My UX Approach

Experience is a series of interactions.

UX is everywhere in our life - setting alarm for work every night, making tea, taking the bus to school, and of course, checking message and email on your smartphone as well.

Let’s take a look at the experience when someone is taking the bus to school:

01. The Motivation / Before

It’s a school day and have to be at school at 9am

02. The Experience / During

Go to the correct bus stop
Wait for the bus to come
Confirm the bus is the correct one

/ On the bus /

Get on
Pay bus fare
Find a place to sit/stand
Stay alert when to stop the bus
Press stop button in the right time
Ready to get off
Confirm this is the right stop and get off

03. The Post-Experience / After

Walk to school from the bus station
Arrive at school on time

We design to fill the gaps inside a series of interactions,

or commonly said: problem-solving

As everyone in the industry is saying, our design is filling the gap between the user situation and user expectation.

All products and services, no matter they are digital or not, connected to our real-life events and experiences. If designer ignored the motivation stage and the post-experience, only focused on the interactions on the product itself, it will create blind spots, affecting the design and evaluation of the product/service, and the design outcome will not be as perfect as planned and imagined.

And what makes the user uses the product/service? Because:
It is matching their motivation (user needs)

It is more favourable than other options (product features)

It is believed to be delivered (user expectation towards product)

Holistic Experience Design - Before, During & After

We can divide any experience into 3 phases - [ Before | During | After ]

Before: What motivates the user?
Positive or negative motivation doesn’t affect much because they all motivate the user to conduct the following interactions.

During: How was the experience?
Depend if it is a smooth journey or not, but barriers will not 100% bring down the experience. The “During” can also be divided into phrases, like [beginning stage - intermediate stage - ending stage].

After: Was it delivered as expected? Does it lead to any unwanted issue? ( can be a factual issue or it’s just feeling, neutral to happy)
Depend if the “after experience” and the connection to the next event causing drawbacks or serious issue. But it won’t turn down one’s feelings.

The 4 Combinations and corresponding results of Before, During & After

01. Successful Case

Normal happy path:

They have a situation that motivates them to use the product or service
During using the product or service, they found it smooth and easy to complete
The experience ended as they expected, connection to the next event is seamless

02. Slightly Successful Case

Some barriers occurred when archiving the outcome, but a fruitful result:

They have a situation that motivates them to use the product or service
During using the product or service, they found it hard and not easy to complete
The experience ended finally, connection to the next event is seamless

03. Slightly Unsuccessful Case

Smooth experience, with some drawbacks:

They have a situation that motivates them to use the product or service
During using the product or service, they found it smooth and easy to complete
The experience didn’t end as they expected, barrier occurred in the connection to the next event

04. Unsuccessful Case

Barriers when archiving the outcome, not satisfactory result

They have a situation that motivates them to use the product or service
During using the product or service, they found it hard and not easy to complete
The experience didn’t end as they expected, barrier occurred in the connection to the next event

UX is not about the user only, but it is a mixture of provider, user and the interactions in between

User experience is never only about the user or the provider(business), it is an art to balance both expectation by knowing and designing a better interaction between them.

As the whole experience is really complicated, usually I’ll review it in the following flow, to check if there is any unknown sector before kick-starting the project: