10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design Whitney Hess is an independent user experience designer, writer and consultant based in New York City. She authors the blog Pleasure and Pain. When I tell people that I am a user experience designer, I usually get a blank stare. I try to follow it up quickly by saying that I make stuff easy and pleasurable to use. The term “user experience” or UX has been getting a lot of play, but many businesses are confused about what it actually is and how crucial it is to their success. I asked some of the most influential and widely respected practitioners in UX what they consider to be the biggest misperceptions of what we do. User experience design is NOT... 1. ...user interface design It’s not uncommon to confuse “user experience” with “user interface” — after all it’s a big part of what users interact with while experiencing digital products and services. “Interface is a component of user experience, but there's much more,” says Peter Merholz, founding partner and president of Adaptive Path.
InfoDesign: Understanding by Design Customer Experience v User Experience In the process of writing the book (, yes, it’s coming, I promise!) I found myself surprisingly flummoxed when it came to writing about Experience Strategy and the role it plays (or should play) in business strategy. I’ve talked about Experience Strategy with clients over the years, written Experience Strategies for projects I’ve worked on, and worked under the illusion that I was clear about what this actually entailed… however, in coming to write about and thereby define what it meant, it all of a sudden felt very fuzzy. What is Experience Strategy? Having done a review of some of the significant contributions to this topic from the UX community, I found myself dissatisfied… for Johnny Holland some time ago. Then I discovered Customer Experience (CX). Turns out there is this whole other profession, born, it seems, mostly from the marketing discipline, who have an active interest in orchestrating company wide good experience for their customers. This worries me.
What makes a good UX designer? What makes a good UX designer? It’s an important question, not just for current and aspiring UX designers, but also for those looking to hire a UX designer and for those working with UX designers. In this article I outline some of the skills, characteristics and qualities that in my opinion a good UX designer should possess and discuss what it is that I think really makes for a good UX designer. But there’s no such thing as a typical UX designer Before I dive in to what in my opinion makes a good UX designer I think that it’s worth pointing out that in my experience there’s really no such thing as a typical UX designer. Being like Mr T I pity the fool! UX designers by nature are a varied bunch. Being a designer First and foremost I think that a UX designer should be just that – a designer. Being a researcher UX designers obviously need to be designers, but they shouldn’t just be designers. Being a techie Being a creative Being a suit Being a team player It’s more than just skills Being dedicated