User experience is about designing all aspects of a person’s experience with a product or service.
Influences
Influenced by graphic design, psychology, research and anthropology. All have an impact, and it all boils down to human behaviour. Creating a user-centred design process takes the user’s needs into account at every stage of the product life cycle.
More than UI
Great user experience designers aren’t only concerned with the User Interface. UI is just a part of the overall user experience. User experience designers focus on listening to both the users, and business objectives to build a better product that bridges the gap between the customer and the business.
Most [clients] expect experience design to be a discrete activity, solving all their problems with a single functional specification or a single research study. It must be an ongoing effort, a process of continually learning about users, responding to their behaviors, and evolving the product or service.”
Dan Brown, co-founder and principal at EightShapes
Making stuff easy and intuitive is far from our only goal. In order to get people to change their behavior, we need to create stuff they want to use, too.
Chris Fahey, founding partner and principal of Behavior.
User experience isn’t just the domain of one person or one department. Great user experience involves all departments throughout an organisation. From customer services to the CEO. All can provide input regarding failings or points of complaints from users, and the user experience designer should listen to collate these requirements to design a better user experience.
It’s not just a one-time process. It’s iterative. Therefore it’s important to continually listen and adjust.