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Everyone has their own interpretation of Design especially User Experience Design. What can be the best way to explain UX in words?
How to answer this to my parents?
How to answer this to my colleagues from other teams?
How to answer this to a random stranger on road?
User Experience Design is the process of enhancing user satisfaction with a product by improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction with the product.
UX Design refers to the term User Experience Design, while UI Design stands for User Interface Design. Both elements are crucial to a product and work closely together. But despite their professional relationship, the roles themselves are quite different, referring to very different parts of the process and the design discipline. Where UX Design is a more analytical and technical field, UI Design is closer to what we refer to as graphic design, though the responsibilities are somewhat more complex.
Refer this article - http://blog.careerfoundry.com/ui-design/the-difference-between-ux-and-ui-design-a-laymans-guide/
I think you can just simply give them a random example that's already impact to their life, such as shoelace, door information "push"/"pull", rearview mirror on the car which give a comfort and really help user using the product but you done this things in digital way. It will more easy to understand for them.
P.S This sometimes happen to me, and I will explain to them like I mention, we should leave explanation that contains some jargon IMHO.
Here's how I explain it to laymen:
UX is the experience of a user. Have you ever been frustrated by a website, app, device, or tool? That's a bad user experience. Have you ever been delighted because something was easier than it should be or turned out really simple when you didn't expect it? That's a great user experience. UX designers are the people who try to make frustrating products and services into delightful ones.
Usually after that, whoever I'm talking to immediately starts tell me stories of all the frustrating apps and devices they've owned in their life. Therefore, I only explain this when I have a lot of free time.
Since UX Design is such a broad discipline, and few of us do all of it, you might focus on the specific things that you do in your job.
"It's my job to make sure that our products help people accomplish what they need to do. So I meet with customers to see what they need in their work and I design products that support those tasks. Then I work closely with visual designers and programmers to build it."
I usually avoid metaphors, but sometimes compare UX to architecture since "design" makes people think I do visuals.
Maybe:
A UX designer helps users to achieve their goals using a product or service.
Sometimes it is about making things easier to use, sometimes it is about making things not so easy to use, etc.
Good UX is any solution that makes a task easier, faster, more utilitarian, intuitive and allows the user to think less about the task they are trying to carry out. Bad UX is any solution that makes the user have to think more about the tool/solution than the task they are trying to carry out
