Made around John

I believe some of us have run blind thinking the whole world knows what UX is. I believe I have to admit that I’m one of these people. In fact not too long ago I probably didn’t have a clue either what the term actually meant. I guess it has to do with the fact that I by chance ran into people who introduced me to the concept and taught me how it all works and what the ideas behind it are. 

So, now to the good stuff. What is really UX? I don’t feel 100% sure when I write this because honestly I don’t think anybody knows just exactly what the term means and what it refers to. Everybody seems to have different ideas and opinions and especially work processes that UX people work by varies a lot!
If I were to wrap up the term UX today and give a concise answer I would say it has everything to do with setting the order of things. Should we test what we have now? Or should we design or redesign and test it after that? Another thing that is extremely essential for UX is having an innovation method by which you base all your design hypotheses and which is then used to carry out work tasks to other people.

It feels like even though I’ve already mentioned a great variety of responsibilities the most important one still remains. It’s the obvious What is good design for the users? There are a lot of best practices worth mentioning and such examples are:

What is above and below the fold of a webpage?
How do we encourage users to scroll so that they see all of our good content?
What will the users actually read of my content based on what they are physically and mentally able to interpret?
Are there pages, messages or concepts on my site or app that users totally miss or neglect for some reason?
Does the startpage carousel in any way work or does it only confuse users?

There are many questions similar to these worth asking and the list basically just goes on and on forever depending on how much you want to learn about user behavior and user psychology.
After this long and growing list of things to think of comes another aspect of it all and it is what will look good esthetically and how do we create art? My mind often hits a blank when I try to put words on good art, I simply know it when I see it or it flows out naturally when you start working on something.
Good art when it comes to apps and websites fully depend on a lot of different aspects. Here the questions I asked earlier together with a multitude of other questions becomes extremely relevant. No matter how simple a site is good art can’t be created without the users and their behavior in mind.
I believe it is the complexity and the many different things you need to have in mind that makes it so fun to work with this type of design and why so many find struggles in their digital projects. Just like any craft there is no limit to what you can learn and what you can create. The best part is that all the hard work put into a UX project will serve to give happier users who are more likely to buy from you and recommend you to friends. 

I feel like I need to come back to this subject many times in order to cover more of it and get into dept on different parts. However I hope for some of you who might be less familiar with the practice of UX that you will have gotten a basic understanding for it and that maybe even some of you have become interested to learn more about it.