In the field of design, you not only need technical skills to succeed, but also business prowess. As the number of people using the Internet increases, the value of UX designers increases. Multiple companies are seeking UX designers to help them gain a competitive edge in their market.
By now, Nintendo has made exactly 87,493,029 versions of Mario Kart since the game was first introduced in 1992 for the Super Nintendo. (Okay, the company has really made 13—which is still a lot!) But a new sequel coming this fall to the Nintendo Switch changes the formula in an enticing way, thanks to super experimental UX.
There is a reason you are not familiar with many -maybe not even one- of Airbnb’s competitors. The renting/booking marketplace “giant” has thrived in the global market for a decade and still hasn’t found anyone that can stand up to him.
User-friendly Experience + Simplified Buying Journey = More Sales
Online businesses in 2020 are forced to compete with large online and big box retailers, including Amazon, Wayfair, and brick-and-mortar stores like Walmart and Best Buy. In order to compete, e-commerce websites need to have a great user-experience (UX) and a streamlined buying process. Complicated checkout systems, over-cluttered product pages, and a lack of mobile optimization can severely inhibit a retailer from competing with large companies that have large, dedicated user-experience teams.
We’re all familiar with the way companies such as Uber and Airbnb have brought fundamental disruption to their respective industries. Taxis and cars for hire existed long before the advent of Uber. But one of the core differences Uber offers customers is the user experience (UX).
Developers both large and small can benefit from an outside perspective given by a game user research, or usability research geared towards games. Indie developers can benefit from adding UX expertise to the development team, while large developers can obtain an outside perspective to compliment and verify findings from internal members of the development team. In this article, we will present three key ways in which game research can maximize a game’s success.
Uber did not allow you to pre-book a taxi. Amazon started out by selling books only. Google was just a search engine. McDonald’s got rid of cutlery. And somehow we still believe that for a product to be successful it must do many things.
Most clients and projects require the design researchers to state a predetermined sample size of users. Researchers often find it hard to justify to clients and business stakeholders on the choice of their sample size of users.
User-centered design isn’t just about creating a great experience for customers—it’s also a smart business move.
How do you conduct impactful user research in a short space of time?
As the manager of a Rapid Research team at Google, I’ve built a team around just that — delivering meaningful insights, fast. My job is to ensure our product teams get the insights they need quickly and effectively.