What Is User Experience (UX) Design?

User experience (UX) design is the process design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences for users. UX design encompasses the entire process of acquiring and integrating a product, including aspects such as branding, design, usability, and functionality.

User experience design involves more than simply making software easy to use. It also includes designing other experiences associated with a product, such as marketing campaigns, packaging, and after-sales support. Most importantly, UX design focuses on providing solutions that address users’ pain points and needs. After all, no one will use a product that serves no purpose.

UX vs. UI: What Is the Difference?

The term “user experience design” is often used interchangeably with terms such as “user interface design” and “usability.” However, although usability and user interface (UI) design are both important aspects of UX design, they are subsets of it.

A user experience designer focuses on the entire process of acquiring and integrating a product, including branding, design, usability, and functionality. This process begins even before the device reaches the user.

No product is an island. A product is more than the product itself. It is a cohesive, integrated set of experiences. Think through all the stages of a product or service—from initial intentions to final reflections, from first use to subsequent help, service, and maintenance. Make sure they all work together seamlessly.

—Donald Norman, who coined the term “user experience.”

Products that provide excellent user experiences, such as the iPhone, are therefore designed with the complete context of consumption and use in mind, including the entire process from purchasing and owning the product to troubleshooting it. Similarly, user experience designers focus not only on a product’s usability, but also on other aspects of the user experience, such as enjoyment, efficiency, and fun. There is therefore no single definition of a good user experience. Instead, a good user experience meets the needs of a particular user within the specific context in which the product is used.

User experience designers attempt to answer the question: “How can we make interactions with computers, smartphones, products, or services as intuitive, smooth, and enjoyable as possible?”

User Experience Design—A Formal Definition

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) defines user experience as:

“A person’s perceptions and responses resulting from the use or anticipated use of a product, system, or service.”

We can divide this definition into two parts:

A person’s perceptions and responses.
The use of a product, system, or service.

In user experience design, designers cannot control users’ perceptions and responses—the first part of the definition. For example, they cannot directly control how users feel when using a product, how their fingers move, or where their eyes look. However, designers can control how a product, system, or service behaves and appears—the second part of the definition.

“We cannot design a user experience. We can only design for a user experience. Specifically, we cannot design a sensory experience; we can only create design features capable of evoking that experience.”

—Jeff Johnson, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of San Francisco

The simplest way to understand user experience design is to view it as both a verb and a noun. A user experience designer designs—the verb—by imagining, planning, and modifying the things that influence the user experience—the noun, referring to users’ perceptions of and responses to a system or service.

The simplest way to think about user experience design is as both a verb and a noun.

For example, when people use a physical device such as a computer mouse, we can control certain aspects of the product that affect whether users enjoy looking at it, touching it, and holding it:

How it feels in the hand. Is it comfortable, or is it too large and cumbersome?
Its weight. Does the weight affect the user’s ability to move it freely?
Its ease of use. Can users operate it automatically and intuitively, or must they think carefully about every action required to achieve their goal?

When people use a digital product, such as a computer application, some of the aspects we can influence include:

How intuitively they can navigate the system.
Whether the available cues help guide them toward their goals.
Whether essential aspects of a task are visible at the appropriate time.

UX Designers Consider the Who, Why, What, and How of Product Use

As a user experience designer, you should consider the who, why, what, and how of product use. The why concerns the user’s motivation for using the product. This may relate to a task they want to accomplish with the product or to the values and views they associate with owning and using it. The what concerns the things people can do with the product—its functionality. Finally, the how concerns designing that functionality in a way that is easy to understand and aesthetically pleasing.

User experience designers begin by considering the why, then determine the what, and finally consider the how of creating products that provide users with meaningful experiences. In software design, you must ensure that the product’s underlying functionality can be delivered through existing devices while providing a seamless and fluid experience.

UX Design Is User-Centered

Because user experience design covers the entire user journey, it is a multidisciplinary field. UX designers come from a wide range of backgrounds, including visual design, programming, psychology, and interaction design. Designing for human users also means working within a broader scope regarding accessibility and accommodating the physical limitations of many potential users, such as difficulty reading small text.

The typical responsibilities of a UX designer are varied, but they commonly include user research, creating personas, designing wireframes and interactive prototypes, and testing designs. These responsibilities can differ significantly between organizations. Nevertheless, UX designers must always act as advocates for users and place user needs at the center of all design and development work. For this reason, most UX designers use some form of user-centered workflow and continually apply their best-informed efforts until they identify an optimal solution that addresses all relevant problems and satisfies user needs.