If you own a software product today, you have more options than ever before over every aspect of its ecosystem – from how it’s designed, to the technology used to create it, to where and how it is distributed or published, to how it is maintained and supported. This blog post is a part of series on the web and mobile app infrastructure.  Today’s post will focus on User Experience.
Viewing Your Product as a Process – an Experience – Rather Than a Static “Thing”
You often see UX described as something along the lines of “it’s how a user feels when they use a software product”. Additionally, it’s often considered a phase of product development and is commonly associated with UI design. I would say that UX design is a way to view your product as a process – an experience – not merely as a static “thing”.
Why is it important to view your product as experience? Historically, software engineers have been mainly concerned with creating functional software, and putting a lot of weight in writing clean code, and having a low rate of defects. Today we’re at the point where, there so many products, so many options that quality is not always the decisive factor. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very important, but no matter how good your code is, Â if your product is confusing or difficult to learn, — no one will use it.
 It is human nature to chose the path of least resistance when it comes to learning how to use a new tool. If your product is not intuitive, i.e. it takes a long time to figure out, the user will choose a new product that can be learned in a single trial.
UX design is an increasingly hot topic, as users demand that their software products are available on multiple platforms. For example, I use Evernote for writing purposes: I use it on my MacBook Pro at home, on my Windows machine in the office and my Android phone when I’m on the go. The transition between the three “incarnations” is easy and intuitive: you learn to use it on one platform, you know how to use it on all the others. My data is accessible “anytime, anywhere”, it makes me more productive and, in addition, the tool backs up my data. Someone has put in a lot of effort to design this seamless experience, and they’ve done a good job.
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Areas of UX – Much More Than a Functional Spec
In the past, experience design has been, not so much ignored, as not treated as a separate discipline, and incorporated into different cycles of product development. Product idea would be turned into a functional specification document, approved by the stakeholders, and a UI designer and a team of developers would create the product, — then testers will take it for a spin.  Where does UX fit into this? Who should take the responsibility of UX design? Before we answer that, let’s look at a few key areas of user experience design:
- Information architecture (IA), which is how the content is organized, prioritized and presented. This is part of the overall structure of your product, and you need to make sure that it’s flexible in order to accommodate potential changes and additions to the product. Types of IA include: hierarchy,  hub and spoke, nested, tabbed, bento box or filtered view. Each one of these is appropriate for a certain type of product. In later blog posts, I will expand on this subject.
- Interaction Design (IxD) – this is where the interaction types come in. How does your user interact with the features of your product? This is where you introduce workflows and provide useful notifications/feedback along the way, so they don’t feel lost or confused. Make sure to consider user’s prior experience and conventions they are used to, so that your product is easier to learn. Provide useful and clear feedback, in human language, without the technical jargon. Find a way to handle errors gracefully without blaming or frustrating the user.
- Interface Design. This is where function is given form. Make things visually appealing to make sure users want to use your product and are enjoying the experience. This is where you consider the layout of your features on the screen, considering how users place their hands and fingers on a tablet or smartphone.
- Navigation Design. Good navigation design gives a strong sense of where you are, what your next step is and what the expected result should be. Make sure that you product reveals the right things at the right points of user navigation.
This is just a brief overview of experience design areas, and we’ll go back to different aspects of UX in future blog posts. The main point is that the areas described above need to be included in your product development process; if your organization has a UX designer to address them, — that’s great; some of them can be done by the UI designer, or it might be the product owner’s responsibility, or it could be a tandem of several team members. In addition don’t forget to get some feedback from real users, make sure to observe how real people use your product, and see if the product is intuitive to them and used as intended.
Why Dextrys
Dextrys are the experts in the web and mobile ecosystems for small and mid-sized retailers, services, and consumer product companies, including
•            User experience and front-end app design for web, smart phone and tablets
•            Back-end software systems that enable and support the customer experience
•            Software testing, and
•            Cloud consultingÂ
When you work with Dextrys you can be confident that our team of focused experts will deliver on time, within budget and to the quality you expect.
