To kick off 2013, I’ll be teaming with Jeremy Foster, Technical Evangelist at Microsoft, to talk about the Windows 8 features that offer marketers and advertisers unique, built-in opportunities for weaving their brands/stories into the much-buzzed-about new OS.

We’ll look at the factors that make Windows 8 an important player/factor in the tech/marketing landscape, including:

The new paradigm. Windows 8 is breaking new ground. You get a mobile experience on whatever device you run it on – whether desktop, notebook or tablet.

• The numbers. No matter how many mixed reviews you may see, Windows 8 isn’t going away – and many people will be using it given Microsoft’s dominance in the business computing market.

• The opportunity. The market potential for entrepreneurs is huge. While the iOS market is saturated, those who jump into the Windows 8 app market have a chance to make a big splash.

• The unique, marketing-friendly features. For instance, Windows 8 “live tiles” – ie, the buttons you touch to launch an app – are, unlike their Apple equivalents, dynamic, displaying continuously updated content. Imagine the possibilities for creating (brand) apps that continuously feature new content even before an app is launched? And then there’s the new take on blending advertising into the OS … many of the “Modern UI” apps that ship with Windows 8 have built-in ads. We’ll talk about these and more.

I hope you’ll join us.

Why Marketers Should be Early Adopters of Windows 8
PSAMA Luncheon
Wednesday, January 9
The Harbor Club/Seattle
Get the details/register now.

First and foremost, there was a huge leap in Cyber Monday spending – sales grew 30.3 percent over the same period last year. U.S. consumers spent $1.5 billion, making it the largest shopping day in history.

Other important figures:

• More than 18 percent of consumers used a mobile device to visit a retailer site – a jump of more than 70 percent over 2011.
• Mobile sales neared 13%, an increase of more than 96 percent over 2011.
• The iPad was the biggest traffic generator among tablets and smartphones, driving more than 7 percent of online shopping. The iPhone came in second at 6.9
• percent; Android took third place with 4.5 percent.
• Among tablets, the iPad won out, driving 90.5 percent of tablet traffic. Amazon Kindle jumped into second place with 2.6 percent. The Samsung Galaxy and Barnes & Noble Nook came next with 2 percent and 0.6 percent, respectively.
• While there were plenty of online Black Friday offers, Cyber Monday’s online sales trumped Black Friday’s by 36 percent, which should jettison any ideas you might have had about Black Friday becoming as online-shopping-focused as Cyber Monday these days.

Consumers left no stone unturned in their simultaneous, “multi-screen” search for the best bargains, hitting stores in person as well as shopping online and via mobile devices. The report’s figures on multi-screen shopping were a surprise at first glance: 58.1 percent of consumers used smart phones compared to the 41.9 percent who searched for bargains via tablets. Given the more generous screen size of tablets, I’d much prefer using them to shop, but far more people own smart phones, so this makes sense.

So what crucial user experience lessons can ecommerce companies take away from this year’s numbers?

1. You’d better have a great smartphone user experience in place. People are clearly shopping with their phones, and you can bet they will go elsewhere if you have a slow, annoying and/or hard-to-navigate mobile site … or no mobile-friendly interface at all.
2. Same goes for the tablet, of course, though tablet screens are a bit more forgiving. Tablet users expect an experience tailored to the device.
3. Offering a variety of special online offers over time – free shipping, discounts, etc. – is smart. The IBM report found that while digital consumers spent more, they “once again shopped with greater frequency to take advantage of retailer deals as well as free shipping.” This behavior led to a drop in average order value by 6.6 percent (to $185.12), though the average number of items per order increased 14.1 percent to 8.34 percent compared with Black Friday. Translation: Individual orders may total less, but shoppers may come back and buy more later, based on the deals you’re promoting and how well you’re promoting them – on-site as well as via email, ads and social media.
4. But #3 only works well if you create a seamless experience for redeeming the offers. For instance, if shoppers get an email promoting free shipping and/or a certain discount, those offers should be ideally be activated/reflected when they click the email link and begin shopping. If they do need to input a code to get their discount, you need to make it obvious when/where they should do this.

