OUGD504- What is user experience?

Google Design (design.google)
Material Design (google apps)
IOS Human Interface Guidelines, design themes
Suggested to app followers about sizes and guidelines/ how to use areas of the screen
Reference this though the process

What
When
Where 
Why 
Who
How

Takes the users needs into account at every stage of the products lifecycle
Why UX matters...
You are doing some of this stuff already
User centred design is a process
It's not hard
Its fun/fascinating

USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN:

Quickly becoming its own distinct area and practice
Brief/audience/hierarchy
Continuously placing the user at the centre of the approach, they have to set the criteria of setting the visual communications

HCI- Human Computer Interaction, the ways that people interact with digital systems
Usability- refers to the ease and efficiency

When people use digital systems they want to fulfil a particular task or because they aid their social identity or socialising with other people, or could be both.

UX refers directly to the ways that the use/customer/operator experiences using the product/system/interface on their own terms.

UXD is the informed manipulation and development of the factors that influence the user's experience

UXD precedes visual design. UXD informs visual interface design. UX designers will set out the criteria by which the designer will operate.

Analyse: business research/ user research/ data analysis and conceptualisation

Design: creating concepts/ interaction behaviours/ look and feel

Prototypes: realising design alternatives

Evaluate: verifying and refining

User research:
UX designers commit to a lot of user research, user research seeks to gain a better understanding of the needs of users
Focus groups
Interviews
Observations
Identifying and conceptualising user rulers, user needs, task flows, etc.

Techniques:

1. Personas: as characteristics of archetypal users. UX designers aim to design the most appealing interface for one or a handful users, since its impossible to please everyone its better to have a small percentage happy than the whole user population half happy. They are fictitious since they likely combine aspects informed from numerous sources.

-reflect data found in user research
-focus on the present
-be realistic not idealistic
-describe a challenging target user
-provide insight to the users context, behaviour, attitudes, needs, challenges/pain points, goals and motivations

2. Task flows/user flows: work flows visualise (flow charts) the stages involved in completing certain tasks (task flow) or the journey a user takes through the system (user flow). Really identifying issues with this

3. Wireframes: they are the first step towards putting all the user research, personas, workflows, etc. into a visual format. The aim of them is to experiment and test hierarchies and informed layout strategies. UX designers will always refer back to personas and workflows to test the wireframe layouts.

Should aim to use all of the techniques discussed here. Once you have decided what you will produce a digital design for (problem) you can begin to consider user flows and develop specific personas.