#2 Defining UX design
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I think UX is like this one big head and it's just about what do we designers do. And inside there are all those divisions, if I can call it so, where there will be different people, different roles that would be just focused on different parts of user experience.

So hello everyone and welcome to Amfisa's and Ioana's podcast. This is the second episode and what we hope will be a long series of episodes. Since we're actually treating it like coffee together, I'm curious to hear how your week went, Amfisa. How was your last week?

couple of days since we last spoke last week. Hey there. Okay. So first of all, hello everyone. I'm really excited to have this second episode finally. My last week was interesting. I think it was really, really busy so that I was falling behind most of my projects. First of all, the energy courses started last week, you know, the North and Melbourne group. So I was taking two of those courses about UX at OY and another one about UX analytics.

So this took all of my evenings in the weekdays. Then apart from that, I was trying to manage

the freelance project I still have because my past client is still supporting it. We're still working on the progress for the project. Like I'm giving feedback to the developer. We were searching for illustrator designer. Then there was a lot of, a lot of issues with illustrator, not illustrator designer, but between the communication between them, I was trying to facilitate this. So it's been messy. And also there was a full-time job obviously. And, and I was trying to support my students. So it's like always busy.

But I hope that your week was a little bit easier. And how was it, by the way? Well, I'm also doing a freelance project on the side right now. So it kind of feels like a full-time job because I just can't balance things right because I want to get fully invested and very immersed in any project that I take on. So I always say that it's a side job, but in fact, it feels like a full-time job. Well, actually, I'm currently...

on pre-maternal leave from my first job so I have only this sidekick which is full-time job the only full-time job I have right now but also I have personal projects around UX goodies and so on and so forth and it always feels like at the end of the week I'm exhausted anytime I try to rest and take a proper break or a longer break I feel like I'm wasting time and this immediate guilt kicks in and I'm not

I'm not yet able to handle it. And I never take the break I need. And I hope that I'm not gonna burn out. And I hope the same for you, because I know that you're always doing things. I was just thinking that we will once need to do this as a separate topic, I guess, because this is a big topic for us both. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But until then...

I'd like to share with the audience the topic of today, which is defining UX design.

Which may seem as a no-brainer, because since for UX designers, we all know what UX design is. But actually, it's a very controversial subject in the UX industry right now. And I think everybody has a different definition. And there's no universal agreement that we can all refer to, except for some ISO standards for usability or something. Yeah.

But apart from that, there's no unique definition that can clarify what UX design is. And also, I think that people that are trying to break into the industry start off with this question. What actually is UX design? So I'm really curious to hear your thoughts around UX.

this definition and also how you feel the industry is doing right now in terms of defining what your user experience and your user experience design. The topic is really interesting just because it's always the first question that probably your parents or friends asking at least it was like that like back I don't know two years ago so

So pretty much everybody would be like, what is UX? Why are you saying those acronyms? What does it mean? Nobody understands that. Back in the beginning, my mom still didn't know what I was doing. I was just saying to her, you know, I'm kind of doing those interfaces for startups. And then she kind of learned first what is startups. And then I was like, okay, instead of explaining you all the logic behind, I'll just say, you know, everything you see on your screen is basically what we do. And for her, it was easier. But

Obviously, it's not what we're doing. We don't do just those screens. It's not just about screens. And I really like to think of it as honestly just like any experience that involves senses, human senses. So everything, and it's not just about senses actually, it's also about mentality. So everything we people experience

do with products, objects, services around us that involves our mental thinking as well as our feelings. Either it is visual, tactical, voice. I think it's a part of an experience. They always, all of those senses help us to understand the status, understand what's going on really. It's like for us as designers, we are like those mediators. We communicate

either a product or a service or a meaning or a vision or whatever it is through those devices we have right now. So today we use phones and computers, tomorrow who knows what we will use, like for example, brain machine interfaces maybe upcoming from Elon Musk, right? We never know. So tomorrow it could be a different experiment. It doesn't need to be limited to just devices around us,

But the experience is literally everything we interact with that help our lives, that makes our life better. It's almost like a companion to us, I guess, because we communicate and hopefully we make the life, as designers, we make life better for somebody. And also it's important to note that I think that UX is

Like there is no one right formula about what user experience design needs to be. Every person will use specific product in a different way. It's very hard to, you know, design one way for everyone. Again, the experience could be anything, not just the digital one, but for example, how do you interact with the cup or I don't know, with any product, even with chocolate, with a bar of chocolate, anything. It's really just like, how do you interact with something in front of you?