In short, if you want a piece of the Cyber Monday pie – not to mention a cut of the spending consumers do all of the other days of the year – you’d better make sure you offer a great shopping experience that’s appealing, easy and fast on all devices.

When it comes to choosing who to align with — Apple v. Microsoft, Democrats v. Republicans — not too many people stake their claim in the middle ground territory, regularly going back and forth between which party they vote for and what technology they buy.

Polar perspectives

I can’t speak for my Produxs colleagues’ political leanings, but when it comes to choosing sides in the Apple v. Microsoft battle, we’re what you might called Registered Independents. As designers, we’re heavy Mac users; as a Seattle tech firm, we’re big supporters of our neighbor Microsoft. We always love partnering with MSN, including our recent work on Windows 8 apps.

Walk around our offices and you’ll find that people’s personal devices include a mix of Apple and Microsoft products – iPads, Windows Phones, etc.

But in my experience, Technology Independents make up a smaller sample of the population than political Independents.

Many Apple fans will never buy into Windows 8, no matter how much they might be intrigued by the newer, cooler approach (and it won’t just be because they’ve already invested in a bunch of Apple devices).

And even if they aren’t as passionate as Apple fans, my sense is that a majority of Windows users won’t cross to the other side for their work and play either; they may buy an iPad or iPhone for personal use, but when it comes to serious computing, they can’t see letting go of the PC environment. (Windows 8, of course, is attempting to give them the best of both worlds.)

Launch mentality

I’m a tech news junkie, and while I can’t claim to have conducted a thorough survey of Windows 8 launch coverage, my unscientific impression is that most reactions to the new Microsoft OS are as polarized as presidential politics.

Scanning headlines, I’m seeing mostly love or hate — and after watching a lot of products and software debut over the years, it drives me crazy that a product is often deemed a success or failure based solely on the perceptions and reactions that spin off of its launch. In the Apple era, we have a particularly entrenched measure of success: No line outside the store on debut day? Must be a dud.

There are great products that have terrible, off-message launches or ad campaigns. There is great software that debuts with a glitch or two that’s quickly fixed in response to consumer red flags. (And there are certainly plenty of qualified political candidates who have also suffered from bumpy or mishandled debuts, too.)

As a Technology Independent, I’m fascinated to see how things shake out with Windows 8 in six months, when launch fever will have died down and all the dire and effusive predictions will have been proven right or wrong by the only reviewers who really matter: consumers.

Meanwhile, I hope you registered your Democratic, Republican or Independent leanings and voted today. (Regardless of how it all turns out, we can all celebrate a break from political ads.)

But now I’m wondering how long it’s going to be before Apple pillages a little from the new Windows 8 operating system.

Here are just three advantages the controversial new Microsoft OS has over Apple:

1. Live tiles.

With Apple devices, you get a set display of small icons that give you little to no information until you engage with them.

Some Apple app icons, such as those for voicemail/phone or email, do have visual cues to let you know something new is available within the app (think of the number that pops up at the corner of the email app button to show you how many new messages you have). Other apps offer no notifications and mostly just serve as a way to launch the app.

The Apple icons are also uniform in size – and why wouldn’t they be, given that they aren’t displaying useful information?

Windows 8 live tiles on the other hand, do display information that you can see/use without launching the app.

A shot of live tiles on a Windows Phone 7 (the enhanced Windows Phone 8 was just unveiled by Microsoft)

The weather app tile actually displays weather information.

The calendar live tile shows the details of your next meeting.

“Pictures” actually shows pictures I have on the phone.

There are apps that just have notifications, such as Phone and Messaging… and there are others that are just static icons. Let’s just say it’s a nice blend of tiles.

Taking those two examples and running with them … You can pick up your phone first thing in the morning and see both what your first appointment is and what temperature/weather you should be dressing for … no launching apps or maneuvering between multiple apps. You can actually see your first appointment just by waking the phone up (you don’t even have to unlock it).

When Windows Phone 8 goes on sale, you’ll also have the additional flexibility of customizing the size of the tiles on your phone.

