UX Ecosystems

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 to how you communicate; everything around you has been designed by someone. In other words, user experience design, or UX design, is  *everywhere* – from how you interact with your smartphone to how your home is designed. Of course, not all experiences are *well designed*. And that's why UX design is such an incredibly exciting and  rewarding field to be in.

We can trace UX design all the way back to the ancient Romans. They developed theories of aesthetics to construct amazing buildings that have stood the test of time. Vitruvius, a renowned Roman architect who wrote the first-ever book on architecture, asserted that good design must have the qualities of *durability*, *usefulness* and *aesthetics*. These qualities are *as* important to UX design today as they were millennia ago.

From the early 1970s to '80s, UX design was known as "human-computer interaction", or *HCI*. HCI rose to prominence just as personal computers became mainstream, and that was not a coincidence. 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. But in the 1970s, Xerox PARC introduced the first personal computer. And it was not only small, but it utilized the first *graphical user interface*.

Instead of lines of code, you used Windows icons and a mouse. And it started a revolution! Soon, companies like Apple and Microsoft were heavily borrowing from the Alto to create their own personal computers. This explosion of personal computing in the 1970s and 1980s led people to ask questions like "How should people interact with computers?" and "How can we make that interaction as intuitive as when we interact with other humans?". As people started finding the answers to these questions, the field of human-computer interaction, or HCI, started to grow.

Originally, HCI practitioners were mostly from fields such as cognitive psychology and computer science, and they were mostly focused on the concept of *usability*: how to make computers as intuitive as possible. As the field of HCI grew, designers quickly realized that designing intuitive computers required a greater understanding of other fields such as *motion graphics*, *storytelling* and *linguistics*. UX design today is really just  a continuation of what was called *HCI* in the 1980s

and *interaction design* in the 1990s. Today, we're dealing with a whole new set of products and services, the smartphone, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. But the questions we are asking as UX designers are *exactly the same*. It's still about "How can we make the experience of interacting with a computer, a smartphone, a product, a service as *intuitive*, *smooth* and *pleasant* as possible?".

Don Norman, the prominent 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 has been used. Let's think about the smartphone, for example. As UX designers, we care not only about making the software easy to use;

we also care about *designing the right marketing campaign*, about *creating a great unboxing experience*, as well as *making troubleshooting 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 addresses the need of the user in the first place. If not, you'll just be designing in a vacuum and no one will care how smooth or pleasant the experience is.

This is why UX design has become such a huge umbrella term which encompasses many fields, including *visual design*, *usability*, *psychology*, *sociology* and *aesthetics*. If you're interested in the *questions* that UX designers ask and if you're excited about finding the *answers*, then we have some very good news for you! The first piece of good news is that because  UX design is such a multidisciplinary field, the barriers of entry are very low. It doesn't matter where you come from or what you majored in;

you'll 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's extremely challenging and rewarding to be a UX designer. There's an endless depth to the job, and you'll always be coming up with new  possibilities and new solutions. And, finally, the great news is that you can start *right now*! You can start learning UX design *today*. At the Interaction Design Foundation, because we're a non-profit

we're able to deliver online UX courses at an extremely high quality and at a surprisingly low price. You can also pick up a few books at your library, or you can read some articles online. The point is you can take action right now. You can start learning UX design, and then you can make the world into a better design place than when you found it.

When developing a product or service, it is *essential*   to know what problem we are solving for our users. But as designers, we all too easily shift far away from their perspective. Simply put, we forget that *we are not our users*. User research is how we understand what our users *want*, and it helps us design products and services that are *relevant* to people. User research can help you inspire your design,

evaluate your solutions and measure your impact by placing people at the center of your design process. And this is why user research should be a *pillar* of any design strategy. This course will teach you *why* you should conduct user research and *how* it can fit into different work processes. You'll learn to understand your target audience's needs and involve your stakeholders.

We'll look at the most common research techniques, such as semi-structured interviews and contextual inquiry. And we'll learn how to conduct observational studies to  *really understand what your target users need*. This course will be helpful for you whether  you're just starting out in UX or looking to advance your UX career with additional research techniques. By the end of the course, you'll have an industry-recognized certificate – trusted by leading companies worldwide. More importantly, you'll master *in-demand research skills* that you can start applying to your projects straight away

and confidently present your research to clients and employers alike. Are you ready? Let's get started!

