Design is arguably the defining human endeavor that separates us from all other species.
Take a look around you right now and you'll notice that everything has been designed from how you sleep
to how you eat and how you communicate.
Everything around you has been designed by someone.
In other words, user experience, design or UX is everywhere from how you interact with your smartphone
to how your home is designed, etc..
Of course, not all experiences are well designed, and that's why UX design is such an incredibly big
and exciting and rewarding field to be in.
Let's start by first discussing what is UX and UX design?
User Experience Design is the process design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and
relevant experiences to users.
This involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including
aspects of branding, design, usability and function.
Let me explain this in a more clear way.
User experience design is often used with terms such as user interface design and usability.
However, while usability and user interface design are important aspects of UX design, there are subsets
of it.
UX design covers a vast array of other areas to a UX designer is concerned with the entire process of
acquiring and integrating a product, including aspects of branding, design, usability and function.
It is a story that begins before the device is even in the user's hand.
So what we basically do is we build up something out of pretty much nothing.
You are the person who is in charge of so many different elements before the user gets access to it.
When we're talking about user experience design, we are talking about how we want the user to expect
the best work coming from us.
That's why we study how they feel, how they think, and so many other details that we will be discussing.
And it will all be depending on our target audience, very obviously.
Later on, we try to decide what type of user experience we want to produce from our users.
We can trace UX design all the way back to the ancient Romans.
They developed theories of athletics to construct amazing buildings that have stood the test of time.
Let's look at Vitruvius, for example.
RU?
Yes.
This is also a U.
He is a renowned Roman architect who wrote the first ever book on architecture.
He asserted that good design must have three qualities.
These three qualities include your ability.
Which is.
How much does it endure for the user?
How strong is it?
How much can it take when it comes to someone using the product?
How much time does it need to stay good or like it's breaking?
Anything that has to do with the strength or kind of how long it can survive.
The second one is usefulness.
And for usefulness.
It's more they can be interconnected in a way durability and usefulness.
But for usefulness, what we do is we're focusing on how beneficial is it.
So this is more about how long can it survive.
But this one is how well can it benefit me?
Something can be very durable, very strong, but it could be useless and vice versa.
Sometimes we would get something, especially something that is cheap and it's works for maybe a week
or two, and then the durability is so low that it stops working.
And as for the third one, quite obviously we need to include the aesthetics.
For the aesthetics.
It's it is quite necessary.
And it is because people not only depend on how a product functions, but also how it looks.
Some people prefer minimal products, right?
Such as MacBooks, iPhones and stuff like that.
But other people have a different kind of aesthetic, something bulky, maybe gaming PCs.
So this definitely depends on the audience itself.
But these three features work together in order to create some sort of optimal user experience.
And obviously, this is not the guide that we will be going with because things have developed through
time.
And also this these qualities were applied much earlier than now, before they were.
Understanding the deeper details on what UX is, you know, it still wasn't identified as UX.
It was more of a series of ask, that kind of thing.
It is very, very old.
And of course, these qualities are as important to you as design today as they were so many millennia
ago.
From the early 1970s to eighties, UX design was known as human computer interactions, which you can
see right here.
This term is one of the most important and significant terms, and we can also call it HCI just for
short.
So we don't have to say human computer interaction all the time.
But actually I rose to prominence just as personal computers became mainstream.
Now, of course, computers were not that big yet.
At the 1970s to 1980s, it was still being developed.
It was still spreading around, you know, and that's when computers were focused on when it comes to
user experience.
Now, of course, when we were talking about ancient Rome, we weren't talking about the technology
aspects.
They were building their buildings in an aesthetic way that had all of these three criteria.
Right?
They built such strong buildings that had durability, that had usefulness, and that had aesthetics
that until nowadays we see them strive, they don't fall.
They are very, very durable.
Despite the amounts of weather, despite the global warming, despite everything, they still survive,
you know.
And that's why it is quite interesting how they were able to create something big out of such theory.
This is supposed to be the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but it's not exactly it.
But anyways, you understand me, there are so many things to user experience design rather than just
a computer or something digital.
It could be something physical as far as you can think of, and you can still kind of apply it to your
own criteria.
It is that easy and that simple.
You see, before the 1970s, computers were just large machines that were operated by punching lines
of code.
So for most people, computers were really, really hard to use, right?
