Great UX Is About More Than Just Design
If you haven’t heard about User Experience (UX) as it relates to the design industry, you’ve likely been living under a rock for the last few years. The growing popularity of UX has opened a design niche that more people than ever have begun to “specialize” in.
The people pushing the UX movement in their work help our industry to evolve by utilizing common UX patterns and flows. And in a time when one part of our industry seems to be eating itself alive by undercutting other designers in the search for work, and looking for the free and cheap way out whenever possible, those pushing the UX movement are vital to carrying the design industry to the next level.
These past few years we’ve focused on UX as a niche of design. But UX is more than that, and when we understand it as a solitary part of our work instead of integral to the final product, I think we’re really getting away from an important part of UX: the part that remains after our work with the client is done.
A Brand is More than a Logo
At The Phuse we have a brand designer who kicks serious ass. Erik‘s job is to create brands around our client’s needs that specify not only colors and a logo, but are also intended to manifest emotions and feelings in the user that reflect the way our client does business.
But when a client gets their brand designed by us, we constantly remind the client that the brand should assist us in decision-making processes, much like we use personas to help us flesh out a more human User Experience. Whether it be the copy Matt writes, or the effects we use for our CSS3 transitions, the brand has to truly resonate throughout every decision we make in order to make our work truly effective.
But it doesn’t stop there.
The reason we tailor a brand to a client, and not vice versa, is because the brand reflects how our clients interact with their customers. Brand isn’t just about design; it’s about making the company’s image reflect their relationship with their customers.
The brands we create are extensions of the company’s way of dealing with clients, and so the work we do only lays the groundwork for the real work that goes on within company operations to maintain that brand.
Putting Responsibility on the Client
So you’ve built this awesome blog design with a great-looking slideshow, and all the holder content you put in there looks great. But now that you’re done, you might begin to worry about what the client is going to do to your piece of art.
Will they use horrendous stock-imagery that butchers the design? What about the typography you perfectly crafted — are they going to overuse headers and large text, and unnecessarily bold entire paragraphs?
It can be tough to put trust and responsibility in a client, I get it. But, let’s face it; they put their trust in you first.
Sure, what we give our clients is a big part of what they’re selling, but execution is key. If the client doesn’t execute their brand properly and there is a disconnect from the style of the site to the way they deal with their customers, we’ve shot ourselves in the foot. The client is responsible for operating the business – we’re not.
As per usual, we need to teach our clients about this responsibility. Let them know why it’s important, and in some cases (like uploading proper-sized, quality images) show them how it’s done. If they ruin your piece of art, it is not your client’s fault. It’s your fault for failing to teach them what they need to do to maintain it.
So What About UX?
The same path of thought comes into play with UX as it does with brand design. We focus plenty on the positioning and style of elements to make sure they’re where user-known patterns say they’re located and look like. But what about the experience the user has with the company?
There’s a difference between User Experience-based design and User Experience-based business, and too often we generalize and blame the latter on the business for not following suit. But did we inform them on the decisions we made and how we tailored the experiences for their company?
These are things that we clearly can’t do for the client – they have to do this day-to-day while running their business, and it would be unrealistic for us to ensure that they’re extending the experience beyond their web presence. But if we don’t teach our clients the importance of this, we may as well have designed blindfolded.
What Do We Do?
When clients come to us, we don’t just take them in and assign them a number. They’re brought through a process that helps us understand the way they’ll be doing business (or how they’re already doing it). Much like we treat our clients to the brand we’ve developed around ourselves and give them good experience (more than just a pretty design portfolio to look at), we need to teach our clients to do the same.
It’s not about telling them how to run their business, it’s about teaching them that we can create brands and a User Experience tailored to their product and the users they are bringing in. Don’t design blindfolded and hope for the best. Show the client how how they can use our work to their advantage.