Frequently Asked User Experience Design Questions

Here are answers to ten commonly asked questions about user experience (UX) design.

Design comes in many forms, which can lead to many questions. Misconceptions are common and everyone seems to have a strong opinion.

However, for agencies that design and develop digital products for clients, these misconceptions can mean the difference between a product that delights and one that frustrates the people you’re trying to reach. If design expectations aren’t properly managed, projects can go off the rails.

Plus, as a Certified B Corp, we’re committed to ensuring all the services we deliver adhere to high standards of transparency and accountability. In other words, we’ll always prioritize more responsible practices in all the work we do, including design.

In addition to those listed on our experience design services page, here are ten common questions that come up during discussions with clients about user experience design.

1. What is user experience design?

User experience design is a creative, multidisciplinary approach to designing digital products and services that prioritizes the needs of end users. It is multidisciplinary in that it combines elements of behavioral psychology and creative problem solving with graphic design, facilitation, computer science, and a focus on continuous improvement through research and testing.

2. What’s the difference between UX Design and experience design?

A subset of experience design, UX design is specific to people visiting a website, mobile app, or other digital experience. Experience design involves other channels and touch points along a person’s journey or experience with your brand, including marketing, customer support, and physical environments.

Organizations that utilize these disciplines in tandem with one another can better meet their customers’ or other stakeholders’ needs in more meaningful ways.

3. What’s the difference between UX design and Design Thinking?

Design Thinking is a strategic, exploratory approach to creative problem solving that typically answers ‘why’ and ‘what’ questions. UX design is more tactical, answering ‘how’ a feasible, delightful, and viable experience can be achieved. Product teams often utilizes Design Thinking as a means to approach successful UX design activities. 

4. Is user experience design an individual role or a collaborative team approach?

Yes! Different companies approach user experience design differently. Often, an organization’s approach is dictated by the size of its team or project, the amount of resources it devotes to UX design practices, and the experience of team members.

Whether implemented by a team or single designer, UX design involves a series of activities strung together in the service of creating successful outcomes for product users.

5. What role does UX design play in early project discovery or roadmapping processes?

Many teams incorporate UX design activities (see next question) as part of early discovery, strategy, or product roadmapping sessions. This helps them create consensus on where an organization’s business goals align with people’s needs in service of a more useful product.

However, UX design doesn’t stop with strategy. Organizations may employ ongoing testing programs to more clearly understand what resonates with visitors and what doesn’t, using the insights derived from testing sessions to improve product features over time.

6. What are some common user experience design activities?

Common user experience design activities can include (but are not limited to):

• User research: A variety of qualitative and quantitative activities to discover what people actually want from your digital product or service.
• Facilitation: Many UX design activities occur in workshops necessary to successfully create a good experience. These workshops require a facilitator who is skilled in collaboration, conflict resolution, sketching, journey mapping, and other activities listed below.
• User or job stories: Hypothesis statements that outline what someone wants from your product or, in the case of job stories, what they will ‘hire’ your product to help them accomplish.
• Journey or experience mapping: Defining the channels, touch points, and perceptions someone experiences when interacting with your product or service.
• Sketching: Drawing activities used to help project stakeholders communicate visual design ideas.
• Wireframes: A collection of components representing potential page layouts that help stakeholders reach consensus before design comps are created. Wireframes are often created through sketching (low-fidelity) or with design tools for higher fidelity deliverables.
• Design comps: Page layout compositions with visual branding, such as fonts, colors, illustrations, and imagery applied.
• Prototypes: Feature representations used to convey interactivity, prototypes can include clickable features such as buttons or simply represent a series of pages or components placed in the order they will be experienced by users.
• User testing: A series of activities where target users review features and provide feedback meant to improve usability. User tests can be conducted in a variety of ways. Qualitative tests typically involve small groups and one-on-one stakeholder interviews whereas quantitative tests collect interactivity data across a wide sample set that enable teams to analyze trends.

7. What makes user experience design ‘sustainable’?

Sustainable design asks how we might apply regenerative social, economic, and environmental justice principles to the process of designing digital products and services. Activities include defining the materials needs of human and non-human stakeholders in each of these areas and designing inclusive, performant, lightweight solutions to address those needs.

8. What makes user experience design ‘inclusive’?

Teams that prioritize designing products for as many people as possible regardless of ability, age, culture, language, gender identity, location, and so on create more inclusive experiences. Inclusive design blends human-centered concepts like accessibility, usability, and inclusivity in the service of creating solutions that work for a broader audience than your ‘typical’ user.

9. How, specifically, does UX design improve digital products?

UX design improves products in many ways. Here are just a few:

• By bringing stakeholders into the design process, teams create better solutions.
• When teams prioritize stakeholder needs, they don’t waste time or resources building features no one wants.
• Using test data to drive decision-making reduces subjectivity during design reviews.
• When products prioritize accessibility, they don’t alienate the up to one billion people around the world who identify as having some sort of physical or cognitive disability. This reduces legal risk as well.
• Good collaboration quickly creates consensus which leads to faster launches.
• By focusing on testing and continuous improvement, products last longer, are more resilient, and better meet people’s needs.

10. Should you include user experience design activities in every digital project?

Not every digital project requires a full set of UX design activities. Sometimes project resources won’t support that. However, all projects can benefit from at least some of the activities described in this post. The more rigor you include in the process of creating your digital product or service, the more likely you’ll be to find success.

We recommend devoting enough time during up front strategy or discovery sessions to match recommended UX design activities with available budget to implement them.