When you think about it, it’s sort of surprising that Apple didn’t think of this first.

2. Greater flexibility and productivity.

Windows 8 devices are going to be more productive tools because the tablet solution and the desktop solutions are on one device.

Let’s say you have an iPad and a bluetooth keyboard, and you have work to do – typing up a document or creating a spreadsheet, for instance. While the iPad runs some Apple productivity programs, it doesn’t run the Windows office suite – Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. – that most people still use for work … so your ability to dive into the work you usually do via laptop or desktop is limited.

What Windows 8 brings to the table is the ability to take a tablet device and easily pivot from the usual tablet functions (email, browsing, etc.) over to a productive work experience – and then back again.

3. Availability via a far wider variety of products and price points … which may ultimately result in a bigger pool of users.

Apple has had phenomenal success, but your choices and price points are fairly limited. The Windows 8 OS will be available on many more devices from many more companies and will give price-conscious consumers more buying power than Apple does.

Don’t get me wrong – I realize that when you purchase an Apple device, you’re purchasing a premium product, and there’s obviously a market for that, given Apple’s revenues.

But I believe Microsoft’s OS will make its way into more hands, which is great for companies looking to capitalize on that audience and build apps for Windows 8.

What’s your take? Can you buy into the idea that Apple may be envying some of Windows 8’s features and advantages?

We have a little firsthand experience with Windows 8 via some app design we’ve done this year,  but more importantly, we’ve spent a lot of time designing websites and apps to fit the online and IT needs of a wide variety of companies.

This understanding of those business needs, coupled with our Windows 8 work and entrepreneurial way of thinking, has given us valuable perspective on the new OS’ significance for the business community (and those who market to that community).

Here’s why we think the business community needs to pay attention to Windows 8:

1. Microsoft still owns the business market.

Plenty of statistics support Microsoft’s dominance in the enterprise space, and you probably experience that reality firsthand, just as we do. Despite all of the consumer buzz about Apple products, when we go into meetings at companies of all sizes, Mac is rarely the dominant machine/OS we see unless we’re going into a design studio. Quite often the only Mac in the room was brought in by our designers.

It doesn’t make much sense to ignore the rollout of a paradigm-changing operating system for a big market with the staying power of Microsoft – a market that likes continuity and, if done right, evolution.

2. Windows 8 has gone out on a limb to resolve a big challenge: Creating an OS that makes millennials, traditionalists and IT managers happy.

The consumerization of business has been a nightmare for IT departments, as more and more employees have brought interloper iPads and iPhones into the corporate environment. IT managers are having an increasingly difficult time wrapping their heads around how to deal with these mixed operating systems. (Note that according to Gartner, it is projected that global enterprise IT spend will hit 2.8 trillion by 2014. Don’t you think IT will demand resolution to the multiple OS and device issues?)

It’s a problem that isn’t going to go away. “Millennial” generation employees are going to dominate companies as baby boomers retire, and they’re used to having the latest and greatest experience. To satisfy that demand, there needs to be a balance between the delight that Apple brings and the demands of IT.

Windows 8 is addressing that by offering the new touch-first “Modern UI” that’s fun and consumerized, as well as the desktop experience that people are used to and that works for IT.

In short, it’s a dual-mode OS that gives you the ability to effortlessly switch between your work life and your home life on the same device; people will no longer have to choose between convenience and productivity.

Until more feedback begins rolling in after the Oct. 26 release, we won’t know whether Microsoft’s first bid to create an OS for everyone will be successful; pre-release feedback is mixed.

But I’m pretty sure the company will keep plugging away at any problems until this hybrid environment takes hold.

3. Windows 8 appears to signal a new era for Microsoft – more innovative and flexible.

Microsoft is loosening up. When you think back over the company’s long history, its modus operandi was to build software that you the customer had to adapt to – as is. You were forced into whatever paradigm they offered up.

With Windows 8, Microsoft is changing that dynamic. You actually get to customize and make this yours – make a Microsoft OS do what you need/want it to do. Windows 8 connects many different experiences in a highly customized, personalized way.

