The user experience design is becoming a key aspect in creating any product. But how did it all begin? Read on to find out more about the history of UX design.
What is User Experience Design?
Think you are building an app, and you want to know how a person would experience using your application. You want to know whether the user experience of your app is good or not! You want to improve the experience of your app for a user so that a person can interact with your app effortlessly.
What should you do to know about the user experience of your app? You can keep a person who will specialize in giving you feedback about your design’s user experience. Also, that person will provide you with solutions to make your app more user-friendly. That person is called a user experience designer!
Why is the Title Called User Experience Designer?
Donald Norman joined Apple in the 1990s as their user experience designer. Don is a cognitive scientist, and everything he made, he named a user experience design. He was also the first person that had user experience in their title.
Apple hired Don Norman so that he could help them make their applications better and more user-friendly. Apple wanted the best user interactive product out there and the user experience to be as swift as possible.
What Is Cognitive Science?
Cognitive science is the study of our thoughts, how we learn, and the mental organization of our minds. Cognitive scientists study how a person’s brain thinks and why it thinks like this.
They take help from psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and computer modeling to understand this.
The study of cognitive science has been around for a long time, but it came into the spotlight in the 20th century. Chinese philosophy is one of the first steps on record to be made for cognitive science.
Around 4000BC, the Chinese philosophy named Feng Shui was a study on the importance of space.
6000 years ago, Feng Shui was the first philosophy to my knowledge related to user experience. Though at that time, the term cognitive science did not even exist. Feng Shui is translated as a similar meaning to water and wind.
UX Design Has Its Roots In The Ancient Philosophy Of Feng Shui
Feng Shui is the basic philosophy of how everything is arranged around us in our daily life and positively and negatively affect our everyday life. For example, you go to your office and see everything is upside down, the tables are upside down, and the chairs are all obsolete.
What will go through your mind at that time? I bet you will not be much excited to start working, will you? See how the arrangement of the objects in your daily life affects your energy. Now think of another example.
You go to your home after a tough day at work. After arriving home, you see every piece of furniture in your house and other household objects arranged in order. Will you not be excited to be at home? Feng Shui is all about the things placed in the right place.
In Chinese philosophy, the arrangement of everything connects with your chi. Chi is another word for your daily energy; without good chi, it is tough to go through the day without feeling alive.
Every object around you occupies space, and your feeling, whether good or bad, depends on how you arrange things around you. The main point of this philosophy is that it wants us to set our daily objects in a way that would positively affect our energy.
You may wonder why talking about an ancient Chinese philosophy has to do with the history of UX design.
The philosophy of Feng Shui built the foundation for cognitive science and which in turn helped people doing research on cognitive science.
As we all know, cognitive science is related to UX design, so, in a way, Feng Shui has a fundamental part in the “History of UX design.” People like Don Norman were helped a ton by this ancient Chinese philosophy.
What Is The Reason For UX Design?
UX design was solely invented so that the person using a particular product has the swiftest and most user-friendly experience possible. It is the process of creating (whether the product is physical or virtual) the most beautiful, user-friendly, delightful, and comfortable product for the consumer.
With the right UX design, the consumer has a hassle-free experience with the physical or virtual product the company sells.
If your product is easy to use, you already have the edge over your competitors because the users will feel more comfortable using your product.
Just think about Microsoft Windows. Windows has a more user-friendly graphical user interface than, for example, Linux.
On the other hand, Linux operating system is free of charge, but people still prefer Microsoft Windows over it. Why is that? Because Microsoft Windows is easier to use and has a better user interface.
Microsoft Windows is the perfect example of how UX design plays a part in the demand for your product.
The better your user experience design is, the more it will appeal to the consumers and the more they will be willing to pay for that particular product. If you want to increase demand for your product, always look at how good the product user experience is and how you can improve it.
User experience is one of the main reasons big companies spend tons and tons of money on improving their user experience design. They want to have the edge over the competition, and user experience design is one of the primary factors to start.
What Is The Difference Between UX Design And Graphic Design?
For starters, graphics designers think about making your product or design look good. They will ensure the product’s outlook seems the best way possible.
That’s their primary focus. Their job is not to create a more user-friendly design but to make a user-appealing design. So, graphics designers will create a visually perfect app design.
Now, the people whose job is to make a more user-friendly design are UX designers. UX designer’s sole purpose is to think about how natural the product is to use for the consumers. The consumers come first for the user experience designers.
The User coming first is one of the primary rules of UX designers. They will do anything to ensure your product has the most user-friendly design possible. The primary focus of user experience design is designing for usability, not communication.
If we compare the two, graphics designers only focus on the visually pleasing part of your product. On the other hand, UX designers are primarily focused on users and how your product communicates with them.
Besides that, UX designer focuses on how easy your product is to interact with a consumer, and they will make sure you have the best possible user-friendly product.
Companies know that now it is equally important to have a good outlook and a user-friendly design for their product to be a hit among the users.
There is a high demand for UX designers because companies know how vital the usability of their products is. If you’re considering becoming a user experience designer, go for it because you will receive a nice paycheck for your services.
If we look at the past decade, the demand for UX designers has rapidly increased because consumers want user-friendly products, and companies are trying to make user-friendly designs. That’s why we can expect high demand for UX designers in the future.