And what does this thing gives you in return? Is it satisfies your needs? I just remember that in the weekends, we were going to cafe with my husband and we got like two teapots. Whereas there was like a

part with the leaves, there was a sort of teapot and then there was a cup and we didn't know how to use the part with the leaves. So I put it in my cup and my husband put it into the teapot and we were like, why are you using it the wrong way? You know, it's very hard because like we all have our different patterns and understand how do we use the product.

So we always need to understand that it's like very hard to design for somebody specific. And when you design something, you never know how it will be used. I'm not going to go into the processes we should follow, but we just need to keep this in mind that people are so unique. And as designers, we just really need to think about the psychology, the usability, the usefulness, the utility and stuff like this. I know it's a big answer, but I wanted to hear your opinion also. How do you define user experience? Well,

Well, actually, I'm going to build on top of everything you just shared, because I think that you got things in a very encompassing and deep way defined already.

but what I would like to continue with this maybe emphasize a little bit this distinction between UX which is usually refers to the user's experience of a product and UX design which is the act of designing that particular experience for the user so with this separation I would now focus on what UX design actually is and what's its purpose and I think that just like you said

User experience design is the act, the intentional act of doing design with intent, with the intent of giving a pleasurable, delightful, satisfactory, functional experience to your users by putting them at the core of your process in a way. So making your entire efforts of building a product centered around your

your users and understanding them as good as possible in order to leverage that uniqueness that you talked about. And I loved the part with users are actually unique as many times we try, I'm going to derail a little, but many times we try to box users into this personas or this categories or the, our user is this one.

When in fact, this can simplify our job, yeah, but at the same time, we're missing out on the particularities of

or nuances that our users have. Yeah, pretty much UX design is the act and the process of creating products that people enjoy. And I think that it's mostly used in relation to the digital products for building apps, websites, and so on. But I think that everything is an experience, just like you said. So-

And that's why in UX design, one of the most common example is Norman Doerr, right? So Norman has defined or has helped us understand what user experience is by referring to a Doerr experience, which is a physical product, but it's pretty much the same interior process for our users. It's the way they interact with something that's outside of them, be it

Just like you said, a voice interface, a physical product, a chocolate bar, which I'm hoping I'll interact with soon. And yeah, of course, digital interfaces. This is pretty much the most encompassing way we can describe user experience. But I'm curious if you have any thoughts on why the industry feels a bit shattered when trying to define user experience.

experience why there are so many contrary opinions and sometimes even violent debates around what UX is and what UX isn't and what UI is and what UX isn't and so there is an ongoing effort in the industry to try to define and find the right answer which of course there's no right answer there's no absolute answer but why do you think this happens is it because I don't know the industry is not mature enough or what are your thoughts on this

I don't think it's because industry is not mature. I think industry is maybe even reaching the maturity level, at least in my opinion. But I think that it's the term that we are using. And I like the term, honestly. But I also think that it is also very broad and in a way ambiguous. Like experience, it sounds like everything, right? And when you hear it, even if you're not in the industry, it's just not specific. So when you say user experience,

your, I don't know, people around you could totally think about different things. Whatever is on top of their mind, whatever is shaping their mentality. When they hear experience, they would maybe think of traveling experiences, experiencing the food, the interior, and it's not always the top mind thing that people would think of interfaces.

