You Can't Miss...The User Experience

Yesterday's post on Smashing Magazine starts by saying: "A lot of designers seem to be talking about user experience (UX) these days. We’re supposed to delight our users, even provide them with magic, so that they love our websites, apps and start-ups. User experience is a very blurry concept. Consequently, many people use the term incorrectly."

What's crazy about this model that they discuss is that I see both sides of the spectrum. Growing up I was the user -- so I chose my magazines based on what I saw on the cover as it related to me because that made me like the product and it had the special appeal. But now that I'm at Mizzou I have been taught to focus on those first four product features as a designer: content (always content...that has been drilled into my head over the last four years), presentation, functionality and interaction. And as far as the center section is concerned -- both the designers and the users manipulate, stimulate and identify each other, which is why I believe both parties take part in that step of the model.


What's most important in this post however, was the final section -- telling us that we can not design the user experience because we can not design the use. However, we can design for the user -- and that was the plan all along.