What is the importance of user experience (UX)?

[Ethanbrody]

I want to know about what is the importance of user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design in web development.

[rproffitt]

For us it was about what the client wanted and would pay for.

What else would it be?

[Dani]

Rproffitt, I think maybe you’re misunderstanding the question. Or at least I hope you are.

If you are working as an independent UI/UX contractor for hire, then the client would come to you with their conversion goals (whether that’s strictly signups, user engagement, etc.), and as the UI/UX expert for hire, it’s your job to come up with wireframes and design language that best achieves the problem at hand.

If you work as part of an internal team, the process is much the same, only your client is a different team within your company.

I would hope that a UI/UX expert would push back on what the client wants the interface to look like, and instead advocate for what is going to perform the best based on their vast experience in this realm.

You see, as app creators, we have a great overall sense of all the features and functionality our app encases, and we want to optimize for giving the end-user maximum visibility into it all. That often results in clunky interfaces that are super-intuitive to us, but very unintuitive, confusing, and overwhelming to end-users.

Enter the UI/UX expert, who serves as a middleman between the backend and frontend developers, while the master they serve is the marketing department.

[rproffitt]

@DANI. I kept it simple because without fail clients would have a lot of work to be done and a beer budget. Yes we would feedback about broken UI/UX.

Funny you mentioned wireframes. We stopped using those years ago since you could never implement the wireframe exactly across what is now some thousand different screens. Not to mention if the user doesn't have the browser full screen or the phone is portrait or landscape. We went with simple sketches of the desktop and mobile views and because of budget and time, didn't bother with wireframing.

[Dani]

Like it or not, if you bypassed the step of responsive design wire framing, you are not taking UI/UX into consideration the way you probably should, and are not giving it the focus and time and attention and expertise from a usability expert that it needs to ensure success.

That’s fine if that’s where your priorities lay, but your answer to the OP’s question should probably have been something akin to “we don’t because it’s not within scope.”

Similarly, I code in production because I don’t have the money to properly reproduce my production environment as a staging server. I can admit that I bypass the crucial step of QA testing.

[Reverend Jim]

Sometimes you have to work to convince the client that what they want isn't necessarily what they need.

[Dani]

Perhaps this doesn’t go without saying, but fixing a broken interface is NOT the same as data driven design, which is the absolute core of UX.

If you don’t pause and take the step to focus on data driven design, you don’t do any UI/UX, IMHO.

[Dani]

You added the word responsive. We do that with a few sketches. No longer use wireframe apps.

Modern apps are responsive. Check out Figma, which is the one I hear about most often these days.

[Dani]

Why use an app when a pad of paper and a #2 pencil will do?

Simply because it won’t do. Check out the full feature set of Figma and you’ll see what I mean.

[Dani]

“Too many hours wasted” isn’t necessarily the opinion of those who are opening their wallets to fund the company.

For example, there’s a very old research study from over a decade ago (can no longer find it) where Amazon showcased that they increased their revenue multiple-fold by a small repositioning of their shopping cart buttons, and another study where another tiny tweak was able to decrease page speed by something like 100 milliseconds, and resulted in increased time on site by a factor of 10x, resulting in insurmountable revenue gains that were visible in the stock market.

As an engineer on a big team, you might get frustrated on why so much deliberating, and going back to the drawing board, and re-deliberating, and more drawing board, is happening over things as small as moving buttons by 10 pixels, or changing the font size from 14px to 14.5px, but it’s the butterfly effect in full swing.

[Dani]

I just want to add that that whole butterfly concept, as it relates to UI/UX, is what made me fall in love with the SEO industry all those years ago. I loved how a college kid, with nothing but time and research and studying data, and studying color theory, and analyzing usability studies, and lots and lots and lots of data analysis, could make a tiny tweak to one line of code on her iMac in her dorm room, that would impact how a few pixels looked on a webpage (something as small as changing the size of a button). That small change would quite literally affect the way search engines indexed and ranked the site (eg Google cares a LOT about user experience in their algorithms), how millions of people around the world interacted with the website, how much time they spent on it, whether it subconsciously influenced them to hit that sign up button, and, consequently, impact their lives … in your case, specifically, impact how you choose to spend your time even decades later.