We'll talk about the seven factors that describe user experience. User experience, or UX, is critical to the success or failure of a product in the market. But *what* do we mean by UX? All too often, we confuse UX with usability. which describes *how easy* a product is to use. It's true that UX as a discipline began with usability. 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 market. According to Peter Morville, a pioneer in the UX field who has written several bestselling books on UX, there are seven factors that describe user experience: Useful, Usable, Findable, Credible, Desirable, Accessible and Valuable. Let's take a look at each factor in turn and what it means for the overall user experience. The first factor of user experience is Useful. You only want to bring a product to market if it's useful

and has a purpose for its target customers. If the product has *no* purpose, it's 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 isn't useful. It's worth noting that *useful* is in the eye of the beholder. And we also call products "useful" if they deliver *non-practical* benefits such as fun or aesthetic appeal.

So, a computer game or a sculpture may be deemed useful even if they don't enable a user to accomplish a goal that others find meaningful. *Usable*, or Usability, 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. *Findable* refers to the idea that the product must be easy to find. If you're working with digital and information products such as webpages, the content within them must be easy to find, too. Music- and video-streaming services with millions of files are extreme examples of the importance of designing for findability. If Netflix users can't find something they're in the mood for on a Friday night, it doesn't matter how much great content is hidden beneath the surface.

They'll stop using the service. *Credibility* 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 do, but that it will last for a reasonable amount of time and that the information provided with it is accurate and fit for purpose. It's nearly impossible to deliver a good user experience if the user thinks the product creator is lying or has bad intentions. They'll take their business elsewhere instead. In 2015, when it was discovered that

Volkswagen had rigged the software of millions of diesel cars to cheat on emissions tests, it not only cost them up to $30 billion in damages, but they also lost customer trust and a huge part of the U.S. market share that they're still struggling to regain. That's an extreme example of what a loss in credibility will do. But even if you don't commit fraud, you should always ensure that your product lives up to what it promises. *Desirability* is conveyed in design through branding, image, identity, aesthetics and emotional design.

The more desirable a product is, the more likely it is that the user who has it will brag about it and create desire in *other* users. To understand desirability, think of a Skoda and a Porsche. They're to some extent both useful, usable, findable, accessible, credible and valuable. But, for most people, Porsche is much more desirable than Skoda. That's not to say that Skoda is undesirable. They have sold a lot of cars under that brand. But given a choice of a new Porsche or Skoda for free,

most people will opt for the Porsche. Accessibility is about providing an experience which can be accessed by users of a full range of abilities. This includes those who are disabled in some respect, such as hearing loss, impaired vision, motion impaired or learning impaired. Doing interface design for accessibility means that you use colors which color-blind people can see, that text is legible even for people with low vision and so on. Sadly, accessibility often gets lost in the mix when we create user experiences.

Design for accessibility is sometimes seen by companies as a waste of money because the impression is that people with disabilities make up a small segment of the population. But even if you don't want to design for accessibility just to be a good person, it's worth remembering that when you design for accessibility, you'll often find that you create products that are easier for *everyone* to use, not just those with disabilities. Don't neglect accessibility in the user experience. Finally, accessible design is now a legal obligation

in many jurisdictions, including the E.U. And failure to deliver it may result in fines. Finally, the product must deliver *Value*. It must deliver value to the business which creates it and to the customer who buys or uses it. Without value, it's likely that any initial success of a product will eventually be undermined. A product can provide value to different users in different ways. For some users, desirability is more important than accessibility and vice versa.

That means that the value factor is really *the sum* of all the different factors of *user experience* combined. In this video, we've taken you through Peter Morville's 7 Factors of User Experience. What they show is that the success of a product depends on more than utility and usability alone. Products which are usable, useful, findable, accessible, credible, valuable and desirable are much more likely to succeed in the marketplace *and* bring joy to their users.

