Design is such a natural human ability that almost everyone is designing most of the time—whether they are conscious of it, or not.

—Harold Nelson, Erik Stolterman,
   in "The Design Way"

Design = Change

for a better stage.

A Strategic Process

to create a better experience for your target audiences.

UX is the intangible design of a strategy that brings us to a solution.

—Erik Flowers​,
   Principal Service Designer at Intuit

   helloerik.com

The interface IS NOT
the solution.

That’s the true heart of the battle between UX and those who only want UI—or don’t know the difference.

UX

User Experience

How people feel while using the product

UI

User Interface

What people interact with while using the product

Emotion

Technical

UI is what people see and touch. It is what comes to mind when thinking of a product or an experience. But the UI stands on the top of a huge UX mountain. The better the UI works, the bigger the UX beneath. The message we must spread is simple: UX is not UI.

—Erik Flowers​,
   Principal Service Designer at Intuit

   helloerik.com

UX

UI

is a part of

What people typically see
in UX process

• Interface Design
• Visual Design

What are actually included in
UX process (uxisnotui.com)

• Field research
• Face to face interviewing
• Creation and administering of tests
• Gathering, organizing, and presenting statistics
• Documentation of personas and findings
• Product design
• Feature writing
• Requirement writing
• Graphic arts
• Interaction design
• Information Architecture
• Usability

• Prototyping
• Interface layout
• Interface design
• Visual design
• Taxonomy creation
• Terminology creation
• Copy writing
• Presentation and speaking
• Working tightly with programmers
• Brainstorm coordination
• Company culture evangelism
• Communication to stakeholders

It’s a huge strategic process that aims to create a product or website that customers/users/visitors are drawn to, find easy to use, and quickly understand. Through the UX work we’ll arrive at the right interface conclusion.

—Erik Flowers​,
   Principal Service Designer at Intuit

   helloerik.com

• Ability to compete on a new level
• Lowered cost of support
• Strengthening user ties to your product
• The absolute best marketing
• Increase ROI

The ROI of User Experience with Dr. Susan Weinschenk (5:51)

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

—Ernst Friedrich Schumacher

Personas

Fiction representations of your target user base

Your Imaginary
Best Friends

In 2005, Ursula Dantin of the University of Auckland in New Zealand conducted a study to prove the effectiveness of creating and using personas
in UI design by comparing her school system (Cecil) with Turnitin.com.

Her research showed, not surprisingly, that personas helped the design process,
an in no small way.

Identifying personas and performing their tasks helped introduce clarity and accountable reasoning into the UI evaluation process. Using personas in combination with Nielsen usability heuristics was not time consuming and required no additional software applications. This suggests that personas are an inexpensive yet effective option for UI design. Even after implementation, personas can be a valuable tool to assess usability and pinpoint areas
for improvement. 

—Ursula Dantin from the University of
   Auckland in New Zealand