7 Common UX Design Myths

And how to avoid them.

Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash

Greetings everyone, fellow seekers of truth. It’s about time to bust some myths around UX/Product Design.

First of all, I wanted to thank everyone who read my last story about “Things I wish I knew when I started Designing”, cuz’ it got really widespread and I hope it helped some newbies to find their career path as well. And I am really excited to discuss with you all other topics related to the UX.

Honestly speaking, I’m not that much skilled in UX Design, however I’ve already faced those misconceptions during the design process. Some of them are really “popular”, some are based on specific data and may vary from service to service.

Let’s roll.

Myth #1: UX = UI

One of the most popular misconceptions of all time. People that aren’t in this area might think those two disciplines are the same and represent same results and outcomes. But, actually, no.

Well, I’m not gonna go deep in details of each area, cuz’ there are so much topics been already discussed throughout the whole Internet. Instead, I will try to explain my vision as simple as possible.

UX stands for “User Experience” and involves end-user interaction with the company, its products and services. In other words, this is a process of defining users’ problems and solving them before they realize it.

UI stands for “User Interface” and involves color codes, buttons, forms, text fonts, visual hierarchy and etc. It is responsible for visual product perception, while making the interface more attractive, aesthetic and sometimes “trendy”.

So, as you can see, UX is more about science and UI is more about art.

The picture below demonstrates my vision of a UX and UI design.

Well, you may wonder what CX stands for. “Customer Experience” to be exact, but that’s not kinda topic to discuss it here. We’ll cover it later on (I promise).

But some people might think “Why UX covers UI? These are different disciplines which interact with each other, not inside each other”. And they will be right. However, let’s consider basic stages of UX Design process (in short):

Understand

If you have four hours to chop down a tree, spend the first three hours sharpening your axe. — Popular proverb

Well, this is the stage where you try to identify your brand, users and deliverables. You have to comprehend the user’s pain points by answering the following question: What’s their problem?

Research

This stage gonna be the “blood” of your project. Things you will identify, discover and challenge will be the foundation layer for your product’s lifecycle.

Some great tools for user research:

• Interviews
• Surveys
• Usability Tests

Analyze

During this step, you will be (obviously) analyzing all gathered information from the previous stage in order to specify most important elements.

Couple of ways to make an analysis:

• Customer Journey map
• User Personas

Design

Here comes the “art” part. This is the stage where you literally “push pixels” in order to reach the desired outcome. That means building:

• User Flow
• Mockups
• Colors
• Buttons
• Icons
• Images
• Components

Sounds like the “UI thing” isn’t it? This whole stage is about User Interface Design and its principles. This is where you have to design in terms of your product/service, brand guidelines and some “trendy things”.

Of course, you can start designing the User Interface for some “fake concepts” and mockups, but for the real product which will be used by thousands or (hopefully) millions of users, it is inevitable to lay out a rigid foundation for your product.

Remember: this is an iterative process which means you won’t have an ideal solution at first time. You’ll have to design, redesign, erase everything and start from scratch all over again.

Launch

Typically the last stage where you release your product’s features, solutions, improvements to your audience. Generally speaking, this is not formally the last step, cuz’ you’ll have to iterate and return to the Analysis again, to measure your improvements whether you succeeded or not.

By this time, you can easily identify between UI and UX, their deliverables, processes and vision.

Let’s move onto the second myth.

Myth #2: Users don’t scroll

One of the most serious misleadings is that Designers, Devs and Managers tend to think that people usually do not scroll, and there is no necessity in providing information at the bottom of a web page or mobile app. They might be right since all important information is almost always above the fold, but in order to make sure that people will scroll, several design principles should be followed and interesting content should be also provided.

People do scroll. And nearly half of them even scroll till the bottom of the page.

Here is some research proving users’ scrollings:

• What You Think You Know About the Web Is Wrong
• The myth of the page fold: evidence from user testing
• Unfolding the Fold

Those investigations really found out that people actually scroll and they scroll a lot. In mid-nineties people didn’t scroll that much, why? My suggestion (in addition) is that impact of social networks takes place. The logic of “feed” had a significant influence on every user’s experience and, currently, scrolling has become an essential part of every web page, mobile app, etc.

Keep in mind that content above the fold will still get the most attention and is also crucial for users in deciding whether your page is worth reading at all.

Myth #3: You’re like your user

While designing, let’s say, a website, some Designers suggest like everyone is like them. They expect the same vision, same logic, functionality and emotions while using a product. This causes a strong bias and usually leads to a bad design or useless purpose of the website. Why?

The problem is that you as a Designer already know a lot about thy product, its advantages and drawbacks. You are passionate and know how it operates and you have a deep-down knowledge about its back side things. Users, in contrast, don’t really care that much because they want to get things done using your website. Moreover, attitudes, goals and expectations vary as well.

Knowing how people will use something is essential. — Donald Norman

Many of your users are coming to your site or using your product for the very first time. Many of them have a goal in mind and are using your product because they believe it will help them achieve that goal. And others are cautiously poking around, cuz’ little unsure due to previous experiences left them confused and dissatisfied.

