Hands-On UX Design for Developers: Design, prototype, and implement compelling user experiences from scratch.

Just knowing what UX Design stands for is not the same as really understanding the details of what it is. UX design is mainly focused on the overall experience of your product and not just on its look.

When it comes to UX design there is no general definition for it, because UX design covers a lot of different areas inside it, such as designing, branding, research, usability, accessibility, and function.

So, a proper definition of UX design might be the following:

UX Design is the process of designing physical or digital products that are useful, easy to use, and provide a great experience in interacting with them.

In short, it's everything that involves why, what, and howthe product is being used by its users.

We will start with why because it involves the user's desire to use the product. The desire might be to finish a specific task or to add value for themselves by using it. The what explains the things that people will do with the product's functionalities or the features that are provided with it. Finally, how relates to the user's way of accessing the product's functionality through its design or interface.

Think of an app that you use daily, that you love, makes sense when you open it, and provides you with great value when you are using it; that's a good UX. Every app that you have on your devices has a UX, but it may be a good or bad one.

However, a bad UX design has consequences. If your app has a bad UX design, users will have a hard time using it, and they will need training to use the app. As soon as they find a similar, better app that accomplishes the same task, they will move on because no one wants difficulty in completing a simple task.

Losing users means losing revenue. An improved UX design increases revenue because people will pay more for premium services if it makes their life easier. It's really important to understand the difference between what UX design is, and what it is not.

Some of you might be confused about what exactly the difference is between UX and UI design. As mentioned earlier, UX looks at the overall experience of the product, whereas UI is focused more on the look and feel, such as fonts, colors, buttons, layout, and spaces. 

Let's take an example of a booking website. Let's say that we need to book a flight from India to somewhere in Europe; booking in this case is the main content, the main thing that we want to accomplish; the website itself provides us with an UI with the options of searching the flights and choosing the one that we need. However, the whole process where we interact with the UI, from searching to choosing, and in the end, booking the flight, is the UX process, where the main content, booking in our case, is done.

The following image aims to explain the difference between a UI and UX design:

Although we have mentioned this several times, it is important that we explain this topic further for clarity.

It is really important for UX to be involved from the first phase of the product development; it will reduce the cost, since you can detect issues in the early phase and fix them, rather than doing so later.

UI supports UX, UI extends the UX, and, for sure, UI is the vehicle for UX. UI is the user connection to your application, which needs to be as simple and as clear as possible for your user. It must allow your user to do their work in a pleasing, easy, and efficient manner.