7 Ways to Enhance Your Product With UX

User Experience is critical to the success or failure of a product in the market, but all too often, UX is confused with usability, which describes how easy a product is to use. While it is true that UX as a discipline was all about usability, UX has grown much more than usability, and paying attention to all facets of UX in order to deliver successful products to market is vital. 

Here are the key 7 ways that are enhanced in your product by User Experience:

If you're interested in learning how WANDR can make your UX goals happen, schedule a free consultation here.

1. UX Design Determines if the Product is Useful

Why bring a product to the market if it isn’t useful? A product cannot withstand tough market conditions if it can’t deem itself useful. 

It’s important to note that a product's usefulness is in the eye of the beholder, and a product can be labeled ‘useful’ if it delivers non-practical benefits like fun or aesthetic appeal.

2. UX Design Makes the Product Easy to Use

Product usability allows users to reach their end object efficiently and effectively. Though I don’t think Virtual Reality (VR) is practical with its peripherals and wires, for now; it is what it is.

A product can be successful if the market labels it as not usable, but there’s less probability of it.

First-generation products are often associated with poor usability...

...like first-generation MP3 players. Once the more usable iPod entered the market, MP3 players lost the race. The iPod improved upon the flaws of the MP3 player and built itself to be a truly functional MP3 player.

3. Navigation Made Easy with UX

In today’s world, a product must be easy to find and navigate along with the content. Why? Because if the user can’t find the content on your website, they’re going to start looking somewhere else instead. Time is money. Time is precious, at least for most of us. Due to the factor called ‘limited lifespan’, product findability is critical to the user experience design.

4. Building Trust Over the Product

In the 21st century where there are plenty of alternatives for anything that you can think of, users aren’t going to spare a second thought for your product if it doesn’t seem credible. Users will exit your product within seconds unless there’s a strong reason for them to stay behind. 

Credibility means earning the trust of the user with the product that’s on their screen. It’s not just about product usability but also about trusting in spending a reasonable amount of time using your product that serves its purpose.

It’s not at all possible to deliver a user experience if the user starts to think that the product is created with foul intentions. Without any hesitation, they’ll move their attention span somewhere else - despite remembering the terrible experience left behind by the previous product. In this case, word-of-mouth can have an adverse effect on your product.  

5. Desirability Matters.

Ford and Porsche are big-time automobile manufacturers. Both the brands tick a lot of boxes ranging from useful, findable, accessible, usable, valuable, and credible- but for me, Porsche is more desirable than Ford. I’m not saying that Ford is undesirable. If spoiled with the choice of choosing between a new Porsche or a Ford for free, most people will go for Porsche.

Image, branding, identity, aesthetics, and emotional design are some of the design elements that mold the desirability of a product. A desirable product is more likely to get earn some extra marketing outreach from its users to the outside world.

Whilst we can appreciate Ford —we all tend to yearn for a car that screams ‘Look at me!’ and is pure power on four wheels.

6. Enhance Accessibility

At most times, accessibility doesn’t get its due credit when it comes to crafting user experiences. It’s all about allowing a user to fully immerse and experience the full range of the product — this also includes those who are disabled in hearing, vision, motion, or learning impaired. 

Because of the misconception that people with disabilities make a small fraction of the audience, designing for accessibility is often overlooked by companies. In fact, according to this census report in the United States, at least 19% of people had a disability in 2010, and it is likely that this number is higher in less developed nations. 

That’s 1 in 5 people in the audience of your product who might not use it because it isn’t accessible - or 20% of your total market.

It’s also worth noting that when a product is designed for accessibility, the product ends up being easier for everyone to use and just for people with disabilities. Let’s not ignore accessibility when it comes to user experience; it isn’t about courtesy but about heeding some common sense.

7. Provide Value by Solving Problems

If the product fails to deliver any value, its initial clout will start clearing and economics starts to take its natural course to undermine the product. As product designers, it’s critical to remember how value has a pivotal role when it comes to influencing purchasing decisions. 

A $200 product that solves a $20,000 problem is the one that is likely to succeed; a $20,000 product that solves a $200 problem is far less likely to do so.

The success of a product relies not just on utility and usability. Products that are useful, usable, credible, findable, accessible, desirable, and valuable have a higher chance to succeed in today’s market.

Want to know more about how UX can enhance your product? Check out our full blog here.

Interested in working with WANDR for your UX/UI goals? Schedule a call today!