What is the user experience? Thankfully it is just what the combination of these two words suggest. It is what a person (or whoever is meant to use the service or product) emotionally experiences when interacting with a service or product.
Imagine you visit a moderately big grocery store. The shelves ordering is totally off: hair coloring, teddy bears, beans, and baguettes are stacked onto one shelf and similar ordering with random stuff on other shelves also. You wander around the store with your grocery list and even the store staff isn’t able to help you with finding the items. They also don’t know what is where. There you are… confused, angry, hopeless. Whichever emotion tops the other. After wandering in this store for 2 hours, you go to the cashier. This person isn’t looking at you and just peeping your groceries through the line. Not even a single muscle is moving in their face. They don’t say “Hello!” nor “Thank you!” and not even a “Goodbye!”.
So what is your experience in this shop? Would you visit it voluntarily tomorrow if needed? What do you think? How well is this shop doing?
If I were you, I would start a betting competition with my friends and bet when the shop would be closed.
Let’s take the opposite situation with e.g. online grocery store. You have your grocery list and go to the site. every item is exactly in the section you are looking into. The shopping cart is full of different items in less than 10 minutes. You proceed to the checkout. Enter your address, pay quickly with the bank link. the check is sent to your email. You get a note to your phone that the store drop off will take place within 2 hours. The guy shows up at your door after an hour with a big smile on his face, greeting, thanking, and wishing you a pleasant day.
You close the door thinking:” Wow.. these guys are fast and pretty at the same time. … Oops! I forgot to order chocolate chips!” And there you are sitting behind the computer ordering not just the chocolate chips, but also some brie, juicy watermelon and some nice meals your pets would appreciate.
You already are a committed customer and tend to be one for a longer period. And why not?!
Our lives tend to be more complicated than they already are. There is not a single reason why you should waste your time on lousy service or products.
UX can be measured on anything: from mobile apps to desktop applications, from person-to-person conversations to physical product usage, from simple 1 on 1 customer service to building an efficient and profitable corporation. And where you can measure UX, there is always something you could improve. Is it worth it? Definitely!
The reason why you can hear the phrase lately so much it that more and more people get into entrepreneurship. Many of them get into the same field, provide the same services or create already existing products.
Let’s say you want to open a cafe. Just in the block where you want to open it, are already 2 coffee shops. How should you stand out from them.? Why should people start to prefer your shop? The main question a UX person would normally ask you is: ” What is the problem you will solve for your customers?”
The conversation would normally look like:
Your answer to the question, “I want to give them a good cup of coffee.”
Me: “But other coffee shops already have decent coffee. How would you differentiate?”
You: “I will have exceptional customer service. All my baristas will be educated on coffee and must have at least 3+ years experience.”
Me: “Yeah, good. But have you lately visited these cafes?”
You:” No, but I remember that one of them had a very limited coffee variety and the other had an ignorant cashier.”
Me: “OK. Wanna join me for a coffee next week in these places?”
You: “Why?”
Me: “Let’s just go and experience it ourselves. Feel the place and view the whole service and customer scenarios. After that, we could ask their customers what they like about these places and what not. the whole conversation is to figure out the hole in the current block cafe market. What is missing in it? What are their customers currently lacking? What is the customers’ problem?“
By doing the initial customer research, you can ensure yourself that you are doing just what your future customers want. There is no guessing whether you are doing the right thing or not. By the time you start to write the business plan to get a loan you already know what you need in order to succeed.
The same principle applies to everything. When you want to develop an app or a program, then before you start actual coding: do the research. See what others have done, what is good, what is bad, how you would improve it, is it actually what customers want.
UX is a very wide concept and it can be applied to everything: from peoples conversations to using everyday things to programs we use. And it should be used on everything. It does not actually matter how far you are with the production. It is never too late to start measuring your usability. In the end, your goal is to convert more people into buying customers. You can achieve it by giving them the best experience on every level. And this is the win-win situation you are looking for. Happy customer = happy you.
So what is the next step?