How to improve your UX

UX technically stands for User eXperience, however it is more useful to think of it as managing User eXpectation.

• If you are using a product and something weird happens that’s bad UX
• If something different to what you were expecting happens, that’s bad UX
• If you don’t know what to expect, that’s bad UX

This is summarised in Steve Krug’s book Don’t make me think (were you expecting to be able to click the name of the book? - bad UX)

User testing is so effective as it allows someone who has never seen your product before to voice their confusion about it (I was expecting this to happen, or what does that do etc). After months of hard work you understand your product, but your customers don’t.

Good UX is all about making sure you give your customers what they expect, or give them pointers (cues can be subtle or not). If you find yourself constantly needing to tell your customers how to use a product you might have an issue.

“A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it’s not that good”. — Martin Leblanc

As an example, if you are revolutionising an interface, you need to tell your customers that’s what your doing, so they don’t expect to see the traditional UI (and are then delighted because not only is your UI better, but they expected the change!).