If you are reading this article, chances are that you are familiar with the notions of user experience and user interface. If you are not familiar with these terms, however, you are actually the user in the term ‘user experience/interface.’ Either way, UX is an essential notion and the primary goal of each production, regardless of the industry. User experience (UX) provides useful feedback, indicates necessary improvements and increases product demand on the market if the user experience is good.
Nevertheless, many companies and businesses tend to neglect the UX in their marketing and business strategies. The majority, therefore, tends to focus more on the user interface (UI), as they perceive the layout of a product or service is more important than the actual product or service, in which case the UX is usually poorly designed. And that is when the worst user experience sins happen. So, let’s take a look at all the worst things one can do as a UX designer.
User Experience Is Not About The Users
This is probably the most common mistake a UX designer can make. The designer neglects the importance of the users and doesn’t even bother talking to them or looking for feedback. In order to create a good UX design, it is important to communicate and always leave room for improvement according to the information the designer acquires from the users.
Sometimes, UX designers are limited by time, resources, or both, but even in such a scenario, it is possible to conduct at least a research based on testing. The user testing is always a plus in creating a proper design, so by testing at least 5 participants and users, you can be sure to discover a high percentage of issues regarding a product or service. Here are some advantages of user testing:
• You can watch users’ reaction, act habits, and emotions
• You can track all the results in a real-time mode
• You are in control of all the steps, and you can target them to the right point
• You will save money and time by fixing issues the users’ have pointed out
• You can test features you are not sure about
• The results of the testing come from a natural environment
Design Copy From Competitors
Another unfortunate thing a UX designer can do is copy from the competitors. Just because a particular design worked for the competitors, it doesn’t mean that the model would be successfully applied to your design and product/service UX. So, it is extremely important for the UX designer to focus on their own ideas and creativity, as well as their product or service. To accomplish this, the designer needs to conduct thorough research of the product persona and apply a design that will meet the users’ needs.
The Same Ideas Over And Over
There are many ways UX designer can make it harder to provide work that will yield success; one of them is not staying in line with the upcoming trends and new ideas. If a UX designer applies the same concepts, techniques, and strategies to new products and services, chances are they will stop evolving and eventually reach failure. Therefore, it is significant for the designer to continually learn, stay curious, follow trends and take risks. For example, if the designer wants to improve their content, they should write papers for money, for writing and content advice.
No Stories, Scenarios, And Storyboards
When designing a UX, it is important to align it with the user stories, scenarios, and storyboards that describe particular cases of their product interaction. Stories usually give a general description of the interaction, scenarios look into the notion more thoroughly, and the storyboards provide a visual demonstration. All of these methods and techniques should be applied even before the design sketching. However, a bad UX designer probably won’t even take these techniques into consideration or would turn to them late into the design.
Thinking Within The Box
The UX discipline is quite unique, and many UX designers don’t usually pay attention to other disciplines and fields that are important for a successful design. So, for a UX designer to do a good job, they need to talk with other members of their team, for example, with the developers and the marketing team, as UX is simply everybody’s problem if it doesn’t function properly. The whole team needs to be involved in the design process, so a good UX designer thinks outside the box and welcomes other ideas and suggestions; a bad designer never leaves the box.
Complexity
Sure, complexity is unavoidable in UX design, and sometimes, it simply needs to be visible. However, a good UX designer will use complexity indicators rather than overwhelming everyone with how blurry of an expertise UX is. Good UX needs to be complicated, but also adequately explained, shared, taught and of course, activated. So, in order to establish a good UX design, the designer should focus on helping others understand it instead of complaining that ‘no one can really understand’ the complex intricacies of UX.
More Characteristics Of A Bad UX Designer
- They think they know better than the team
- They think UX is just an extension of UI and front-end visual design
- They don’t care about the content strategy, and common writing mistakes are always ignored by them
- They never sketch and only jump straight to digital solutions
- They don’t consult with content creation sites and blogs
- They conduct tests only when the final solution is complete
- They never agree with the results
- They don’t know how to handle errors and alternative paths
- They don’t work with the product manager to understand the end users
