With better user experience comes better revenue, better reviews, more users, among other things. But what exactly is User Experience (UX)? And why does it have a huge impact on your app?

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What is User Experience (UX)?

User experience is a discipline that has a history in computer-human interaction. It focuses on having a deeper level of understanding of the user’s needs, their priorities, how capable or limited they are. A user’s attention is a valuable resource, it is important to manage that attention to the utmost of your advantage. 

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The User Experience Honeycomb‍

The User Experience Honeycomb is a visualization tool developed by Peter Morville in 2004. This was initially developed as a teaching tool but is often used by fellow UX designers as a checklist. 

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Later in 2018, this honeycomb was further optimized by Katerina Karagianni. She further rearranged the factors and grouped them in sections based on how the user interacts with the app (use, think, feel). She added color coding and labels to make the grouping easier so that the relationship between the factors is highlighted.

It focuses on 7 UX fundamentals 

• Credibility
• Usefulness
• Value
• Desirability
• Findable
• Usability
• Accessibility

The importance of having good User Experience

Giving the user a positive experience on your app would be your priority. A meaningful user experience will allow defining the user’s journey on your app that is the most conducive to the app’s success.

Increase in user retention 

User retention refers to the process of keeping your users engaged in your app, maintaining consistent interactions with it. Good user experience will keep the users interacting with the app, helping you maintain a steady user base. 

Critical for improving ROI

In general terms we use ROI more broadly, to understand the effect of an investment in user research, design-e.g. When you invest in user experience, you will see a massive lead in your ROI. There are several ways UX improves ROI. These include:

• A reduced launch time
• Improved job performance
• Budget saving in development costs
• Less inventory
  

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User Satisfaction

People love a well-designed app that is efficient in providing usage. Having a smoother user experience will increase user satisfaction and would also positively affect brand loyalty.

Better brand recognition

When users interact with an app, they relate their experience with the brand. Providing users with a good experience helps strengthen your company or your app’s reputation. The app and the development team will be celebrated due to the extensive good reviews for your efforts.

Improving the UX experience

In order to improve the UX of your app, you need to pay close attention to the troubled areas. There are a few common points that lead to a bad user experience. 

User Research

The basis of interface designing is a result of marketing results. There should be adequate knowledge of the target audience, their preferences, goals, and motives.

Design concept

A design concept is an idea behind the design that is used to convey the app and its purpose to the end-users. It must meet the expectations and requirements of the users, allowing fulfilling the main objective set.

User Flow

Users interact with your app in different paths. In this path, there are decision points (moments of interaction). It is crucial for you that the user goes through these moments of interaction exactly as you intended. think about reducing the frequency of clicks needed for them to get to their destination, and to remove the unnecessary ones.

Interaction Optimization

The interactions between the user and the app should be helpful and directional rather than befuddling and convoluted. You need to provide visual feedback, assign an undo action wherever possible, and prevent errors and error messages.

Visual appeal

It is important for an app to have fairly good visuals. Bad design flow and misguide the user and lead them astray. Good visuals rarely correlate with extranet animations, visual overloads i.e distractions. There should be extensive knowledge of the taste of the audience, and the design should complement that visual style.

Compatibility

To make your app appeal to a broader audience, you need to be compatible with all handheld devices, be it android phones, iPhones, iPads, or Android tablets. Breakpoints should be used to allow the transformation of the layout. Vectors also help in maintaining visual consistency among all devices, keep it light, and don’t stretch. 

Tools to use for UX designing

These Designing tools are general-purpose programs enabling UX designers to create and edit assets for designing

• For wireframing: Balsamiq, MockPlus, and Wireframe.cc.
• For design and prototyping: Sketch, Figma, Adobe XD, UXPin, and Adobe Illustrator.‍
• For research and collaboration: Miro, Abstract, and UserZoom.

Takeaways

User Experience or UX, as the name suggests is very much centered around the user. You need to look at it not as an independent half but as the backbone of your app. Perfecting the UX for your app will take multiple iterations and a significant investment-be it time or finance. But as said by Jeff Bezos, the founder, and CEO of Amazon, “We’re not competitor obsessed, we’re customer-obsessed. We start with what the user needs and work backward.”