But of course, if you're in IT industry, you'll already hear this term UX and then there will be also debates about what UX encompasses, right? What do we do? What processes do we follow? What value we can bring as the UX designers, again, as an act, I guess. And also I think it's a little bit confusing when we think about UX as the term, because again, it's big and it includes all those different nuances and it's holistic and we think about, you know,

We think about the process we follow as UX designers from the beginning, from asking questions, why, who and what and how.

all the way towards those small icons and interactions and all those, I don't know, even vibrations on the phone. So it's very huge. When we think of UX, it's everything. It's this big one cap on top of everything. But inside of UX, we have all those small things and all those bottles between, oh, UX or UI, or is it the same thing or is it a different thing? I think UX is like this one big hat and it's just about what do we designers do, right?

Right? And inside, there are all those divisions, if I can call it so, where there will be different people, different roles that would be just focused on different parts of user experience. Some of them would be focused on interaction parts, some of them on UI parts, some of them on like analytical parts or strategic parts, right? And all of those parts will be still essential to the experience overall, but they will just be tackling specific parts of it. The confusion might come because like,

People say, oh, UI is a UX. Or somebody say, no, I'm just working on UI because I'm making those screens pretty or whatever. And it's not a UX. It is a UX. It's a part of UX. It's just that your work is revolving about one specific part of your other experience. So I still think it's a part of the same thing, but it could be confusing from when we talk about it as a term to when we start doing something. And when we start doing something, we can see those small separations in the context.

parts of the work we are doing and what do you think? Do you have the same impression or do you think, yeah, what's your opinion on like confusion towards this term? Well, I think that I am in total agreement that UX is actually a big umbrella that encompasses different specific fields

divisions. I like the word division. So I think that all these small parts work together to create an experience that the final user has. And it can be through motion design, which only a motion designer. So I wouldn't be the best person to do motion design, of course, who

Even though I'm a UX designer, I consider myself a UX designer. So I think that all these smaller parts make up the big experience, the entirety of the experience a user has. And that's why no part should be neglected. For example, if you have the perfect product but the copy is broken, then you should hire a UX writer, which is an emerging field if you want, or something that hasn't been around for a long while.

it's gaining a lot of popularity, but it's really important. I mean, you can break an experience if some details are not well thought of. So that's why UX is not about one thing, it's about many things and all those things need to work together as a whole.

I think the industry is debating very much around it because we all need a feeling of certainty or a feeling of agreement or a feeling of things have been clarified. We finally know what UX design is and this is the absolute right answer that we can all refer to. And I think that it's actually a good thing that people are, even with all the controversial conversations and maybe

conversations that don't go so well even with even in spite of these malfunctions I think that it's healthy that the industry is continuously debating and trying to advance the conversation in and the efforts of defining UX design and I think that it's particularly valuable for the people outside the design industry because designers we know by now

But the ones that are outside the UX industry don't really get that much the clarity maybe around what we're doing. And even people who are trying to break into the industry, I think that in the beginning it can feel very confusing. So the lack of this common agreement that we all in favor and comfortable with reflects on the

on the experience that people breaking into the UX industry have because they might feel overwhelmed as to what UI is, what interface design, what information architecture and so on. What are all these things? What am I actually trying to learn here? I think

what you were just saying that we don't have this consensus on what it is and we really need to have this consensus otherwise it kind of starts you know it starts evolving into opinions battle or like no this is what I do this is what I like no this is not the UX and this is UI and you know all of that it's really funny that we want as the humans we want to have this clarity in one liner but

if we try to make it a one-liner this huge holistic interconnected diverse industry in one liner it's impossible to put it all in this one sentence that will tell it all in just like I don't know a few seconds it's impossible otherwise you know like it really would depend on how do you approach things in your life in your work how you describe it you probably will describe it from your own perspective and from your

own role, maybe even at work. And it could sometimes be really different. Some of people would say like, oh, you know, it's very strategic and it's really about business decisions and how business, how users, how the user's voice drives the business decisions. And somebody would say, no, it's really about a feeling and an emotion and how it helps users to, you know, progress with their tasks or whatever, whatever. It's really, really, really different. And

