Perhaps the greatest challenge of user experience design (UX) is to fully embrace empathy – to really understand what it’s like for an outsider to engage with what you’re making. But what can a new company do to make its product experience more intuitive and empathic?
Great UX design requires the ability to shift your perspective from your own desires and problems to the point of view of someone with a completely different set of desires and problems. Luckily, there are plenty of tools and techniques available to eliminate some of the guesswork, such as testing, analytics, and feedback.
Startups must be wary of being too inward-looking. Sometimes it can be so exciting to focus on how amazing the product is, how many features can be added, and how pretty it looks, that key questions are overlooked: is it useful? Is it meaningful? Does it bring joy?
UX 101 For Startups by Ripul Kumar on Medium.com outlines some key principles of UX, including:
• Making sure you’re making something useful, before you even worry about usability
• Understanding the difference between UX and UI (user interface)
• The importance of interacting with real people who might use your product
• Using empathy
• The iterative nature of the design process
• The importance of testing and feedback
Check out the article to read the rest.