When we first were exploring the computers and the big industry and what was happening.
We kind of had to do a lot in order to access them.
We had to code a lot, so we had to kind of have some sort of shortcuts on a key keyboard to understand
how to open a computer, how to run a CPU and so many other details.
But in the 1970s, there is a place called x, e, r0x packed.
I'm going to call them Xerox PARC.
I'm not sure how to pronounce it, but.
Oh, actually it's PARC.
Sorry, Xerox PARC.
And these are the people who actually introduced the first personal computer.
And it was not only small, but it utilized the first graphical user interface.
So before we had like the really, really, really bulky computers, right?
And before that we had even bulkier computers.
They were very hard to use, they were very hard to maintain.
And the coding was just impossible to go through.
Later on.
This is actually the smaller version of a computer.
They first had it be built into a big bulk of items and understand that this is something that could
be used to connect with other people later on.
It was understood that it's not supposed to only function, but it is also supposed to serve the audience
very well.
So instead of lines of code, you need to use windows, icons and a mouse.
And it started a revolution and pretty much, you know, they built up external parts that can help
with the experience.
Of course, initially it wasn't even a real keyboard.
It used to be just a keyboard that looked completely different than nowadays.
It's keyboard very obviously, and we didn't really have much options to play around with.
So this alone was them thinking about their users, their potential audience.
Soon, companies like Apple and Microsoft were heavily borrowing from the also to create their own personal
computers.
The explosion of personal computing in the 1970s and the 1980s led people to ask questions like How
should people interact with computers?
And other questions like, How can we make that interaction as easy and smooth as if we're interacting
with other humans?
As people started finding the answers of these questions.
The field of human computer interaction started to grow.
Originally, HCI practitioners were mostly from fields such as cognitive psychology and computer science.
They were mostly focused on the concept of usability, which is when it was a very easily distinguishable.
So first of all, usefulness and usability are very different terms and we will look into the differences
between them in a much deeper detail very soon.
But just to let you know from now, they are very different from one another for the usability process.
It really depends on the process of how it is being used and how it is approached, how easy it is to
understand is it hard to use a mouse with a keyboard, with a CPU, with a computer?
And all of this would be measured by computer scientists and psychology scientists.
They wanted to work on how to make computers as intuitive as possible.
As the field of the eye grew, designers quickly realized that designing intuitive computers required
a greater understanding of other fields, such as motion graphics, storytelling, linguistics and so
on.
So now, though, not only are we using computers in English, but we're also using them in other languages
for other people internationally.
We're also focusing on motion graphics, like the Windows logo while the computer is starting up so
that the user is on board waiting for something to happen on their computer.
Just all of that really contributed to the build up of user experience and how they can perceive such
a process very easily and very well.
UX design today is really just a continuation of what is called HCI in the 1980s and interaction design
obviously in the 1990s.
Today we are dealing with a whole new set of products and services.
We have the smartphone.
We have virtual and augmented reality.
We have artificial intelligence.
And so much more is going to come soon, such as the metaverse.
But the questions we're asking as UX designers are the exactly the same.
It's still about how can we make this experience of interacting with a computer or a smartphone or a
product or a service as smooth, as pleasant, as natural as possible.
Just, for example, having a platform of videos where I am explaining to you guys as if I'm talking
to you alone is another approach to UX design, another approach to making things feel more natural
now.
Don Norman, the designer who coined the term user experience, once said that design is everything.
What he meant was that UX designers are not only concerned with the product when it is being used,
but also before the product has been purchased and after it's been used.
Let's think about the smartphone, for example, as you x designers, we care not only about making
a software easy to use, we also care about designing the right marketing campaign.
And it's all about creating a great unboxing experience, for example, as well as making solving problems
as painless as possible.
Of course, on top of that, we need to make sure that the product or service that you're offering actually
address the need of the user in the first place.
If not, you will just be designing and for pretty much nothing and no one will care how smooth or pleasant
experience is.
This is why UX design has become such a huge umbrella term with so many fields inside of it, including
visual design, usability, psychology, sociology, aesthetics, and so much more.
If you're interested in the questions that UX designers ask, and if you're excited about finding out
the answers, then this is the course for you.
This is how we are approaching understanding these small details, because UX design is such a big,
big field and the barriers of entry are really low.
