What is Good and Bad UX?

As a designer we have to consider the need of the target user as later it will transform into a user experience whether pleasant or not. Today let’s talk about good and bad user experience but before that let’s talk a little about what user experience is

What is User experience?

User experience is something we feel while using a product, website, and application, our overall encounter with a product whether good or bad.

Suppose you need to buy a mobile phone within your budget and basic requirements, so whatever interaction and feelings you will have with this product from looking at advertisement to price to features and its overall usability is considered as user experience.

What is Good User Experience?

When a product actually fulfills the need for its creation

If a product fulfills the need of the user which even the user doesn’t know about is considered a good experience.

Let’s see a few examples where I had a good experience.

• Instagram is an app that is used very frequently by most of the crowd. If we look at the Instagram messenger, it has a feature of the timer on media where we can decide how many times someone can see our picture as shown in the image below.

The Instagram messenger timing feature

• Netflix provides us a feature to create multiple users in one account, so that if two people are watching the same show or movie then they will be independent of each other’s progress.

Multiple profiles on Netflix

• An Indian airline ‘AIR INDIA’ sometimes provides an option of free seat booking at the time we book our tickets even if we are booking it 2 months before travel. Whereas for other airlines this is chargeable, i.e. if we have to book our seat at the time of booking tickets we have to pay some amount for it.

What is Bad User Experience?

Bad user experience is something that either slows our work or is very complicated to use, something that not actually solve our need from that product.

Let’s see few examples

• Recently I was facing an issue with my Airtel broadband connection, as it didn’t have any network for days, I tried to contact the toll-free number but all I get in return is ‘No executive is available to take my call’, which lead me to email the airtel customer services However I got a disappointing response.

They replied that they need a complaint number to process my request and again I came to square zero. I can’t solve my issue either through their app or toll-free number and not through email. This was a very bad experience I felt with airtel.

• While using the youtube app (Free version)on our mobile phones we cannot multitask as youtube does not run in the background, as soon as we minimize the app, music or any video will stop running.

But YouTube provides this feature in a premium subscription, we can actually minimize the app and still, the video will continue to run. We can consider this as a very good business strategy by youtube.

So basically I think, as a designer for a better user experience we need to keep in mind how we can fulfill the need and expectations of the user from a product and deliver the same as much as we can.