What do you do?!?

How would you describe UX to someone who doesn’t understand what it means?

Someone asked me this question recently. I had to think. What do they already know? What do they understand? Older generations, your grandparents or parents, or someone who simply isn’t technically savvy probably won't understand the terms we like to throw around in the industry (i.e., human-centered design, journey mapping, design thinking, user interface design, etc.).

I could’ve asked them what their favorite phone app was. Then explain that people in UX essentially make the decisions that make the app work the way it does. But it’s so much more than that. It’s about empathizing with people. It’s more than digital. And it's more than visual. It’s about a journey and finding pain points that people experience, and designing solutions for those issues.

A light-hearted way of describing it might be to break it down with a simple analogy. Equate UX design to making a cake. We all can understand the concept of a cake. A deliciously simple treat that most of us have enjoyed a few times in our life. You know….cake.

The recipe for the cake = UX.

The icing and decoration = UI.

If following a recipe for a cake and you miss vital ingredients like eggs, the cake will not be good. Like following a recipe, UX follows steps and processes to make things like phone apps, websites, and other experiences easier for a user. If those steps aren’t followed correctly, the user will probably have a terrible time with that experience.

If decorating a cake, and you mess up the frosting, so it looks unappealing, someone might not want to eat it. Or they eat it, and it’s okay, but not a great experience, because it looked disgusting. That’s similar to UI. If the user interface design doesn’t look right, it will make the user not want to use it, even if it’s a perfectly good product.

So it’s all about making empathetic design decisions and following processes that make a great product or experience.

How would you describe UX to someone that didn’t get it?