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1 © Westley Knight 2019 W. Knight, UX for Developers, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-4227-8_1

CHAPTER 1

What Is User Experience? Over the past few years, the prominence of the term “User Experience” has grown

significantly. The term, coined by Don Norman, was not created to simply focus on

digital products, but to encompass the entire experience that an individual has, through

any and all mediums, around a product or a service.

This is the purest understanding of the term User Experience (UX), but as Don

himself has said, the term has been “horribly misused” when it is applied specifically

to the context of websites and applications alone. With that said, the core concept of

UX endures; regardless of what kind of digital product the user interacts with – whether

that be a website, an application, or any other piece of software – UX is still about the

experience a person has with that product.

However, this book presents a slight variation of the concept. As the title suggests, it

will focus on User Experience for Developers, in regard to how they can contribute to a

better experience for the end user through the digital products they build (although this

deviates from the original meaning of the term). As developers we have our own window

through which we can affect the user experience. We find ourselves at the sharp end of

the software development life cycle: at the point of implementation. We are turning the

intentions of product owners, analysts, and designers into products that will be used by

real people.

Creating an experience isn’t about the how a product is created. It’s not about how it

was engineered, what frameworks were implemented, or whether you use bleeding-edge

technology; it’s about how the product helps people to complete their tasks, to achieve

their goals, and – perhaps most importantly – how they feel when they use and engage

with the product.

This user-centered mindset can be a commonly neglected aspect of digital product

design, and is one that needs to receive far more prominence. By providing developers

with the means to gain a comprehensive understanding of your user’s needs, and

what good user experience means to your users, we can create more successful digital

products with a solid foundation of knowing their needs and goals.

Knight, Westley. UX for Developers : How to Integrate User-Centered Design Principles into Your Day-To-Day Development Work, Apress L. P., 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/snhu-ebooks/detail.action?docID=5611444. Created from snhu-ebooks on 2022-03-01 16:46:02.

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Typically, the term User Experience refers to how an end user feels about the digital

products that developers build, but you cannot design the experience itself; that belongs

to the user, to the individual. Their experience is formed in their own mind, through a

filter of their previous experiences, the situation they find themselves using the product

in, and a multitude of other influencing factors. An experience is as unique as the

individual that perceives it, which makes it a completely subjective matter. This means

that we can only design for an experience, to aim to give the user the best experience we

can by designing to meet the needs of the user, in the situational context they may find

themselves in while they use the products we create.

The goal of this chapter is to understand what User Experience means to a developer

building a digital product. This will be the context in which we continue to uncover the

improvements we can make to our own understanding, our day-to-day workflows, with

our project teams, with designers, with our fellow developers, and ultimately, the people

who will be using what we build.

We’ll look at how we can define what user experience is, firstly by working through

what it is not; breaking down common misconceptions; differentiating the often-

conflated user interface against user experience; and examining the various disciplines

that come together to form the overarching user experience. We’ll also examine

where user experience fits in as part of a process, how it fits with the needs of your

organizations, and how it fits with your own responsibilities as a developer.

Defining User Experience User Experience is a notoriously difficult thing to define. Ever since I entered the field,

I have been looking for the perfect answer to the question, “What do you do for a living?”

As a Front-End Developer, I could answer this question with relative ease to those

who operate outside of our technically focused bubble: “I build websites.” More often

than not, this answer was fairly well understood, although it would lead to the occasional

“Can you help me fix my email?” predicament.

Answering the same question with “I’m a User Experience Designer” leads to some

of the most genuinely entertaining expressions I have seen appear on the faces of human

beings. The ensuing awkward silence is then filled with my own rambling explanation of

how I work to make applications or websites easier to use. This then leads to the design

Chapter 1 What Is User experIenCe?

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world equivalent of “Can you fix my email?,” which is for the other person to pull their

mobile phone from their pocket, and walk you through the most annoying thing to them

in the app they use most at that moment in time.

After this happens to you a few times, you start to build an understanding of how

everyone is affected in different ways, not only by the product they use, but also in the

contexts they find themselves in, the tasks they are looking to complete, alongside a

multitude of other factors that the team of people who created the product in the first

place could never have imagined.

Misconceptions of UX Design Whether or not there is a real understanding of what User Experience Design truly

is across all industries and organizations is up for debate. In my experience, the vast

majority of organizations that I have come into contact with are still coming to grips with

User Experience, what it entails for their business, and figuring out how it changes the

way they operate when trying to make the users – their customers – an integral part of

the process when designing, building, or updating their digital product.

Although we have established that the term User Experience has been misused

when compared to its original meaning, and even if we reframe UX to purely focus on

digital products, there are still a few misconceptions around what comprises the user

experience.

The most common of these misconceptions is that User Interface Design is seen

as synonymous with User Experience Design. So let’s take a look at setting a few things

straight.

UX Is Not UI As any UX practitioner will tell you, user interface design is not user experience design.

UX practitioners will look to educate others that the scope of UX Design reaches far

wider than just the discipline of UI Design, while looking to avoid diminishing its

importance to the overall user experience.

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Figure 1-1 shows the User Experience design disciplines, as envisioned by Dan Saffer.

