UX has never been exclusively digital
A short look at UX design’s unforgiving digital-only tag
User Experience
noun
noun: user experience; plural noun: user experiences
“the overall experience of a person using a product such as a website or computer application, especially in terms of how easy or pleasing it is to use.”
I believe one of the most common misconceptions in design is that UX is exclusive to digital design. Take the results from a quick ‘ux definition’ search on google above for example “using a product such as a website or computer” gives us a prime example of UX designs digital tag.
In addition to this, there’s countless of posts on medium and other sites going through the differences between UX and UI — each time I see one I cringe a little inside. UX seems to have been separated as a stand-alone discipline. It’s been given a ‘digital only’ tag when in-fact the principles and values used in UX are, and perhaps the same, as the values in other design and problem-solving disciplines. Let me explain
I want to try and explain this at a deeper level than just separating UX from visual design, whilst keeping it short and to the point of course. It’s too easy to get lost in the UI/UX trap and perhaps the reason we think UX is so closely related to UI is that of the way we are educated. Take my first UX project at University for example — it was for a digital brief and solution, from that moment I struggled with my next few UX design projects as I was not able to understand that UX could be applied in ways that are not digital.
The principles of good user experience design have such a great affinity to the principles of better design principles that I’m still confused this happened at all.
Any discipline which involves a user has some kind of experience right? Branding is all about user perception…Industrial Design can be how users may interact or feel when they use the product… you know… this product that users are experiencing is not limited to a digital product yet that’s the way many people see it.
Whilst I don’t believe branding and user experience are the same, I do believe that branding, industrial design, visual design (etc) all have user experience in common and that this ‘UX’ tag in digital design is unjustified. Perhaps this is the line that designers need to cross to get a better grasp on the power of UX design and how they can use it as a tool to their advantage.
Looking to the future, voice AI may be the biggest player involved in the push to break away from UX design’s digital-only tag. Voice AI forces designers to consider more than just visual experience but the experience of users that are remote from a screen — where they are, what they want or need and how they want to get it and so on.
And perhaps for designers to come to terms with the unity of experience through different design disciplines yet another title will be established. To me, the most important thing is that this exclusive tag of UX design as digital progress. After all, how people perceive brands, interact with products or simply speak to your customer service is all contained in the user experience of our products.