For instance, Windows 8 is optimized for touch control, but works equally well with mouse and keyboard. It features cloud-based sharing for every device you own: PC, tablet, phone, Xbox – and that means everything is shared … not just music. All of your content will be available everywhere.

All the glitches may not be worked out in the first release, but Windows 8 has taken an important step forward.

Bottom line: No matter what the reaction to Windows 8 may be in the early months, the fact is, it’s Microsoft’s new operating system, and a whole lot of people will be using it. Wouldn’t you rather be early to the party than play catch up later?

What are your thoughts on Windows 8? Will you buy in? Let us know in the comments below.

Here are some unnatural UX designer behaviors to watch out for during your design process:

1. Their eyes glaze over, and they begin doodling when you start talking about your business objectives and your customers.

Some designers want to focus on the creative process without being weighed down by pesky facts, figures and goals that might limit their great design ideas.

2. No testing or user research needed for these mind-readers.

An example from one of our designers: During a discussion of the outcome of A/B testing –which means you run tests to compare users’ responses to two designs – he once heard a senior-level designer say, “Since when do we let users make design decisions?”

“I thought it spoke volumes about his philosophy/approach,” says our designer. “Unfortunately, a lot of UX designers (and their clients) don’t believe in testing their solutions, pre- or post-launch.”

3. They’re not fond of “process.” Oh, and documenting their work.

If your designers don’t keep you in the mix and don’t tell you what they’re doing and when they’re doing it, you’re definitely not working with bonafide UX designers. When building a great website, things like schedules, workflow maps, design reviews, etc. along the way are crucial to a successful project that finishes on time and on budget.

4. They get defensive when you ask questions.

Example: Asked about technical problems during a walk-through of your new site, they brush these problems aside – “Temporary glitches! They’ll be fixed by launch!” – and encourage you to focus on the delightful visual design.

5. They don’t show a single symptom of DOCD (design obsessive-compulsive disorder).

A true UX designer is all about the details … which is what you want in the person creating your website. In website building, missing one key detail along the way can result in painful delays and backtracking.

6. Your every wish can be granted by these miracle-workers. Technology is no obstacle.

This confident brand of UX designer won’t even have to ask you about your technical requirements; they just know their design will work for any company with any technical setup.

“So,” you might ask the Miracle UX Team along the way, “will this work with my existing IT setup? Can my IT department manage it and keep it up-to-date?”

If the response is a) a deer-in-headlights look of panic or b) an immediate Cheshire Cat smile and reassuring pat on the back, you should push back.

You see, skilled UX designers know both the amazing capabilities and the limitations of technology. They will ask you a LOT of questions and set realistic expectations.

In a nutshell: If your UX design team displays any of these unusual habits, run.

***

Thanks so much for “tuning in” for this Real UX series; I hope it’s given you helpful, practical information about what a crack UX design team brings to the table when you’re considering building or revamping a website or application.

In the interactive, digital world we conduct business in today, designing in a vacuum – with no attention given to how users actually use your site or app – is a risky strategy.  My biased (but sincere) advice is that you partner with bonafide UX designers and make your site/app effective and successful the first time out.

Have you noticed any of these troublesome behaviors during a design process? Let me know in the comments.

Why is Windows 8 a big deal?

Todd Bishop: It’s a radical change, for better or for worse; it’s a huge risk – straddle mobile and desktop with 1 operating system – there will be a culture shock as people start to use it; the depth of change is a big deal.

Brier Dudley: It’s a big shift. It’s the vehicle with which Microsoft wants to shift your thinking from the way you view computing; It’s a “tuner” to cloud services, moving from applications on the device to cloud services on whatever device you have access to at the moment.

How will the Apple verdict impact the Win 8 launch?

Brier: Apple is waging war on Android, which is good for Microsoft. It’s created uncertainty about Android, so Microsoft seems safe right now.

Charlie: This is the first time Microsoft has come out with something drastically different from Apple, which is a good thing.