Although this is not an exhaustive list of all the facets that could be considered part

of user experience design, from this you can see how User Interface Design sits within

the larger sphere of Interaction Design, which in turn belongs to the sphere of User

Experience Design.

Depending on the structure or strategy of the organization that you work in, each

of these disciplines could be the responsibility of separate individuals. Perhaps each is

a discipline shared between multiple people, or there may be one individual covering

multiple, or perhaps even all of these disciplines.

Figure 1-1. The Disciplines of User Experience

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If we think about these disciplines and how they relate to the roles of people within

an organization, we may find that a team working on a particular feature of their flagship

product would include a User Researcher who studies Human-Computer Interaction in

relation to your product. A Content Strategist or Copywriter who would work on Content,

and perhaps Information Architecture. They may have User Interface Designers who

only work on Visual Design, or the same role may also cover Interaction Design and

Sound Design. There may be a full team of individuals who specialize in each of these

disciplines working together, or there may be a single individual who covers all aspects

of User Experience Design: the fabled UX Unicorn.

Whatever the make-up of the team, and whatever disciplines fall into the

responsibilities of a particular role, it is apparent that all of these disciplines – all of

these aspects of user experience design – must be considered in order to deliver a better

experience to the user.

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

—Steve Jobs

We must also be mindful not to restrict our understanding of the user experience

to simply that of visual design, or the graphical user interface. We must expand our

understanding to the physical connections we have to the products we are using; input

through peripherals like the mouse and keyboard, direct physical interactions with touch

screens or multi-touch track pads, and the physical responses we receive from those

interactions through haptic and kinesthetic feedback. With voice interfaces becoming

more common with Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Google Now,

we must consider how users may wish to interact with our products in this way. With

virtual reality making a seemingly promising resurgence, as well as augmented reality

and gesture-based interactions, we find that a user’s experience reaches far beyond the

traditional graphical user interface, and that there are many more ways of interacting

with our digital products than is immediately apparent.

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UX Is Not Usability It is common for usability to be thought of as the user experience, as the term is used

to describe what a user thinks and feels about an interface; how intuitive it is, how easy

it is to use, how easy it is to learn. Again, usability is just a small part of the larger user

experience whole. When we examine what usability means – how easy it is to use and

learn – it becomes apparent that it is an attribute of the user interface.

As usability applies to the user interface, again, this is not just related to the visual

aspect, but to all mediums through which a user can interact with our digital products.

People often think that making a product usable creates a good user experience.

As we have already established, there is more to it than that. While usability is most

definitely an important factor that contributes to the user experience, only concentrating

on usability neglects other aspects of the experience.

The UX Honeycomb in Figure 1-2 illustrates the other facets that we need to consider

in a more holistic view of a user experience.

Figure 1-2. UX Honeycomb created by Peter Morville

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The UX Honeycomb was created by Peter Morville to help his clients understand that

there was more to the user experience than just usability. Each facet is representative of a

part of the user experience:

• Useful – If your product does not solve a problem or fulfill a need

that its user has, then the need for that product quickly evaporates.

We must always be aware of our users and their changing needs and

behaviors in order for our work to stay relevant and useful.

• Usable – Ease of use and learnability are key to retaining those who

already use your product, and yet it only relates to the user interface.

Although important, it does not encompass all of the considerations

required for good user experience design.

• Desirable – Although this is rather intangible, the importance and

value that elements of emotional connections to a brand, an identity,

or a product can have significant bearing on the overall experience.

• Findable – A user must be able to find what it is they need to be able

to get the job done.

• Accessible – We must strive to make the things we build available to

everyone, regardless of physical or cognitive impairments.

• Credible – The product must be trustworthy. It must allow the user to

believe what we tell them.

• Valuable – The product must deliver value, not only to the user’s

satisfaction, but to that of the stakeholders, and to the bottom line of

the business.

UX Is Not Just Part of a Process Something that I still encounter is that there can be a large divide between the user

experience designers and the developers working on the same product or feature.

This is especially surprising when the developers are employing Agile methodologies.

The iterative and incremental nature of Agile development is so closely aligned to the

process of user-centered design, it can be completely mystifying that the larger life cycle

of a project still follows a more traditional waterfall process, where design work will be

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completed before handing documentation over to the development team for their work

to begin. It really is more common than you may think.

User experience design is not an item on a list where you can check the box and say

you’re done. It is an essential part of every process, or in other words, it is the process.

Placing the user at the heart of the design process requires the integration of user

experience design into everything you and your team do.

From the very beginning of the software development life cycle for any given feature

of a digital product, we should be looking to include the user. Their involvement will

help to guide the decisions we make at every step of the journey from inception to

launch, and beyond. User research can be utilized at the very beginning to validate ideas

for features, whether they would be useful to the user in helping them to complete their

tasks and achieve their goals. Prototyping and usability testing with real people help us

to quickly iterate our proposed design into a more usable solution.

Our work involving the user is not finished when a feature is released to the world.

Analytics and varying forms of user feedback can be utilized following the launch of a

feature to feed back to the business to see how we can further improve our offering to

our users.

