Photo by Jessy Smith on Unsplash
As a designer you’re always looking at how everything is designed around you. This is because it’s good for you design muscles to do so. You get better at design by saying how can this design be better. Even if the design is good, you should look at it and say what about this can be better? The great thing about this is that you can practice this line of thinking anywhere because UX is everywhere! Every product you own has UX. Every website or mobile app you’ve been on has UX.
Spot problems that aren’t being handled
If you want to be a good UX designer, you need to understand that as a designer is to solve problems. That means that you are constantly looking for those problems in daily life. You can look at problems that a business is having and offer up your services. This can in turn lead to you working for them on a more full-time basis. A lot of UXers don’t want to do this because they are against volunteer work, but if you want to set yourself apart from the crowd then this is one of the things you can do.
UX has so many steps to it there are a lot of good that UX can do for a business. Since UX has so much research that goes into it, it uncovers a lot of things that a business needs to do to stay afloat. While going through the steps required as a UX designer, you may uncover that the business needs better branding, better marketing, a recall on products that it produces, better copywriting, so on and so forth. Now, just because you’re the one to notice problems doesn’t automatically mean that you are the one who has to solve all the problems you notice.
UX is not just physical
Part of the reason why people have a misunderstanding of what UX is because UX is not just the physical. As a matter of fact, that’s where the term UI/UX comes from. Think of the human anatomy. The UX is the skeleton and UI is the exoskeleton that goes on top of the skeleton. I.e., every physical or digital object has a UI and underneath that UI lies the UX.
One example of UX being everywhere is a trash can that has a foot pedal. With that type of trash can, you can open the trash can and throw away garbage without touching the can with your hands. Personally, I like that sort of stuff because I can avoid the feeling that comes from touching something that’s dirty.
Another example would be those doors in bathrooms that can be opened without you touching the handle. This is because the door has a foothold where you can pull the door with your foot or an arm handle where you can open the handle with your arm. It grosses me out when people walk out of the restroom without washing their hands so doors like these are a great idea to me!
UX is in every industry
When I say that UX is everywhere one of the things I mean is that UX is applicable to pretty much any field that you can think of. I.e., you can be a UX designer who works in IT, Law, the medical field, sports, or whatever other fields you can think of. Most UX design jobs will be like this. This is because even though design is its own industry it’s also a tool, a tool to be used for communication and every industry needs this.
I think part of the reason why UX is being found in so many industries is because companies are starting to realize the value of having a UX designer on their team. The UX designer can help the company realize what they are doing wrong and help them maximize profits as a result.
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