If it is not design, then what is?
In 2006, my work colleague offered me two websites about sports news, both from the Arab Gulf. And some small pictures of the topics, and he was getting a million visits a month, and he asked me if I had a convincing explanation for this?
Since that time, I have been thinking and searching for an answer. If a beautiful design does not affect the visitors’ preference scales, then what does it really affect? How a site like reddit is considered one of the most visited sites that some find ugly.
D a few years of research, I found that the visitor enters the site or application to obtain information or implement a service, so he is not interested in contemplating the design of the site’s buttons. It also found that every digital product has an experience that has a positive or negative impact on the user.
This experience has come to be called user experience (UX), and is concerned with making products more competitive, easier to use, and may affect your emotions toward the product. Therefore, major companies are interested in improving the user experience in their digital products, to acquire more users and outperform competitors.
So why not improve the user experience in all digital products?
Most digital products work with one or more user experience designers, but they often fail to be competitive and favored by users.
In my opinion there are two problems:
- There is not enough awareness and understanding about user experience, at the corporate level and product management.
- The right person in terms of qualifications and experience is not selected and hired.
Reading superficial posts and articles, some people think that the experience is just changing the colors of the screens and adding some pictures. That’s why the focus is on beautiful designs and some tools when looking for employees.
But by designing the experience, you can go further, as you can motivate users to take action, and reduce development costs by focusing on the features that users want and eliminating other features. In addition to making the product more competitive by understanding competitors and their strengths and weaknesses and taking advantage of them.
Many government and banking services websites are difficult (hard to understand and use), sometimes you even have to go to the nearest branch to complete your transaction, because you cannot do it electronically.
Finally, are you still wondering why some Arab sites and services fail?! Try buying a digital book from this site and let me know if you can.
Don’t lose any more and invest in improving your user experience
Hire me or request my services to make your product more competitive and design a more pleasant experience for users.