A user’s needs and behaviors are constantly evolving, so in order for your product

to stay relevant to them, there must be a constant effort to respond to those needs. This

means that the work you do, whatever it may be, is never truly finished.

UX Is Not Only About the User Unfortunately, some of the terminology used to convey the meaning of a particular

approach can be misleading in some cases. Take, for instance, the term “user-centered

design.” You could be forgiven if you were to draw the conclusion that the user was at the

heart of every decision made in this approach to design.

As much as I would love this to be the case, as I’m sure many other UX practitioners

would, this is simply not how the real world functions. User-centered design (also

referred to as Human-Centered Design by IDEO, a global design company) actually

refers to bringing the needs of the user into consideration from the very beginning of

any project. The representation of user needs should ideally stand on an equal footing

alongside both the business objectives and technical requirements (Figure 1-3).

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This also means that we cannot always do what is best for the users. In the real world,

you will find many cases in which the business goals override the user needs. In this

situation, we are aiming to meet as many goals and needs as is feasible in our best efforts

to make the best possible product within the constraints we have.

UX Is Not the Responsibility of Someone Else In the same vein that UX Design isn’t just one stage in the larger process, it is part of

everyone’s process, whether they are aware of it or not. The user experience is affected

with every decision made about the product, from a strategic business perspective, right

down to how a button is implemented in the product itself.

In order for every role in the process of creating digital products to take on the

responsibility of the resulting user experience, user-centered design must become part

of the organizational culture. Everybody must be pulling in the same direction in order

to build the best product for their users. If your organization isn’t driven by user needs as

much as they are by the business goals, together we can start to affect change by bringing

the roles of the UX designer and the developer closer together.

Figure 1-3. Human-Centered Design adapted from IDEO, a global design company

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Everybody in the team working on a product must be pulling in the same direction in

order to build the best possible product for the user. By bringing the roles of UX designer

and developer closer together, we can dramatically reduce the possible (and probable)

disparity between the intention of the design and the realization of the product.

By removing the internal conflicts in the motivations of what constitutes a good

digital product between the developer and the designer – traditionally developers are

focused on the needs of the system, while UX designers on prioritizing the needs of

the user – we are able to bring the user experience into focus by extension: not just for

ourselves, but for the wider team. If we can break the widely proliferated stereotypes

around developers and their apparent “systems first” approach within the team –

specifically by focusing on user needs – together we can be the people to instigate the

change needed across the entire team, even across the whole organization, making the

user experience part of everybody’s responsibility.

The Core Disciplines of User Experience Since there are so many different interpretations of what user experience design

comprises, it can be rather challenging to define the job roles that exist within. UX

Design, as an industry, is still maturing, and we will continue to see this process of

maturation throughout businesses across the world as the approach of user-centered

design is assimilated into the day-to-day workings throughout the organization.

In my opinion, “The Six Core Disciplines of User Experience” defined by Nick

Finck is the blueprint within which individual roles can be categorized. It takes the

array of different disciplines found in “The Disciplines of User Experience” by Dan

Saffer (Figure 1-1), and refines them into a set of specialties that focuses on the areas of

endeavor most commonly found when creating digital products. Let’s take a brief look at

each of these core disciplines to see what they involve.

User Research The focus of user research is to understand the needs and behaviors of your users

through observation, task analysis, and other methods of gathering feedback in order to

interpret the effect a design has on those users.

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Content Strategy The aim of content strategy is to ensure that your product is home to meaningful and

engaging content. The discipline focuses on the planning, creation, delivery, and

governance of content to deliver useful and usable content to the user.

Information Architecture The aim of the discipline of Information Architecture is to help users to understand

where they are, where they have been, and what to expect next, as they navigate through

information in order to achieve their goals. Understanding how items of content relate to

each other, and then organizing them in a logical, meaningful, and sustainable manner

accomplishes this.

Interaction Design Interaction design is the practice that looks to create meaningful and engaging interfaces

by understanding how users interact with technology. It enables us to guide users

through journeys by giving them clues about what the next steps are, make users more

efficient by anticipating and mitigating possible errors, provide responses to a user’s

actions in the form of feedback, and ultimately make it simple for the user to learn the

interface.

Visual Design Good visual design enhances a user’s experience and builds their trust in the brand

by focusing on aesthetics. It aligns the typography, colors, images, and other visual

elements to help convey the content or function of the product.

Usability Evaluation Usability refers to the efficiency and effectiveness that a user experiences when

interacting with a digital product. Different techniques can be implemented to

determine how intuitive the design is, discover the frequency of errors when carrying

out tasks, reveal how easy it is to learn and use, and even measure subjective feedback in

terms of user satisfaction.

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Summary We have covered the definition of user experience in the context of digital products:

websites, applications, or other software. By addressing common misconceptions of user

experience and the discipline of user experience design, we have built a solid foundation

of understanding that will stand us in good stead for the topics we will cover in the rest of

the book. We’ll look at how the perspective of the user should influence your day-to-day

working practices, how we can more effectively work within our teams to deliver better

experiences for our users, and the practical implementation of tools and techniques

required to become a user-focused developer.

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