user-experience

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User experience, often abbreviated as UX, refers to the total experience a user has with a tool, or even an entire company, across all methods of communication and interaction with that tool, including both direct interactions using a tool UI and indirect interactions via other tools such as email, SMS, phone calls, in-person human representatives of the tool or company, etc.

Why

Why UX? A good UX should/will make you more productive, more in control (user agency), while minimizing frustration.

How

Iterating with your own use-cases (scratching your own itches, per principles) helps you at least build a good UX for yourself, as long as you do use it yourself (selfdogfood).

Then if/when you have a second user, watch *how* they use your software, and take notes. Watch where they get stuck, or frustrated. Listen to them verbalize *what* they want to get down, but be very ware of anything they say about *how* they want to do it, or any opinions about tools etc.

Beware of

Beware of just "asking" users what they want. They're usually wrong (they don't have sufficient self-cognition plus design skills to do so, not their fault) and you'll usually get bad outcomes if you try to build accordingly.

See video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw9gaEiQAxY

Or:

See Also

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience
• UI
• design
• 2017-11-19 Convenience isn’t digital / Why we need a different response to convenience in a digital age
• Bad mobile UI example: Fast Company: https://twitter.com/fredbenenson/status/1127020290947436545
  • "Congratulations to @FastCoDesign for one of the most egregious examples of mobile cruft I’ve ever seen. It’s actually impressive how bad this is: the initial page load manages to display zero actual content" @fredbenenson May 11, 2019
• ^^^
• https://daringfireball.net/2004/04/spray_on_usability
• Thread: Anime computer human interface design examples and inferred principles: https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1238561450727112704 (see gifs / photos / videos)
  • "I want to build an anime computer.
    big CRT monitor, very high res.
    weird boxy shape.
    keyboard: lots of unlabeled rectangles and/or triangles
    
    (from https://specialkam.tumblr.com/post/67820544102)" @Foone March 13, 2020
• https://twitter.com/DudeWhoCode/status/1327416318308466688
  • "Client: We don't want to spend time on UX. Our product is easy to use, anyone should underst...
    
    User:
    
    https://t.co/0tnZ6NfbOk" @DudeWhoCode November 14, 2020
• Criticism (and warning of dark patterns): 2021-01-28 Why I'm losing faith in UX (UX as User Exploitation)