Why User Experience?
TecEd has been focused on users and their experience with products, applications, websites, and services since 1967. Back then, we created user guides and reference manuals to help people use computers and software. Today, as technology has evolved and permeated people’s lives, our involvement in the user experience is broader and deeper.
Every website, mobile app, or product provides a user experience. The challenge is in making it a great user experience. A website, mobile app, or product is only as good as the experience the user has with it. Subjective and context-dependent, a good experience for one person may be something quite different for another, so creating a great user experience is both art and science.
Here’s what Brian Solis had to say in Why User Experience Is Critical To Customer Relationships:
The primary function of UX is the development of an architecture that creates a delightful, emotional, and sensory experience. This is why it’s vital to customer experiences and engagement. UX is, among many things, designed to be experiential, affective, useful, productive, and entertaining. And, most importantly, it’s devised with an end in mind where the means to that end is efficient and optimized for each channel.
Let’s take a look at the point of origin for the moment. Your smartphone, computer screen, and tablet open a window to a new experience that is unique to that device. It’s a looking glass into your world that goes beyond usability. Successful UX evokes engagement or purpose, affects sentiment, and influences behavior. And this is why UX is so important.
The art of a great user experience is in designing a user interface and task flow that, as Solis notes, “evokes engagement or purpose, affects sentiment”—that is, users feel good about what they are experiencing. Meanwhile, learning how users perform tasks and find needed information, and understanding their requirements and goals, is at the heart of the science of designing a great user experience.
TecEd employs a range of user research methodologies to gain the kinds of user insights that can inform your design decisions. We also offer user interface design services to supplement your internal resources. This pairing of user research with design results in a user experience that is enjoyable as well as successful: a great user experience.