A few quotes that stood out:

“There’s an early Microsoft days opportunity here with the app development for Windows 8, because of the sheer volume of units that will be sold with Windows 8 loaded.” – Todd Bishop

“Microsoft has a tendency to pull the plug if something isn’t successful quickly. However, they’ve continued to pursue the Windows Phone, so it makes me think they’ll stick it out on Windows 8.” – Charlie Claxton

“Apple did a good job of beating Microsoft down during the Vista era.” – Brier Dudley

“I think people in the tech community appreciate the effort that Microsoft is making with Windows 8.” – Brier Dudley

“Microsoft is so focused on Windows 8 that they’re missing areas that they could really make a mark – How come I can’t Skype through Kinect yet??” – Todd Bishop

With regards to Windows 8 and our Produxs survey results: “I was pleased that there was ANY amount of enthusiasm.” – Charlie Claxton

“The value prop of Windows 8 is that the stats show we’re all moving to mobile – don’t do a website first, do a mobile app first.” – John Sloat

Make sure and check back with us over the next couple months for updates on Windows 8 app development, how it’s performing and more!

This week, I thought I’d share a bit about the assumptions people have about UX design and finish up with a short “bill of rights” for UX clients – things you should expect when you hire a UX design firm.

What UX design isn’t

Along with my experience, I also checked with our design team to see what common UX myths they run into both on the job and in talking to people about what they do for a living.

Here are the highlights:

“UI (user interface) design and UX (user experience) design are just two ways of referring to the same thing.”

Nope.

These are actually two different things. UI is part of the UX experience. – it’s the piece that you and I interact with when we engage with a product/website/application.

UX is far more all-encompassing, as it is truly defined as the perceptions/responses resulting from the use of a product/service/system. It is subjective and focuses on use. We in the industry use the term “UX” in talking about our work because there are many elements of user-centered methodology at play in a successful application or website.

Your microwave is a great example of UI vs UX. The numbers on the keypad, the presets, the clock, the big button to open the door, the door, etc. – those are the UI, or controls, that (more than likely) a team of folks gathered data for, researched, prototyped, tested and eventually proposed/constructed as a final solution.

The UX, or experience, is the heating of your coffee so you can enjoy drinking every last drop while it’s hot, melting butter for the popcorn that you made to have with the movie you rented, or heating up that last piece of blackberry pie for dessert.

In short, a successful User Interface creates an environment for a successful User Experience.

“All website design is alike.”

There are many people designing websites these days, but there is a huge difference between designing an informational website and a transactional website experience (i.e., one in which your overriding goal is to motivate someone to complete a transaction on your site).  UX designers bring specific expertise to the table that spells the difference between a revenue-generating website and a purely informational one. It’s a different mindset.

“UX design is about making things pretty.”

In the end, we do create visually beautiful websites, but the visual design is only one step in the process.  It’s great to have a show-stopping look and feel for your website, but no one is going to stick around and do business with you if your site doesn’t function well.

We include visual design as part of our UX design process because the visual design translates the brand characteristics (type, color, etc.) into the final experience. It’s what you and I are used to engaging with – the way we can tell the difference between visiting target.com and kmart.com (regardless of the product similarity). What’s important is that the all the elements of the visual design not only reflect the brand but also promote a site’s accessibility.

“UX designers are production artists.”

Every once in awhile, UX designers encounter clients who don’t get that we are experts who – while partnering with them – can think through a complex problem and come up with great solutions.

What they’re really interested in is having us sit at a computer in their offices so they can stand over our shoulders and say, “Move this over there. Wait, no … let’s move it down here.” One of my colleagues calls it the “rent-a-wrist” phenomenon – if that’s all you need,  UX designers are not your best choice, as their wrists are far more specialized and therefore more expensive than the wrists who can click according to instruction!

UX Client Bill of Rights

Now you know what UX design is, as well as what it isn’t.  I’ll wrap up this post with a list of things you should expect when working with a UX design firm:

1.  You have the right to expect a financial payoff from your UX design project.

UX design should lead to increased revenue, whether it flows in (from boosted sales, etc.) or comes as a result of less money going out the door (greater efficiency).

See last week’s post for more detail on this.

