User experience (UX) design offers an intuitive experience for the user of any digital platform. It makes their life easier and actually, good UX should go unnoticed because the user will know exactly what to do next.
I read a great quote about this on Twitter recently “UX makes the new feel familiar”– you shouldn’t have to read up on how to use something, it should just make sense!
Here at Strafe Creative, we focus on great UX together with stand-out aesthetics – we say ‘make it beautiful but make it functional too’. This approach can be the difference between a user loving your platform vs giving up after 10 minutes of trying to find their way around.
UX design is about the why, what and how of your product’s usage
“Design is really an act of communication, which means having a deep understanding of the person for whom the designer is communicating.” – Donald A. Norman.
The term UX design was coined in the 1990s by Don Norman, an American cognitive science researcher, professor, and author. It focuses on 3 key principles of your SaaS design
- The Why – UX designers research and define the motivations, values and views of your target customer (this is one of the reasons why we do so much initial research at the beginning of all our projects)
- The What – then we design the functionality and built-in features of your application based on user needs
- The How – finally we address accessibility and usability to keep your customer satisfied during their customer journey
We cycle through 4 basic questions during the design process 
To answer these, you’ve got to be clear on four key things:
User Research (UR)
UX designers use in-depth research, surveys and focus groups to learn about your customer. This knowledge forms a user persona, which we refer to when creating your design.
Experience Strategy (ExS)
This is the holistic approach a UX design team will use to incorporate customer and business needs within the design.
Interaction Design (IxD)
As you would expect this strategy is about the usability and accessibility of your design – we build out high-fidelity prototypes to test and ensure that the interactions between pages and features work as a user would expect. Designers use user personas to create software functions that focus on engaging experiences.
Information Architecture (IA)
At Strafe, we actually refer to this as ‘Content Hierarchy’. We review how we want the user to flow through the relevant information in the design; how and when you present pages, navigation and calls to action that satisfy the user.
Why UX design is good for business
- UX design makes the onboarding process easy
- Good UX design creates more daily users through added value and intuitive use
- Reduces support tickets
- Increases paid plan opt-ins
- Increases trial to customer rate
- Improves take-up of new features
Read more: Why UX design is important for your digital product
Incorporating UX design into your digital product, both at pre-launch and post-launch updates ultimately increases your ROI and builds your profits.
Here are some interesting stats that back that up. Design-led companies reported 41% higher market shares, 46% high competitive advantage and 50% more loyal customers according to a research study by Adobe, carried out by A Forrester Consulting.
Ultimately UX Design centres your concept around the customer
We have all tried SaaS apps to help us with daily tasks. The ones we have discarded didn’t answer our needs as a customer. Those we trialled and gave up on didn’t satisfy our daily needs and desires. Those we loved from the first use, we have become addicted to and happily refer friends and colleagues to. These are the apps that become household brands.
How do they do this?
They put the customer first.
And they do it by employing strong UX design at every stage of the product lifecycle to understand and serve the customer with the right features and information points at the right time.
