
A dev, designer, and a PM are asked the same question: What is UX? - ProcrastiNathan
https://blog.codelitt.com/what-is-ux/
======
branon
"What is UX?"

<five paragraphs that don't answer the question, interspersed with unnecessary
banner images>

"We don't know what UX is, everyone who's asked has a different answer, and it
ultimately depends on your product and its users."

Sounds about right.

~~~
itskwanyall
Isn’t the point of the post to highlight that people in different roles could
all be looking at the the same thing but interpret is very differently?

~~~
nitrogen
(Note: I haven't read the article yet; I'm just commenting on general writing
practices)

It's the responsibility of the person trying to gather and present disparate
ideas to synthesize them into a coherent conclusion. This is often hard work,
and failing to do so diminishes the effectiveness of the rest of the piece.

------
ps0161
> Take a pencil, for example. There’s the way that the wood, plastic or metal
> feels on your hand, the way it falls on your fingers, the feel of the
> graphite against the paper ... it’s all been thoroughly thought out and
> designed, each component a part of the experience of writing with a pencil.

To attempt to parallel the ergonomics of a pencil, good or otherwise, with
some grand UX narrative feels inappropriate. If the 'interaction of graphite
on paper' is to your liking that is very much an accident of design rather
than a result of any pencil designer's intention. 3b, HB, or 3H madam?
Methinks that the primary driver of the pencil factory of both yesteryear and
today would be maximisation of production vs units of wood, lead, or rubber.
The 'way it falls on your fingers' a consequence of resource constraints
nothing more.

The experience of writing with a pencil is perhaps the better for not being
messed with.

The pencil survives and has survived by being always useful, value for money,
and fit for purpose.

Model those attributes and users will accommodate and grow to love your
products UX regardless of its failings.

~~~
jackfruitpeel
The pencil has been iterated upon countless times, by a huge number of
individuals and organisations. They also have a huge variety of forms for
different uses and contexts: carpenters pencils, steno pencils, charcoal
pencils, pencils for users with disabilities, etc.

These factors are influenced by material constraints and opportunities, but
don't discount the importance of design iteration in the simplest of objects.

And as someone who has spent a lot of time drawing, the feel and quality of
different pencils (wood, graphite hardness etc.) is something people care an
awful lot about.

~~~
atoav
Also: isn't the UX of a pencil very close to the UNIX philosophy of having
little tools that do one thing and one thing well, and work together with
other things?

In that sense most software today isn't a pencil. It is more like a fully
furbished office where you are not allowed to use a pencil but you have to use
a silly oversized rubber-ballpen with decorative feathers instead. Oh and the
paper is made of plastic and you are not allowed to change it because the guy
at the door will beat you with a stick. On the bright side the filing cabinet
might be the best you have ever seen — but you really aren't enjoying it all
that much because you feel forced to write on plastic with a goofy pen that
changes colours every 4 months. Ah, and you are forbidden to take the plastic
writings out of the room (again the man with the stick).

I cannot believe that it is 2020 and the best thing we came up with is still
just a text based shell (nothing against those, they are great, but I'd love
to see the same modularity in typical GUI applications).

~~~
ryandrake
If 2020 Silicon Valley had to invent the pencil, it would be shaped like a
smartphone, include chat apps and "social," require special paper to write
with, and send everything the user writes back to the company's server.

~~~
Izkata
Something like these, perhaps?

[https://www.thearchitectsguide.com/articles/best-smart-
pen](https://www.thearchitectsguide.com/articles/best-smart-pen)

(#7 includes saving to Slack)

~~~
malikwaqas758
something like these?
[https://bestjigsawguide.com/](https://bestjigsawguide.com/)

------
dgb23
UX's meaning (aside from sounding cool) is so unclear that people are writing
articles since years, trying to explain it.

It is a useful, buzzword-y term to say: "I care about how users interact with
this". Or: "The UX in this part needs improvement".

"UX Design" however is confusing especially when attached to a role. The
output of a "UX Designer" is (at least eventually) a UI. So they are a UI
Designer? Well no, it is all about the "experience"! My UX is pretty bad here
because the software is buggy. Is the engineer who fixes the bug a UX Designer
now?

You often see the term UX alongside UI, like this: UI/UX. This is because the
designer wants to emphasize what they care about, but they secretly know that
the thing they design is the actual UI, not the "experience".