I kind of still like it, you know, to hear those different opinions. I also remember that in one of the posts recently I was reading, somebody defined experience in a fun way. Somebody said that UI is how...

how the girl looks like and what attracts you in the girl and your ex is why you married her. It's like everything together. So, I mean, it's not exactly precise, but I like the metaphor here that, yeah, maybe when you, even when we think about digital products, you first download it, like if you'll find it trustworthy, if it's modern, if it looks good,

Holistical and clear and the value proposition is in the first place, you know why you're downloading it You're attracted to the kind of visual look and when you start using it, um

and it's engaging and brings you constantly value and it doesn't bother you with notification, doesn't use those dark patterns and do not break the trust and stuff like this. It becomes a habit for you, something that you live with almost like a partner, right? A companion to your daily life. Some of the products stick with us for years and if not decades. So it's, yeah, you can debate about it also for a long time here, I believe.

Yeah, I think it can be a very long conversation and a fruitful one. The last point I wanted to add on this controversy in the industry subject is the fact that I think that this very heated conversation around what UX design is and what isn't,

stems from the fact that it's often misunderstood, especially outside the industry, but it can happen even to design professionals to define completely in a completely different way, just like you said, based on what they're actually doing in their day-to-day lives and jobs. But I think that the problem is many people complain, or at least designers complain about the fact that recruiting staff and hiring managers is...

It often happens that people hire UX designers, but then expect them to do mock-ups or pretty screens and the visual part. And they just, so it's, it's, the problem is that many job descriptions feel broken. Another very common example of how UX is misinterpreted outside, but in the closest vicinity of the design industry is that people try to hire UX designers and then expect them to know how to code, which is an advantage.

UX designer but it's not actually the job of the UX designers but many people think that UX designers need coding skills when they hire for a UX designer so I think that the problem is that it kind of this this lack of universal agreement if you want can lead to actual

problems and bad experiences for designers that are starting in industry and even for senior designers which are being recruited for things that they're not supposed to be doing. So I think that maybe this is the only reason, another reason for which the industry tries to find the perfect definition that we can all

agree by it could be like two parts I think one is that design for a long time it was like a visual aspect and we used to hear of design like as a graphic design and something that you know we create beautiful stuff and then out of blue somehow we start talking about strategy and business and all those

mind maps and stuff like that, which is like what? So not every country already get there with what UX designers do. And I think it sometimes also depends on the country or on the region where you live at. In some places,

It's still in this, I guess, early stages of understanding what you user experience designer could bring to the table. And in some places, it's actually, you know, some countries, especially like Scandinavia, for example, I think that they were doing UX already like 20 years ago. I mean, like all the strategic parts of the UX, like 20 years ago, and then they changed

they were thinking about user experience design in a different way than in some other countries, in some other parts of the world. So it could be also really dependent on where you are at and what's the image of the word design and how the design evolved into the user experience design in the, I guess, in this context.

in this cultural region, overall. So sometimes it could be that you have like this, your expectation both matches, sometimes it totally doesn't match. Now I would like to ask you another question, which I think that is very close to, goes hand in hand with the effort of defining UX. I think we can't talk about UX without understanding what

good UXs. So what does it mean to have a good experience of a product? What is a good experience? Of course, just like you said, it can be very unique for every person and individual. It's something different. But what do you think makes good UX?

I think I would just refer to this metaphor with the girl. Like, honestly, I think there is some like sense in this because to me, a good user experience designer is the experience that is first of all, attractive, then it is useful and then it is usable. Like it's, it's a different aspects and it's, it's if you want, you can zoom out and think of it as a, as a journey of building relationships. Like you first, like,

get to know about the product. And at this stage, there are certain values or important points that you look out for in this product. So like you first see if it's trustworthy and if it's just, you know, something that you want to interact with.

