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Kenny Chan is studying Information Engineering in The City University of Hong Kong who is interested in Data Management and Data Analysis.

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<h3>The user experience – UX</h3><p>User experience otherwise known as UX is the experience of the users when they use a product or service. UX mainly focuses on the feelings of users and is less focused on the appearance of the product.</p><p><strong>“UX is not about how good the users see but how good the users feel.”</strong></p><h3>The defects of the unbalanced product</h3><p><img src="https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/b7d5319a_c1af92ed86.jpg" alt="b7d5319a.jpg" srcset="https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/thumbnail_b7d5319a_c1af92ed86.jpg 245w,https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/small_b7d5319a_c1af92ed86.jpg 500w,https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/medium_b7d5319a_c1af92ed86.jpg 750w," sizes="100vw"><br>&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align:center;">Figure 1. The importance of the three factors in balanced UX</p><p>Similar to product development, there are three factors that need to be considered for developing a balanced UX design. They are the needs of the users, business value and implementation complexity respectively. The UX design should be able to solve users' needs, create business values and optimize implementation complexity. Otherwise, some defects will occur.</p><p>1. <strong>Lack of optimize implementation complexity</strong> (Expensive UX)</p><ul><li>Long development time</li><li>Often trade-off quality for time</li><li>Endless bugfix loops</li></ul><p>2. <strong>Lack of business value</strong> (Ineffective UX)</p><ul><li>No effect on business value growth</li><li>No bonding between users and the product</li><li>Easy replaced</li></ul><p>3. <strong>Lack of solution of user’s needs</strong> (Useless)</p><ul><li>Low usage</li><li>Low satisfaction</li></ul><h3>The methods of designing the balanced UX</h3><p><img src="https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/thumbnail_and_banner_fe012a2523.jpeg" alt="thumbnail&amp;banner.jpeg" srcset="https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/thumbnail_thumbnail_and_banner_fe012a2523.jpeg 245w,https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/small_thumbnail_and_banner_fe012a2523.jpeg 500w,https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/medium_thumbnail_and_banner_fe012a2523.jpeg 750w,https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/large_thumbnail_and_banner_fe012a2523.jpeg 1000w," sizes="100vw"></p><p style="text-align:center;">Figure 2. The four quadrants of a UX design</p><p><br>The x-axis and y-axis are UX implementation complexity/difficulty and effectiveness respectively. There are four different quadrants according to its complexity and effectiveness. In an ideal case, the UX designer can create an effective and simple product which lays in the bottom-left hand corner quadrant.</p><p><img src="https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/d62a40b4_bae911449d.jpg" alt="d62a40b4.jpg" srcset="https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/thumbnail_d62a40b4_bae911449d.jpg 245w,https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/small_d62a40b4_bae911449d.jpg 500w,https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/medium_d62a40b4_bae911449d.jpg 750w," sizes="100vw"></p><p style="text-align:center;">Figure 3. Different methods of improving the product</p><p><br>Firstly, the UX designer creates an expensive UX. Although the UX can fulfill all of the business values, it takes a lot of time to finish. Therefore, the UX designer uses some methods to strike a balanced UX. Here are the process and expected outcome of different methods:</p><figure class="table"><table><tbody><tr><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);">Method</td><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);">Process</td><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);">Expected Outcome</td></tr><tr><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);vertical-align:top;">Cutting scope</td><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);vertical-align:top;">Giving up to fulfill some business values or requirements in order to decrease the complexity of the UX.</td><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);vertical-align:top;">A new UX with less effectiveness and less difficulty/complexity.</td></tr><tr><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);vertical-align:top;">Optimizing by expertise</td><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);vertical-align:top;">Taking some actions to decrease the complexity of the UX but preserve the business values.</td><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);vertical-align:top;">The same UX with less difficulty/complexity.</td></tr><tr><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);vertical-align:top;">Understanding and re-creating</td><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);vertical-align:top;">Requiring high ability of imagination and understanding of the client’s needs so that the designer can create an innovative UX design.</td><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);vertical-align:top;">A new UX with more effectiveness and less difficulty/complexity.</td></tr></tbody></table></figure><p>When the UX designer strikes the balanced UX. Cutting scope without proper understanding that you definitely do not want to happen in designing UX which creates a poor design. The UX designer may create an ineffective/useless UX if the UX designer does not have enough understanding of the client’s needs and the product’s business values for cutting scope. In the worse case, a poor UX with negative impacts would be created.</p><h3>UX Delivery Case Study</h3><p><img src="https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/f92ec040_7dc23837eb.jpg" alt="f92ec040.jpg" srcset="https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/thumbnail_f92ec040_7dc23837eb.jpg 245w,https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/small_f92ec040_7dc23837eb.jpg 500w,https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/medium_f92ec040_7dc23837eb.jpg 750w," sizes="100vw"></p><p style="text-align:center;">Figure 4. General process and consideration in product development</p><p><br>Take the development of the mobile app as an example. In figure 4, there are four major positions across the business goal, UX design, and implementation sections in this project.