Posted 1 year ago (March 2, 2011 at 12:00 AM) in Design, Us
Anyone who's ever taken a glance at the "About Us" section here at rise.net knows that one of the rock stars on our roster is Ian Sholtys, User Experience Strategist extraordinaire. What exactly does a UX Strategist do, you ask? And just what is UX strategy, while we're at it?
We figured it best to let Master Sholtys tell you about that in his own words, being the guru of such things here at Rise, after all. Take it away, Maestro!
===
In a web design production team, there are many roles which are easy to understand. Designers work their Photoshop magic with logos, colors and images. Copywriters create a voice for the site and polish the text to perfection. Developers make the functional elements of the site, and indeed the site itself. But what does the nebulous User Experience designer/strategist do?
User Experience (UX) is where form meets function, and as its name implies, it focuses on the experience of the user.
Imagine that you're designing a homepage for a website that sells shoes–well before you start designing or building, you need to know what to put on the page and how to arrange it. There are a lot of possibilities between "a welcome message" and "everything and the kitchen sink", and it's up to the UX Strategist to figure out the best solution. A UX Strategist considers the site's users and works to prioritize the most important information and actions based on their goals. Do users check back frequently for one-day specials, or are they more interested in the latest footwear from overseas? Is there a valuable newsletter with exclusive coupons, or a contest for users to submit photos of themselves wearing their purchases in exotic locations?
A UX Strategist's job doesn't end there, though. In addition to considering the placement of each piece of information, the flow and feel of the whole page has to be evaluated. Put too many "hot items" on the homepage and they might not feel very special. Include lots of features, all begging for attention, and a user might feel overwhelmed with the options, and become distracted by less important things or leave the site entirely. On the other end of the spectrum, though, make a homepage too sparse and the site might feel abandoned, stale, and small.
Even when the planning of a site has been documented thoroughly for other team members to build from, a UX Strategist is still necessary to make sure that the plans were indeed effective when translated into a functional site. Thorough testing, when in the mindset of users or with other people who are unfamiliar to the project, can reveal stumbling blocks which couldn't be anticipated. Being deeply familiar with the requirements and the reasons behind each feature, the UX Strategist is perfectly positioned to revisit new features and pages as they're completed, and identify areas to be streamlined and polished.
There's a lot of planning that goes into making a good website. You can't just start putting in images and text while hoping that it will all fit together nicely–no more than you can expect to start building a house without designs and floor plans. Working with a User Experience Strategist, and employing user-centered design in general, lays the foundation for a solid site which will appeal to real users.
