with a blank page. To illustrate a very irresponsible way to plan an essay, try to cluster (or mental map) without a clear idea of ​​the essay topic or idea. The result is pretty obvious ... all the ideas generated would be completely random and disconnected without something as simple as an argument to tie together the ideas in an understandable way.

Of course nobody would do this, and the equivalent of web development would randomly put a lot of web elements and characteristics together on a web page in the hope that something good would arise out of it. Can you imagine that? ... Search dialog, layout, navigation bar, map mashups ... all spread randomly onto a web page. Alone, there's nothing wrong with any of these web elements. But without a context, the common elements of the web to no avail.

What if there was a central theme? For example, if the argument is essay "ecommerce", so at least we can begin to structure our ideas clustered around this central idea. This would give our ideas a context in which the discussion would revolve around, and help us to produce content that is much more significant.

In analogy to web development, this is typically the context in which it is implemented UX development. For example, if the site under development is identified as a site like "ecommerce", the practitioner begins to UX design all the functionality of the website with all models of e-commerce design, conventions, and best practices. For a look at "how to" ecommerce sites work conventionally and "how" users in general and optimally interface with ecommerce sites, a developer should UX environment enough to start drawing the roadmap UX.

But ideally, essays are structured around topics ... are structured around a thesis. A thesis answers the question of "why" this essay was written and "why" a reader would want to spend time reading at all. It goes beyond a topic, providing a point of view and a clearer direction for the essay. In our example, the clustering essay on the right, the argument is passed by a general idea of ​​"ecommerce", for a very specific type of ecommerce. Focusing on a more "dogmatic" view, then we can organize our content so much better and see the context of our information at a level deeper and more meaningful.

In relation to the UX development, there is a similar benefit of understanding "why" the site exists and "why" users would be forced to use it. To structure our development around UX "because" we think this site is so addictive, you can experience developers who have a specific context and are much more significant. For example, if we were developing a site with a mission: "a social market for stock photography". Some of the traditional paradigms of ecommerce generally only have a mediocre importance. Sure, technically it would work to implement a "shopping" on the site for users to store their favorite photos, but that solution is not ideal. Now let's say we take a closer look at the uniqueness of the "why" this site exists, and further describe a "social market for stock photography: For publishers high-volume printing." This gives us very clearly as we would like more information about developing the UX. Simply by looking deeper into why this site exists, instead of implementing a shopping cart to lean, we would likely implement the project folders in which users can create and save photos of projects and works of art relevant to specific folders of the project. Each design pattern UX or agreement would be developed in a deeper context, not only should be used as features, but it should be used.

I like to think that as a UX professional, are not mere buyers of order ... we are creators. We help you define and create, as a website exist and function, and to do well, we must first examine why .......