User Experience is a very new and loose term for a very old field of very loose terms. Isn’t it information architecture, usability, accessibility, that kind of stuff? Yes, but not really. And people are still trying to figure it out.
User Experience, or UX, is the way a user interacts with digital interfaces: websites, intranets and applications for computers, mobile, kiosks, etc. It introduces the user into the equation of strategizing, planning, designing and developing any of these things. The UX discipline will usually ask:
WILL users use it?
CAN users use this?
Anyway, who asks these questions? (hoho)
Depending on where you are, they call this person by different names. Here, I’m an Information Architect, but others may be User Experience Designers or Strategists, Conceptual Designers. Or they may have all of these and more doing very specific stuff in different UX fields (I’ll talk about that some other time). It all depends on each organization’s process. It’s all art, it’s all evolving and, still, it’s all pretty much the same as 30, 40 years ago (I’ll also talk about that some other time).
The Information Architect, or IA, is responsible for discovering and defining user goals, characteristics and tasks through user research, and carrying them through the project concept and development with sitemaps, flows, wireframes, schematics, without forgetting that they need to get along nicely with the business and brand goals. Most of us know about the information architecture behind these schematic documents, but there is also a lot of user research work that needs to happen before all that is figured out (again, I’ll also talk about that some other time).
Do you know who your users are? Expectations, goals, behaviors? It’s like when you have to buy someone a gift; the more you know about that person and keep her in mind while shopping, the more likely you are to get her exactly what she’ll like. The less you know about her, the more likely you are to get her something that YOU like – and that she’ll just re-sell on e-bay (No, I won’t talk about that, ever).
Sabrina Fonseca - NY
Tags: user experience
Having been in this “loose” but not losing business for many years I am glad to see a “marketing agency” talk about ux. Bravo!
Gordon
http://gmeta.com
Thanks for sharing this. User Experience, especially in our field, is something that can fundamentally shift the outcome of our business. I’ve been a huge proponent of UX and IA in the context of the Direct Marketing paradigm. This is great information, keep putting it out there!
UX,happens to be a factor in rating online brands. Surfers can only be engaged …ie their UX can be more+ve or not depending on the interactivity level. This phenomenum is significant measuring brand believability. Brand managers need to design a feedback system that analysis the users exp of their brand. Even brands with high ROI can have poor rating value in UX.
