Where Would Your Site Be Without Your User Experience Designer?
IC Creative is the industry leading recruitment consultancy for UX jobs. IC Creative asks: what is the point of a User Experience Designer?
So…what is UX? Isn’t it simply an effort to make a finished website look nice? Absolutely not! User experience should be viewed as equally important as any of the processes that go toward site construction. Too many companies believe that the UX designer provides a bit of “dressing-up” for the finished site, whereas they should be looking at user experience as a starting point.
According to Jared Spool, CEO of the world’s largest usability research company, User Interface Engineering (UIE), a lot of firms get it into their heads that “good experience design is an add-on, not a base requirement.”
The process of building a website should be about teamwork. Sharing an equal footing within that team should be the guy who writes the code, should be the copywriter creating the content and should be the UX designer.
It should be a consideration that the end user is a part of the team as well. UX is a constantly evolving process that has to be flexible. Learning what works best and then implementing it, constantly testing and experimenting; what works, what doesn’t, throw that away and move on?
UX isn’t a set discipline. What works for some sites will not be a good fit for others. It depends for what purpose your website is intended and what sort of audience you wish to attract and engage with. Always consider your demographic.
UX isn’t just about appearance; it’s also about interaction, accessibility, usability. It should be attractive, absorbing and fun. Look at it as a combination of logic and emotion: the user wishes to get a particular result from your site, wants to reach a particular page or item, so they want to follow a logical path; but let them enjoy getting there.
Where would a site be without UX? Probably nowhere. Users would be arriving there and not having enough to hold their attention would jump away to the next option. If they stayed because they believed they might find information they’re looking for, without a logical pathway and properly designed buttons, they may never find it. They could get lost in a maze and simply give up.
The problem is the average attention span is widely acknowledged to be dropping. This is especially true when visiting websites, with so much competition on the internet it is believed that the user spends less than one minute per site. It is the UX designer’s job to not only catch the users’ attention but to hold it. If you aren’t holding their attention, perhaps your competitor is.