2. You have a right to expect a design that is tailored to your needs, your platform(s) and your IT capacities from the get-go.

Don’t accept a UX design that was created in a vacuum according to the personal preferences and ideas of a design team, with little regard for your unique needs and specs. Designs that are adapted after the fact to fit a certain technology or platform won’t be as effective as if the technology decisions/limitations were known during the design process. The UX design process should take the individual client challenges and end game into account from Day 1.

3.  You have the right to expect a design team that delivers the less glamorous, sometimes boring-to-a-client (but essential) user research and functional design as well as the fun, enticing things clients are sure to ooh and aahh over.

We like to joke with clients that the difference between UX design and visual design is that the former is like eating your spinach and the latter is the dessert.

There are critical steps that ensure a healthy foundation for a website or application. These need to be in place in order for the gorgeous visuals that engage clients (and their customers) on an emotional level to shine properly. We agree with our clients that this is the boring part … but the results will make every one of the boring wireframes worth the wait.

Our clients are almost giddy when they see visual designs after weeks or months of looking at “grey-scale” UX design deliverables. When the two are done well in tandem, clients will reap the rewards.

The Real UX Series will end on a humorous note (with any luck) next week. Stay tuned.

Is there anything you still don’t get about UX design and/or its potential for your company? Post your questions in the comments section below.

Now that I’ve thrown out some big-picture context, I’ll use the rest of this series to explain what goes into real, true UX design. There are a lot of misconceptions and assumptions floating around, and it deserves a closer look for the sake of my pride and your budget.

UX design = $$

This is the most important sentence of this blog – of this entire series:

Real UX design helps clients/companies make more money.

That can happen in any number of ways, depending on your company and your goals, but when you invest in UX design, it should always pay off financially.

A couple of examples:

A well-executed ecommerce website design may directly increase your company’s sales.

Or an internal application or “dashboard” may get everyone in your sales division on the same page and cranking so efficiently that your sales go up and your spending goes down.

I find that people tend to think of “design” in general as a fluffy, nice-to-have concept in the business world. In fact, UX design done right is a powerful business tool – a must-have (in my humble – but fact-backed – opinion).

What makes real UX design powerful?

For you to buy into my argument that UX design is a money-making tool, I’ll give you a quick tour of the steps that go into it without taking you too far into the weeds.

1.  We take time to talk with you/your team to understand your business and what you’re looking to accomplish with our help.

2.  We then come up with what we think is the best strategy. We explain why and make changes according to your feedback.

3.  Some people begin to doze off when you use the word “research,” so I’ll just say that the next step is doing our homework – specifically doing whatever it takes to understand what will motivate a target user. We use any number of research/analytic tools to arrive at what will make your target users do what you want them to do … and in turn make your business more successful.

Our homework may include (but isn’t limited to) these steps:

• Interviews (remote or in person)
• Contextual inquiries (studying users in the context of using a tool or application)
• Focus groups
• Analytics
• Usability testing
• A/B or multi-variable testing

4.  Once we have the data we need, we tackle another step that clients sometimes see as boring but is absolutely crucial to “real,” effective UX design – creating the underlying “architecture” of a website or application. This is the part that ensures that what we design for clients will run well and reliably for users and will be easy for a company to update and maintain.

We get pretty excited about this part, because it’s what makes the design tick. We can know everything there is to know about what will motivate your target users, but if our design doesn’t function, all the rest is pointless.

5.  Finally, we turn to the glamorous part: visual design. Like our clients, we love reaching the point where we layer the beautiful imagery on top of a strong, intuitive architecture – creating an inviting, aesthetically pleasing experience for the user.

The bottom line

If you decide that UX design would help your company with specific challenges or big-picture business objectives, I recommend doing your homework as you choose your experts: If the designers/design shops you check out are not talking about the steps I’ve just touched on, you won’t get true UX design … or the financial payoff it brings.

Any thoughts about how UX design could boost your company’s bottom line?

Next up in the series:

The flip side … what UX design isn’t. A sampling of common misconceptions, offered up by our veteran designers – as well as the top signs you’re not working with a real UX designer.

