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In 1956, Gillis Lundgren - IKEA’s catalog manager, was tasked with delivering a new, leaf-shaped table called the Lovet to a nearby photo studio. During the process, he got frustrated trying to fit the table into his small post-war car and started thinking about a potential solution.
This thought process led IKEA to adopt the iconic flat pack design.
It’s amazing how this one simple design change translated into several benefits for the Sweden-based furniture store:
- The flat packaging helps IKEA keep furniture prices lower, making them accessible to many customers.
- Flatpack furniture is lightweight and easy to transport in Ikea stores and for customers on their way home.
- The boxes are space-saving for both IKEA stores and customers.
- It encourages designers to create functional products that are also clean and minimalist.
This story of IKEA’s flat-packaged furniture shows how user experience design can revolutionize an entire industry, impacting millions of users worldwide and delivering business value.
How Airbnb Aimed To Design Better User Experience For Specially Abled Users
Airbnb known for its user experience, recognized that it wasn’t effectively designing for specially-abled people. After conversing with travelers with disabilities and advocacy groups, the brand started to hear their stories, gain perspective, and learn how to do better.
The main takeaway was that their previous solution—a “wheelchair accessible” option to filter accessible homes—failed to meet their needs. Guests could not find the apt information to find a suitable accommodation. To address this issue, Airbnb started working on a new “Accessibility Needs” feature with filters for guests.
Is UX Design The Same As User Interface (UI) Design?
As opposed to UX design, UI design is the interface that the users engage with. It includes components and interactive elements like text, images, button types, typography, and more, all. Here’s a quick take on UI and UX design differences:
Differences Between UI and UX Design
| UX Design | UI Design |
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What Consists Of A UX Design Process?
Effective UX design is centered around user needs and feedback. The key processes include:
Research And Understanding
This includes Identifying users’ pain points, goals, and behaviors to inform detailed user personas. It also involves market analysis to better understand the competitive landscape and identify opportunities for differentiation.
Prototyping And Wireframing
Based on research insights, designers create visual representations of the product's structure and flow. Prototyping involves building interactive mockups for user testing, while wireframes focus on the layout and information hierarchy.
Testing And Iteration
Continuous testing is crucial for refining the design and includes user testing such as A/B testing to gather user feedback along with analytics (heatmaps and session recordings). Post this, iterative refinement takes place, leading to products that truly meet user needs and drive business success.
Implementation
Once the product is ready, it's launched, often in stages to gather additional feedback. Close monitoring of user behavior and performance metrics is essential.
Note: UX design is an ongoing process. Post-launch, teams should continue to gather user feedback, analyze data, and make iterative improvements to enhance the user experience.
What Are The Key Components of User Experience Design?
The key components of user experience design are:
Information Architecture (IA)
IA is the structural design that organizes information to support usability, findability, and understanding, and enhances the user experience.
Interaction Design (IxD)
Interaction design focuses on designing interactive experiences between humans and products. It involves creating intuitive and engaging interfaces that guide users through tasks efficiently. Designers achieve this by applying various user-centered principles and cognitive psychology.
Visual Design
Visual design enhances user experience by creating visually appealing and engaging interfaces. Effective use of color evokes emotions, creates visual hierarchy, and reinforces brand identity, while the right typography contributes to the interface’s overall visual hierarchy and aesthetic appeal.
What Are The Common Principles Of UX?
Covered by the website of the same name, the common laws of user experience include the following:
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Fitts’s Law |
The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target. |
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Aesthetic-Usability Effect |
Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more usable. |
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Doherty Threshold |
Productivity soars when a computer and its users interact at a pace (<400ms) that ensures that neither has to wait on the other. |
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Goal-Gradient Effect |
The tendency to approach a goal increases with proximity to the goal. |
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Jakob’s Law |
Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know. |
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Hick’s Law |
The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices. |
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Law Of Common Region |
Elements tend to be perceived into groups if they are sharing an area with a clearly defined boundary. |
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Law Of Proximity |
Objects that are near, or proximate to each other, tend to be grouped together. |
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Law Of Prägnanz |
People will perceive and interpret ambiguous or complex images as the simplest form possible, because it is the interpretation that requires the least cognitive effort of us. |
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Law Of Similarity |
The human eye tends to perceive similar elements in a design as a complete picture, shape, or group, even if those elements are separated. |
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Law Of Uniform Connectedness |
Elements that are visually connected are perceived as more related than elements with no connection. |
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Miller’s Law |
The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory. |
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Occam’s Razor |
Among competing hypotheses that predict equally well, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. |
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Pareto Principle |
The Pareto principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. |
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Parkinson’s Law |
Any task will inflate until all of the available time is spent. |
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Peak-End Rule |
People judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak and at its end, rather than the total sum or average of every moment of the experience. |
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Postel’s Law |
Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send. |
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Serial Position Effect |
Users tend to best remember the first and last items in a series. |
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Tesler’s Law |
Tesler's Law, also known as The Law of Conservation of Complexity, states that for any system there is a certain amount of complexity which cannot be reduced. |
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Von Restorff Effect |
The Von Restorff effect, also known as The Isolation Effect, predicts that when multiple similar objects are present, the one that differs from the rest is most likely to be remembered. |
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Zeigarnik Effect |
People remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks. |
How Axelerant Enhanced User Experience On The Red Hat Developer Portal
Axelerant partnered with Red Hat to redesign their developer portal with the goal of providing an experience-based outlook and a brand new learning experience for developers. The challenge was in:
- Restructuring Information Architecture: Revamp the website's information architecture to support desired user journeys.
- Creating a Roadmap: Align the portal’s design with its business objectives.
- Changing Perception: Shift the "free-software" outlook that Red Hat had among its developer audience.
Our Approach
Our approach was grounded in the Design Thinking and How Might We frameworks, ensuring that the portal would effectively address user problems. We divided our strategy into three key segments:
- Information Architecture & Navigation Redesign
- Website Redesign
- Usability Audit
The implementation of a new information architecture and navigation model has transformed the Red Hat Developer portal. The key outcomes included:
- Enhanced Learning Experience: The portal now offers a streamlined learning experience, enabling developers to track and understand their learning journeys more effectively.
- Personalized Touchpoints: The portal provides a more personalized user experience, keeping users engaged by reducing the cognitive load from unstructured learning resources.
- Improved User Engagement: With a more organized and intuitive design, the developer portal keeps users engaged and focused on their learning paths.
The collaboration has successfully revamped the Red Hat Developer portal, aligning it with business goals and significantly improving the user experience.
Learn more about the impact of user experience design by connecting with our team.
Dheeraj Khindri, Director of Experience Design
A pragmatic soul and cinema enthusiast who enjoys larger-than-life films—that’s Dheeraj. In his free time, he explores all things poetry, solo guitar sessions, and binge-worthy web series. His life’s essential values? Empathy, autonomy, and pragmatism.
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