You might be here talking to me today simply because I slaved for hundreds of hours one week of summer vacation two decades ago, deliberating over the perfect size and position and amount of white space around a sign up button.

[Dani]

I'm sorry, but I feel the need to call you out for being incredibly irresponsible for responding to a question about the importance of UI/UX with as nonchalant of a response as, whatever the client wants, what else? and it's essentially a waste of time with too many hours wasted.

Not having a UI/UX expert is akin to building a structure without an architect. You have the carpenter and plumber and electrician and even structural engineer who can build something that functions just fine, but without the architect, you're building a big square box that doesn't take into consideration all the design nuances that make architectural masterpieces that withstand the test of time. And, yes, sometimes architects have to go back to the drawing board time and time again, just like novelists with writer's block often do. Architecture, just like UI/UX, is an art.

[Dani]

... and if your response to me is simply that it's not within your client's budget, I redirect you back to my second post in this thread where I wrote:

That’s fine if that’s where your priorities lay, but your answer to the OP’s question should probably have been something akin to “we don’t because it’s not within scope.”

In other words, if the client's beer budget can handle building a bunch of white box structures that function fine, then that's fine. But it's still irresponsible IMHO to reply to a question about the importance of UI/UX insinuating that it's not that critical as long as things work.

In today's landscape of competition on the web, catching the end-user's attention 50 milliseconds sooner, or playing with whitespace to subconsciously impact user behavior, or making sure that there's a consistent design language across a website with a big team behind it, can very easily be the difference between going bankrupt and going IPO.

[Dani]

Sorry for all the many posts in this thread. One final thing :)

The question asks, specifically, about user experience (UX). Google defines UX as:

User experience (UX) focuses on having a deep understanding of users, what they need, what they value, their abilities, and also their limitations. It also takes into account the business goals and objectives of the group managing the project.

I fail to see how that can be successfully accomplished with a pad and pencil sketching a rudimentary wireframe.

My reason for posting so much in this thread is because UX and, specifically, data driven design, are things I am soooooo passionate about, and I wanted to spread awareness about how important they are. I felt a bit like you were downplaying their significance and importance, especially in highly competitive markets.

[sarahcuneiform]

User experience (UX) is important because it refers to the feeling users experience when using a product, application, system, or service. It encompasses everything an end-user does related to the product, including how it fits into their overall workflow and the steps before and after the product is actually in use. UX design focuses heavily on having a deep understanding of users, what they need, what they value, their abilities, and their limitations. A good user experience provides a competitive edge and reduces the risk of product failure. UX saves an organization’s time, money, and effort at every stage of the design process, and brings long-term value to the business.

[ahsan_34]

UX the digital link connecting mankind and technology. Empathy, creativity, psychology, and design work in perfect harmony to improve users' lives and the digital environment as a whole. It exemplifies "human-first" design in the digital age.

[marrywillson]

User experience (UX) is the level of satisfaction an individual gets from interacting with a specific design.

The goal of user experience design (UX design) is to optimize a product's usability, fluidity, and entertainment for its users.

UX aims to satisfy user wants and provide wonderful experiences that entice customers to stick with a product or brand.

Over time, a great user experience helps businesses by enhancing their reputation and loyalty.

A satisfying user experience increases your market share and reduces the likelihood that your product will fail.

UX design aims to offer solutions that resolve needs and pain points.

The price of customer service and training can be decreased by providing a good user experience.

To sum up, user experience matters because it prioritizes satisfying customer wants, and increasing brand loyalty and reputation.

[myresellerhome]

User engagement may be improved, site traffic can be increased, and user happiness can be improved with a well-designed user interface and user experience. It makes it easier for visitors to explore the site, locate information that is pertinent to their needs, and carry out the tasks they require. Building a brand identity and creating a favorable impression of the website are both helped along by a strong user interface and user experience design.