But UX design is often used either incorrectly or overly broadly, and to clear things up, we’ve put together a primer. Our next few blog posts will help you recognize true, bottom-line-focused UX design and avoid falling for beautiful “exteriors” that were created without user-centered design best practices.

Although we all encounter UX design every day, many people don’t recognize it when they see it – and benefit from it. So we begin the series with a quick look at how UX design plays into our personal lives and the business world.

UX (User Experience) in the Real World

I’m passionate about what I do, but explaining it can lead to blank stares. When I mention the term “UX design,” I can almost see the gears turning in their heads (“Am I supposed to know what that is?”).

Because UX design tends to sound so foreign to people despite being such a big part of our day-to-day lives,  I try to demystify it whenever I get the chance.

So before I delve into defining true UX design (as opposed to various piecemeal approaches that are often erroneously tagged as UX design) in next week’s post, I wanted to give you a big-picture sense of how ingrained it is in our world.

Your UX

To fully understand why UX design matters, it helps to look at the impact that great UX and poor UX already have in your life.

At its heart, UX design is about solving problems; that’s what attracted me to this subset of design in the first place – from the time I was young, I loved the idea of taking complex, difficult things and making them easier.

In a professional context, we usually talk about UX design as a discipline focused on making interactions of all kinds more appealing, intuitive, productive and user-friendly – interactions as mundane as opening a door, engaging with customer service departments, making a purchase online or navigating an app.

With those examples alone, I’m betting you’ve had a wildly varying range of experiences, from seamless and quick to confusing and frustrating.

How many times have you encountered terrible UX in the design of a door, something that seems so straightforward? A door may say “PUSH” despite having handles designed to pull. Doors may open out when the space would logically call for them to open inward, or vice-versa. A clothes dryer may have its door put on so that it opens in the wrong direction where it’s situated, leaving you to go to pretzel-like lengths to load and remove your laundry.

The difference between a good or bad interaction is well executed UX design. When an interactive experience has been created with the end user in mind (this part involves research/expertise), the outcome has exponentially better odds at being successful for everyone involved.

A world without UX

Here’s a little food for thought about just how crucial UX design is in today’s consumer and business worlds.

Technology on the go. Without UX design, it’s safe to say that iPods, iPhones and iPads, and their brethren digital music players, smartphones and tablets would not have taken the world by storm. These products were not the first of their kind, but they are the best at fitting seamlessly into our lives.

Ecommerce (shopping for nearly everything imaginable from the comfort of wherever you happen to be) would never have exploded the way that it has.

Consumers would never flock to online retailers unless the interactive experience was convenient and easy to navigate; it’s the specialized knowledge and skill of UX designers that make it so.

Amazon.com launched selling books to the masses online in 1995, and today Amazon is where the masses go to find just about anything you could imagine.

The following year, Expedia.com launched, transforming the travel industry by giving us the power to book our own travel online. Today most of us would never think to do it any other way. Granted, if we look back at those original websites through today’s lenses, it would be like watching the original Star Wars movie and wondering why we thought the special effects were so amazing back in the day.

You probably wouldn’t be intimately acquainted with the lives of high school classmates you haven’t seen in 20 years (some might say this is a good thing).

Social media has been around in one rudimentary form or another since the early 1980s (remember Usenet?), but the concept didn’t go mainstream until after 2000. One could argue that this would never have happened had it not been for social media entrepreneurs embracing UX principles and applying them to the entire social experience.

You wouldn’t enjoy the convenience and ease offered by voice command technology, touch screens, etc. (touch screens are so intuitive that even toddlers figure out the navigation in no time).

Though we need to reach a point where the technology could be mass-produced before it caught on for the masses, there was a high dependency on UX design to facilitate its mainstream adoption.  UX designers have been involved in the creation of countless interactions that you rely on every day without realizing what makes it possible. That seamlessness and invisibility is the hallmark of great UX design.

In a nutshell, it’s hard to make money, conduct business efficiently, and navigate daily personal business without UX design. I hope you’ll come back to read the rest of the Real UX blog series; it may change the way you think about how you do business.