It doesn't matter where you come from or what you majored in, you will always have something relevant
to bring to the field of UX design.
All you need is a constant drive for absorbing new knowledge and constantly improving yourself.
The second piece of good news is that it is extremely challenging and rewarding to be a UX designer.
I know that this does not sound like great news, but there is an endless depth to the job and you will
always be coming up with new possibilities and new solutions.
And finally, the best great news is you are starting right now.
You're learning UX design today and you will be understanding so many things about this field that will
make you leave this course feeling so confidently.
Products that provide great user experience, such as iPhone are designed not only with the products,
consumption or use in mind, but also the entire process of acquiring, owning and even fixing troublesome
mistakes in it.
And this is what you're going to be studying and understanding in this course.
Similarly, UX designers don't just focus on creating products that are usable.
We concentrate on other aspects of user experience, such as pleasure, efficiency and why not fun as
well.
We want to make it something that is so catchy and interesting for the user that they will want to see
what you have to offer.
We will also be talking about the seven factors that describe user experience, user experience or you
X just for future reference.
Because we will be using UX a lot because you E does not really work.
Because we have you I and you E because UI stands for user interface and obviously UX stands for User
Experience Interface.
And this is what we're talking about right now.
You know, this field alone is one of the most dominant fields in design and we will be talking about
it better in a second.
You will see what I mean and you will be very impressed.
But as I was saying, it is critical to the success or failure of a product and the market, like I
mentioned earlier.
Also, often a lot of people confuse you X with usability, which describes how easy a product is to
use, but in reality it has nothing to do with usability.
Not at all.
Trust me, it is just a small field in user experience design.
So do not let usability trick you.
And we obviously will be talking about what usability is and bigger depth.
It is true that UX as a discipline began with usability though, but UX has grown to accommodate much
more than usability, and you need to pay attention to all aspects of the user experience if you want
to deliver successful products to the market.
According to so many people who actually got to study UX and understand that in depth, there are seven
main factors that describe user experience which are useful, usable, findable, credible, desirable,
accessible and valuable.
And we will be talking about those in another chapter.
But just right now we're going through them very quickly, just as an introduction, just to make you
guys ensure that what you are going to be listening to, what you're going to be learning throughout
this class.
Has so much in depth rather than just something that you think you might know very easily.
For example, let's look at the factor of usability.
Usable, right?
You only want to bring a product to the market if it's useful and has a purpose for its target customers.
If this product has no purpose, it is unlikely to be able to compete for attention on a market full
of purposeful and useful products.
If we take a simple example like a car, the primary purpose for most people is if they can drive it
where they need to go.
A car that can't drive obviously isn't useful.
It isn't worth anything for the person who's going to be purchasing the car.
We also call products useful if they deliver benefits such as fun or esoteric appeal.
So sometimes people are very intrigued and interested in buying house decor, even though it does nothing
to the house, just decorates it.
But it adds to the aesthetic of a house.
Now, of course, I didn't mix up here.
I meant to talk about usefulness.
Use.
But now we're going to actually talk about usable.
I was very distracted by this over here.
But anyways.
Usable is about enabling users to effectively and efficiently achieve their end objective with a product.
Products can succeed if they're not usable, but they're much less likely to do so.
Besides giving you a competitive advantage, a high level of usability can also make a huge difference
in the safety and comfort of use.
Cars are a good example of a context where everything you interact with must have a high level of usability
so we can keep our focus on driving while changing stations on the radio, for example.
That makes it very usable.
Makes it usable in very different aspects.
Next, we have findable.
FINDABLE.
It refers to the idea that a product must be easy to find.
If you're working with digital and information products such as web pages, the content within them
must be easy to find, too.
For example, music and video streaming services with millions of files are extreme examples of the
importance of designing for find ability.
If Netflix users can't find something there, they're in the mood for on a Friday night.
It doesn't matter how much great content is hidden beneath beneath the surface, they will stop using
the service so when they don't find anything.
What Netflix does is they suggest things either from the same actors of the item or movie or series
they're trying to find or other movies that have the same exact scenario, for example.
Next.
We have credibility, Kyra.
Double.
And I think this term is quite easy.
It relates to the ability of the user to trust in the product that you've provided, not just that it
does the job that it's supposed to, but that it will last for a reasonable amount of time and that
the information is accurate.
And it's it fits its purpose.
