User experience shows how comfortable the user feels when using a particular interface. It is an environment for creating beautiful designs by identifying problems and finding the best solutions for them.
Contrary to popular belief, user experience is not a purely creative process, but rather a rational, consistently repeatable process that can be applied to solve design problems. In this article, you’ll find 6 untapped ways to create an engaging user experience.
1. Creating an engaging user experience: create a connection
Getting started on the journey to improve the user experience requires the relevant IT teams to connect and create an ongoing dialogue with users. There is no substitute for this interaction – it would seem like such a simple thing, but it is often absent in many IT organisations today, although it is completely at our disposal.
So when we create these connections with our users and begin the process of communicating around a common goal, focusing on the user experience, we usually immediately notice that the desired changes begin to occur.
The key skill here is to listen and observe carefully. Yes, it may seem obvious, but a productive meeting is one that we can have with a user or client, asking simple questions and then listening carefully to the answers. This simple exchange of information will tell us everything we need to know.
2. Set clear goals
The desire to improve the user experience generates a certain healthy excitement on the part of users. That being said, “improving the user experience” can be interpreted quite broadly, and therefore it is necessary to set clear goals from the very beginning.
This is important for the IT organisation, which is tasked with improving the user experience, and it is necessary for the users themselves to know exactly what will be implemented and what will not, and to provide a baseline against which the success of the activities will be measured.
Goals should be developed with users and written in a language they understand. How will we define success? What will be implemented, and how exactly will it meet the requirements and expectations of users? The goals will serve as guidelines along the entire path of implementation of changes: when clarifying priorities, when determining the amount of investment, when we have final user acceptance.
3. Start with “easy”
If you ask the users to describe a great user experience in just a few words, most of them would include the words “easy” or “simple” in the description. This does not mean that the IT system is in some way limited, simple, or that it lacks key capabilities – far from it.
“Easy” gives us the ability to do everything we need to do at a high level, and at the same time, shaping the process in such a way that it does not take a lot of time, everything is intuitive, requires minimal training and orientation.
The most engaging user experience is when new users quickly and easily jump into work. It allows them to do their job with little or no previous experience with the system. Take a look at the user experience of an IT system through the eyes of a new employee. What does it take to make a new user productive as quickly as possible?
As we know, more and more IT systems in Australia are accessed and used on mobile devices. Accordingly, you can take this option as a basis, start the journey with it, in order to provide a greater effect from improving the user experience.
4. Focus on refining current features
It is very easy to fall into the trap when releasing new versions of an application or a website. There are always plenty of ideas for new features, but it’s important to take a closer look at the existing ones first.
A few good features that work simply and efficiently are much better than a huge number of innovations that no one uses.
5. Integrate form and function
To create the most engaging user experience, the programmer and UX designer must work together. The programmer creates the logic and structure of the application, and the designer applies knowledge of human behaviour and aesthetics.
6. Openness of design and testing
Openness and transparency throughout the entire process of working with employees to provide a more engaging user experience is an important goal. Transparency creates a communications’ foundation for fast and clear communication with users and helps to avoid misunderstandings and misaligned expectations.
User review meetings should be held regularly to share ideas and may include early prototypes and user testing of pre-release software. And here we may find that users see things a little differently, and we reach areas that would not show up in traditional testing processes.
UX pumping: be a user
Here are some tips on how to be a user. UX designers, developers and SEO experts from Sydney guarantee that it is impossible to make products with a good user experience if your personal user experience is weak, so we would like to give you some tips:
Use the best-selling products
Perhaps, for personal reasons, you don’t need them, but since these are bestsellers, you can take from there some mechanics implemented there and implement them already in your product. For example, you may not like TikTok or Instagram at all, but at the same time these products are indisputable bestsellers, and you could get some convenient and popular mechanics from there for further use;
Use new products
Of course, without fanaticism – you do not need to download and start using all the applications that appear on the market every day. However, some new products may really suit your taste, or perhaps you will find application for them in your work. Do not cling to every new trend: if you liked the application, then try to adapt it to your activity, if not, then ruthlessly get rid of it;
Always record your feelings as a user
What products you like and what you don’t. When you begin to record the sensations from the use of certain products, then over time you will form a base on which you can make decisions already within your own product, you will have hypotheses about what might work in your product, and what no.
UX pumping: measuring user experience
Typically, there are two types of user experience measurements: quantitative and qualitative.
Quantitative measurements include everything that can be measured in numbers and draw some conclusions based on the aggregation of the information received and the presentation of metrics in some form: closed polls; counters; metrics. There are more qualitative measurements, these are observations, interviews, usability tests, diary studies, sorting.
What should you pay special attention to? If your product is mass-produced, you can quantify user experience using surveys – think about what questions you would like to discuss with your users, and create a survey based on them.
If your product is not very popular (although this is an optional condition) and at the same time has direct access to the user, then you can think about an observation or an interview.
It is worth dwelling in particular on UX metrics. There are very, very many metrics that allow you to measure and research user experience – about 40 pieces, however, several of the most important ones need to be highlighted:
SUS (System Usability Scale)
You need to ask 10 questions to the user to get a full assessment of the products. Here it is worth mentioning that not every product can afford it and not every user is able to answer 10 questions;
SEQ (Single Ease Question)
Single Ease Question, an indicator of the difficulty of solving a problem, is a very simple metric consisting of one question: how easy (or difficult) was it for the user to complete his task? As a rule, the rating scale is from 1 to 7, while the average is considered to be 5.5;
Completion rate
This is the percentage of users who completed the graded task. There is also an average of 78%;
UMUX (Usability Metric for User Experience)
UMUX is a way to measure how easy and convenient the product is for the user and how well the product solves the user’s problem using 4 questions (there is also a UMUX-Lite version with two control questions instead of four);
NPS (Net Promoter Score)
Net Promoter Score, (a level of customer loyalty) is a metric that also consists of one question: “Will you recommend this product to someone?” As a rule, the scale of the answer is from 1 to 10.
If you have doubts about the information content of this metric due to the fact that the question in it is “thrown into the future”, then there is an alternative version of it – NPS (actual Net Promoter Score), where the question sounds differently: “Have you already recommended this product?”
Conclusion
Nothing kills your application or a web site aster than disgruntled users. In a hurry during the development and launch stages, many teams forget about the main participant in the whole process – the user.
We simply cannot underestimate the impact of user experience on the vital day-to-day work that happens in both IT and business every day. The impact can be as negative in the case of a poor user experience as it can be surprisingly powerful in positive impact due to a great, engaging user experience.
A great user experience can help each employee do their job better every day and, in turn, provide the organisation’s customers with the highest level of service.
