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When you hear the word “design,” what comes to mind? Chances are, you think about your phone, your tablet, or your computer (if you thought about something you wear, good for you Dapper Dan/Danielle, but that’s not what this article is about). It’s not surprising that such devices would be so prominent in our thinking, considering their importance in our day-to-day lives. In fact, as a society, we have become far more design conscious in the last decade than ever before. Where design used to be treated almost as an afterthought, it’s now at the forefront of every software project, not to mention the hardware that runs it.
Thanks for this goes largely to Apple, who correctly understood that users of their products cared about design, even if those users didn’t know it at the time. More recently, design has become something every entrepreneur understands is at the forefront of getting their products noticed, whether it’s a toothbrush or an adult toy. 
But beyond sales and marketing considerations, why is design so important? It’s because design is the foundation for every interaction we have with the world. If a building is poorly designed, there might not be enough elevators or public restrooms. If its signage is poorly designed, you might not be able to find what few elevators and restrooms there are. If the fire suppression systems are poorly designed, well… you get the idea. Design impacts every aspect of your modern life. 
Not surprisingly, software took a while to come up to speed. Yet when you consider that software as we think of it today is only around 35 years old (setting 1984 and the first Mac as the advent of modern software), the fact that software design is so crucial, and that UX design is an exploding industry, is really quite remarkable. 
Software design is evolving at an ever-increasing rate of speed. This is due to several factors:

  • The growth of the UX Design job field. In an article from Jacob Nielsen of Nielsen Norman Group, he states that the number of UX design jobs grew by 1000x between 1983 and 2017 — from about a thousand to a million. This trend is expected to continue. 
  • The ubiquity of web pages. The reason for the aforementioned demand for UX designers is driven in part by the vast landscape of web pages, each requiring some level of design. Users now evaluate products and services based on their experience while visiting a web site. Good design has a direct, primary impact on business across almost every industry. 
  • Sophistication of Users. Today, users expect good design, and they are not patient with design that falls short of those expectations. Beyond the rather high bar set by Apple’s revolutionary products like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, myriad other products have driven design as a concept into the public consciousness. 

UX and UI

What’s the difference between UX and UI design? While many use the two terms interchangeably, there is a distinct difference. First coined by Apple in the early ‘90s, “User Experience” (UX) was originally meant to include the unboxing of the product, setup, and first interactions in addition to the ongoing use of the hardware and software. Nowadays, it’s used in a more targeted fashion, encapsulating the user’s interactions with the software itself. It includes things like navigation, interaction – scrolling, clicking, typing – readability, and iconography. 
UI Design, on the other hand, is a narrower field of thought, and really has more to do with the last two items above. User Interface (UI) design is the art and science of communicating ideas and information. It’s a necessary part of UX design, but not as all-encompassing. 

Getting Started

UX Design is a vast subject – you can get one or more degrees in it. That said, there are ways  a custom software developer can get rolling building better apps. It takes earnest effort, and a willingness to listen to users and clients. 
At its core, all UX design is driven by two things: People and Processes. Both are as individualized as they can be. 

People

You will never find exactly the same mix of users at any one company. It’s very important to know the different types of users who will be interacting with your software, and build for them. Here are a few factors to consider:

  • Age: remember that some of your users were born after the first personal computers were invented, while others went through nearly half of their lives before they ever laid hands on one. Some had a small, powerful computer in their hands by age 10, while others learned to type reluctantly at age 30 in order to keep their jobs. These are massive differences, but be careful of stereotyping — not all older users are technology-averse, and not all younger users are fast studies. 
  • Personality: a fastidious user might interact with software in a completely different way from a more laid-back type. A driven entrepreneur/owner might expect different answers than an employee with limited tasks to complete. Personalities are not only the product of genes and upbringing, but also work goals and work environment. 
  • Experience: a user who has had to rely on an app that did not behave well – frequent crashes, slow performance, difficult to use – may have different needs than a user who has had mostly positive software experiences. For example, the user with more bad experience under her belt might need more visual confirmation that an action produced the correct result. 
  • Emotional state: here’s another thing you can get a degree in: Change Management (well, a certification, anyway). People often fear change, and the introduction of new software into a work environment pretty much always means big change. This can produce all kinds of feelings, including fear but also resentment, and hostility. It can also mean the opposite, including unreasonably high expectations and unrealistic hope. And, of course, it can simply be a feeling of enthusiastic and realistic acceptance of the change the software will bring. 

The point of all this talk about people is that if users are at the center of the design experience, and you understand those users, you will be well on your way to designing better user experiences. The best way I have found to really understand users is to watch them work and ask questions where appropriate. Why did they do a certain thing? What was the goal? How certain did they feel that the goal was being achieved? What are the uncertainties? How do they feel about the amount of time and effort it took to achieve it? This works both before and after you build the app; it’s great for helping you evaluate your success after the fact, but it’s also really useful in understanding how to architect your app’s processes. 

Processes

Those processes are important to understand because these represent the goals the users wish to accomplish. If they can’t get there, it doesn’t matter how nice your software looks or feels. Every process has a goal, whether it’s a report, a set of records representing a subset of information, viewing a contact’s phone and email information, or confirmation that a QC process has been completed with proper accountability. Goals are important, but there’s more to the process than that – there’s also the way the goal is accomplished, how much work it takes, and how clear the steps are for the user. A well-designed process has a minimum number of steps, which are laid out clearly and give good feedback along the way. 

Steal, steal, steal.

 Decades ago, when I was a new student in art school, a professor stood up in front of our class and proclaimed, “Steal! Steal! Steal!” What he really meant was that we should build on the work of others. He also emphasized that we should do it our own way, and better. This is, of course, how a little thing called the Renaissance happened. And it’s a good way to improve and inform your own design, if you do it correctly. It works best when you assess actual apps or web sites that you interact with on a regular basis, asking yourself how the user experience is working for you. If it’s going well, ask yourself why, using the criteria mentioned earlier. 

Be a Constant

An important key to achieving good design is being as consistent as possible in the way you design your interactions. There are always lots of ways to solve any given problem, and your design toolbox most likely includes various objects you can use to convey information or accept input from a user. If a popover worked in one part of the system, there’s no need to switch to a card window in another. If you design in FileMaker, like I do, refer to my article on how to be consistent in your style creation and naming. 
Learn SubtractionGood designers know that everything they throw on the screen to begin with is not going to be necessary in the end. Be willing to remove things that are unnecessary, or to combine several things into one. This goes for steps in your process as well as objects on your screen. Simple things like dropping a user into a field with a cursor already flashing when a new page loads can go a long way.

 
Conclusion

By placing the user and the user’s processes at the center of your design, you take a huge step toward being a good designer. And by learning to evaluate other apps that you interact with, you will become better at building and assessing your own great designs!