What is UX and why should you care about it?

Do you remember the last time you waited in an annoying long line, just to get your morning coffee? Or that time that your cable got cut down, right in the middle of your favorite show?

This is actually a time, when you experienced a case of “bad user experience” and probably the reason you are not going back to that coffee place again.

Bad experience tends to stick, much more than the good one.

It is because of the many choices we have, that make us quickly forget when a product or a service we used was in fact good and user friendly. It’s the many opportunities, options and competition, that makes it all so easy on us to drop a service and switch to “the other” provider, the minute we face a difficulty when using it.

Humans are not that sentimental when it comes to something they’re paying for to serve them.

Having said all that, it is not easy to define what User Experience actually is with one simple sentence.

What we can do, is try to understand the importance of it, when it comes to creating a successful business. We are all aware now, that it is naïve to believe that you can start and succeed with your business plan without being online in one way or another. Either with a blog, a Facebook page, a website etc.

Now think about, how frustrating it can be when you go online to find a product or a service you are looking for and you just can’t find your way around that website because of one or couple of reasons.

That is where creating good UX comes in.

To better understand what that means, you shouldn’t get confused, that UX is simply defined by one of those terms you might hear designers use – User Interface, usability options, un-precise Information Architecture design etc. It is actually all of the above – in other words – all of the aspects of the experience you have when using a service.

What you need to remember is that good UX can play a crucial part in attracting and maintaining a customer base, because it is not extreme to say that you only get one shot and a couple of seconds for a user to decide if he is leaving your service for good or if he will be coming a second and a third time.

Also published on Medium.