UX Defined
If you’re expecting a ubiquitously agreed definition of user experience design (aka UX or UE design), you may be disappointed. Until recently there were a range of definitions, spanning from the broad and diffuse “community of practice - not a single profession” offered by the nascent AIGA “experience design” group, to an “inherently a multi-disciplinary field” espoused by uxnet.org, to what I’d say is the more concise definition provided by the anonymous authors of wikipedia.org: “The overall experience and satisfaction a user has when using a product or system.” While all of these hit the target somewhere, none seem a bulls eye. Sure, the target is still moving; language—like all else—should evolve. Meanwhile, all-encompassing and varied definitions can, and does, cause confusion, misunderstanding, and misuse of the term.
It is clear to most by now that, however broad its origins, UX / UE Design is primarily associated with interactive media, especially internet-based hypertext (http) webs. In any case, none of the other design disciplines make much claim to it, except within design firms where both physical and digital products and services are designed. In other words, where we find the term used, a web designer is like very near by.
The definition for UX / UE Design that is most matches my experience as a planner, designer and producer of web-based software, which I’ve long held, is borrowed from the discipline of linguistics: UX / UE Design is a “compound language.” That is, a language resulting from the synthesis of multiple discreet language vocabularies. Ideally, the integration results in a cohesive Gestalt pattern, registered consciously or not by the user, so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This, of course, can be implemented across a number of related artifacts (retail store, software, packaging, support documents, peripherals, etc.), so that, as intended according the terms accepted originator, Don Norman, their entirety result in an experience of pleasure and quality, related to the product or service, by the user.
The languages normally integrated in an interactive media project, defined by their respective academic and professional disciplines, are
- Written Language: alpha-numeric characters; English, Spanish, French, etc.
- Graphics: shape, spacial symbolism, color, composition
- Navigation: actionable user interface elements, user flow
- Information Architecture: labels, taxonomies, structure, visual organization, hierarchy, sequence (at site, category, and screen levels)
- Interactive Logic: information processing logic, interactivity, functionality, utility (aka “features”), high level programming
- Motion: animation, motion graphics, rhythm, calculus
- Audio: music or spoken word (aka Voice Over, V.O.) if selected or expected
Each of these elements are languages containing expansive vocabularies, the scope of which requires highly specialized knowledge to apply at the professional level. Thus, as generally agreed, user experience design is highly interdisciplinary. And for the business context we also must manage to integrate the strategic element. But that’s another story. Rather than elaborate on any of these elements, I’ll focus on the central element in UX Design: the user’s needs, limitations, and subjective experience.
Of course any discussion of the elements of user experience would be incomplete, at best, without acknowledging the profound and highly practical insight provided us by Jessie James Garret via his book, The Elements of User Experience. In his easily absorbed visual metaphor, the elements are divided in to “planes” of surface, skeleton, structure, scope and strategy, thus spanning a continuum from most concrete (surface), to most abstract (strategy). This is an extremely useful model, as special emphasis is given to the relationship between planes as the project moves through time from abstract to concrete manifestations. I strongly recommend it to anyone involved in web design in any capacity.
The user-centric theme allies UX Design with other more traditional disciplines, which have greatly illuminated web design in general. Foremost among them is that step-child of psychology, Human Factors, which applied to human-computer interaction, aims to bring to the capabilities and limitations of human to the interaction designer’s palette, to form a more human-friendly system. The difference between it, user-centered design (UCD), and UX, is simply one of emphasis. UCD and human factors emphasize human performance (which is what computers were invented to improve), where as the scope of user experience is both wider and deeper, to include life impacts overall—for individual, organizational, and societal experience—as well as task performance.
One way to characterize this shift of emphasis we’re experiencing as an industry is that which, I hope, we are experiencing as a culture: a shift from a focus on goals and objectives, to one better recognizing the value of the process of life itself. Which, after many goals have been striven for and, or, acheived, people often come to recognize as equally important as achievement itself, if not more so. This should come as no surprise. Here it is worth noticing that, for American’s, our constitutional right to happiness is in the pursuit of it, and not achievement. This is, I think, for good reason.
In an ever The Better Mouse Trap technological economy, with models for organization and achievement still largely anchored in industrial age philosophies, emphasizing subjective individual experience and essential life processes in any enterprise is no small feat. Yet, as one respected supervisor put it me, “the better part of design is empathy.”
Defining UX Design by what it is not is also useful. It is certainly NOT a trendy new name for
- Web design
- User-centered design
- Graphic design
- Human factors engineering
- Interface design
- Information architecture
- Interaction design
- Usability testing
Nor does the terms most common interpretation, of anything any user ever experiences, serve us. Though I’d say that user-focus is necessary for the success of any interactive system, regardless of one’s interpretation of user experience design: it is better used poorly than not at all. Yet as with any word definition, the more precise and widely agreed, the more powerful and useful it is. As always, limits and constraints lend clarity and power.
One very seldom discussed reason for the adoption of UX Design is a historical one. In the beginning was the intrepid webmaster, ideally possessing a swiss army knife-like set of skills. As project complexity grew, labor divided. And before long web designers and developers needed to differentiate themselves from the fray as graphics, markup and script generation tools, the so-called WYSIWYG tools, helped “democratize” the production of web sites. At one point it seemed anyone with a creative impulse experienced a strong gravitational pull towards Photoshop and Illustrator, and a career in computer graphic design. Which in turn led to opportunities to design web sites. To further this historical point, I ask my dear reader to indulge me in a little reminiscence.
The Amazing Web Job Title Generator is now long-gone; not even cached by archive.org. But in its day (ca. 1995-7, last seen on webreview.com) it was truly amazing. It not only offered a seemingly infinite number of three web-related word combinations, generated randomly, but it reminded us that we were in a profession so new and multi-disciplinary that to use traditional job titles seemed ridiculous. And who wanted them: we were the popular new subversives, and we wanted people to know it. As often the case, the new boss, it turns out, is not unlike the old boss. Anyway, many of us didn’t want to remain underdogs. And let’s face it, too (while the magician is telling tricks), that mysterious terms, like mystery itself, insinuates some power, or attraction. At least until the curtain is pulled back to reveal the wizard, as ever, is just a man.
Still, today we have The BS Job Title Generator. And it will do just fine, as some of us can still the sort of wry humor, such as colonized peoples must use, from time to time.
Humors aside, finding respectable titles for our vocations, avocations and studies, has proven difficult for good reason: because of the extremely complex nature of web and web application design, which is, in fact, inherently interdisciplinary, interactive (human-computer, computer-computer, and human-human), and multi-dimensional.
In sum UX Designers practice the careful planning (process matters greatly to UX Design), design and integration of multiple disciplines and symbolic systems affect users—a.k.a. people—that use interactive systems for an expansive variety of reasons.
Is this thee definitive definition of UX Design? I’m sure it is not. But I hope it serves you somehow, as it has me, after striving daily to understand, define, share, and apply it as best I can for over ten years now.
You’re invited to advance the definition I’ve attempted to provide here, or expand it, or add your own, via comments. And if those of others interest you, here are the Top Ten (Seven so far) Definitions of UX Design I’ve discovered »