What is User Experience (UX) Design?

Take a moment to think about your favourite website or application. What made you love it? Did it feel intuitive from the first usage? Does it sometimes even predict exactly what you want? Well, these days, most probably, there was a user experience designer who spent hours designing it so you can enjoy it.

There still exist many terribly designed products though. But just imagine if all the products had been optimised for user’s happiness, that would indirectly enhance and enrich the lives of it’s users.

But, what exactly is UX design? Often UX design gets mixed and intertwined with UI design which leads to confusion, so we’ll talk about the differences to more clearly define what UX design actually is.

User interface (UI) design is a design process focused on creating and improving the elements that interact with the user. This includes the physical and technical methods of input and output like screens and elements on them like buttons, images, text and icons.

Typical activities include:

Functionality requirements gathering

User and task analysis

Graphical user interface design

Visual design

User experience (UX) design, on the other hand, deals with optimising the experience of a user when interacting with your product. It is a design process focused on enhancing user satisfaction by improving usability, accessibility and pleasure of the interaction between the user and the product.

By using art and science when engineering product interactions the goal is to generate positive emotions and delight the users by anticipating their needs. User is the most important and all the methodologies are deeply rooted in a thorough understanding of the user and meeting the user’s needs.

Main activities include:

User research, gathering statistics, i nterviewing and conducting surveys

Creating personas, user scenarios and mental models

Product design

Visual design

Interaction design

Information architecture and content strategy

Usability and accessibility studies

Rapid prototyping

Product testing and analysis

So, UX designers focus more on the interaction while UI designers deal more with the visual aspects of the interface.

UI design field is more well defined and exists longer time on the market, while UX design is newer and it doesn’t have that many jobs yet. But it is definitely the right time to acquire these skills because demand for both industry roles is growing fast. The job market for UX designers grew by 70% last year as companies are beginning to understand the power of creating better experiences.

Here is data from Google Trends which shows growing interest for user experience design industry:



If you are still not sure that spending time building up UX design skills is for you, it could be useful to look at the most usual traits of a typical UX designer:

Empathy for others and ability to listen

Passion for the craft

Curiosity about the world around you

Ability to adapt and learn quickly

A detail-oriented nature to the work you do

Receptiveness to feedback from others

Why is it hard to learn UX design?

In a field that requires expertise in many different areas, what’s the best way to start? People often ask this question and it’s a question with no single answer.

If you don’t have opportunities to practice UX in your current role, making the switch can seem difficult. Junior UX design positions are hard to find and people are rarely willing to offer education for these skills on the job, so you need to start with already having the skills. Because of catch 22 (to apply for this job, you need to have experience, but to gain the experience, you need to get a job first) people often take very different paths to ultimately land at this position.

Most UX designers have a UI design background so they come with a strong knowledge of visual design and are swift with Photoshop/Illustrator. Some come from software development background, so when other UX designers mess around with Keynote to create prototypes, they have knowledge of HTML/CSS/Javascript and can rapidly build an interactive prototype. Some UX designers come from a business analyst background and the research principles they have are well developed. They just need to apply them in a different way and instead of thinking about the business side think about the user side. Others come to the field with a psychology background, as well as from fields like industrial design, information science, communication design… and some even don’t have a degree.

With design it is easy to show your ability to do good work so the degree doesn’t have a big importance.

Watch these 4 videos as an intro to UX design

What is UX Design?

A motivating talk about the advantages of becoming a UX designer.

2. What Does a UX Designer Do?

Discussion about the tools a UX designer uses every day and what excites her about being a UX designer.

3. Steve Krug’s Demo Usability Test

A demonstration of a usability test where Steve asks you to gather your own observations and then shares his observations afterwards.

4. Why it’s a Great Time to Be a UX Designer?

An inspiring talk which motivated a lot of people to pursue a career in UX design.

Sign up for these 6 free courses

1. UX Basics

User experience design is a broad field, and Lis Hubert, the instructor, does a great job of explaining it. If you don’t have a membership with Treehouse, you can sign up for the free trial just to take the course.

2. 31 Fundamentals of UX design

It’s a quick overview of all the big parts of UX where the order of the lessons follows a real-life UX process and each lesson is isolated from the others so you can read up only on specific parts.