It's nearly impossible to deliver a good user experience if the user thinks the product creator is lying
or having bad intentions.
They will take their business elsewhere and set.
Of course, I can talk a lot more about the other aspects, but I'm going to stop right here and we're
going to talk and that better depth when we actually get to the seven factors.
Now let's talk about the UX designer and product produce.
Since you x design encompasses the entire user journey.
It is a multidisciplinary field.
UX designers come from a variety of backgrounds such as visual design, programming, psychology and
interaction design.
And of course so much more to design for human users also means that you have to work with a lot of
different fields regarding accessibility and accommodating to many potential users as physical limitations,
such as things like reading a small text.
You have to adapt to that.
You have to make sure that this text is going to be easy to change around.
For audience who can't read it, a UX designer is typical tasks vary, but often include user research,
creating personas, designing wireframes and interactive prototypes as well as design as well as testing
designs.
These tasks can vary greatly from one organization to the next, but they always demand designers to
be the user's advocate and keep the user's needs at the center of all design and development efforts.
That is why most designers work in some form of user centered work process, and they keep channeling
their best informed efforts until they address all of the relevant issues and the user's needs.
Of course, one, they are in the process of approaching these techniques.
What they have to do is take it step by step.
First ask why?
Why do I want to build this item product application?
And then what will it do to make it to make things better for the audience?
What will it offer that stands out compared to so many other platforms?
And then we'll look at how we are going to approach it and how we want to fix or elevate the users experience
from this application or this product.
These approaches are very obviously the main ones, but later on we move into a deeper task oriented
procedure.
So we start with understanding the context of Fuse, right?
So pretty much what we would be doing is we would look into the application or the product and understand
what is it going to be used for.
And through that, we will be able to specify user requirements.
Right.
Let's give an example for this, just to kind of start freshening up a little warm up and get into this
study mode.
So let's say I'm trying to create, I don't know, a news application, but this one is unique because
this one focuses on the small news that aren't being broadcasted everywhere.
So here we have our kind of platform.
We'll make it a Web site.
Okay.
So this is the context and the user requirements.
So what would users need to get to it?
They would need a computer.
They would need Internet.
They would need, I don't know, interest.
So the interest is something interesting, right?
Because.
This could be something as small as minorities.
Because we can't really think that the small news, the small local news in this country will be heard
by everyone.
Everyone would be interested in maybe locals.
So we would want to have something that appeals to minorities or locals.
Let's go.
As not locals for now.
People who live in this area that we are covering the news for.
Then we look for design solutions.
Right?
How can we focus on these small news when no one is covering them?
We try to kind of have a solution for these items by looking into things such as maybe hired journalists
to stay around all day.
Could be something like stay in touch with a hashtag.
They can have some.
Some features on the website itself.
I remember another website kind of trying to shed light over topics that aren't really spoken about
and society.
And what they would do is they would pretty much have entries by people who want to talk about these
issues and then they would release it.
So that's a solution, right?
People find these small news and submit them to the website, which could be approved by someone.
So these are just very this is a very small example and these are very small solutions.
But at the end of it, you have to evaluate against requirements, right.
So they're locals in a specific country, someone with a computer or someone with a wi fi and someone
with an interest.
And usually journalists maybe might have a hard time with staying in touch with everything in their
surroundings all the time.
But this is a good example.
Anyways, a website is also useful.
Hashtags, for example, might not be very useful because they might not really serve the original purpose
that we are trying to achieve.
Right.
It's still a small website that is focused on locals, so hashtags aren't going to be the most effective.
And this process kind of is non-linear, right?
I wrote task one, task two, three and four, but actually they go around each other.
So, for example, in order to evaluate, sometimes we go back to the requirements.
Requirements.
And sometimes we might find ourselves going back to understanding the context, just to understand how
to evaluate these requirements.
Sometimes we have to go back to the solutions and then from the solutions will get to go back to evaluating.
So this process is definitely one that you need to go around with and understand what you're doing in
order to look into it very deeply and very well.
And obviously throughout all of this journey, you are gaining experience as a UX designer.
But now I'm more than positive.
You guys are wondering what is the difference between a graphic designer and a UX designer?
If there is an occupation that is 100% linked to the public's idea of what design is all about.
It is graphic design from the familiar golden arcs of the McDonald's brand to the typography and colors
of movie posters.
