UX design (short for User Experience design) is the art and science of designing how users interact with digital products — making sure that experience is smooth, intuitive, and even enjoyable.
The term “UX” comes from user experience, a concept made popular in the 1990s by Don Norman, a cognitive scientist who worked at Apple. He wanted to emphasize that how a person feels when using a product matters just as much as what the product does. So, UX design is about shaping digital experiences — like apps, websites, or software — to fit human needs, behaviors, and emotions.
Imagine you’re using a food delivery app. UX design is what makes it easy to find your favorite restaurant, order quickly, and track your meal in real time. If everything flows naturally and nothing confuses you, that’s good UX. If buttons are hard to find or you’re unsure if your order went through, that’s bad UX. A UX designer anticipates these friction points and designs around them, usually by testing with real users and refining based on feedback.
UX design includes a lot of listening — to users, to business goals, to technical constraints — and then building wireframes, user flows, and prototypes. It’s not just about looking good (that’s more the realm of UI design), it’s about working well for the people using the product.
Want to go deeper? Check out NNGroup’s guide to UX.
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