&nbsp; Different talents in different teams have their considerations and roles in order to finish the project.</p><p>Project owner - The project owner needs to define the business goal and be in charge of the project.</p><p>Business analyst - The business analyst does some marketing research in order to find the lack of the original project. Then the business analyst needs to propose some improvements to achieve the business goal.</p><p>UX designer - The UX designer needs to focus on the interaction between users and the mobile app in order to let the users have an impressive experience when they use the app.</p><p>Solution architect - The solution architect is responsible for monitoring the timeline and coordinating the different teams in implementation.</p><p>Here is the summary in this case:<br>&nbsp;</p><figure class="table"><table><tbody><tr><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);"><strong>Postion</strong></td><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);"><strong>In this case</strong></td></tr><tr><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);">Project owner</td><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);">- Boost the order sales by encouraging our existing mobile app customers to buy similar products.</td></tr><tr><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);vertical-align:top;">Business analyst</td><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);vertical-align:top;"><p>- Add categorization on our products.</p><p><br>- Migrate existing sales records.<br>- Touch our existing users via a new personalized way.<br>- Build a limited-time discount offer.</p></td></tr><tr><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);vertical-align:top;">UX designer</td><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);">- Received a similar product notification with warm wordings.<br>- The user clicks the notification to launch our app.<br>- Our app can identify the notification and show a 'welcome back' splash screen.<br>- After the warm welcome message, our app pops up a product dialog.<br>- After that, the product shows the limited-time offer obviously to let the user know this offer is limited in time.<br>- Follow the standard checkout UX.</td></tr><tr><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);">Solution architect</td><td style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 0%, 0%);">- It is not realistic to finish it in 1 month.</td></tr></tbody></table></figure><p style="text-align:center;"><img src="https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/d3d905c5_e1a24a184f.png" alt="d3d905c5.png" srcset="https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/thumbnail_d3d905c5_e1a24a184f.png 245w,https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/small_d3d905c5_e1a24a184f.png 500w,https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/medium_d3d905c5_e1a24a184f.png 750w,https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/large_d3d905c5_e1a24a184f.png 1000w," sizes="100vw"><br>Figure 5. The user journey and technical requirements in the original design</p><p>Firstly, in order to achieve the business goal, there are server technical requirements such as features, API server, database etc. After attempting these technical requirements, an UX which can fulfill the business goal but it may be quite expensive.</p><p>After having a UX design, the UX designer can try to improve the design in the next step.</p><h3>Fail case of cutting scope</h3><p><img src="https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/0db642e5_798f4a180d.png" alt="0db642e5.png" srcset="https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/thumbnail_0db642e5_798f4a180d.png 245w,https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/small_0db642e5_798f4a180d.png 500w,https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/medium_0db642e5_798f4a180d.png 750w,https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/large_0db642e5_798f4a180d.png 1000w," sizes="100vw"></p><p style="text-align:center;">Figure 6. The user journey and technical requirement in the fail case</p><p><br>If the designer does not have enough understanding of the business goal of boosting the order sales by encouraging our existing mobile app customers to buy similar products, the designer may only add the broadcast product notification and cut other functions. The user will get a notification when there is a new product, no matter if it is a related product or a non-related product.</p><p>A poor UX design is created in this case because it cannot fulfill the business goal. There are too many push notifications, and users receive unrelated products.</p><h3>Successful case of improving the UX design.</h3><p><img src="https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/0886a92a_cf59dbbb07.png" alt="0886a92a.png" srcset="https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/thumbnail_0886a92a_cf59dbbb07.png 245w,https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/small_0886a92a_cf59dbbb07.png 500w,https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/medium_0886a92a_cf59dbbb07.png 750w,https://gt-terraform-web-s3-prod.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/large_0886a92a_cf59dbbb07.png 1000w," sizes="100vw"></p><p style="text-align:center;">Figure 7. The user journey and technical requirement in the successful case</p><p><br>The UX design can be improved by optimizing by expertise. The integrated managed service can be applied to fulfill the requirements of the admin control panel, loyalty system and scheduler rather than building a new system. It reduces development effort, testing effort and overall complexity.</p>

User experience otherwise known as UX is the experience of the users when they use a product or service. UX mainly focuses on the feelings of users and is less focused on the appearance of the product.

Gary is a professional full stack developer with passion for providing technical solutions specialized in early UX product design phrases as a lead solution architect. Gary is also a tech blogger who loves sharing insights and professional expertise regarding issues in the industry on his Facebook page (Gap撈Tech), blogs, and community events.

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