Hello and welcome to the Working Image Podcast. I'm your host Jarrrod Michael Gordon. This is episode four, UX and UI Design. Let's get started. The main idea of this podcast is to help you, the non-designer business owner, understand how the world of design impacts your business. With this in mind, I'm not gonna deep dive into this topic because there is no need to do so for you, but you need to know the basics and how that impacts your business. So what is UX and ui? Let's start with ux, which stands for user experience. We have to give credit where credit is due, and then Nielsen Norman Group design consultancy is credited with coining the term user experience sometime in the late nineties. Now, they define user experience as user experience encompasses all aspects of enduser's interaction with the company, its services and its products, but really the term UX and UI became part of our vernacular because the tech world basically ran with the term and blew up, and eventually it trickled down to your industry. All industries use UX design even if you don't know it, and it can help your business or hinder it. All physical and digital products take UX into account. Basically, a UX designer will think about how a products experience makes the user feel and how easy or difficult it is for the user to use the product. Think about it. Have you ever used a product or tried to use a product and it still doesn't work the way you want it? Then someone shows you how to use the product and you think to yourself, Well, that's dumb. It would've been easier if it worked like this. Instead, what you're really saying is the product's user experience is horrible. Now, subconsciously, your brain is created a negative response to the product, and you will question buying or using anything from that company. Again, all due to a bad user experience. That's how it affects your company and, yes, it is that important. User experience isn't just found in your product or service, but also in your employees. Think about this. If someone calls your office and receives terrible treatment, that person's user experience with your company is now tainted. User experience is directly connected to your company's branding. Bad UX equals bad branding equals loss of sales. An example of amazing user experience is the Apple iPod. When the iPod was introduced, there was plenty of MP3 players on the market. They had many problems including battery life, physical size, and user interface, which is the UI that I mentioned earlier, but we'll speak about that soon. Users even had trouble getting music onto the devices themselves. Apple took a few years to solve all the UX problems the MP3 music players had, and the iPod was born. They studied everything from color of the iPod to the way it sits in your hand to how the earbuds sat in your ears. The iPod became the world's greatest digital music player ever. You see, that is what a UX designer does. They research how someone will use the product or service. It's the practice of cognitive science, learning how existing users or even potential users think of an existing product and then implementing that research into a new product or service. Then they map out how the product or service is going to be used over and over again until they feel the best user experience has been reached. UX isn't about visuals. It concentrates solely on the overall feel of the experience. Every business has a website, or at least they should. A lot of companies have apps that either works in conjunction with their website or they sell things from there. This is where the tech industry really pushed a UX and UI terminology. Let's say you hire someone to design a website for you. If the person designing your website doesn't go through step one user experience, your website will never produce for you. For most companies, their website is supposed to produce leads or sell products. Your website needs to be designed in such a way that the user can contact you or buy a product in as few steps as possible, but those steps need to make sense, and yes, there is a lot more to designing website, but user experience is step number one, and it's the most important step because it's the foundation for the rest of the design process. If someone gets confused using your site, they're gone. They're clicking away, and your competition just won that lead. This is why I always say your website is designed for your customers or clients, not for you. Now, let's talk about ui, also known as user interface. This one is more straightforward, user interfaces, the look and the overall presentation of a digital product, but it can't be successful without good UX design. You see, they work together as partners in design. Unlike UX design, user interface design only exists in the digital world. Websites, apps, digital interfaces, augmented reality, et cetera. UI creates an intuitive experience that doesn't allow users to think too much. UI will take all those design principles and elements I spoke about in the last episode and create an intuitive experience. Going back to the iPod example, the UI of the iPod was so easy to use. It was one of if not the major reason for a success, and it's not that the iPod was easy to use. It was that the user experience was designed so well that it was highly intuitive. Let's bring this back to you in your company. Your website, marketing collateral, et cetera, must be designed with UX and UI in mind, so they are easy to use and understand, which will result in more leads and sales. This is why you shouldn't just throw something together or use the term good enough because it shouldn't be good enough. It's your company and it should be represented with the best design it can have by a professional designer. You don't want to end up paying money for a design that ultimately doesn't work. Obviously, you're just wasting your money at that point. So to review, UX is the experience of your product, service, or marketing collateral, and UI is the design of that experience. Well, that's it for episode four, The Working Image Podcast, UX, and UI. All necessary links and information are in the show notes. If you have any questions, email theworkingimage@gmail.com. We know your time is valuable. Thank you for using some of that time to listen. Take care.