Design
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8 Essential Elements of Great UX Design

Written by Talent Garden Talent Garden
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User experience (UX) design is integral to creating an appealing product or service for users. It’s used in a wide range of applications, including in online tools such as a PDF merger, mobile apps such as Uber and Airbnb, and online banking platforms. With UX, the user is integral to the overall design of the service and product, helping businesses boost customer satisfaction and conversion rates.  Without implementing UX design, businesses may struggle to retain customers, so much so that 88% of users are less likely to return to a website after a poor user experience. In this article, we’ll explore the eight essential elements in UX design, so you can boost your user experiences and boost customer retention.  We’ll cover the following topics: 
  • What is UX design?
  • What is a UX design brief? 
  • The benefits of UX design 
  • What are the essential elements of great UX design? 

What is UX Design? 

Great UX Design Free to use image from Unsplash UX design is when professionals make user-centred decisions when designing digital products to ensure they meet the wants and needs of the target audience.  To make a product that will appeal to the right people, designers need an intimate understanding of user needs and behaviors to create a product that is intuitive and tailored to the right audience. 

What is a UX Design Brief?

A UX brief documents the scope and overall goals of a UX design project, ensuring that all parties involved understand their roles and responsibilities.  It guarantees that both the client and the designers are on the same page, as well as outlining objectives, requirements, and limitations. Without a UX brief, external designers will struggle to understand your overall vision, leaving more scope for human error and wasted time and money. Imagine a complete stranger walking through your office door - how would you explain your business? This is what needs to be included in your UX design brief. Think of it as an introduction. 

The Benefits of UX Design

Businesses focusing on the user experience create better products, boosting customer retention and satisfaction. There are many benefits of UX design, including:
  • Improving the user experience. UX design is centred around creating products that, over all else, appeal to the user. By making a user-centered product or service, UX designers can create products that increase user satisfaction, boosting loyalty and retention. 
  • Increasing revenue and reducing development costs. Offering a user experience that is accessible attracts more visitors to your website and increases conversions and revenue. It also reduces costs, as UX designers identify and resolve design issues during the development stage. This helps to avoid costly redesigns after release day.
  • Accessibility. UX design improves accessibility for users with disabilities by creating products that focus on the universal user experience. This can help to ensure that all users are able to access and use the product effectively, improving customer satisfaction and retention. 

What are the Essential Elements of Great UX Design?

Great UX Design Free to use image from Unsplash When UX design is “great”, you might not even notice it at all. It’s designed to be seamless, working behind the scenes to deliver an easy-to-use service to users without bugs, slow loading times, or gaps in the experience.  To achieve a seamless and “invisible” design, you’ll need to create a service that’s visually appealing, simple, and gives users everything they need to move forward. Understanding the individual needs and behaviours of your target demographic is, therefore, vital to creating a great UX design.  Here are the essential elements you’ll need to consider during UX development. 

  1. Understanding User Needs and Motivations

To create an effective UX design, you need to get into people's mindset to use the product or service. Consider their goals, feelings, and motivations by asking the following questions: 
  • Why are they using this product or service? 
  • What do they wish to achieve? 
  • What are their pain points?
For instance, an individual using file transfer software is doing so to share a file with someone else quickly. They want to achieve a quick transfer and don’t want to use software that’s slow and difficult to understand.  UX design looks past the preferences of designers and internal staff - it revolves around the user and will be backed by in-depth research and testing.  In fact, there are several research strategies that UX designers use to understand the target audience on a more intimate level, including analytics, interviews and surveys, and empathy mapping. 

  1. Clarity

Great UX DesignFree to use image from Unsplash Good UX designs offer simple and intuitive navigation without overwhelming users with too many options or design features.  While a visually appealing design is beneficial, people don’t use a product or service to look at something attractive. Instead, they’re there to achieve something - whether it’s to finish a task like signing an electronic waiver form or get their questions answered on an About page.  To create a good UX design and add value for customers, follow information architecture (IA), which involves organizing, structuring, and labeling content efficiently so users can easily navigate through content. Create a hierarchy of information using categories and subcategories, tags, menus, and search bars. 

  1. Consistent designs

Consistency is key in UX design. A harmonious interface, layout, and interactions help users better understand and navigate through a product or service, reducing frustration and confusion.  By maintaining design consistency, you’ll create user familiarity, improving usability and experience when using the product or service. 

  1. Inclusivity 

Make a UX design accessible to all by implementing diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives into your product or service. Implementing options for the visually, hearing, or physically impaired is a designer’s responsibility so that all users can access adequate information.  Implement this into your UX design by: 
  • Conducting user research, including surveys and usability testing, to identify user needs and accessibility barriers
  • Adding multiple ways to experience the design, such as audio components for visually impaired users
  • Add preference options on display and negotiations 
  • Using inclusive language, such as gender-neutral terms, to create a more inclusive environment

  1. Visual appeal

Great UX design must visually appeal to and engage the target audience through consistent branding across all channels, not only to engage but to retain users.  Using attractive colours, typography, and imagery goes a long way in creating an excellent first impression amongst users, motivating them to explore the product or service further. Visuals should also be consistent with existing branding to help enforce its identity and create consistent messaging, building brand recognition and loyalty.

  1. Speed and high performance 

Great UX Design Free to use image from Unsplash Have you ever faced a slow-loading website or an unresponsive product and, out of frustration, gone elsewhere?  Speed and high performance are crucial parts of UX design, influencing the user perception of the usability, engagement, and experience of a product or service. Designing a fast product improves user retention, conversion, and optimization. Without it, you could face high bounce rates and poor user engagement, making it increasingly difficult to reach business goals. 

  1. Tone of voice 

A fundamental part of UX design, your brand voice and tone create a memorable and easy-to-understand experience for users, helping the product or service to differentiate itself from competitors.  Once you’ve developed the product or service features, you need to ask yourself the following questions: 
  • How do you want to communicate with the user? 
  • How do you want users to interact with your product or service? 
  • What tone would best suit the target audience? 
Spending valuable time devising the appropriate tone of voice for the product or service can enhance user satisfaction and ensure they have a cohesive and valuable experience. 

  1. Goals & success benchmarks

To guide UX development, design, and testing, it’s essential to set clear goals for the overall user experience. Goals and success benchmarks allow all developers and designers to understand the desired outcome and measure their success along the way.  When tracking your goals, you must decide what metrics are most appropriate to guide product testing and evaluate effectiveness during the development phase. To do this, outline the user’s wants and needs and keep this in mind when choosing which metrics to track.  Metrics to track include: 
  • User satisfaction: Measuring users' satisfaction through surveys and ratings indicates that the design is either meeting the needs and expectations of the users or needs to be improved. 
  • Conversion rate: Tracking the percentage of users who complete a specific desired action indicates that the design motivates users to take action. If your design has a low conversion rate, it may show that it needs editing. 
  • Engagement: This metric measures engagement with the design, including time spent on the site or the number of clicks. High engagement indicates that the design is exciting and engaging.

Enhance Your Product or Service with UX Design

Great UX Design Free to use image from Unsplash Ready to boost customer satisfaction? Consider implementing UX design into your future product and service development. UX design is proven to boost your return on investment, with 94% of positive first impressions based on a website’s design.  Clearly, UX design is an effective way to increase revenue through customer satisfaction and lower overall development costs.
Article updated on: 09 August 2023
Talent Garden
Written by
Talent Garden, Digital Skills Academy

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