In the next of a series of interviews with our selection panellists, Shikoh Gitau, User Experience Researcher, Google, shares her thoughts on what user experience is and the importance of designing it well.

What is User Experience?

A common misconception is usually to equate user experience (UX) with user interface (UI), which is the visual/tangible part of a technological service or product. While the UI plays a big part in how the user experiences and interacts with products or services, it is just one aspect of UX.

UX is not the technology or, necessarily, about the technology. UX takes into consideration the user’s whole environment, including the information used and accessed by the users, their behavior, personal attributes, personal goals, yearnings desires and aspirations. After a comprehensive understanding of these factors, a UX design then incorporates them in the form of elements or attributes built into the technology, in a way that allows users to accomplish their goals. An experience is deemed to be good when the service or product is found to be useful, useable, valuable, and desirable.

What are the components of UX?

The UX process starts with listening to the users, observing their environment, and picking up on their tacit and obvious knowledge. It then analyses this information, refining it into themes and using it to present a design in a manner the user can readily understand. UX can be divided into a number of iterative activities:

• Determining the information architecture. This basically analyses and refines all the information that has been collected and then organizes it into flows or structures that are understandable to the users as helping achieve a given goal.
• Interaction design. Determines how these different pieces of the information architecture connect in a manner that enables people to manipulate that information to achieve their goals
• Visual design. This is the ‘artsy,’ pixel and button component of UX where the design above is presented in a manner that best responds to the users’ actions to achieve their goals. This is the part of UX from which derive such attributes as desirability and usability.

What is the role of research in UX?

When you view UX beyond pixels and buttons, you start to understand it is more than just improving the interface of a technology. It is about improving the world around the user. With this in mind, UX becomes holistic process that first starts with understanding the user through open-minded inquiry about them, their environment and their needs. This inquiry or research phase is to me, and many will attest to the same, the most critical part of the UX process. This is even more important when designing for populations that are different from one that you are originally from. As a technologist, you usually have ways you are used to doing things, and this usually finds its way into how we design technology, which excludes users from other populations. Without fully understanding the target end user, it will be a struggle to achieve a useful, usable, valuable and desirable product.

Examples of Good UX

My best reference to great UX in developing countries is the revolutionary mobile money transfer service. M-PESA. MPESA was designed with the goal of ensuring safe transfer of money from urban areas to rural areas in Kenya. To be able to achieve this goal, the designer realized technology in itself was not enough, there had to be an ecosystem in place to support what they envisioned. They put in place a network of agents that worked seamlessly with the network operator to ensure what seems to an instantaneous transfer of funds. By looking at user patterns, they realized that spaza shops, kiosks and any other local grocery shop were part of the ‘user experience.’

Another favourite is Nokia 1100, said to be the most popular mobile phone model ever made, with over 200 million pieces sold in its lifetime. Why, you might ask? Whilst not being the most nifty of products when it came to looks, I believe it is because it did what it was meant to do. It had a flashlight which made it really popular with users in emerging markets where grid electricity can be erratic. It was durable: rumour has it that it could float on water, be dried and come back to life! Whether true or not, it’s clear it met the essentials, and added extra value.

Why should MNOs focus on women?

MPESA and Nokia above have shown great examples on how meeting the needs of the usually marginalized BoP users can be profitable. Women form at least half of the whole population. The potential profit they represent is demonstrated by the fast moving consumer goods industry, which has based much effort on understanding and providing “what women want.”  It has nailed down the UX of these goods. From packaging to marketing, they meet the needs and aspirations of women of various income brackets using differing techniques tailored to those women’s varying situations. They have raised living standards by making and breaking the products into affordable units and in return raking in a profit.

Why are initiatives such as the design challenge important?

Initiatives such as the Design Challenge allow UX practitioners and other stakeholders to step outside their comfort zone to use their skills to confront a reality that is often different from one they are used to. These initiatives bring the needs of resource-poor women to the attention of UX practitioners, who might not otherwise consider them, leading to designs which better accommodate the challenges faced by developing country women.