This is the third post in a three-part series on the online experience of the user. You can read about usability and user interface design in my previous two posts. Whether you work in a special library, museum, or archive considering, the user experience of visitors to your website is important and necessary.

Often, an individual’s first impression of your organization is determined by a website. As I mentioned previously, usability and user interface design are sub-parts of user experience design, so let’s finish up this series by bringing everything together.

User Experience Defined

According to the Interaction Design Foundation “user experience (UX) design is the process design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. This involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability and function.”

UserTesting gives insight into the purpose of UX design when they quoted a study from the Oxford Journal Interacting with Computers that said, “the goal of UX design in business is to “improve customer satisfaction and loyalty through the utility, ease of use, and pleasure provided in the interaction with a product.” This goal can also be true for our organizations. If we work in a for-profit setting, then building customer satisfaction and loyalty are considerations. In non-profit settings, our websites help to support and further our missions (Morville, 2004).

There are seven factors included in user experience design: useful, usable, desirable, findable, accessible, credible, and valuable. These factors were identified by Morville and then described as:

• Useful: Your content should be original and fulfill a need
• Usable: Site must be easy to use
• Desirable: Image, identity, brand, and other design elements are used to evoke emotion and appreciation
• Findable: Content needs to be navigable and locatable onsite and offsite
• Accessible: Content needs to be accessible to people with disabilities
• Credible: Users must trust and believe what you tell them (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2019)
• Valuable: the site must be seen as adding value to the visitor (Morville, 2004)

Application of User Experience Design

In your special library, museum, or archive, you will want to think specifically about how to incorporate user experience design into your website. To create a good user interface experience, consider why individuals visit your site. Once those reasons are clearly articulated you can start determining the best design strategies for each of the seven factors of user experience design.

Once the why is identified, you can start helping web designers understand what your users need and how they will be interacting with the site.

Conclusion

This post completes the three-part series on the user experience. This is a topic I am very passionate about and hope you have found it helpful. Many of our users visit our websites before they interact with any employee or visit our organizations in person. Spending time designing a good user experience is worth the effort.

Recommended Resources

Garrett, J. J. (2000). Elements of user experience. Retrieved from
http://uxdesign.com/assets/Elements-of-User-Experience.pdf

References

Interaction Design Foundation. (2019). What is user experience (UX) design? Retrieved from
https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/ux-design

Morville, P. (2004). User experience design. Retrieved from
http://semanticstudios.com/user_experience_design/

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2019). User experience basics. Retrieved from
https://www.usability.gov/what-and-why/user-experience.html

UserTesting. (2019). What is UX design? 15 user experience experts weigh in. Retrieved from
https://www.usertesting.com/blog/what-is-ux-design-15-user-experience-experts-weigh-in/