I wanted to just spend a little bit of time on the *user journey*. So, we can see how important user research is to creating really compelling value propositions and creating value for organizations that are trying to use service design to innovate, improve, streamline and smooth out. Well, there's nothing better to tackle that with than the user journey.

I wanted to just spend a little bit of time on this technique in case you didn't have that much experience with it or maybe you were doing journeys in a way that was different to the way I'm going to present to you. At least, I just wanted to share a template with you that can give you better access to what you're looking for. For me, now, a journey is something that you *build on*. So, first off it's your *customer journey*.

And on that is your service blueprint. And remember that the journey is going to reveal those cross-channel like, say, *breakpoints*, *pain points*, *disconnects* that you can map in the different *swim lane diagrams* – is the official term for a journey map. So, it comes from that – these swim lanes. And so, you'll have like maybe your channels here – you know – you'll have your user tasks here, pains and gains, or you can just have positive (+) or negative (-).

And I tend to change my user journeys, try and improve them, try and improve them. One of the problems that I find with journey maps – and they became very popular, I think around 2010, maybe, was the heyday of user journeys – 2010 / 2012, maybe. It was all about this beautiful big visualization. Let's be clear: A customer journey map is *not* about impressing your team

with really cool, big swim diagram visualizations with tons of little icons. It's a document like all deliverables in a human-centered design perspective. It should work for the internal teams that are using it as a decision-making document *as well*. The thing about the journey map that's particularly of value to the service designer is that it's happening across time

or across stages or across goals. So, the stages of, say, the life cycle – you know – you might have Research, Compare, Purchase, then the Return shopping. In other words, it's not just the purchase. A lot of conversion optimization and approaches to selling online just focus on this part here: the compare and purchase, or the funnel – if you will – the purchase funnel. And I think it's important to have the acquisition as much as the retention.

This is the conversion here. So, these two steps are the conversion steps. It's important to have *all* those steps represented. *Happy / sad moments* – you can have a little smiley face; *disconnects and breaks* – you know – so that you're like: "Ah! This is a break right here. They're on their phone, and they're researching, but the site's not responsive or it's *partially* responsive. And then, compare – when they go to compare, it only allows three items. So, it's like "Ohh!" – and then we have a quote from the user going:

"Why does this only allow (imitated mumbling)?!" – you know – something communicating the pain point. The other thing it's going to have is your reflections from your ethnography, from your personas. It's going to have those real-world contexts, basically. Instead of basically making it up and doing it internally, you're going to base it on user data. You'll also want to have *recommendations*. So, down here at the bottom you can have a list of recommendations

as well. This is an example of a journey map we created. And you can see the touch points we've added along the way. So, we have these different stages. We've got this – as the user walks through. So, we have Pre-apply, Apply, Post-apply. This is an online application journey. And we have the various channels that are occurring there. We've got the pain points represented. And the steps are:

Discover, Research, Apply, Manage and Dream. Discover was important because a lot of people didn't know that the offers were there. This is for getting an account. And basically the value proposition is you're going to have these offers – targeted offers – sent to you. So, the key is to find out how people are currently applying and at what stage makes sense to offer them these upsells, basically. And that's the value add that's being offered here.

I've been talking to a lot of people in agencies, startups, even from the GAFAs, to Google, to Apple, et cetera. And I realized that we share the same frustrations – from people who don't get design. They may sound familiar. We'll see. The first one is, 'Can you make it *pretty*?'; 'Can you do the 'UX' (whatever it is)?'; and, 'Can you add this *wow* effect?'

And if you're like me – so, this is me – when you hear that, you would cringe. And I've heard them a lot. Because what we really want to hear is... 'Can you make it *usable*?'; 'Can *we* do the UX *together*?'; And the last one: 'Can you *tell me what's broken*?'