Then you start using it and then you start seeing if it brings you value. So is it useful? Is it usable? Do you get confused? Do you spend too much time? Do you maybe get lost around? Do you not being able to complete your tasks? So is it usable and useful to you?

And then we think about the next stages of this product, you know, journey and cycle. We started thinking about how does it help us on a daily life basis? So can this product be really right here when I need it? Is it healthy product? For example, some of the products we know right now are not super healthy. Like sometimes they're using those habit forming mechanisms that make us want to come back though they don't really bring us value or don't

help us growing, right? So if this product is healthy, if this really kind of comes around when you need it, if it not distracts you from your tasks, for example, it doesn't require your attention, you know, swipe here, click here, get there. If it's just like having a good, healthy relationship with you as the person, as the user,

So for me, a good experience is really like having a friend who helps, who cares about me, who doesn't use my data against me, you know, all of that stuff.

And if I feel like this product is almost like somebody I can trust and maybe delegate a part of my work or my needs or my tasks to this part, it's the product I would like to use. So this may be like subjective definition of a good user experience. And it also has like a lot of those small puzzles that are really important in different stages of the product development cycle, product journey cycle.

as well as also updates when, you know, tomorrow this product, you know, changes everything and doesn't fit my needs anymore. That's a bummer as well. Or if tomorrow evolves into something that I can not just use, but benefit much more. And if it's like,

with my needs every single year. Like Sketch, for example. It was really in hand in the beginning with every user. We had like a Photoshop, which started to be really hard and bulky to use. We had this Sketch and it was super great because it was community-based. We had those plugins and people were engaging and they had a lot of updates. So we were using it so often. And so I guess it was just matching our needs

until it became so bulky and heavy and not so quick anymore to deliver on new features. And now we all started moving towards Figma or whatever other tool, maybe XD.

Just because, you know, it doesn't meet much as our needs any longer or it's harder to use it right now. There are other products. So it's a very, very long, I guess, definition or a very, very long journey that you take your users or friends on board with, I guess. I love your definition. And what I like about your response or what really struck a chord in me is the part where the digital product or the product should be your friend.

and you should trust him and it should be as, as responsible as a human would be towards you and as respectful and like build, because this actually comes down to relationship. So I love the idea that you defined the good user experience by, uh, defining, uh, by, by referring to the relationship that that product is building with you, which should be of course based on trust and transparency and, uh, uh,

finer things that go beyond just meeting your needs immediate needs or serving you which are fundamental I mean I don't I don't see any reason for which a person would use a product that doesn't enable them to accomplish their tasks so I don't see why I would use a

to-do list or productivity app of any sort that doesn't allow me to enter my to-do list or something very basic. So of course, the first thing in creating a good user experience is allowing your users to accomplish their tasks, find the practicality in your product, the value.

But then also the things that you spoke about, relationship, trust, and not abusing your data and not using dark patterns, which I don't know why still happens more often than it should. Maybe because it's not regulated in any way. So maybe because the UX industry is a younger industry compared to, I don't know, let's

say the medical system. Okay, we're talking about different things. It's life-threatening potential situations versus just a product. But at the same time, I think that we're waking up as an industry and as an entire world

We're waking up to realize that it can be harmful in maybe sometimes even equal ways to a bad medical act, decision or practice. So maybe UX design should also be regulated, at least in trying to protect people.

users from dark patterns and habit forming models that are not honest and so on. So I love that you touched on those points. But to get back to my answer of what would you expect, it's just like you said, usable.

valuable, and it should also be delightful, which is in a way it has to do with the visual design, the visual aspect, micro interactions, micro delighters, if you want, and even motion design and things that make it feel nice to use. And it's like, it's a product that you're excited to interact with.

