Using Your User Experience

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Every once in a while we get very annoyed at digital tools not having the functions we need to complete advanced tasks.

Or perhaps the features we are looking for are hidden away and hard to find.

These moments can make us feel frustrated as they eat away at our motivation to keep working on our projects. Of course, a reflex of googling a solution usually helps us deal with the actual issue at hand.

But what about that initial feeling of annoyance and frustration?

Running into awkward, uncomfortable emotions is a valuable experience. Even though our perspective may be focused on building and designing, we all spend plenty of time being users of products.

This can be turned into a valuable resource if we are able to consistently see the link between an individual design element and the frustration it caused.

The key thing here is being drawn out of the identity of a builder or a developer, and into the mind of an ordinary user. While this exercise is well-known to many, the path to making use of it often lies in these everyday moments of frustration.

Put simply, we should always keep the channel open in our minds for valuable bits of user experience to enter as an ingredient into our thought process. Even if we are sometimes irritated by them, they still carry useful clues for improving our designs.