"Let's make sure your digital platform engages its users and turns them into loyal visitors."
Murat Usta, PhD
UX Design/Research Expert
The quality of your UX design can make it or break it for your business. Users time and attention are limited. Great UX design makes your platform preferred to your competitors’. It keeps the users coming back for more. That’s why user design is essential to gain a strategic advantage for any digital business.
Let’s dive into the five traits that make UX design great.
Great UX design keeps the users coming back for more.
When heart and mind is in conflict, heart almost always wins. This is especially true if people are cognitively busy. Desire to experience positive emotions and avoid negative ones motivates people to pick one digital platform over the other. People often even pay more to use a platform because of their emotional connection to it. Thus, great UX design must evoke positive emotions. To do so, sources of positive emotions (e.g., ease, competence, autonomy, relaxation, self-affirmation) must be placed within the UX design of all platforms.
People often even pay more to use a platform because of their emotional connection to it.
Users are not motivated at all to solve problems. For example, searching for information and choosing among too many options can easily get confusing. When users get confused, they leave to other platforms that makes the task easier for them. Thus, designers must rank tasks in the order of importance both to the users and the platform. UX design must be standardized to allow users to complete important tasks with the least amount of friction. Such tasks also must be easily accessible throughout the platform. For more complicated customized tasks, users must be directed to a different section. Doing so reduces confusion and makes for a simpler and more beautiful user interface.
UX design must be standardized to allow users to complete important tasks with the least amount of friction.
It is reasonable that platforms that serve the same purpose often have similar designs. Nobody wants to reinvent the wheel while there is something that already works well. Yet, unique distinct features can be necessary to gain a competitive advantage. You shouldn’t go out of the ordinary just to be different but you must continuously develop new useful features that set you apart from your competitors. For example, an AI-driven recommendation system that predicts what a user will order next will save time to that user. That user will prefer a platform that offers such an innovative feature to the one that requires many clicks to order the same thing.
Unique distinct features can be necessary to gain a competitive advantage.
Great UX design is almost entirely frictionless. Sources of friction can be many. Glitches, broken links, or high download times are technical frictions. Frictions that originate from UX design are those that slow down, confuse, or demotivate the user due to some feature of the user interface. For example, friction can arise from the amount of information presented or required and the unnecessary steps for a user to complete a task. You must review your interface continuously looking for areas with friction and develop innovative solutions to remove these frictions from your system.
Friction can arise from the amount of information presented or required and the unnecessary steps for a user to complete a task
Users learn skills to accomplish tasks on your platform. Soon, those skills turn into habits. Once users start to feel accomplished doing these tasks, they will not want to spend the time and effort to learn new skills on a new platform. Thus, they stay locked in. The faster the users learn and get used to your digital platform the better. Thus, great UX design must be easy to learn and provide guidance at first for more complicated tasks.
The faster the users learn and get used to your digital platform the better.
When we conduct audits, we assess the quality of a UX design based on the traits above as well as other criteria specific to the company or the industry. We also suggest enhancements to UX design based on this assessment. Are you ready to audit your UX design?
"Let's make sure your digital platform engages its users and turns them into loyal visitors."
Murat Usta, PhD
UX Design/Research Expert
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