It seems like all the products should be like this, but actually it's quite a hard job to get it to nail it. I mean, how many products do we use that we're completely excited about and we don't find anything?

flaw in their system and I mean all the big apps that I love there are many things that I hate about them at the same time so it's it's interesting that delivering a good experience to your users it's actually not that easy so people seem to think that ah UX designers anyone can learn UX design anyone can do UX design it's like I don't know

the entry bar is quite low but in reality it's really hard to get things right I think it's very interesting that you've mentioned it because I now think that you remember we were talking about this in the beginning that every human is different and then it's very hard to design for everybody in like in the same kind of experience level like in the same good way I guess first because

Same for me. There is the products that I really love and I think they're delightful and they help my needs, but there are frustrating parts about them. And I assume that it's just because it doesn't match my mental model. For somebody else, it would be perfect. For somebody else, maybe who's more analytical or more whatever else, like person whose brain work a little bit differently and have a different mentality.

For them, it would be a perfect way of accomplishing stuff. For me, it's just different. You know, to the same example with my husband, how I used the parts with the leaves of the tea. And for us, it was very no-brainer. This is where we need to put those stuff. But for different people, it's different. They expect to see things here or they expect to see things here or they expect to have this flow or a different flow. And it's really hard to design for everybody. So...

course it's impossible to design super perfect experience one size fits all but there are definitely those parts as you've mentioned a delightfulness and usefulness and there is sometimes this learning curve that we need to go through in order to learn how to use it in a like more effective way as the users and we kind of like as the users even we just need to recognize this or acknowledge the fact that it's

it's not always going to be super perfect product that fits and you can use it without any frictions. For sure there will be some frictions, but it's really important which kind of relationship you take those users through. And if you kind of nailed the relationship, you started having trustworthy relationship where the user trusts you and wants to come back and really use you in the needed moments.

In these cases, this user can maybe sometimes get used to so small of those frictions that doesn't match his particular mental models or kind of patterns of the things how he used this.

For example, I can bring the products like Notion. For me, it was, it had this like entry curve. It's like you have this blank sort of shit with different opportunities and you don't know where to start. And it's like, okay, you can go crazy. You can go very simple. You don't know where to start. And there's this learning curve. You have to wrap your head around it to understand how to start using it in order to make value for yourself.

or even Airtable, or like there are some more products that are really useful right now to me and I'm using them on a daily basis. There were those frictions in the beginning and I had to accustom myself to use them in order to start loving those products, if that makes sense.

- Well, I have to be honest and admit that I'm a very lazy user. So for me, in continuing on your line of, on our train of thought that users are different and unique, I'm the kind of user that isn't open to putting too much effort into learning something new. So it has to be, to feel like a no-brainer, very user-friendly, very simple, don't make me waste my time. My time is very important.

And so, yeah, this is why I'm a bit struggling with the learning curve of Notion right now, but I'm starting to see value as days go by and I'm trying to learn.

learn how to maximize, make the most of the notion. But it kind of seems like what you described. But for example, for me in terms of, let's say, products that have created this feeling of delight for me so far, I think that one example was Revolut, which is the financial app I think most of our listeners might know.

So maybe because I was a bit biased by working in the financial industry for many years as a designer I don't know what happened there. But when when I first made a payment to a friend it felt like it's magic. It felt like it was really hard. So that's when I understood from a user standpoint how things feel when they work well and fast and intuitive and beautiful.

And so it was, it just felt like magic. And I know that it wasn't one time that I had a conversation with people sending me a request for money. And then I replied so quickly that they were like, what just happened? Did you already send it? What happened? How did you do it? I mean, everybody was startled at the speed of which things happened and ease.

This was one example of an experience that I was delighted by and I still stuck with Revolut even though there are things that I don't like or maybe don't feel as robust as they do in my bank apps. Just like you said, I mean if you are delivering 90% a great

experience I think users will be more understanding and gentle with you when you tend to fuck up some parts. So I think that this is one example and of course being an avid music listener I have to admit that Spotify for me was great for a long long while but now it feels like it's just reinforcing my musical biases and I'm stuck in this box where I'm actually listening to the same things. So in the beginning the

thing that attracted me about Spotify, the fact that I get recommendations and they're going to help me expand based on my taste, expand the circle of bands and music I'm listening. It actually, it's keeping me in a box. This is what I realized for the past few months. So I'm just listening to the same kinds of music again and again, and it's reinforcing my taste.