How to avoid it? Conduct a research. Fortunately, there are a bunch of tools and techniques you can implement to easily understand your target audience’s behavior and emotion patterns. Exempli gratia:

• Surveys — set of specific questions distributed to a large number of respondents in order to identify pain points and results.
• User Interviews — conducted a conversation with current (or potential) users in order to obtain results in terms of their preferences, behavior and vision of a product.
• Usability Testing — set of specific tasks provided to a user with your product in order to identify pain points, user problems and success metrics.

Research is your best friend and should not be neglected even if time frames are restricted. It helps you to discover future user problems and build a solution before they relize it.

Myth #4: Design means looking good

Many people around the world define design that is something visually attractive and elegant. They tend to assume design as a decoration, visual result, but not a process. It is incorrect, though. Design is more likely how it works and operates, rather that looks and feels. UX Design is not only visually attractive (like illustrations and graphics) but also functional and useful.

What designers say about how do they define design:

“What is design to me? Like design I think it’s best to break the problem up until you find the simplest solution.” — Paul Scrivens

“Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose.” — Charles Eames

Thus, the aim of great design is to actually solve problems. Design is based on comprehension of how users see the world, how they behave, what emotions do they feel and their context as well. It’s just not about colors and font styles, it is also about prototyping, research, testings and science.

Uh, I’m feeling like a mythbuster (shoutout to Jamie and Adam!).

Myth #5: More choices = higher satisfaction

Nope. That’s another misconception over there. Yes, having choices is a good thing and users are satisfied if they are in control of what they do.

Despite this, the more choices product offers, the harder it is to understand the product itself and its interface and functionality. Some studies showed that too many choices lead to “decision paralysis” — complete lack of ability to make a decision. This leads to frustration, which finally leads to refusion of using your product. In other words, as the decision time increases, the user experience suffers. You don’t want this to happen, do you?

Let’s take a stepback to basics. Hick’s Law states that “the time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices”. Thus, Designers should provide an optimal quantity of choices in order to maximize the outcome.

Here is a tip: simplify choices for the user by breaking down complex tasks into smaller steps, or combine similar tasks into high-end categories. You can even highlight/emphasize the recommended options to avoid information overload and decision paralysis.

Myth #6: Users make optimal choices

That’s an ideal world, where customers make optimal decisions based on a product/service. They scan the page to find every specific piece of information, but studies found out this is not in real life and users tend to choose a somewhat reasonable option that catches their eyes.

In other words, people choose a link that is even slightly connected to what they are looking for and expect some specific outcome from that link. Here is some joke about it:

A QA Engineer walks into a bar. Orders 1 beer. Orders -0 beers. Orders 2.5 billion beers. Orders -15 beers. Orders affsdffssfd. Orders lizard. Orders 9999dg36 beers. The first real customer walks into a bar and asks where the bathroom is. The bar bursts in flames, everyone is dead.

This is really g(old) joke, which represents real-life mistakes of every newbie team. They expect a user to make a choice they really want to but didn’t realize there are too many other options to be considered.

Steve Krug wrote in his book “Don’t Make Me Think” (strictly insist on reading this masterpiece) that users tend to guess the option because there is no penalty in a mistake and it’s fun.

Try to make options as clear as possible, provide possible outcomes of what to expect and investigate every little scenario that might come up even from the deep-down area of your website/app, cuz’ as Murphy’s Law states “anything that can go wrong will go wrong”.

Myth #7: People read on the Web

Basically, people read on the web word-by-word when they are actually interested in the content. But in general, they just scan pages thru some keywords that will catch their eye and likely will skip irrelevant information.

Here is some research made:

• Jakob Nielsen’s eye-tracking study from 2008 indicated that less than 20% of the text content is actually read on an average web page.
• Steve Krug claims in “Don’t Make Me Think” (again, read it) that one of the most important facts about web users is that they don’t read, they scan.

But when actually people read? Firstly, when they are really interested in the content. Secondly, when the interface is well-structured and organized.

So, try to organize the hierarchy of your content properly, clarify paragraphs (if there are so much text), play with contrast and identify the keywords of each paragraph to deliver meaningful information to the reader.

As an example, you can see how I did to this article. If you scan through the text, you’ll see how keywords are highlighted, hierarchy is correct and even images help you to navigate between topics. Thus, you’ll be able to quickly scan thru the titles and catch relevant information only, without wasting some time.

Summary

We’ve done it. It was a very “mythbusting” adventure. But a little disclaimer: don’t rely on my research only, do your own. Products significantly differ from one another, thus, services vary as well, target audience, deliverables and emotions also different. And never forget that research is your best friend and a solid positive foundation for your product’s future.

Do not try to design just for design. Aesthetics and clearance is not a crucial part of your product. Your product should solve problems and shouldn’t create other ones.

There are so many topics left to cover, I’m already working on “Habits of a Designer” and I hope we’ll get thru them later on. Spread the word to your fellow design friends and discuss with them. Adequate discussion is one of those great habits, though.

Thanks and see ya later!