By- Sushma Sumant

 User experience (UX) design is the process of creating products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users.  This involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability, and function.

For example: Considering a shopping website or app, User experience is not just about if you can explore all the items & buy what you need. But User Experience is all about how you feel to use the website or app for shopping. User experience is nothing but the feeling that the user gets while using the platform for performing any action.

 Despite advances in technology we still need the basic computing i.e. we still need basic desktops, laptops, GUI, etc.  Some industries are still fully operational with basic old fashioned computing.  Even in future we will be needing basic building blocks of computing.  For example, future is still full of tasks associated with computing such as word processing, database management, storing & retrieving information, spreadsheet management, etc.

 The concept of computing is changing.  It has gone beyond the GUIs, laptops, desktops and the Web & it has become more ubiquitous.  Computer systems are being worn by people which are called wearable devices. For example, fitness bands with sensors & wireless connectivity.  Embedded systems are used in appliances, furniture, vehicles, roads, etc.  Majority of these embedded computing systems are being commercialized and hence are becoming popular & accessible.

 In past, the systems were focused just on improving the work being done, despite its poor usability.  Poor usability was instead used as an excuse of provided as security barrier from uninitiated outsiders.  But as the computing as improved and a lot of options are being provided to users, they tend to find the service that is the most usable apart from being the most efficient.  Usability is now considered to be as important as efficiency in the market.

 Modern users give a lot of importance to design.  They tend to choose alternatives just because they think the design is very poor which was not the case earlier.  To be precise, poor designs were being tolerated for effective systems earlier but not in this modern era.

 Traditional usability can be explained as how efficient, effective and satisfying can the human-computer interaction be to the user.  General characteristics of usability are use, productivity, learnability, efficiency, effectiveness, retainability, user satisfaction, etc.  There are certain misconceptions about usability such as being called “dummy proofing” and being considered as equivalent to “user equivalent”.  It is also nothing as usability testing and visual appeal.

 The concept of quality in designing is expanding.  More of engineering focus is being deployed on user performance which is known as user experience.  User satisfaction is not just the emotional impact but considered as a much broad spectrum & the response to user satisfaction is also very different from people these days.  Focus has always been on the functioning but now equal amount of focus is also being given to the user experience part.

 A good user experience does not necessarily mean high tech or cool  Design is not just about technology but beyond it.  Technology is only required only for certain types of designs but there are other types of designs which don’t require technology.  User Experience is totally felt by the users internally.  It is simply the effect or effects felt by the user as a result of interaction with any system.  User experience can never be deigned it can only be experienced. We can only design for user experience.