UX and Design Thinking

UX is user experience. As the name suggests, it is about how users interact with a product and their experience of it. People often conflate User Experience with User Interface. Although a User Interface is a tool through which one can experience, User Experience covers much more. For instance, a software product with a very user-friendly interface can still provide a frustrating experience if the database holds erroneous and incomplete data. User Experience research covers not just how the product will be used (its interface) but also a deeper look into why the product is needed, what common external factors could affect the product’s use and how the interface works alongside those.

UX is born out of Design Thinking. Design Thinking is often referred to as, “thinking outside the box”. It is the process of examining problems and empathising with users in order to provide practical solutions. Design Thinking can be challenging, as humans spend their lives forming ideas about how the world works, and these ideas can become deeply engrained. These ideas are referred to as schema. Just as a schema for a database describes the format of the information that a table will hold, our schema form strict blueprints that are reapplied, sometimes stubbornly, to new experiences. For instance, a mental schema for a fish might contain characteristics like scales, fins, tail, gills… However, for someone who lives on the coast, their fish schema would be vastly different from someone who lives inland, near rivers. Therefore, faced with the problem of how to catch a fish, each person would come up with a different solution. The purpose of using Design Thinking is to break these schema in order to come up with the best solution for the problem, not just the first thing that comes to us. One way in which this is done is through thorough research, observing product users in action in order to break pre-conceived notions of how products should work or be used.

Design Thinking is not just an abstract idea, but is associated with a structured Design Process. This makes it easier to work from problem to solution in an organised manner. The Design Process can be broken down into four main stages. They are Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver. Discovery is about researching, empathising, and exploration of the problem domain. Defining is about taking that research and narrowing down the problem and scope. Developing is about generating quick prototypes and solutions to the problem identified by defining. Delivery is about taking those developed solutions and refining one to present to your user.

There is a common misunderstanding that Design and Art are synonymous. However while Art is for oneself, design is for others. Although ideation and the prototyping can be used in art making, Art itself is about expressing oneself to others, whereas design is about developing ideas for others with product users in mind.

Although there is an important difference between Art and Design, the Design Process can be applied to many non-Design areas. For instance Discovery and Define stages are heavily used in the Sciences, in order to develop hypotheses. For Science, Developing comes in the form of experimentation and Delivery in the form of conclusion or theory.