~~~
logicallee
>The output of a "UX Designer" is (at least eventually) a UI.

Not only. For example if you add 2000 ms to 15000 ms of latency after each
click then you might think it is still the same UI. In fact in a sense it _is_
still the same UI.

In my opinion by contrast (and contrary to your sentence) the UX designer's
output can include the latency budget by which the page must be fully
returned. This additional output is captured by a term such as UI/UX.

A UI designer has no say about responsiveness (latency). A UX designer does.

~~~
ricardobeat
> A UI designer has no say about responsiveness (latency). A UX designer does

That is definitely not true. UI design encompasses usability, including
interactivity, feedback, animations, etc. Otherwise it's just graphic design.

I think the term UX was defined to go way beyond those concerns, and into
areas from marketing, branding, copywriting, all the way to what the actual
product is, how it is offered, even pricing. Some simple examples: timing and
content of emails, purchasing options and how they are displayed, how multiple
platforms (mobile, desktop, snailmail, phone) are tied together, content
strategy.

You can see that aspiration reflected in the designer responses in the
beginning of the article: they are the ones mentioning the business side, and
not the managers.

~~~
logicallee
>I think the term UX was defined to go way beyond those concerns, and into
areas from marketing, branding, copywriting, all the way to what the actual
product is, how it is offered, even pricing.

Interesting! I'm totally on board with this set of concerns - but can you find
any reference for your statement? (Anybody on the web who gave a definition of
UX similar to yours?)

------
Complexicate
The first paragraph summarized 3 different ways:

We asked neurologists, psychiatrists, and sociologists about human decision
making. * The neurologists focused on stimuli and the brain. * The
psychiatrists focused on the behaviors of individuals. * The sociologists
focused on interactions between human groups.

We asked physicists, chemists, and biologists about the building blocks of the
world. * The physicists focused on forces of nature. * The chemists focused on
molecules and their chemical interactions. * The biologists focused on cells
and organisms.

We asked engineers, designers, and project managers about UX. * The engineers
focused on the interactions between the engineered bits of the UX and the
users. * The designers focused on the 2 groups that have opinions about UX
design: the company and the users. * The project managers focused on how well
the UX got the project done.

------
throwanem
That this link should currently be showing only a huge '500' with a raw error
message as subhead strikes me as apropos, in a sidewise kind of way.

The Internet Archive caught it before it broke:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20200709170526/https://blog.codel...](http://web.archive.org/web/20200709170526/https://blog.codelitt.com/what-
is-ux/)

~~~
ProcrastiNathan
I appreciate you.

------
vlovich123
I’m an engineer. The only definition I’ve used is the one pointed out here as
the PM perspective: how are your users using the product, what are their pain
points, how can you make it more pleasant for them? Understanding how to put
yourself into their shoes is the hardest. Understanding how to quantify and
measure that experience is even harder.

------
choward
> They cared about making sure that the brand’s values were enhancing the
> experience.

What does this even mean?

~~~
youeseh
Facebook wants to show you ads. You want to see updates from your friends and
family. Facebook will come up with a clever way to show you updates from your
friends and family but not all at once and not all at the top. So, you'll have
to scroll and scroll and scroll to see updates and might even have to visit
multiple times to see updates, all the while seeing a lot of ads along the
way.

UX enhancing brand values! :D

~~~
choward
It seems weird that a designer would focus on "brand values" over a good user
experience. I guess they are answering in the context of a working for a
company and not just being a designer. I assumed "enhancing the user
experience" meant making the user experience better, but clearly that's not
what it means.