3. Human-Computer Interaction by Scott Klemmer

Human-Computer Interaction is a very popular course where you can watch the videos for free from the previous class or pay for ability to get a certificate and get access to many more lessons by signing up for Interaction design coursera specialization.

4. UX Fundamentals

As you begin the course, you’ll complete a short quiz to assess your current knowledge of UX design. Throughout the course, you can complete assignments and use an online forum to upload and share assignments. There are also quizzes at the end of each section to help you retain what you learn.

5. HackDesign

Great overview of many design topics primarily focused on developers who want to learn more about design.

6. Springboard UX design learning path

By signing up you get access to a ton of structured links to help you learn more about UX design. The learning path is in form of a detailed curriculum linking to external sites.

Read these 5 fundamental books

1. Don’t Make Me Think, Steve Krug

Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think is the definitely the most recommended book as an intro to UX. If you haven’t read any UX books yet, it is the best one to start. The book mainly deals with usability and is very practical and quick read. The knowledge from this book can be applied to any web design project.

2. The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman

The author, Don Norman, is considered to be one of the fathers of UX. In this book about designing products for people he explains why everyday objects like chairs, teapots, computers, and phones are designed the way they are. Reading this book will help you see the world around you differently, noticing the human-centered design in all the products around you and not just in websites and apps.

3. 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about People, Susan Weinschenk

This book combines real science and research with practical examples to deliver a guide for you to design more intuitive and engaging work for print, websites, applications, and products that match the way people think, work, and play.

4. A Project Guide to UX Design, Russ Unger, Carolyn Chandler

This book gives a good introduction to the usability process and methods and explains the steps from start to finish of a UX project. Because every UX project is unique, the book reviews a range of UX tools and approaches that you can use.

5. Information Architecture for the Web and Beyond, Rosenfeld, Morville, Arango

Also known as “The Polar Bear Book” because of its cover. This is one of the essential books about information architecture and about ways how to apply it for complex web systems.

Listen to these 4 podcasts

1. UX Podcast

Hosts Per and James usually bring on a thought leader to discuss UX strategy, information architecture, cognitive neuroscience, story mapping, integrating lean & agile methods, and more.

2. Boxes and arrows

Podcast discussing, improving and promoting the work of the information architecture community.

3. The UX Intern

A monthly podcast interviewing seasoned user experience designers from the perspective of a UX design intern.

4. UXpod

A free-ranging set of discussions on user experience design, website design, and usability in general.

Become a part of the community

1. Dribbble.com

Dribbble tends to focus more on creative design, but there are definitely UI designs shared as well. It is invite only.

2. Behance.net

The social network for designers that includes a lot of UX/UI design work. It allows to document the whole design process instead of focusing on aesthetics of just one image, which often makes it more suitable for UX work than Dribbble.

3. UX Community on Slack | Join the UX Slack Community

One of the biggest UX communities which is hosted over a popular instant-messaging communication app called Slack. It is free to sign up and be a member.

Join a local meetup

Stay current with the related news

1. Designer News

A community for sharing mainly design but also other related IT links and events.

2. UX Design Weekly

A hand picked list of the best user experience design links sent to your e-mail every week.

Hone your craft

The best way to learn is to put your skills to action. So after going through all the courses and books, it’s time to put theory into practice by applying UX on actual project work. Also, you will need to have a portfolio if you want to find a job or land any freelance opportunities.

Best way to do this is if you have an idea for an app, website or a product, try creating and designing it from scratch by using all the UX skills you gathered. If you don’t have an idea yet, look at some products you currently use and look for ways to optimise them.

Document your design process and after you finished the work, show what you’ve done on Dribbble, Behance or your own portfolio website. The goal is to find problems to solve and develop a portfolio as 2-3 good quality projects will be plenty to get an entry level job.

You can also look for work on freelancing platforms like UpWork.com, Elance.com and Freelancer.com. By doing smaller projects you can gather experience to be ready to look for a UX design job or start a freelance career.

If you are a front-end developer or UI designer and you decided not to switch your role, you will be able to bring much more value to the work you do by applying your newly acquired UX design skills.

P.S. There are more great resources which couldn’t fit here, but the goal was that you can start with the best stuff and not be overwhelmed with too many options.