When UX Design Can Help a Project
UX Design has been around for a while.
Still, many people don't know when is the right moment to bring someone to help with User Experience.
It sounds complicated and time-consuming, and sometimes it's not clear what are the outcomes of hiring a UX professional.
But actually there are some excellent reasons to do it, and the benefits are enormous. To dive into that let's first start with some basics.
What is UX Design anyways?
"Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. That’s not what we think design is. Design is how it works."
Steve Jobs
The Apple founder is spot on at this description. Especially when we're talking about UX Design. Understanding how users interact with the product is essential to make it great.
UX Design is the process of understanding and improving user satisfaction, product usability and accessibility by delivering the solution to the problems and desires a user has.
When to Apply UX Design
Ideally, it's interesting to do explore UX before starting any new feature or product. By doing so we're making sure that we're going in the right direction.
But that doesn't mean that UX Design should be skipped if a project has already started. Some risks come with ignoring it.
Without investing in UX Design:
- Developers might be building the wrong product (and will redo it later)
- Users can get disappointed (causing brand damage and churn)
- A company may lose a window of opportunity (and the competitor might not).
Conclusion
Making great products is hard. It's an ongoing process, and there will be iterations to improve it as long as it's being used. And UX can help define the what and the why.
Every project will have the pressure for delivery. But we must do progress with a strategic mind and look beyond today's tasks.
It's not about how fast we start developing, but how fast users see value on the solution. That's the actual finish line. That's what makes a great product.