Graphic designers create some of the most iconic and wonderful designs around us.
They're very noticeable.
They stand out.
They make a statement.
So why would a graphic designer potentially one of you guys or some of you guys?
Would want to change their career to u x design.
Well, for one, much can be said about the sense of satisfaction and fulfillment derived from getting
under the hood of the products that you're working in rather than just working on the exterior.
Right.
Personally, I would rather know deep details about the company that I work and the products that are
working, the things that are offered, rather than just create posters with the company's name in it.
That's one very big pro if you're actually interested in the place that you're working in.
You know, passion is very important for this job.
Furthermore, according to PayScale, the average salary for a graphic designer in the United States
is $41,000.
But the same for a UX designer is $74,000.
Now, guys, I'm just saying this difference is not small.
You know, I wanted to start with the money specifically, because this is one of the biggest aspects,
I think, for us as employees.
So it's okay for you guys to admit that this part might be the part that convinced to the most UX design
is currently in very high demand because now it is getting so much more exposure and the UX designers
tend to be more concerned with a lot of things such as the look, feel and usability of a product and
item, right?
So here we're really looking into the product and depth.
We're really understanding what we're doing.
We're really solidifying our target audience.
Meanwhile, for graphic design, I think it's usually a bit more broad.
We're looking at maybe designing icons, posters, so it's two dimensional and it's really like just
visual.
You know, of course it has visuals, aesthetics, etc. But the look, the feel and the usability are
not as strong in graphic design compared to UX design.
So as a UX designer, you have the ability to have the graphic design skills plus.
These other aspects.
So in a way, you can end up as a graphic designer if you x design doesn't really work for you because
you also understand what a user would want better.
But obviously this field is much more limited compared to X design.
Sometimes we also might wonder what do graphic design and UX have in common?
Well, for starters, they both have emotional designs, right?
When I am trying to create something with graphic design.
I don't want it to just be a poster.
I wanted to say a message telling message to my audience.
Right.
I want it to serve a purpose.
Same thing for UX design, but like I said, it's much more in-depth.
It has the process of understanding in details.
What button makes them emotional more.
What button makes them feel stressed?
What button makes them feel comfortable?
For example, having the delete button on social media.
That's a great thing.
And that's part of the UX design that we will be talking about very soon.
But also, graphic design does have these aspects, but in a much more limited way.
They both have creative thinking, which is kind of giving solutions to existing problems, right?
For example, colors, specific topics, for example, let's say global warming, maybe not everyone's
interested in it.
So let's think of a creative way to come up with making people feel interested about global warming.
These two require creative thinking.
I want to create a poster about global warming that people will look at and they will be interested
in.
Or I want to create a product for people to use for global warming in order to kind of raise awareness.
Finally, both of them have the process of prototyping.
And when you're prototyping, you're really looking at stages of creating the products.
And for graphic design, prototyping is much simpler than your design because when you're prototyping,
you're just say, getting a paper and you're like, okay, so here I'm going to write, put the logo.
And I'm going to probably put a photo right here of something.
And then probably the description text over here.
This is just a very basic example.
As for U X design prototyping, it's prototyping the solutions.
So let's say I'm going to add a section in the website for submissions.
So I'm kind of designing the button's, the website, the logos over here, the information, a photo,
etc. This is an example for website.
You know, things are much more detailed than that.
But I'm just trying to show general similarities.
As for the differences, graphic design is more pixel focused, meaning it's usually mostly done on
your computer.
The work that you're doing is just, you know, things that are done digitally.
But UX design is out of the digital world.
It is also user focused.
Of course it has pixel focus, but it expands to user focus, which makes it much more flexible because
as you're focusing on people around you, you're starting to understand much more successful ways to
access your people, your target audience.
Now, graphic design is specialized, so sometimes it can be an animator, sometimes it can be, I don't
know, a logo designer, stuff like that.
But for UX design, what you do is you understand people.
You also design.
You also create solutions.
You do so many things at once that makes it very, very broad and not limited at all.
Now, generally speaking, we are going to go through a lot of more detailed information regarding UX
and UI.
But I'm going to stop here for now, and I hope that I'm able to help you understand better as an introduction
what this course would be offering in a much stronger sense.
Now let's move on to the next chapter and kind of prepare ourselves even better.