~~~
jbob2000
Big companies do this weird thing where they get a bunch of passionate people
to oppose each other when creating a solution, and then take some weird
Frankenstein middle ground that appeals to no one except the budget and
timeline.

------
laurent123456
Server error at the moment - below is the full text:

* * *

Some weeks ago I asked a few of the Codelitt team members a simple question:

    
    
        “What is UX?”
    

I was happy that no one shied away from answering, and the difference in their
responses was incredible:

Engineers focused their answers in very pragmatic areas that all revolved
around friction and how to reduce it. The experience “behind the curtain” that
helps make interactions smooth was what they thought of. Things like loading
times or making sure that buttons were clickable came to their minds.

Designers saw the importance of researching both the users and business who
would be investing in the product. They cared about making sure that the
brand’s values were enhancing the experience. They wanted the users &
customers to know exactly what to expect when interacting with their products.

Project Managers focused on understanding and empathizing with the users so
that the end product is intuitive and useful to the user.

Simply put, UX means “User Experience”: it’s the experience that a user has
while interacting with a product. UX Design is, by definition, the process by
which we determine what that experience will be.

UX Design always happens. Whether it’s intentional or not, somebody makes the
decisions about how the human and the product will interact. Good UX Design
happens when we make these decisions in a way that understands and fulfills
the needs of both our users and our business.

UX encompasses so many disciplines that it’s unfair to think of it as a sphere
within visual design. Quite the contrary! The building of an interface is a
subset of that product’s experience design.

UX happens whenever a human interacts with a product. Any product. Take a
pencil, for example. There’s the way that the wood, plastic or metal feels on
your hand, the way it falls on your fingers, the feel of the graphite against
the paper. Does it have a rubber end or a button you have to press to get the
graphite out? In every case, it’s all been thoroughly thought out and
designed, each component a part of the experience of writing with a pencil.

From the business objective, to the product’s stakeholders, designers,
engineers and project managers, the experience encompasses every person
working on it. It is the culmination of a multitude of disciplines working
together. Every decision we make when building a product shapes that
experience. UX is at the heart of everything we do.

~~~
ProcrastiNathan
Thanks for providing this summary! :)

------
chiefalchemist
> "Simply put, UX means “User Experience”: it’s the experience that a user has
> while interacting with a product."

I believe it's broader than that. The experience is a lasting effect. It
starts while interacting with the product, but can continue after that moment
is over. Like a sip of wine has a post-swallow finish, so does an experience.

For example, I ordered some things for my car this morning from Advanced Auto
Parts. I can walk to a B&M location but have sworn off going there after a
sloppy clerk over-charged me.

In any case the web experience worse and took far too long. I'm still
regretting it. I'll never shop there - online or in store again. I'll even go
so far to say I have some ill will for Amex, as it was their perk that go me
there.

The product is long gone but my experience lives on.

------
ScottFree
For the visually oriented, this description of UX in image form can't be beat:
[https://imgur.com/mAttwt6](https://imgur.com/mAttwt6)

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steveharman
Spoiler alert; The answer currently appears to be 500.

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prerok
Well, my first thought is still "Unix, obviously" :)

For fun I looked it up on Wikipedia:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UX](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UX) .
User experience is not listed under Software but under Science/Computing, so a
reader would still first find Unix :)

------
staycoolboy
I like to start by explaining that UX has existed for over 5000 years: in the
way tools are fashioned, pottery is turned, fields are plowed, food is
prepared, instruments are played, lore and laws are written, etc. UX is
ubiquitous, and determines how readily a person can internalize and then
utilize a new concept.

------
1cvmask
Speaking of UX on their own website, they don't have links to the projects
they accomplished in case studies like Halo and Fletcher.

Good luck finding Fletcher in a Google search or even "Fletcher Product
Review" or "Fletcher Software Review" or "Fletcher Review" in a search.