And it's like a perpetual confirmation bias on my musical experience. So, yeah. So I think that the point is that there is no ideal product that I can talk about without finding any frustration in relation to it. But I think that if you do a good job at delivering most of the experience in a proper way and a positive way,

delightful way then users will excuse you for the parts that you're still improving on. I'm trying to think of other products which I'm actually using right now and it's actually really hard sometimes to find those experiences that are really like fulfilling and most of the time it's like it's this thing that does job right right like honestly our lifestyle is is so super like we don't have so much time to find

you know, to build a relationship with those new products, right? We're so busy all the time that sometimes it's just, we need this app for this small thing. But then from the user experience designer, it's the job of the designers to understand how do we want to help these users more so we get more of his time, more of his attention, give more value to this person.

So yeah, sometimes I feel like most of my apps it's just for doing one small thing and not always I would have a good feeling towards those apps. So I'm looking at my phone right now and there is only one app that I remember I had like a really, I was really delighted and excited about. It's called InShot and it's for doing like those videos, Instagram videos. You probably have seen I do a lot of those like vlogging sort of videos which what I was doing today blah blah blah and it's like

For me, I think I have a relationship with this app just because it's like this proper journey which I was trying to describe to you. Because first of all, before I was editing a lot of videos because I'm doing the course, so I need to edit a lot of videos. And I know it's heavy, so you have to download all those videos.

computer then you have to open it those programs I'm heavy you export them import them then you start rendering them then you edit them then you add the music or it's so heavy oh the app is the computer is already heated and blah blah blah it takes you like office to edit a video so when you think of like oh I want to just say I quickly drop a piece of a block of my life to my Instagram or whatever else where I document my journey

And then I saw this app in shot. It was magical to me just because I would open it, import in one click, like five cuts of videos, and it would be just so perfect and seamless and it would be not heavy. It's not going to, you know, quit because it's, I don't know, so much videos and it's heavy and blah, blah, blah. It's just going to...

helped me editing video on the way and they have all those features like transitions, music, stickers, whatever it gives, color editing and stuff like this. And it's so easy to do it. And I would do it with one hand and I would edit a clip of a video in like three minutes and nobody would believe me that I can do this in three minutes. People would say like, "Hey, how are you doing those things? How would you... Are you spending hours at night to just edit those videos?" "No, I spent three minutes to edit it. It's so simple."

So I have like, I was really inspired and shocked by how easy you can do this when they just

you know, created this app. And then I started using it, they started adding more effects and they started adding more features and it became almost advanced to me, like literally like a real tool that you would use on your computer. So I feel like, oh, they are just understanding user needs and they're bringing more delight and those features that are really needed at the right moment and they give you more content there. So they really keep

engaging you in a way to always come back and always keep using them so that's like an example of a good app i would i would kind of bring if somebody asks me

I love the point that you just made that they're constantly bringing out new features that kind of respond to your anticipated needs. And I think that this is kind of a tricky part as a designer. And when you're trying to build a good user experience, you kind of understand the base of what you're trying to do, but then everything that you add on top can be too much.

Not enough or you have to always check for, of course, validation is essential in the design process. But at the same time, it can be risky. So I've seen products that have introduced new features in hope that

if we give this user more functionality, more, more, more, he's going to be more engaged and use the app more, but then the app becomes overwhelming or too cluttered or it's moving away from its original purpose and the original problem it was solving for the user. So it just becomes convoluted or complicated and users tend to get tired of it. So this is also an interesting challenge when you're doing design, finding the right balance between innovating and disrupting in a negative.

way the user's experience. So, but when apps manage to nail the new features they launch and it's like LinkedIn yesterday, I think, or a couple of days ago, I got the update where they're adding stories and

