Though the focus on design is continuing across digital spaces and web, there are too many clients who have no idea of what designing a user experience (UX) is. No website or web app can do away with the question of user experience and so, however faulty their notion is they all have their own tale of UX design.
However, we feel knowing these misconceptions are extremely important to take an effective design initiative to create good UX. Here we would introduce 8 of these common misconceptions about UX design and try to tell the truth.
1) UX and UI are same
No, they are not. But obviously, they are related as well. To tell the truth, user interface or UI is a part of the whole user experience or UX. An UI is designed keeping the user experience in mind and when a UX is created particular emphasis is given in designing the UI to provide ease to the user.
- Great UX design is subtle and organic. There are too many factors involved in it like business objective, user persona and technology.
- Good UI is the immediate interface that works with buttons, layout and tools.
- UI has a typical focus on the environment it will be put to use. On the other hand UX focuses on how users will react, engage, bounce and give feedback at every step of the use.
2) You know what your users want
This is another common mistake of any enterprise to believe that it knows and understands its audience perfectly well. Once you become overconfident of this you are bound to make UX design that underperforms or fails to address user concerns properly.
- First of all, to avoid this misconception approach users freshly and be skeptic of what you are offering them.
- Secondly, test all UX elements and grab hold of objective user data for clear comparison and analysis.
- Remember, the UX is designed for the user and as long as they do not have a rewarding experience, all your investment and energy are just sheer waste.
3) Mobile Apps can only deliver Mobile Experience
In the first phase of mobile revolution we have seen people being more entertained with apps than websites on their mobile browsers. While most sites lacked responsive design and mobile web technology was less strong, apps continued to remain the epicenter of mobile experience.
Now mobile web is strong, versatile and richer to allow native mobile experience coupled up with the huge flexibility and openness of World Wide Web. A vast majority of websites are either built for mobile or built responsively to allow access mobile users. So, no longer mobile experience amounts to only apps. In spite of this we see enterprises are pouring out dollars to convert websites into apps. Most of them still think mobile experience primarily refers to apps, not mobile web.
- Mobile app conversion and integration can be effective but they should come as the secondary choice to address mobile audience.
- Mobile browsing is now more engaging and rewarding than app experience. A link shared with you can take you to a page instantly while the app of the same business needs to be downloaded and installed.
- After installing a new app you can find it not enough useful and can feel the exercise to be waste. But, while browsing you cannot have an experience of this sort. You can simply leave the page for another of your choice.
4) Fancy and flashy design makes UX better
Many website designers make an over-pouring use of their color palette and flashy elements just to make an unmatched user experience. Exciting for the eyes will be exciting for the user attention as well. That is how they consider UX design. In real world, quite contrary is the case. Majority of users prefer simple, straightforward design without any visual clutter. It is because such design allows them doing things easily that they intend to do.
- Design is not only about making things look beautiful but also about performance, accessibility, speed and engagement.
- Complexity is a killer of user interest while simple and clean design enjoys more traction.
5) Just designers can do everything
A design-centric environment can lead to the creation of a stunning visually engaging design, but cannot help garnering a user-centric experience. So, while the role of designers in making the aesthetic is important, you cannot achieve great user experience without UX design specialists.
- A designer has a tendency to think in client-driven terms, while a UX specialist thinks in terms of user-driven situation.
- A designer is invincible to create the face of an app or website, but a UX specialist would do all things to know what user wants and deliver it to them the simplest and most user friendly way possible.
- In nutshell to speak, great UX design needs both the role of designers and the UX specialists.
6) Let old contents remain as they are
Contents never get old unless it loses relevance and usability and so all your older pages are as important as the latest one. But many websites just want to let them untouched when redesigning is going on. Just because these pages are drawing traffic they like to skip them from their redesign project. It can be dangerous on SEO perspective, brand impression and user experience.
- Inconsistent design from older to newer pages can make the page rank suffer and can prove to be challenging for crawlers.
- Such inconsistency of design across pages can make a bad impression on your brand.
- Finally, it can terribly upset users while discovering the difference in visual and other aspects.
7) You need to show everything
With so much digital presence wrapping our life and actions all round the clock, the attention spans of people are getting shorter with every passing day. Naturally, our postmodern boredom just cannot bear listening and seeing too many things at one gasp. The sense of priority, proportion and usefulness make us access content accordingly. But there are sites that completely do the opposite. They ventures to tell and show everything at once.
- First of all, know the user’s priority and purpose of visit and accordingly present your contents.
- Users mostly like to scan a document these days before deciding to go deeper. So, allow them scanning it quickly with appropriate format.
- Make it look clutter free with lot of negative space around.
8) UX requires no testing
Any User Experience comes out as the result of a strategy, not at all by sheer chance. So, as per the strategy it needs to be checked whether and to what extent it fulfills the requirements. Testing the UX is important to get valuable feedback and then feeling the gaps and optimizing it.
- When tested among real users you are likely to come across problems that you otherwise not gave attention to.
- Until an UX is tested and feedback comes from the users, you cannot know where exactly the scope of improvement is there.
Keval Padia is a Founder & CEO of Nimblechapps, a fast-growing mobile app development company. The current innovation and updates of the field lures him to express his views and thoughts on certain topics.