7 Points You Must Consider When Selecting a User Experience Design Agency

Successful digital products require a good user experience (UX). UX is about knowing your users and what they need and value, as well as how they interact with your product or online presence.

UX best practices involve designing the ideal experience for your website, application, or software system. When choosing a user experience design agency, you want to base your selection on how these experts can address these critical factors about the product that will influence the user’s experience.

Is the Product Useful?

A product that isn’t useful will not survive against competing projects that have a clear purpose. At the same time, the project doesn’t have to be useful in a traditional way — a video game can be considered useful if it allows the user to unwind and relax after a difficult day at work or school. Similarly, a painting may be considered useful for its spiritual value and how it makes the user feel.

Is the Product Usable?

Is your product intuitive and user-friendly? If not, more thought may need to be put into its design. Products with an interface that is not easy to navigate will have difficulty gaining traction in the open market. Often companies are so anxious to get their product or website out that they’ll sacrifice quality in order to meet deadlines – think about how computer games are released but often have updates to download later.

How Findable Is the Product?

Findability is the idea that the product and any information within it must be organised in a simple, easily searchable manner. How often have you left a poorly designed website when you just weren’t able to find the information you were looking for? Similarly, if you entered a bookstore and the titles were not arranged logically in each section, imagine how difficult it would be to find the book you were looking for.

Does the Product Have Credibility?

Do users trust what you are telling them through or about your product? Is the information credible, factual, and evergreen? In this day and age, if you cannot give users a reason to trust your product rather quickly, there are plenty of alternatives for them to choose from. They can and will leave in a matter of seconds unless you give them a reason to stay, and they will likely tell others, either personally or in negative feedback, about your site or product.

How Desirable Is the Product?

Desirability in design plays on the user’s emotions and is conveyed through image, aesthetics, identity, and branding. A user who has a popular product is more likely to show it off and ramp up a similar desire in others. For example, both Toyota and Porsche make useful and dependable vehicles, but a Porsche is much more desirable. If one were given the choice of a free car from either of these companies, many people would choose Porsche.

Is the Product Accessible?

Accessibility in a product provides an experience that can be utilised by users of all abilities – including people who are learning-, motion-, vision-, or hearing-impaired. While some corporations see putting this extra effort into the design as a waste of money because they think that people with handicaps make up only a small portion of their audience, it is actually estimated that close to 20% of the population in developed nations are impaired in some way. When you design your product to be usable by people of all abilities, it will be easier for everyone to use your product.

Does the Product Have Value?

Keep in mind that the value of an item is one of the key influences in purchasing decisions. The product must prove to be valuable to the user as well as to the business that created it. Without this, the product’s initial success will likely be brief as more consumers find better options on the market.

Choosing a user experience design agency can seem like a daunting task. However, if you keep in mind how you would like these questions to be answered, you will have a good starting point for your selection.