And they added a double tap, like you can like now by double tapping like on Instagram. So the double tap is something that I was really excited about because it's already in my muscle memory and I'm doing it. I think I'm doing it on objects around the house. Yeah.

by using Instagram so much. But also I'm curious, do I need stories on LinkedIn? I mean, is it something, because I already have the Instagram platform that I'm posting stories on. Maybe it's because maybe I don't need it on LinkedIn because I already have a professional profile on Instagram. But at the same time, it didn't feel, it felt like they're just putting a functionality that has to be there. And it's not necessarily that valuable or meaningful in the context of LinkedIn. Yeah.

But I think we can go on forever finding good and bad examples of products. And I think that actually the audience might want to listen forever to this kind of example. So maybe we would do, I don't know, an episode dedicated to dissecting products and understanding

what's good about the experience a certain product offers and what's bad and how they could improve for their users and maybe this would be another interesting topic for one of our future episodes I like the idea I would definitely do this

So I wonder if we want to wrap it up and have some bullet points as kind of what do we understand today in this conversation? Is there something that you would want to go through? Yeah, I think that indeed we've managed to exchange a lot of content over here. So it was a very productive coffee. I think that for me, things that kind of feel like they were,

most relevant to this conversation or most valuable are the points about not needing to define UX design in a very limiting and constricting and rigid way.

We should leave this definition open and just try to communicate better with the world outside, but just understand that UX design is not one thing. It's very broad and encompassing and can mean a lot of things. And it's very defining UX design is dependent to the context and the space you're trying to do the definition in.

So there's no universal right answer, but pretty much it's about building products that people love using or enjoy using, or at least are not frustrating by when you use it.

And another point that I really liked was the one when we tried to talk about what is a good experience for a user. And I think that in the early days of my design career, I used to be very shy about using words like feeling, emotion, because I felt like, oh, it might sound cheesy and it's not very scientific and I shouldn't be talking about those things because it can feel...

I don't know, immature. But now I know that actually good products are about creating feelings, generating emotions, positive emotions, a positive response.

the feeling of excitement, the feeling of pleasure, of light. So I think that good experiences are about feelings, relationships, just like we said, trust and things that kind of have more to do with what the user feels than what the user thinks necessarily. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Also, I would add is that user experience is very holistic industry itself.

So we need to understand that user experience itself is the one thing and UI interaction design, et cetera, et cetera, motion design, et cetera, is the parts of the design that you can work on. You can work on all of them. You can work on the specific part of them, but don't confuse your work with the term UX design because it's not always the same. I mean, you're contributing towards user experience, right?

So you're definitely working on user experience, even though you can particularly work on one part of it only. And another part is that any user experience is an evolving sort of organism that starts from at some point interacting with you and then it either stays with you or it disappears from your life.

And of course this evolving organisms, like it needs to keep, you know, it's not just supposed to be bring the delight once it's supposed to continuously help you improve with the time, give you more value. Um, and of course to not abuse the relationship that this product has with you. So it's, it's this kind of continuous process and any product, um,

it's not just, you know, you once did it and it's there and it's done, right? It's not that you build one experience and it's, it's, it's done. It's, it's always this, you know, evolving kind of organism, as I said. So that would be my bullet point for today. Well, cause your bullet point actually is, I think I, I would rephrase it into, uh,

it's all about the journey. It's a journey. Yeah. It's a long-term effort. It's a long-term partner. It shouldn't be a one-off experience. It should be something that you build brick by brick in time. And actually, I think that's why as designers, we operate with customer journey maps and product journeys. And that's exactly why, because you have to build something that's sustainable and it takes time to build. And that's,

the value in it and that's where the fun is as a designer so I think that UX is also fun to to end on a very happy and exciting note. UX is happiness that would be it for today thank you so much everyone who listened to this episode hope you learned something today and hope you have a great day of time of a day for now

Thank you and bye bye everyone. Bye everyone.