Let's go over a few definitions. Ways that people would talk about UX maturity Rolf Molich, he said that UX maturity is basically the ability of an organization or a product team to define and meet UX goals to help to achieve business goals. Next one. Jonathan Earthy. He said It's a model of how organizations progress through levels of understanding of human centered issues. Measuring an organization's level on this scale provides information

with which to plan the improvement of human centered processes. And I love what Jonathan Earthy says here because usually when you see those early UX maturity models, it's simply about evaluating where you are. But there was no real emphasis on what you can do to improve or what you can do to maintain. Here's one that I put together. A UX maturity level describes various levels of organizational evolution and operation

as it pertains to the discipline. The more mature an organization is, the more they will outperform the competition. In particular, Design Management Institute has said that design led organizations outperform the competition by anywhere from 216 to 228%. UX maturity is embedded in that design led mindset, so I want to make sure people are going to digest that as well. UX maturity levels provide a means of examination

and help provide a way to measure your status, your progress and your goals. And please keep in mind UX maturity cannot and will not manage itself. So at the organizational level, these are things that have to be deliberately done, that you have people that are responsible for, people that are watching it, people that are keeping their finger on the pulse of UX maturity and taking actions to help drive it.

This new narrative starts with *identifying your audience and intent*. The way you pitch an idea to a client, peer or executive requires an *adjustment to your language and approach*. Client – they're more of an occasional traveler. They don't know the system; they don't know the ins and outs. They're less likely to share your language.  I mean, you're probably speaking design. They speak business and outcomes and results. So, you may need to establish a basic level of understanding.

Clients and executives are also less patient  and don't want to waste 20 minutes going through every single detail just to get to the answer. Karen's what you would call an occasional traveler. She expected high-fidelity visual comps and just had a bottom-liner approach. Karen's one of these busy executives. She doesn't have time for – nor does she need to or want to hear – all the details. She just needs to know *why she should care*, *why it matters to her line of business*,

and then she can decide to support your proposal ...or not. Now, the last time the team had presented to Karen, they spent the *entire 60-minute meeting* walking  her through *their process* and *justifying their decisions*. If you know anything about executives – a 60-minute meeting; *not* a good idea. Here's the rub. They never addressed the value of the business, and the team didn't come in with a clear ask.

In the own words of the team, it was the most grueling 60 minutes of their entire careers at this company. So, what do we do? Well, this time around, we started with audience and intent. We changed the story and wrote a new  narrative and developed a new plan. We started with the *intended outcome* with Karen, shared a few *stories* and then highlighted the *value* that our approach would bring to her business – and quickly gained approval from her. And I'll never forget the moment; it was like eight minutes into my presentation.

I actually looked down at my watch to check, when Karen interrupted me mid-sentence and said, 'Okay, Todd – I get it. You've done your homework; you've clearly shown how the solution solves the problem and how it's better than my original idea. What do we need to do to move forward?  What do you need from *me* to deliver this?'

Accessibility ensures that digital products, websites, applications, services and other interactive interfaces are designed and developed to be easy to use and understand by people with disabilities. 1.85 billion folks around the world who live with a disability or might live with more than one and are navigating the world through assistive technology or other augmentations to kind of assist with that with your interactions with the world around you. Meaning folks who live with disability, but also their caretakers,

their loved ones, their friends. All of this relates to the purchasing power of this community. Disability isn't a stagnant thing. We all have our life cycle. As you age, things change, your eyesight adjusts. All of these relate to disability. Designing accessibility is also designing for your future self. People with disabilities want beautiful designs as well. They want a slick interface. They want it to be smooth and an enjoyable experience. And so if you feel like

your design has gotten worse after you've included accessibility, it's time to start actually iterating and think, How do I actually make this an enjoyable interface to interact with while also making sure it's sets expectations and it actually gives people the amount of information they need. And in a way that they can digest it just as everyone else wants to digest that information for screen reader users a lot of it boils down to making sure you're always labeling

your interactive elements, whether it be buttons, links, slider components. Just making sure that you're giving enough information that people know how to interact with your website, with your design, with whatever that interaction looks like. Also, dark mode is something that came out of this community. So if you're someone who leverages that quite frequently. Font is a huge kind of aspect to think about in your design. A thin font that meets color contrast

can still be a really poor readability experience because of that pixelation aspect or because of how your eye actually perceives the text. What are some tangible things you can start doing to help this user group? Create inclusive and user-friendly experiences for all individuals.

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