Overview

Over the years, UX has become a complicated, obfuscated, tangled mess of artifacts, practices, theories, and principles.

Today, I want to share with you the entirety of UX theory distilled into one, powerful sentence that you can use to guide your organization’s design activities.

UX in one sentence

I already wrote about this at length in The UX Designer’s Field Manual, but I wanted to make sure you had a really solid, simple, and clear understanding of what UX truly is:

“UX is the gap between a user’s expectations and their real outcomes.”

That’s it.

UX is the gap between a user’s expectations and their real outcomes. How they think something is going to go down, or how they expect things to go, versus how they actually go, what they actually get, and how they actually feel at the end of the process.

This idea is not altogether novel, but it is powerful, and can help you quickly cut through the noise of modern UX shenanigans.

What creates good UX?

So if UX is the gap between a user’s expectations and their real outcomes, how do we design a high-quality, high-impact user experience?

Simple:

“Exceed expectations.”

Establish baselines expectations, how a user expects to feel, what they expect to do, and how difficult they expect a process to be, and then exceed those expectations in every possible way.

• If they expect to do X, help them do XY AND Z.
• If they expect to feel A, help them feel A+.
• If they expect it to take an hour, help them get it done in 10 minute.

This principle, and this principle alone creates good UX.

Be absolutely ruthless in your excess as well, because exceeding expectations is what creates real emotional, utility, and convenience value.

How to know if you’re exceeding expectations

Your users will tell you both with their words and their dollars, and they won’t pull punches.

When you are exceeding expectations consistently, you and your team will consistently get positive feedback from your users, both in terms of ratings, and in terms of conversion.

If there are things they are saying are a problem, start digging. Figure out the real problem, and fix it.

• If it’s slow, make it fast.
• If it’s boring, make it interesting.
• If it’s hard, make it easy.
• If it’s wrong, make it right.
• If it’s a bad fit, make it a good fit.
• And if it’s just not right for the users, let them leave without resistance.

This is how you exceed expectations, and it’s how you can consistently create fantastic user experiences, by understanding the principle that in order to create great UX, you must consistently exceed user expectations.

Bringing it all together

In summary:

• UX is the gap between a user’s expectations and their real outcomes.
• Good UX is a matter of establishing baseline expectations and then exceeding them everywhere possible.
• The higher you exceed your user’s expectations in terms of emotional, utility, and convenience values, the greater their overall experience will be, and the higher lasting conversions your offer will net.